Newsletter Article: Term 1, Week 10 2024

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a retreat program with some of our Religious of the Sacred Heart and colleagues from Sacred Heart schools across Australia and New Zealand.  It was an opportunity to connect and learn more about Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat’s story and her vision for the education of young women. Sophie received a holistic education that was remarkable at the

time.  Our students today benefit from her passion and commitment to providing other girls with similar opportunities for learning.

Sophie’s efforts to ensure her students’ intellectual formation, at a time when universities were not open to women, are captured in some of the 14,000 letters that she wrote over her lifetime.  Our own Sister Rita was kind enough to share some of these letters with me.  Below are some excerpt which communicate, in Sophie’s words, her courageous approach to academia, especially reading and writing.

In 1816, Sophie advised Adrienne Michel: “If you have the letters of Saint Jerome, ask to read the ones on the education of little Paula and Pacatula; those are the only ones you will read.”

Books were often in short supply, so she asked a few Religious to write them.  In 1819, Sophie commissioned Mother Michel with this task: “…what has been begun (a copy of the Constitution) will be finished by someone else’ write the history text-book instead.”

Nearly 40 years later, she asks Mother de Curzon: “Do you have the book of Mgr du Panloup (sic) on education?  It is a marvellous book!  It is intended for young men – he wrote it for them – but so many of his maxims can be applied to women!  And so we are giving it to our school-mistresses, and it helps them a great deal to succeed in their exalted and very thorny task of Education!”

Today, thanks to Sophie’s ambition, our experience of education is far more rosy than thorny.  Her passion for writing and reading lives on through our students today.  Our Year 5 scholars have been learning about Sophie and recently wrote and illustrated their own picture books to share her story.  This terrific work showcases their commitment to learning and I am sure that Sophie would be very proud of their efforts on these projects and throughout their first term at Stuartholme.

Well done to all our students and staff for a successful term of academic growth and discovery. I wish everyone in our Sacred Heart community a happy and holy Easter and look forward to journeying with you into Term 2 following the well-deserved break.

Annie Van Homrigh

Dean of Teaching and Learning Innovation