Education faces a critical time for regeneration and repair. It is time to acknowledge the cracks, and rather than ignore them, seek to repair and make a difference.
Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repair, or “gold mending”, is an art form that seeks to recover rather than to discard – a sustainable approach that teaches us to relish our blemishes as opportunities for beautiful repair.
Through the lens of beautiful repair our Cornish College values inspire us towards change and continuous improvement. We see the importance of developing compassion to identify what needs repair, courage to acknowledge the cracks rather than ignore them, and integrity and creativity to make what we have more beautiful.
Cornish College looks, sounds and feels a little different now and in the future, as it should. We are not doing things differently just to be different but to make a difference – because education of a different kind is what children deserve.
So we move forward to make things beautiful.
I see beauty in our community and in the 700 young people who come here, greet us daily, thank us, engage with and challenge us and are proud to be one of us.
I see beauty in every teacher and the support staff who overcome challenges and put aside many of their own personal endeavours just to make a difference.
And I see beauty in our 100 acres, land of the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation – the first people to, no doubt, see beauty in it long before we did.
Nicola Forrest
Principal, Cornish College
As featured in the March edition of the Mornington Peninsula Magazine.
