THE OLD SCHOOL DAYS

As Cat Stevens said: Remember the days in the old school yard. And I did this week.

There was a story in the newspapers about a conference which was held in Melbourne. It was about schoolkids and the specific, diametric, differences between boy students and girl students. Their attention spans. Their different attitudes to school and learning. Even the way they viewed their teachers.

It brought back school memories, especially high school memories, from decades ago. More than four decades ago.

Even as a 13-year-old and 14-year-old I was frustrated at High School. I would often ask a teacher a one-word simple question: “Why?”

And he would answer, insufficiently in my teenaged opinion: “Because it just is. That’s why”. It wasn’t good enough for an inquisitive mind then and it still isn’t. It is a line that a lot of parents wrongly use at home too.

Obviously though, those years set me on an inquisitive journalistic career that has now lasted 45 years. At fourteen I edited the traditional, annual, student newspaper called The Dukshuvver (which was a euphemism for wagging school in New Zealand) and the day it was published the headmaster confiscated all copies and burned them. I guess some things never change.

From memory, I think the main reason was that I took a few mild swipes at teachers (and their nicknames) but the main reason was a harmless joke about a secretary who was quitting her job because she said she was “infanticipating”. I think I stole that from the legendary Walter Winchell. I guess that was pretty raunchy in the 1950s. But remember, the word “pregnant” was still banned in the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1960s and the word “pot” was banned in the Sydney Sun in the 1970s.

Reportedly, from this week’s conference, there is an innate difference in school attitudes of boys and girls. Boys are competitive. They like to argue with their teachers. Compete with their teachers. Show off. Girls want to impress their teachers.

Boys need competition to stimulate them. They need to establish their place in the schoolroom hierarchy. Especially among other boys. Girl students apparently are more passive.

It is an intriguing theory and I tend to agree with it – as a High School show off all those years ago. Boys get bored in class more easily than girls do and want action. Sitting still is not a “boy’s thing”.

This week’s report took me back fifty years to the smell of wet socks, and farts and egg sandwiches for lunch and “six of the best” and pining over the tallest, best-looking, girl in primary school who would not give a short-arse (me) the time of day. Her name was Gay Sutherland. It just came to me then in a flash.

As the song says: It’s all coming back to me now.

School is still a complicated time although it is changing with computers and a better sense of relevance and adventure. School is no longer just “bums on seats” as it was in my day. And we were taught totally irrelevant stuff. We were taught virtually nothing about our local culture but I recall schoolroom lessons on the wheat volumes in Canada.

I did do trigonometry for a year. Not even sure that’s how you spell it. And for a thousand dollars I could not tell you a thing I learned about Pi squared. It was like a foreign language.

Schools should, and maybe now do, teach social skills. They should teach banking and budgets and healthy diets and sex education and depression warnings.

Primarily, they should teach English. I cannot believe how many school leavers -- and even some of their teachers – who cannot spell.

I know there is now this insidious idea that “stream of consciousness” writing is all that counts. Spelling is not important. Don’t agree. Correct spelling is about discipline as well as knowledge.

If I were hiring a new young researcher for my radio programme I would discard the CV and letter from an applicant who not only couldn’t spell but was too lazy to even pick up a dictionary. Or didn’t even rely on the reckless “ spellcheck” button on their laptop.

I don’t believe these are fuddy duddy ideas or ideals. I left school at fifteen. Hated the place and challenged my teachers. I could not wait to get out into “the real world” and become an adult. Wear long pants and start making some money. I didn’t know what a “high school dropout” was until I went to live in the United States and discovered that I was one.

I was intrigued – at 21 in New York – by people nearly thirty years old who were still at university. They seemed to be professional students.

And I wondered how those cloistered halls really prepared them for the real world. How they prepared them for a real job. Sometimes I suspect they didn’t. People joke about “the school of hard knocks” but there is a bit of truth in there.

But, as I said and Cat Stevens sang: Remember the days in the old school yard. Those were the days that shaped us and moulded us. And, I guess, eventually, made us.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005