Singing the odd carol at an old people's home hardly qualifies. Raising money for charity is important but does not have the power to transform our lives that working beside, with and for others directly has. It is time for Abbotsleigh to devise a program of significant community service that develops like any curriculum, like anything we wish to teach well, from Kindergarten to Year 12 - or in this case, beyond Year 12. There must be what curriculum experts call Scope and Sequence, a planned, incremental growing in knowledge, skills and experience in Community Service as in Maths or English. The curriculum element gives us our opportunity to teach Service Learning.
Students learn the values that shape our civil society and they learn to build social capital.
Schools already teach the traditional market economy values of competition, efficiency, utility and wealth creation. In Service Learning they learn the values of reciprocity, stewardship, participation in community and caring for others. They discover new options and choices for their own careers and lives. In order to give this program the importance it needs and merits it must become a requirement of studying at Abbotsleigh. One more Review Team is being developed to study how each girl at Abbotsleigh can use her own skills and efforts directly to assist others and in so doing create a stronger sense of community for girls, staff and parents so that the traditions we create pass on the best of accumulated wisdom to future generations.