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MAGAZINE PIN OAK ISSUE 30: TERM 1, MARCH 4, 2016 Welcome to the 30th issue of the Oxley College fortnightly magazine. IGNITE SWIM K-6 Contents 3 Headmaster’s Report 4 Big Issue 5 Films, Music, Books 6 K - 6 News 7 More K-6 YEAR 8 MEDIEVAL FEAST 8 Feature Article 10 Deputy Head Reports 11 In the Spotlight 12 MAD 13 On the Branch 14 Gallery 15 Calendar 16 Sport Pin Oak Team Editors in Chief Kaarina Allen, Cate Patterson, Heidi Bevan and Isabella Knowles Student Editorial Team Ella Moran, Jemima Taylor, Izzy Moore, Tom Hill Sports Editors Charlie Dummer, Ted Otavaino Student Photographers Olivia Donovan, Catriona Uliana and George Simpson Head Designers Emma Croker, Grace Patterson and Lachlan Billington- Phillips Design Assistants Savannah Sandilands, Bree Feary, Cameron Grice, Tom Whyte, Holly Jefford, Catriona Uliana Head of Marketing and PR Emma Calver Staff Editor Beattie Lanser Oxley College Railway Road, Burradoo, NSW, 2576. Ph: 4861 1366 [email protected] 02 HEADMASTER’S REPORT Last week I spent four days in Botswana making a relationship personable people many of whom would work well at Oxley. with two schools- Sedie Junior School and Mathibe Primary There is a decent hotel 700 metres away. School (they are on the same site). I am confident we can At the same time there are real challenges. Many of the ‘twin’ with them. They are safe, vibrant, in-need schools to students walk five or six kilometres a day to and from school which we can contribute and from whom we can learn a lot. in the hot sun. In the primary school, eight of the twenty We plan at the moment for the first Oxley trip to go there mid/ four classes are run underneath trees because there are not late next year and be open to students in Year 9 and above. enough classrooms. The tap water ran out when I was there This is linked to the Year Nine ‘Rites of Passage’ programme. because the river dried up. A number of the students have The programme has three elements- a three week Sydney HIV (from birth). On a more prosaic level the school’s only experience, a project based Cambridge subject called ‘Global photocopier has broken down and can’t be fixed. Perspectives’ and an international social service trip for many. There is much that our students could do in Botswana. We The international social service trip allows students to be can raise funds before we go. We can teach English in the immersed in another school and society’s culture. By living Junior School. We can be a part of the lessons in the high and working in a close knit community for a week students school (two of the lessons I watched were about HIV and get many more rich experiences than the much maligned ‘slum the nature of government corruption - both projects for the tourism’ model where you drop in for a day, paint a wall, have Global Perspectives course. Sitting in a Botswanan classroom a game of soccer and leave. In addition, by learning about learning about these would give our students an amazing the community in advance in Geography, Global Perspectives first hand insight into these issues for their course). We can and Design and Technology, students will be well aware of the put on a joint cultural festival together of acting, singing and community into which they are going. Indeed, in many cases dancing - I saw something similar when I was there. We can the students in the developing world have Facebook (they spend a day tree planting with their environment group, an may not have enough food, but they have Facebook) and activity that they already do on Saturdays. We can play some we can kick start friendships months in advance of meeting. sport with them- although they are the National Basketball We can also keep the relationships going after our Oxley kids Champions so we should be wary. return to Bowral. Indeed, students may ultimately choose to At the same time, once the exchange finishes there is another take a GAP year in these developing world communities. week to explore the Safari Parks of North Botswana, visit the If two thirds to three quarters of Year 9 were ultimately salt pans and see Victoria Falls. involved in international social service, this would be fifty to So Sedie Junior School and Mathibe Primary School fit well sixty students. They can’t all fit in the one village. This is into the pattern of international social service that we are why we have attempted to find three separate schools in the already establishing in Nepal in 2016 and hopefully Fiji in developing world. I think we have been successful in this: 2016. • One in Jib Jhibe in the Nepali foothills I am aware that this article may have raised as many questions • One in Korovua in Fiji (more on this very soon) as answers. I did want to give you a flavour of my visit last week, but we are still in the early stages of putting together • One in Maun in Botswana. an programme. However, we plan to be able to have much I am hoping that ultimately we will get fifteen to twenty more information for you in the next few months. students in each of these places. They are very different experiences with different focuses. Which brings me to my trip to Botswana. I knew what I was looking for when I left, but I wasn’t sure if I would find it. Luckily I think I did. The Botswanan education system is healthy due to the funds put into it from the Government’s diamond mines. The kids there learn English in Primary School and speak it very well by about the age of ten. The health system is strong and Maun is a small scale town that felt safe. The staff at both schools are excellent- smart, professional, 03 BIG ISSUE Wheat The Master Manipulator of all Mankind Dearest Readers, cold, the rains too heavy (or light) or the wheat just felt bad - the new farmers would just die. They only had The wool has been pulled over our eyes. Everyone’s one crop. eyes. We (humankind) have been the victim of a mass defraud, a gigantic manipulation, a coup conspired And then they’d have more babies and were trapped in by a carbohydrate. Wheat and other ‘domesticated’ this endless loop of slavery. vegetation have managed to reduce, and essentially Why would humans go from their stimulating and varied enslave, our entire species and force us into serving lifestyle foraging for the bountiful foods, as they had to wheat’s every whim. We have gone from the happy, been for the previous 2.5 million years - that provided small, secure group of foragers we once were to the a wholesome diet and supports your entire band of massive hoard of self-replicating, greedy, starving, fellow sapiens, to dedicating your life tending to one or insecure drones that we are today. two types of ungrateful plants. Wheat has us wrapped How has wheat done this? Simple. around it’s grainy finger of manipulation 1. Bribe Homo Sapiens into cultivating wheat by Some might say that wheat has allowed us to grow, to promising an easy source food - because they’re lazy. become the dominate species and ‘win at life’, and that is true - if we only think of the amount of copies of DNA 2. Homo Sapiens have more food, they breed and make as the only measurable way of determining a species more of themselves - because they’re stupid. success. But if we include/account for the happiness of 3. Homo Sapiens realise they don’t have enough food, individual members of a species - then wheat is satan. cultivate, sow and harvest more wheat - because they’re And this applies to any species that is in abundance. desperate. Humans are the wheat of poultry and cattle. They would 4. Repeat steps 2-3 exponentially be considered the most successful species of all time, due to our intense farming, breeding and slaughtering of Around 8500 BC, Homo Sapiens began to farm. They them into abundance. They are also the most unhappy, domesticated, cultivated, tended to, laboured for, caged into tiny pens - with short-lived lives, bred to die. selectively bred and and harvested a couple of species How do we measure the success of a species? Is it the of crop and wildlife. This is known as the ‘Agricultural number of copies of DNA or the collective happiness of Revolution’, but as the historian Dr Yuval Noah Harari has the species? articulated, it really wasn’t a revolution of humankind, but instead a revolution of domesticated vegetation. If you want to know more about wheat, social The Agricultural Revolution is “history’s biggest fraud”. constructs, fictions and cyborgs, I suggest ‘Sapiens’ by Dr Yuval Noah Harari, an intellectually engaging, and Wheat and other grains used to be a small part of the generally fascinating book about the history and future average forager’s daily collection, it was relied upon as of all humankind. much as any of the other 20 staples, even less so due to the amount of effort that was required to process the By Tom Hill (Year 11) stuff. But as soon as the foragers began to collect the wheat, they noticed the wheat had grown ever closer to and around their walking trails.The minuscule nature of the grain had made it difficult to carry it all back to the foraging camp, and some fell, and it grew.

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