Insights from the Principal: This is part three of a three-part series where Principal Lee MacMaster reflects on the value of boys’ education and how a school designed specifically for boys can help them learn, grow and flourish.
What can Xavier offer my son that other similar schools cannot?
My answer is both humble and confident. I cannot speak for other schools. I can only speak about Xavier. And I can speak about what I have experienced here.
The Xavier website asks families to consider “The Xavier Difference” and “Why Xavier?” These are not simply marketing phrases. They point towards something much deeper: the fact that Xavier is a school in the Jesuit tradition. The College itself identifies this as its most fundamental point of difference.
For me, this is the heart of the answer.
Xavier does not simply seek to educate successful young men. We seek to form good men. And, more specifically, we seek to form men for others.
That phrase can easily become familiar through repetition. But at Xavier, it must never become merely a slogan. It must become a way of living.
The Jesuit tradition asks our boys to recognise that their gifts are not simply for themselves. Their intelligence, privilege, talents, leadership, wealth, creativity and opportunities carry with them a responsibility to others.
Our Ignatian Service programs are designed to help students encounter people and communities beyond their own experience and to understand that faith must be expressed through action.
This is why I believe the Xavier difference is ultimately about formation.
We want our boys to become intellectually capable, certainly.
We want them to be physically active and resilient.
We want them to develop confidence, leadership and competence.
We want them to achieve excellent academic outcomes.
But we also want them to become compassionate.
To develop a conscience.
To know how to listen.
To understand vulnerability.
To recognise injustice.
To have the courage to stand up for another person.
To know when to lead and when to serve.
To understand that success without generosity is an incomplete success.
This is the meaning of Men for Others.
The Xavier journey
During my first six months as Principal, I have been struck repeatedly by the breadth of the Xavier experience. It is not one program. It is not one building. It is not one outstanding teacher, sporting team, musical ensemble, service initiative or academic result.
It is the combination of these things. It is the cumulative effect of a boy being surrounded by adults who believe in him, older students who can inspire him, peers who challenge him, opportunities that stretch him and a tradition that asks him to think beyond himself.
Xavier describes its graduates as authentic, spiritual, positive, inspiring, courageous and resilient. Those are ambitious words. They should be. Education should be ambitious for young people.
Our responsibility is not simply to prepare boys for their next examination or their next stage of education. Our responsibility is to prepare them for life.
That means giving them both roots and wings: roots in faith, family, friendship, tradition and community; and wings to think independently, to question, to explore, to take risks, to lead and ultimately to make their own contribution to the world.
This is why the Ignatian tradition matters so much to Xavier.
