Understanding ourselves IN CONTEXT

Memory ties us to a collective framework through which we understand ourselves in context. When SCS alum, Nadine Moodie, spoke at the 2022 St Cyprian’s Day service, she spoke of a utopian St Cyprian’s School. One where students felt a strong sense of belonging and of purpose. She described the school as an incredibly diverse school on the knee of Table Mountain and at the tip of Africa – the school of choice for girls both on the continent and from abroad.

In her words, “Our school population was very global and resembled what I would call ‘a mini United Nations’, as we literally had girls from all over the world. At the entrance of Katherine Buller Boarding House was a map of the world with pins celebrating where our school population hailed from.

I remember there were a number of girls whose families had gone into exile and who chose to send their daughters to St Cyprian’s for a South African education, even though they continued living abroad. We had girls whose parents were diplomats in South Africa. We had representation from across the globe – “

It sounded to me like young women came to this school precisely because being a “girl in blue” meant far more than having a world-class education, it meant you were also a young woman who would learn to see yourself in relation to the world in a particular way. You would lead in a particular way. You would be connected to other women across the country and the world because, in Nadine Moodie’s words, “no matter where we go in the world, when we connect with anyone remotely related to St Cyprian’s there’s a level of expectation, but when we meet with other old girls we experience a collective heritage with commonalities, which transcend matriculation years, difference, creed, faith, opinions.”

As memory was given space in that cathedral, I was listening for the essence of St Cyprian’s School that lay within the story because it is this intrinsic nature of the school that determines its identity. It is this that must be remembered, that must not be lost.

I was conscious that the girls sitting in the wooden pews ahead of me, had not been able to participate in this rite of passage for two years. I wondered what it must be like to have this moment of renewal, each student and each alum with her own story that is in conversation with the one weaving between us from the pulpit. Did they, like me, see this as a moment to reflect, to restore and replenish what is so special about this particular school?

Later that day, I had the privilege of meeting Tessa Fairbairn, the legendary Principal of St Cyprian’s for many years. She described to me the revolutionary nature of the school since it’s very beginning – first as a school for girls in the 1870s and then in the 1970s, as a school where girls of all races were learning together. On both these counts, the school was breaking boundaries and challenging the status quo.

The statistics about the impact of educating girls are a constant reminder that until we are a post-patriarchal society, there continues to be a case for girls’ schools where girls are at the centre of all our educational efforts. However, in reading about educating girls, it also becomes apparent that an academic education in and of itself does not fulfil the potential one hopes it will. How we educate girls, and what we teach them about themselves, their capabilities, their worth, their voices and their power to effect change is imperative to fulfilling their potential.

What is education if not discovery? Progressive, iterative and evolutionary by nature, and seasonal in time, an education at St Cyprian’s School begins at School-in-theWoods and develops through different phases to Grade 12. Every stage involves exploration, discovery and breakthroughs that bear witness to the peaks and troughs inherent in life challenges and celebrates growth, success and failures in the journey to become a proud St Cyprian’s girl.

According to UNESCO estimates, globally, 129 million girls are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age, and 97 million of secondary school age. In this regard, by virtue of attending school, each student at St Cyprian’s is privileged. However, for real change to happen, girls need to be empowered as activists to be young women of courage and compassion, guided by strong values to use their privilege with purpose. Each student can hold onto the foundational values of this revolutionary, evolving school, to face the challenges of her own time.

While 2020 and 2021 were stark and painful reminders of the continued injustices faced by Black people across the world, 2022 has borne a painful testament to the regression in women’s rights from the US to Iran, from whence the greatest feminist protest movement in recent decades is emanating. And all the while, we are threatened by climate change, a social justice issue because it impacts more detrimentally on the most marginalised.

Covid-19 gave us a glimpse into a world of individuals separate and isolated, connecting only through screens – this is not the world we want for our girls. Rather, we want our girls to be part of a sisterhood, each strengthened through strong bonds to each other – lifting each other as they rise. Women who can step up and lead and who are not derailed by change, by uncertainty or by challenge, women who possess a strong sense of self and a strong sense of hope.

In her Pedagogy of Hope, bell hooks writes, ‘The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility, we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.’ This is our legacy and the essence of our school. It is time to remember.

Ghemma Wylde Deputy Head High School: Director of Equity and Belonging

We are Africa, We are leading, It doesn’t matter where you are sleeping, We girls and boys are not some idyllic toys in your game.

We are together, but not the same.

We are fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers

We both harm and care for each other, We are braids and corn rows plaits and curls men and women boys and girls

We are many, we are one. Because the songs we have sung are of inequality, but also of strength, for it is not about speed, but length.

So let us carry the torch of those who took that long walk to freedom and earned it. It’s time that we learned that, Our skin may be different, our clothes not the same, We don’t all have glass in our window panes but we all see the same sky, feel the same breeze, So why were those different knocked down on their knees?

I can only begin to guess the events that took place, to take down the barriers of colour and race, But I know we’re braving an unjust mountain, and the top is not where we are, But I’m proud of South Africa we’ve got pretty far.

So let’s be thankful

We are Ubuntu. We are strong.

We have problems, but not for long, cause we work together, to protect and treasure everyone who calls this place safe.

We are Africa, this beautiful place we call home, and none of us stand alone.

By Coco Stevens, Grade 6