When I was at St. Middle of the Road School for Girls Whose Dad’s Are Bus Drivers we had to save up, and go to the bottle shop ourselves. Needless to say, we drank a lot less than kids who are handed the keys to the drinks cabinet and told to invite over anyone they like. Our parents actually acted like parents, and expected us to act legally, and to work hard. Then if we didn’t work hard we knew we’d have to live with the consequences. There seems to be rather a shortage of that in the upper classes these days.

“Xavier principal Chris McCabe says Nick Mooney wasn’t bullied, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sounds like Jesuit sophistry to me, unless Mr McCabe means the wrong place is Xavier, and the wrong time is now.”

They won’t sack the headmaster, Jesuit sophistry is THE key selection criterion.

Initial reports had it that the whole of year 12 was going to be suspended. I’m not really sure what an appropriate punishment would be in those circumstances, but there probably were a lot of pissed off parents who would have argued, with some justification, that it would be punishing everyone for the actions of an irresponsible minority.

Interesting to read these Xavier stories, my old flatmate was a Xavier boy way back, and he never told me anything like this!

re govt funding: that woman I know whose child was in Tarquin, Algernon & Hugo’s class, changed to the actual Summer Heights High for Year 7.
Used to working hard at school fundraising, She pitched up to join the SHH Mothers Club.
We don’t have one, they told her.
“So how do you buy computers for every child in Grade 2 like the school we just left?”
Oh the Govt gives it to us.

I know of a Merton Hall party where parents were away and their furniture was flung in the pool by outta control teen drunks.

One goes to Xavier so one may play in the Old Xavs for years after, and have great AfterGameDrinks?

I lived in a house only a couple of years ago where college Year 12’s celebrated their completion and dispersal. MANY of them (really) had 99.5 results.
The party went day and night for 3 days and the backyard looked like Keith Moon had been – I felt they were all just exploding from the STRESS of expectation by The Paying Parents.

A gap-year is such a sensible break between levels.

A very good reason to send a child to a church school for 7 years, is so that they don’t embrace obsessive cultism when older. I am very close to a woman who chose a Primary church school for this reason.
After years of daily Chapel, the child goes “christianity? = yawn”
(thank God. bwah ha)

No ‘muck-up day’ in my ‘day’. We got HIT a lot by teachers. Imagine that.

As far as I’m concerned, unless Xavier changes their headmaster as a consequence, they are not really trying to change things. And since I’ve heard nothing about that, I assume they regard this as *only a little too much*, not a fundamental issue. And if this is the case, then they are indeed a disgrace to “Christian values”. But since they declare themselves as a Catholic school in the tradition of St Ignatius (Jesuit), I really expect nothing else anyway, since the Catholics started selectively abandoning Christian values centuries ago.

So, don’t tar all christian schools with the same brush. But yes, there’s clearly a problem here. And even as a probable customer of private high schools, I see no reason why the government should provide them with any funding.