'austraLasia' #54

SDB EDUCATORS URGED TO 'GO PUBLIC'

Julian Fox

MELBOURNE: 1st March -- A meeting of principals and deputies of Salesian

schools throughout Australia heard from facilitator Kevin Treston that

the Salesian charism has been an outstanding contribution to education

globally and in Australia, and that to trumpet its value is not being

triumphalistic. Treston, known especially throughout Australia, the

U.S. and Ireland for his work on the pastoral nature of the Catholic

school and developing a spirituality of the Catholic school, spoke

affirmingly of the pastoral quality and spirituality for which Salesian

schools are noted in his experience. "After being in schools up and

down the nation here and overseas, I can smell a good school from 30

kilometres away", Treston said, in reference to the warmth, hospitality

and natural goodness that he finds on entering Salesian schools. He

urged the Principals and deputy principals present at their annual

conference to be prepared to express publicly their Salesian

perspectives on Catholic Education, and to take up the challenges and

opportunities of the school from this perspective.

The conference was organised by P.A.C.S., the Australian Province

Advisory Committee on Schools.