St Kentigern College lacks moral compass
The narrative surrounding what passes for sport in some large, wealthy secondary schools in New Zealand is starting to look more like an arms race. The ‘‘arms race’’ in Auckland is the 1A rugby competition, where the super power St Kentigern College is looking to gain an advantage over the other major rugby school powers.
To achieve this advantage, St Kentigern has interpreted the rules of the competition by the letter of the law, but without the application of a moral compass.
The other powers in this sporting ‘‘arms race’’ have imposed trade sanctions, by way of a boycott against playing the St Kentigern first XV. This sanction is designed to get St Kents to fall into line with their interpretation of the player recruitment rules and ethics.
The St Kentigern position is: ‘‘We’re not breaking the rules. In fact, we are interpreting them in strict adherence to the letter." This is the point where in rule interpretation a moral compass is required. A strict adherence to the law can sometimes result in a not-guilty verdict. However, being not guilty is not always the same as being innocent.
St Kentigern is not guilty of recruiting players beyond the stipulated numbers from the Auckland region. However, the other schools are asking: ‘‘Are they innocent in their recruitment of players to bolster their rugby team?’’ They argue St Kentigern is not innocent and has overstepped the ethical recruitment line in the sand.
How has school sport come to this? The cyclical nature of success and rebuilding school teams that everyone accepted as the nature of school sport appears to have gone.
Forget about sport as character developing, the sport arms race is a PR exercise for recruitment. However, this school behaviour is character revealing and what is revealed is appalling.
Perhaps the biggest piece of fake news emanating from St Kentigern is its recruitment policy is about providing an educational opportunity hitherto not available to the recruited players.
By this definition Napier Boys’ High School does not provide a good enough education system for its students. To test this hypothesis, St Kentigern chose a student to receive this educational opportunity who, by coincidence, happened to be Napier Boys’ High School’s first XV halfback. The hollowness of the position is beyond defence, but defend it St Kentigern has.
New Zealand schools are not taxpayer-funded to be sport academies. Their primary function is to educate their pupils, employ good teachers, give remedial help to those who need it and extend the able. Sport in an educational context can contribute in a similar manner. School sport has the potential to provide a balanced value system of moral, intellectual and physical development. It can be a vehicle for the promotion of values associated with persistence, hard work, fair play and the acceptance of victory and defeat cheerfully and gracefully.
Done well it should promote critical thinking and make students better understand sport and its place in society.
St Kentigern’s motto is ‘‘to keep the faith’’. Perhaps in one of the chaplain’s weekly eulogies it might be explained just how, in recruiting players from outside of the Auckland region, St Kents is fulfilling its citizen role with the other schools and is ‘‘keeping the faith’’.
Forget about sport as character developing, the sport arms race is a PR exercise for recruitment.