Over the last two years, I have worked towards obtaining an IB diploma, and on paper, I believe I’ve succeeded academically. However, after completing my studies I will not be cherishing a mark, a band, or a total score; what I will appreciate most is the opportunities I was given to improve myself as an individual. From the moment I entered this School in 2015, I found myself obliged to take up flute, piano, electric guitar, guitar ensemble, choir, cricket, football, and Lego robotics. It seemed excessive. Even more peculiar was the continuation of co-curricular requirements into the senior years of high school, where most institutions encourage their students to focus purely on obtaining the highest marks possible. CGS is, perhaps uniquely, not an ATAR factory. While many schools base the quality of their education on the average percentile obtained by their graduating class, CGS does not, and it is my hope that it never will develop such tunnel vision.
The value of a Canberra Grammar School education, in my opinion, is not an ATAR, an award, or any objective measurement of personal success uniquely enabled by this School. Rather, it lies in a well-rounded personal development. In Chinese class, I’ve learnt a word for this; quán miàn fā zhǎn. The value of a comprehensive education, comprising not just academic rigour but a vast array of co-curricular pursuits; sport and music among them, has not been fully apparent to me until now, in my final year of schooling.
The purpose of schooling is not to cram a vast sum of knowledge within a student’s mind; as my peers would undoubtedly agree, the majority of this information finds little application in their everyday lives. Rather, in an academic setting, it is about learning how to learn; and more broadly, cultivating life skills for the real world. Camping expeditions foster independence, organisation and resilience, musical and sporting groups encourage teamwork and humility, academic extension groups push the limits of young minds, and all manner of miscellaneous extracurricular activities enable students to find and follow their passions. The IB diploma programme, rarely offered in this country, demands learning a second language, as well as humanities, science, mathematics and English, a university-style thesis, the elusive theory of knowledge, and, on top of all of this, the completion of creativity, activity and service (CAS) tasks. It is quite possibly the embodiment of well-rounded education, and despite its notorious difficulty nurtures a breadth of knowledge unobtainable through any other programme.
A holistic education such as this isn’t simply a nice-to-have; the broad range of skills it supplies gives a definite advantage in an increasingly competitive workforce. Put simply, a CGS education empowers you to think outside of the box, and as artificial intelligence broadens its reach across every industry, such an ability is critical for future workers. Thus, I can say with confidence, that Canberra Grammar School has made me Ready for the World.
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