Embracing our AI
By Rev. Dr Katherine Rainger, Senior Chaplain
Radford College began as the dream of local Anglicans who wanted to establish a third Anglican school in Canberra. Our 40th birthday this year has given us an opportunity to discover anew the story of Radford’s beginning and to celebrate who we are today.
Last week Anglican Schools Australia, a network of close to 140 Anglican schools throughout Australia, held its annual conference in Melbourne. The theme was Embracing our AI. The organising committee did a great job explaining their choice of theme and the gift of Anglican Identity in educational communities:
- Our brave new world offers us challenges and opportunities our forebears could not have imagined. AI, Artificial Intelligence, promises to release us from mundane tasks, yet threatens to usurp our creativity. It challenges traditional ways of being and invites us into new realities. Such encounters can be unsettling.
- Anglican Schools have another AI, our Anglican Identity, which also offers both challenge and opportunity. In a secular, post-truth world where individuals increasingly are tasked with discovering their own personal meaning and purpose, holding fast to our AI gives us firm ground on which to stand and a story with which to interpret life.
- Our Anglican Identity also challenges us to declare what is essential to our humanity, and to nurture and protect the treasures we contain. In the rich and unpredictable diversity of human life, our schools can be places where all are welcomed and affirmed as beings created in the image and likeness of God, loving and serving God’s world.
Interim Principal Mr Andy Gordon, Associate Chaplain Mr Andy Fleming and Director of Student Experiences Mr Dylan Mordike also attended the conference. It was a very significant time of meeting with over 280 delegates from Anglican Schools around Australia. It’s hard to condense three full days of learning into a few sentences. If you’d like to know more, click here to see the program and click here to read about the speakers. Email any of us if you’d like to know more or have questions.
The things that stood out to me were the conversations with others from the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and other dioceses in Australia and beyond. Sharing our experiences of ministering, serving, leading and teaching in Anglican Schools was invaluable.
It was also a particular gift to hear from The Right Reverend Dr Vicentia Kgabe, Bishop of the Diocese of Lesotho in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Bishop Kgabe invited us through images to see the Kingdom and Diocese of Lesotho. There are 217 Anglican Schools in her Diocese as it is the practice to build a church, build a school and build a health facility at the same time.
Bishop Kgabe talked about schools as the place where students can find wisdom, knowledge, skills, hope, aspiration, community, dignity and respect. She reminded us of the words of Jesus “I have come that they might have life and have it in all its fullness” (John 10:10) and the African word ubuntu meaning “I am because we are.” One of the challenges is the prevalence of child headed households due to parents working in other places, and schools have a role in providing a wholistic education for the children in their care.
At Radford College in our 40th year, we too aim to be an educational community where wisdom, knowledge, skills, hope, aspiration, community, dignity and respect are central to who we are and everything that we do.
Our Anglican Identity provides us with the resources to help us embody and live out these ideals. The College prayer reminds us of the grace and love of God which calls us into relationship with God and with each other.
Great Creator God,
you sing the world into life and fill it with love
binding the things of earth with the Kingdom of Heaven.
Breathe your Spirit over this land,
awaken our senses and fill us with light
that with Christ your Son
we would live in truth
rise in compassion
and walk in wisdom.
Amen