Category: Extracurricular Activities / Co-curricular Activities

School Cadets: Extreme fun leads to future excellence

Trinity Grammar Cadets
Learning to lead … Trinity Grammar School Cadets.

For pure adventure, it’s hard to beat Cadets. What other extracurricular activity combines sport, camping, bivouacking, tracking, patrolling, navigating, abseiling, bushcraft and tactical camouflage with practical military skills such as casualty evacuation, radio communications, first aid, field engineering and ceremonial drill and parade routines? As after-school activities go, cadet training is “extreme”.

But more than fun and excitement, cadets acquire a fundamental skill set that helps them to mature into self-confident, responsible and resourceful young adults. This is why cadet units are a central aspect of student life at many independent schools.

Trinity Grammar School, in Sydney’s Inner West, places a very high value on its cadet program making it compulsory for all students in years 8 and 9. While no longer mandatory from year 10 onward, students are encouraged to stick with the program to bolster their leadership skills. “Trinity has found that those boys who continue beyond the compulsory two-year cadet window are amongst the best leaders that the school produces,” it says. Continue reading “School Cadets: Extreme fun leads to future excellence”

Pop quiz: Name more than one female scientist

How many famous female scientists can you name — not including Marie Curie? If you’re having trouble thinking of any, you’re not alone; even scientists struggle to answer this question.

Brainy beauty ... actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.
Brainy beauty … actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.

The ongoing Public Perception of Famous Female Scientists survey has, since 2004, asked over 1000 scientists and members of the general public in the UK and Western Europe to name 10 famous women scientists. So far, just over 1 per cent of respondents have been up to the task while 30 per cent could name only Marie Curie, the Polish-French two-time Nobel Prize winner for her work on radioactivity and the discovery of the elements radium and polonium. DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin and pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale (included for her statistical work) rounded out the the top three.
Continue reading “Pop quiz: Name more than one female scientist”

School Debating: Where future leaders forge their skills

“If you get involved in debating and public speaking you will definitely go on to rule the world. Guaranteed.”
— Craig Reucassel, comedian and NSW Department of Education Ambassador for Speaking Competitions

Last week, Joe Nimmo of the BBC, asked, “Why have so many Prime Ministers gone to Oxford University?” Of Britain’s 54 elected heads of government, 27 were educated at Oxford making the university enormously politically influential. The answer, Nimmo concluded, lies in the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.  

Incorporating both parliamentary and persuasive speaking styles of debating, the Oxford Union is renowned for its competition success and defence of free speech. Its adherence to the House of Commons debating format makes it “the place where these parliamentarians of the future cut their teeth and learn how to debate,” Harrison Edmonds, president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, told the BBC. Continue reading “School Debating: Where future leaders forge their skills”