Nine Minutes

For over 400 years there has been a cry, a shout, a whisper and a silent prayer to be heard above the roar. Through the arts in poetry and prose, in music and dance, sculpture and painting, scientific and mathematical endeavour, medicine and ecology, politics and religion, all over the world there are those who say enough; basta!

We awake every day to the injustices being committed in our homes, in our schools and in our places of work. Compassion, peace, humility and honest work are pushed aside as power, ego and brutality continue to take precedence.

The nine minutes it took to silence another human being was not an act of circumstance but the result of an education of hate, intolerance, an absence of acceptance of difference. As teachers and leaders within our school we owe it to our students and to our colleagues and most importantly to ourselves in society to practice self-doubt, to be mindful of others and to work towards peace, justice and a sustainable world for all.