From the School Council

School Council

Byrne, bicycles, East Germany and trust

At the centre of School Council’s role is the need for it to operate in a manner deeply connected to the values which sit at the core of Trinity’s culture. And integral to School Council’s work is the implicit understanding and trust that all in the community embrace the same, commonly understood values framework.

As I was reflecting on this notion of trust and shared values, I happened to be reading Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne, former front man for the 1970s’ New Wave band Talking Heads. The book, as the title suggests, is not about Byrne’s life as a former rock star, but is a collection of essays in which he reflects on the different cities that he has explored by bicycle as he travelled the world as a musician and artist. In one chapter, Byrne describes a visit to Berlin and contrasts it with his first in the 1970s, long before the reunification of Germany. Then, Berlin, like the whole country, was physically and ideologically divided: on one side, the freedoms and democracy of the West; on the other, the constraints and restrictions of the totalitarian regime of the East.

Byrne’s evocative descriptions recall Stasiland, the 2002 work by Australian journalist Anna Funder. Stasiland details a number of stories from East Germany, perhaps one of the most perfected surveillance states of all time. The Stasi was the East German secret police, the agency by which the government kept control of the people:

Its job was to know everything about anyone, using any means that it chose. It knew who your visitors were, it knew whom you telephoned . . . it was a bureaucracy metastasised through East German society: overt or covert, there was someone reporting to the Stasi on their fellows or friends in every school, every factory, every apartment block, every pub. By extension, Funder declares that East Germany was a society fundamentally built on mistrust: everyone was seen as an informer on everyone else; every act or word witnessed as ideologically unsound would be rapidly reported to the Stasi. As a consequence, no one could trust, and no one could be trusted. East Germany was a state in which power was sustained by ensuring that the population was in fear of itself.

Inevitably, a nation and an ideology constructed on principles of systemic mistrust cannot survive, for it simply crumbles from within.

An essential component of all effective communities is trust: trust in others and being trustworthy ourselves. To be trusting requires a confident understanding of a shared set of positive beliefs and frequently articulated values.

At Trinity we strive, through our focus on the importance of community and our commitment to upholding the values that sit at our core, to develop within all members of the school an understanding of the need to be responsible and responsive to others. And, this in turn breeds a real sense of responsibility and an understanding that trust is not simply an imposed obligation.

Trust arises out of a deep connection and set of relationships and from an understanding of the moral and ethical glue that cements the structure of good community. Most importantly, trust arises from a confident commitment and involvement with and within the community and all that it offers.

And, as I say, it is this that guides the work of School Council as we seek to ensure Trinity continues to evolve as we move inexorably into the 21st Century.

Being a social creature, living in community with others, is, as Byrne concludes, ‘part of what it is to be human’. And trust is what holds communities together.

Simon Gipson OAM

Chair of School Council