ABSTRACT

The Frog Prince’pal is a description of one principal’s dream of a transformed school that might become a reality in the future. This principal wants to establish a school that assists all students, not just the top 10 per cent, to graduate with a knowledge of self and others, a capacity and desire to shape her/his environment and an enhanced self-esteem. This school will be a place where all students learn, rather than a place where many fail. This is not a vote for mediocrity and the lowest common denominator. Rather it is an assertion that grading and sorting students for the best university faculties, which has become a major preoccupation of schools today, has hijacked the purpose of schooling. This emphasis on finding the very best and being able to discriminate among the top students has driven the curriculum and focused the mind of all associated with schools on a narrow band of schooling outcomes. Students who do not make it into the elite category leave school feeling they are failures. Subsequently they do not perform well either as individuals or as members of society and this has contributed to the breakdown of our present society. Any school leaver who is going to cope in what is basically a hostile society needs a ‘secure understanding of self, others and an awareness of one’s place in the universe’ (Thwaites, Wysock-Wright, 1983, p. 20).