Greg Dening was an Old Boy of Xavier College in Melbourne. A Jesuit for a time, he then left, and became a noted professor of history at Melbourne University. He once wrote: "A school confronts a never-to-be-resolved contradiction. It must fulfill the expectancies of those it serves, if it is to survive. It must change those expectancies, if it is to be truly educational."

I hope you young men before me, about to graduate, can sense what Dening means in that paradox.