I suspect that many people will look back on school days with fondness and maybe a touch of whimsy. There are also others who couldn't wait to get out of the place, to reinvent themselves; after having been shaped by a set of experiences that were like living inside a forge. I think it not at all surprising that I fall into the latter category, after having lived inside my own mind for a while.
I left high school in 1996, which means that next year 2021, will be 25 years since I last left those doors; which presumably means that someone will be organising a class reunion. That may have been a thing before the invention of the internet but here in the twenty-first century, I do not think that it is necessary any more.
Today we are driving through the suburbs of Disraeli, through the classic wasteland of every house free standing on a quarter acre block, through a land where old people are insanely xenophobic and where the kids who play with other kids from every nation in the UN have found their own reasons for bullying.
We drive down Bramwell Avenue, where there is a Woolard's supermarket on the corner, a hardware store which is run by someone who was in 'the war' but which war it is exactly no-one has a clue, past a greengrocers', a newsagents' where the proprietor sells individual cigarettes to fourteen year old children on the sly in the alleyway out the back, and past a variety of mixed businesses which at some point in the future will all disappear thanks to Amazon.
We turn right into Hydrangea Road and crest two hills and then down the hill is Banana High School.
Banana High School is like most other high schools in that it is a model of society but played out in miniature. In six years the jocks, nerds, goths, preps, hippies, and the beautiful people, will form political alliances that are subject to change and according to rules that nobody really understands. Through this process and the overall aim of the education system to create citizens that are capable of surviving in the future through using the education tools of the past, the raw material of children's personalities and natural abilities are hammered and shaped into the things that they will eventually become (subject to another six years of final forming and polishing until about the age of 25.
Banana High School like any other high school has a vision statement, a motto, and half a dozen other lofty statements of managerial tat that consultants have invented, and that teachers who have to face the front line of teenagers generally ignore. I imagine that primary school teachers are on the whole happier than high school teachers because children's nastiness is far less pointed than teenage nastiness which is manufactured from the same root product but which also contains acid and bile.
I think that it is pretty obvious that I survived the experience of schooling and given that I still watch videos about maths on YouTube, and work as an accountant, it should also be obvious what I was reasonably good at. The question here and now is how would 40 year old me have survived? To that end, I still think not very well; except that I would have taken up extra units of English literature and History. The reason why though, is tied up in a far more interesting set of behavioural psychology.
I remember reading a psychology paper looking at people who were stuck in either cramped quarters or who were physically isolated from other people by distance and it noted that at roughly the ⅔ mark, people generally become their most irritable and will behave at their worst.
This had looked at people in places like the Mir space station, in prison, scientists who had been sent to Antarctica, and the common thing is that the ⅔ mark appears to be related to the duration of the mission.
That is really curious because it also equally applies to a sporting fixture where the whole thing is played out in a couple of hours. The ⅔ mark in a football match is at the hour; which explains why that is the best time to make a substitute. The ⅔ mark in an Australian Rules match is part way through the third quarter; which is when teams either lift or drop their heads.
Apply that same principle to schooling and the ⅔ mark happens in Year 8 of 12; and when you also supercharge those same people with a confusing soup of hormones and the onset of puberty, then the concoction means that 13 and 14 year old children are the vilest people on the planet.
I have no desire to go to Banana High School; even if it is some imaginary construct in my mind. I'd rather leave the car parked around the corner, stand outside for a bit and then drive on.
Since we're all on COVIDcation, then it is worth remembering that as the lockdown started on April 1st and doesn't end until June 30th, then that puts the ⅔ mark at May 30th; hence that day is when everyone should be expected to be at their most irritable. Towards the end of May, we should expect to see signs of lashing out and civil disobedience. Curiously, this is exactly what happened in 1919 and why governments in Australia succumbed to public pressure and lifted quarantine restrictions. It's also when we saw a second wave of influenza which was worse than the first.
We can look back over history in exactly the same way that we can look at high school and note that when you put a lot of stroppy selfish people into close quarters for extended periods of time, the results aren't pleasant.
The best response to this is also the one of personal expense; try practicing being kind to people, be patient with people, and try not to be overly critical of yourself if you feel terrible.
Just like high school, it gets better when you leave and the people who you actually manage to make some kind of connection with, are going to endure and continue being kind and patient.
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