Would Mary send Jesus to Xavier?

Anglican’s Brighton Grammar School in the midst of a $3 million world class soccer ground development, (“FIFA 2-star rated synthetic surface”), reported that students visiting a poor school in PNG, built “15 metres of modular shelving”, and were proud, “to be able to help some of their less fiscally wealthy peers”.

Another technique, particularly in marketing material, is not to be too specific about this God business. Some schools avoid any mention as did the UCA’s Haileybury, in a marketing exercise, which devoted a page to persuading parents why they should choose it over its competitors, but not a word about God. Many use terms like, “the school is based on traditional Anglican values”, or it’s, “committed to Christian values”, or it encourages students to live, “by a set of values consistent with the Christian faith”.

A survey of one denomination’s top end schools, found that none of the schools, “spoke of their relation to the Christian faith as trust in God through Christ. The relation to faith was most often described in derivative terms, such as through Christian heritage, values and principles. Two schools made no mention of faith” (Towards a Charter, Report No.1 UCA 2008).

As with most things, however, it’s the way these schools spend their money which shows where they stand in relation to the poor and the Gospel.

Knox Grammar currently oversees “a multimillion dollar construction program ... three Olympic-size indoor basket ball courts, a performance centre and an indoor 50-metre swimming pool”, meanwhile its students were off to Milne Bay (PNG) “where poverty ... leads to hardship ... to dig two toilets and construct a village tap”.

Carey Baptist Grammar School, with its “14-hectare sports complex”, and with yet another multimillion dollar building expansion completed, was sending students “to the poorest regions of Borneo, to work in third world conditions to help with schools, water and hygiene problems”. Carey funded this with a giant wheelbarrow race.

As some of Melbourne Girls Grammar students were wandering through their Science Futures and Creative Arts Centres, others were, “baking muffins for the homeless”.

Meanwhile, MLC students enjoying “world class facilities”, “a high tech media centre”, “suites of purpose built music rooms”, “Olympic standard gymnastic facilities”, all “set amongst beautiful gardens”, are able to raise “more than $100,000 each year for local, national and international charities”.

And the poor, well they weren’t a part of Trinity’s planned $5 million library, or Camberwell Grammar’s “ambitious” 10-year multimillion dollar development, including a huge underground carpark; they wouldn’t be going in and out of Geelong Grammar’s $16 million Wellbeing Centre, nor would they be seeing anything of Presbyterian Ladies College’s $2.3 million “profit”.

But the poor, disabled and ignored, know that at least 2,500 special needs kids are not getting any kind of support (New South Wales Public Schools Principals 2009 Report). They didn’t need the Victorian Auditor-General to remind them that there was a $200 million short fall in school maintenance funds, or that, “there are very large achievement gaps between students from rich and poor” families.

Nor did they need a reporter to tell them of yet another research report which showed that, “children from poor families have fallen so far behind ... they are in danger of never catching up” (The Age, December 3, 2009). They also know that thousands of them are, “being taught in old and shabby portable classrooms including, some believed to contain dangerous asbestos” (Herald Sun, October 24, 2009). But they were comforted by the “breakfast clubs” provided by 33 Victorian schools (The Age, October 12, 2008).

Let another Anglican, Kenneth Leech, have the last word. Reflecting on the church’s “option for the wealthy” he concludes, “What matters most to the churches as institutions is adaptation to, and acceptance by, the power structures. They take seriously the words of Jesus, ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon’, and they have opted for Mammon.”