Our Year 10 Character and Enterprise Program focusses on three things—cultivating wise heads, loving hearts and useful hands in our young people. We want our students to understand the right—that is, what is good, true and beautiful in the world—and to understand why those things are worth pursuing.

We know, however, that a good life does not result from the intellect alone. No, our heart—the centre of our affections and motivations—tends to be the loudest voice, as it were, in our inner board rooms. If we love something, if we admire something—then we will be pulled into its orbit.

Research on character education suggests that students tend to become like the adults they admire. In other words, the embodiment of honesty, integrity or humility in a real person—not just as abstract concepts—is what makes those virtues contagious.

On this basis, we are so thankful to work with our Partner Organisations—wonderful charities, social enterprises, and not-for-profits—whose contributions to the community are shining examples of service and compassion. The people who run them are exactly the models of character we want for our students.

As part of Barker’s Character and Enterprise program, our students will continue to work with their chosen Partner Organisation all year to design an innovation which will enhance their social impact.

Little by little, as they practise seeing the world through the eyes of their Partner Organisations, we hope our students’ hearts will be increasingly inclined to care more about others.

And along the way, we hope they will develop habits of Enterprise which will make them contributors rather than consumers—determined to build and better the world they have inherited.

Click to read more about our Wise Heads, Loving Hearts, Useful Hands education framework.

Mark Lovell

Mark Lovell is the Coordinator of the Year 10 Character and Enterprise Program and teaches English at Barker College, where he has also acted as a Head of House and is involved in the School’s debating program. Prior to joining Barker, he worked as a residential Boarding Master at Shore School. Mark holds four degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in English and Latin and a Bachelor of Secondary Education from the University of Sydney, a Diploma of Biblical Theology from Moore Theological College, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from St John’s College, Annapolis, where he was a Ramsay Postgraduate Scholar. He has received multiple scholarships and academic awards, including the annual Distinguished Essay Prize from the Graduate Institute at St John’s College. His professional and scholarly interests focus on education, faith, and the human condition, and particularly the role of schools in the formation of character.