When Righteousness Interferes with what’s Right

This whole St Kevin’s scandal is such a brutal lesson for all of us. For me it brings up memories I’d rather leave in the past where they belong.

For the past couple of years, I have been traveling across Australia and New Zealand delivering seminars in workplaces about care. Having my attention on care and its importance in a healthy society, I view this situation with a great deal of interest.

Back in the 70’s I attended a Christian Brothers School in inner Melbourne, and it was a common occurrence for one of the brothers and another teacher to make suggestive comments to some boys. We laughed it off and simply labelled the teachers “poofs”.

It was a different time. Community ethics were different. But as I contemplate that, I never for a moment took interest in how those boys who received the comments were feeling. I imagine it could have been frightening for them to be around those teachers. But I, like many, had no sensitivity to that.

I was a bit of a protected species as my Dad was the local publican who supplied the Brothers with their beer, and my uncle was a Monsignor and a powerful figure in the church, so I was never on the receiving end of those comments.

If I sit quietly for a moment and place myself in the shoes of those boys, I guess I’d feel sick. And I also have a sense that my love of going to school would have been severely tarnished.

As I contemplate further, I also recall how violent the Brothers were. They all had very nasty, multi-layered and heavily stitched leather straps, and they used them multiple times a day, often multiple times on the one kid. Abuse was most acceptable.

After year 9 I moved to a Marist school and all I ever experienced there was kindness, support and good humor. No straps and never a mention of inappropriate comments from teachers.

I am so glad that society has evolved. We have made wonderful gains in advancing beyond identifying people by race, gender or sexual preference. Whilst we still have a long way to go, we are getting much better.

So here I sit as a 60 year old man and ask myself what has gone so horribly wrong that this situation can get to the point where we have open mud slinging between media outlets and commentators, where foolish men can’t keep their feet out of their own mouths.

As I contemplate, I realise that perhaps the error is quite simple, and it seems to be around our obsession with brands and what it means to both promote and protect that brand. Over the past couple of years, we have all watched with fascination with how the banks have wrestled to keep their brands looking squeaky clean. Often the drastic cleansing effort involves sacking the CEO.

Schools, like banks, rely on a perception of deep trust and “can do no wrong” to maintain the elevation of their brand.

I am as guilty as any. There are brands that I love, and I will instinctively protect them without really looking at what I am saying. The Marist Institution I attended is one “brand” I protect. There was a time long, long ago when The Catholic Church was another “brand” I vehemently protected. But all that is just my ego, and my ego can have me do some very dumb things from time to time.

Some Private Schools in Australia, for the past 30 years or so, have gone from some pride in the school tie, to an obsessive promotion and defence of the school’s brand. We see it often now where the defense of the brand comes well ahead of common sense.

Back to St Kevin’s. It seems the school’s first response was the protection of the brand. Care for the student was placed well below the brand in the priorities of the school’s leadership. It seems there is some sort of “blind allegiance” that clouds judgement.

However, if we really want to talk brand, St Kevin’s missed a profound opportunity to give their brand a cut and polish that could have elevated it to all. They could have demonstrated care. They could have demonstrated to every parent in Melbourne how their care for a single student transcends all.

But their obsessive, reactive and uninspected allegiance to their brand turned their response into an egotistical display of righteousness, and this prevented them from doing what is right.

Just imagine if, when this incident came to light, every parent received an honest letter from the school telling them what has happened, what they are doing about it and encouraging them to talk to their kids to see if any other students require care and support. The families would have felt cared for and their trust in the school would have deepened.

The school missed a golden opportunity. Whilst they frenetically and righteously went to work polishing their brand, the right thing didn’t get done. Their brand will now be tarnished for a long time.

The evidence was there. When an institution over promotes itself, it establishes an attitude of “holier than thou”, a superiority that places it in a status beyond question. Once a school is running that level of pretense, the students will demonstrate it in public, as was seen in the tram chant incident.

And in the aftermath, we see popular political commentators tarnishing their own brands whilst they frenetically reach to protect someone else’s. I feel that this all comes about because we all sometimes forget to ask ourselves the most basic of all questions that empower us to be the guardians of our own society.

“What is the right thing to do right now? What is standing in the way of me doing the right thing? Am I prepared to listen to my heart and ignore the obsessions of my mind? Do I have the courage to do the right thing, no matter what the outcome?”

We can all get better.

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