Dear St Mary’s DSG Community
In 2029 St Mary’s DSG will celebrate her 150th birthday. I will be 73 and I hope that I will receive an invitation to the festivities.
I wonder what I will find?
I know the day will start with a celebration of the Eucharist and that the form of service will be much the same as today. The subtle scent of incense will still symbolically bestow a sense of holiness and ascension to our worship. Some songs sung will be the same, but others will be more modern and I will probably cluck my tongue to myself about “these new songs!” An African rhythm will pulse the air as the Chapel choir sings for those present accompanied by a melodious set of marimbas. Hopefully the congregation will be moved to sway and dance as the Spirit of joy moves amongst us. The School Hymn will end the service with a transcendent descant bringing goose-bumps to us all.
The Bishop of Pretoria will have preached, and he will have said basically “Well, here we are. God is good, always. We made it! Now, what of the next 50?”
The University of Pretoria will be even more dominant in the area than it is now, and St Mary’s DSG will be an oasis of order amongst the bustle of a busy university suburb.
The campus will be much the same but a few multiple story buildings will have gone up, using up the only space that is available. I hope to see a fully-fledged theatre amongst those, perhaps even serving as an additional hub for the creativity of wider Pretoria. A Pre-school accepting girls from Grade 000 will have been started.
The school will still be relatively small in numbers creating the intimate space where girls are known. The uniform will be much the same, with the blue of the African skies and the brick red of the African ground still dominant.
The curriculum will be much changed and new subjects will be amongst the mix as the school desperately tries to keep in touch with the changing world. An “artist in residence” will be busy working in the Art Centre, and a “conductor in residence” will be working with the Music department.
A new aquatic centre will have been built and the existing pool will be an extension of the hall flowing into the squash courts.
Traffic will be horrendous. The Gautrain will have spread its network to provide a Hillcrest stop parallel with Lynwood road, and daygirls will largely arrive by train. Those who don’t will arrive in buses which will have left the school before dawn to pick up girls all over the town.
An integrated day will be in place, and all girls will spend all day at school. There will be no home-work done at home. Exams will have disappeared in their current format, and all assessments will be done on line, at the pace of each individual. Learning will be far more individualised. Traditional teaching and classrooms will have almost disappeared, and the curriculum will focused on High Velocity Learning through discovery and problem solving. Content will be delivered in bursts when needed. Virtual Reality will be a daily experience as girls find themselves immersed in a world of 3D in every subject.
Together, with a group of other “geriatric” educators, invited back for this auspicious day, I hope to be able to say “We did good! We enabled the school to move forward, but made sure it retained its heartbeat.”
As we do today.
Belonging, purpose and hope 