The Enlightenment Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote in his Ethics that “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” This is a quote I discovered in my studies of Spinoza for the English Extension 2 course, and although I’m sure Spinoza had a lot more on his mind than High School, I think this sentiment describes my year group’s experience of IGS and Year 12 very accurately.
For many of us, the undeniably steep task of preparing for our HSC also came with immense benefits to our learning, as we were pushed by the boundaries of timed tasks and major works to discover new skills. In my own case, these skills and this knowledge meant an even deeper love for poetics, an understanding of the artistic properties of surgical-grade silicone, and insight into how difficult it is to accurately portray a group of nuns in a non-offensive yet comedic way to HSC Drama markers.
But there is a particular kernel of knowledge that came out of my Year 12 experience that I think exemplifies this School, and that was the task of picking a related text for the English Extension 1 Worlds of Upheaval essay. I promise this isn’t just an attempt to use up the knowledge from critical readings that I fumbled in the actual HSC. In my case, I chose Allen Ginsberg’s “monumental hymn to the liberation of the American spirit,” Howl.
Written in 1955 and taken to an obscenity trial only a few years later in 1957, thin paperback copies of this breath-stopped, 112-line poem left gravely empty spaces in the poetry section of bookshops around McCarthyist America. For those of you who know the poem, it may come as a shock that I am relating it to IGS. Although I wouldn’t consider Ginsberg “obscene,” he was certainly radical and shocking in his verse. For those of you who aren’t familiar, I want to read you some of Howl’s opening lines:
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”
Stay with me here.
Again, this may not immediately rouse a direct connection for you to IGS, but it does for me. Ginsberg’s portrait of brilliant artists, poets, revolutionaries, and musicians is one riddled with cultural pain. “The best minds of his generation” were being stifled by HUAC – the American Government’s House Un-American Activities Committee – and their crusade to root out Communist dissidents, or essentially, difference, in any person within America. This culture war created a “silent generation” of wasted creative and intellectual potential. The 1950s in America was a wasteland of moral polarisation founded on demonising otherness.
In this sense, IGS is an institution that I think truly would have made Ginsberg weep with joy. Throughout our 40 years, we have fostered a community that positively embraces difference, playing with the form of a regular “Srivate School” just as Ginsberg experimented within the bounds of poetry. Just as Ginsberg switched from stanzas to strophes and changed classic verse for the breath-stopped line, his “Hebraic Melvillian bardic,” I can think of more than a few times IGS has been subversive, bold, agile, and transgressive.
Moving away from gendered uniforms, as those in my cohort would remember if they attended IGS during Primary School. When getting to class, there were many more hairy legs poking out of green plaid skirts and ponytail ends brushing the back of blazers. Or swapping subdued excursions for student-led trips to the School Strike for Climate rallies. Mr Galea made sure everyone had been duly signed out by their parents, laughing at a few of our signs on the way out of IGS’ magenta front gates. Girls and boys from the class of 2024 proudly stopped to give spur-of-the-moment ABC interviews about how their School cared about their future.
Or something more personal to me and arguably more embarrassing: showing up for an improvisational theatre sports competition at a certain very prestigious all-boys Private School, having the taxi drop my team off right outside the rugby pitch, and not being able to find the School’s theatre. We had to ask a team of athletes in homogenous, proper-uniformed gear where to find it, all the while dressed in casino print suspenders, a rainbow bowtie, and not one but two bucket hats for dramatic effect. Although it was somewhat mortifying, even in the moment, I didn’t feel ashamed. My team and I were there to do improv comedy for our School, and I didn’t feel ashamed.
That quality means the class of 2024 – and all IGS students past and present – will never fall victim to becoming part of Ginsberg’s “silent generation.” I have seen students from less accepting Schools come here and slowly adopt dyed hair, piercings, and slight uniform violations. But it’s not just the surface that changes. I have also seen passions emerge in people, quiet kids suddenly taking charge of School events like ArtsFest, putting themselves forward for leadership, or feeling freed from the reputation they had in their old environment. IGS is a place where the unconventional, the slightly crazy, and the little bit weird is always welcome.
The kind of people our School produces are the kind of people you want to see in the real world. They are kind, and they are radically open to the transparent beauty of the world, much like Ginsberg. Whenever I need reminding of those qualities, I think back to my year group’s Red Earth trip in Year 10. My classmates spent the whole experience making witty jabs at one another – including your Head Boy Karam, although his were funnier than most – until finally, the teachers got fed up and told us to sit in a circle and say one nice thing about everyone.
Most teenagers would probably ignore this or make a joke out of it, but we didn’t. We sat there for what felt like hours, complimenting each other. I think I even saw a few people cry at how earnest and tailored each comment was. We were so good at this, in fact, that the teachers had to pry us away from the circle for dinner. We all left feeling a little bit lighter.
That is why, in many ways, I think our School is as significant as the Beatniks taking part in a liturgical “jazz mass” or the Salon des Refusés – Salon of Rejects – who revolutionised painting with bold chiaroscuro and unblended brushstrokes. IGS is changing the world, one alum at a time, to be a more open place. Although I have briefly had the honour of being its Head Girl, I take solace in leaving knowing that IGS has had generations of leadership before me and will have countless ones afterward, striving for excellence even when it is difficult and recognising the rarity of every student they cross paths with.
Thank you to Ms Duma and Mr Dennehy for putting up with Karam and me on a weekly basis, checking in on us, and reminding us that there were people who cared. Thank you to my family, my teachers, and my friends – my very own Dead Poets Society. Thank you to Karam, a Head Boy who is endlessly intelligent and gregarious. And thank you to Ms Colnan, who has shown me and the School that she cares deeply about the liberating gift of education.
Class of 2024, our time with the “monumental hymn” of IGS is over. I can’t wait to see you all in the real world because I can see some impressively lengthy strophes yet to be written. Thank you.