School in 1960 vs 2007
Got sent this by e-mail from Aussie. As with most humour, has an element of truth to it:
School 1960 vs. School 2007
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1960 – Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up mates.
2007 – Police are called, SWAT team arrives and arrests Johnny and Mark. Mobiles with video of fight confiscated as evidence. They are charged with assault, AVOs are taken out and both are suspended even though Johnny started it. Diversionary conferences and parent meetings conducted. Video shown on 6 internet sites.
Scenario: Jeffrey won’t sit still in class, disrupts other students.
1960 – Jeffrey is sent to the principal’s office and given a good paddling. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. Counselled to death. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra funding because Jeffrey has a disability. Drops out of school.
Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whack with his belt.
1960 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. Psychologist tells Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison.. Billy’s mum has an affair with the psychologist. Psychologist gets a promotion.
Scenario: Mark, a college student, brings cigarettes to school .
1960 – Mark shares a smoke with the school principal out on the smoking area.
2007 – Police are called and Mark is expelled from School for drug possession. His car is searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers, puts them in a model plane paint bottle and blows up an anthill.
1960 – Ants die.
2007 – Security and ASIO are called and Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. Teams investigate parents, siblings are removed from the home, computers are confiscated, and Johnny’s dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario: Johnny falls during recess and scrapes his knee. His teacher, Mary, finds him crying, and gives him a hug to comfort him.
1960 – Johnny soon feels better and goes back to playing.
2007 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces three years in prison. Johnny undergoes five years of therapy.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
1960 Johnny has a crush on the teacher. She does nothing, Johnny grows out of it.
2008 Johnny has crush on teacher. He takes Johnny home and they live happily ever after.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
2004:
That’s almost as funny as the time Aaron stolen Mr Wilsons packet of mints from his desk and distributed them among those who felt like a refreshing burst of flavour.
Que Mr Wilson arriving back from his not so secret mid period smoke to discover the crime. What followed was a fit of rage never seen before by an English teacher. We were all told we were scum and that little shits like 10js (our class) would never amount to anything.
He refused to teacher us for a further two days and stood out in his hideout smoking and plotting revenge. We just fucked around with the rest of the stuff in his desk.
Aaron is now in jail for attempted murder. No really he is.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
how true……
One day we will return to the 60′s type behaviour. One day they will find thast ADD is actually LES – lack of exercise syndrome.
Some new recently in the school system (from the Dept of Ed obviously)
ALS – aspergers like syndrome (they think there is something wrong but it doesnt fit any current menatl problem)
However the teachers are staring to come up with their own:
PPP – piss poor parenting
ADS – absent dad syndrome
SMS – solo mother syndrome
January 15th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
That Billy sounds like a loser.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
1960 – Teacher teaches the class the times-tables and other basic facts and makes the children chant them repetitively until they know them. Tests them and writes the marks in a multicolumn book. Ranks the class at year-end based on their percentage mark.
2008 – Teacher “facilitates the students’ self-directed learning”; tests the students before they have learned the times-tables, during their learning and after their learning; inputs to computer the huge volume of data for MOE. On no account enforces rote learning of basic facts or competition between students for better marks. Students have to guess how well they are doing overall.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I don’t think these stories are finished
Billy’s wife and kids are frightened of him in the 1980′s as he thinks that violence is an answer to lifes problems.
Mark dies of lung cancer in 2008.
Johnny spends time in childrens ward with burns for playing with fireworks unsupervised (one which was faulty) in 1961. The ants returned anyway.
Although I agree that ritalin is handed out way way way too much.
I knew a kid a few years ago that was just jittery. He just couldnt help it. Didnt need ritalin though, just had a seat to himself at mat time so he wouldnt annoy other kids.
You could have strapped him all you wanted, it wouldnt have been able to sit still.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
should have been “he wouldn’t have been able to sit still”
how horrible to call a kid it
January 15th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
This was already published at Not PC in December , 2007, but slightly different.
Fifty years ago at school …
January 15th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I hate the glorification of times gone by. I mean really, it’s just a bit silly saying things were a lot sweeter, nicer and un-PC ‘back then’.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1960 – A policeman sees the event unfolding and beats Mark, a local black kid, with his baton to stop him from mugging poor Johnny.
Scenario: Mark, a college student, brings cigarettes to school
1960 – Mark shares the cigarette with friends and dies of smallpox.
Scenario: Jeffrey won’t sit still in class, disrupts other students.
1960 – Jeffrey is sent to the principal’s office and given a good paddling. After school he changes his name to Charles Manson.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
All to true, yet an old email.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
susan. You’re a happy wee soul. May god come down and bless you with pins through your eyes.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Susan Deare,
But smallpox was eradicated by the United Nati… Ohhhh. I see what you did there.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Michaels – The only place god has blessed me with pins is in my knee. And I tell you what, I couldn’t walk without them! Praise be to the 21st Century!
January 15th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Maths questions:
1960
A logger cuts and sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is four-fifths of that amount. What is his profit?
1970 New-math
A logger exchanges a set (L) of lumber for a set (M) of money. The cardinality of Set M is 100. The set C of production costs contains 20 fewer points. What is the cardinality of Set P of profits?
1990
A logger cuts and sells a truckload of lumber for $100. Her cost is $80, her profit is $20. Find and circle the number 20.
2000
An unenlightened logger cuts down a beautiful stand of 100 trees in order to make a $20 profit. Write an essay explaining how you feel about this as a way to make money. Topic for discussion: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?
January 15th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
re: beautox – marginal, gross, or NPAT?
January 15th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Re: Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers, puts them in a model plane paint bottle and blows up an anthill.
Unfortunately, it would only be the case if Johnny was named Abdul. (This is Australia we are talking about – in 2007)
January 15th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
1980
Billy is disruptive in class. Teacher tapes Billys hands to his desk and puts a tennis ball in his mouth.
2007
The Prime Minister said Billy’s a liar.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Billy was a liar.
How close was Bily’s background lookrd at by the press?
January 16th, 2008 at 12:31 am
1960′s some Billy refuses to own up to a classroom crime, teacher demands to know who did it, Billy does not own up and the class refuses to dob him. Teacher canes the entire class for being complicit in the crime.
Crime solved, all miscreants punished. Life goes on, move on.
Loved the man’s work!
January 16th, 2008 at 12:57 am
All funny and, at the same time, sad. But true.
From what I hear sometimes on the radio, there’s nobody as trendy or daft as an ‘educationalist’.
I shudder to think what a schoolteacher’s job description looks like.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I read in this mornings paper about rampant bulling at my old school which has culminated in a pupil being “violated” with an object.
Since the PC, touchy feely, way has replaced the corporal punishment regime we have not seen the improvement in behavior that those who promoted this new way promised us. In fact, it has got progressively worse.
I’m not saying that bullying was not a problem at school when I was there, but I would say that teachers had a fair bit more respect then than now. There was a clear heirarchy and structure in place and everyone knew their part in it. It is that structure (that is sadly lacking) that young people, especially boys, crave and need.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:17 am
John,
I would imagine Billys background was looked at just as closely as every other case of repressed memory childhood abuse.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Ah yes, the legendary humour of right-wingers with large chips on shoulders.
If only they could learn to laugh at themselves occasionally!
(I don’t quite know how to reconcile this with the very serious post today about schoolyard violence and the Principal’s failure to call the police…)
[DPF: Most people can distinguish between humour and the real world.]
January 16th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I did have a bit of a scuffle with another boy who became my friend at High School – but I also got beaten up once and got a black eye for no reason other than I was an easy target. Two classes were standing around waiting for their teachers to arrive for class as they were late. My teacher was Mr Okeroa who is now an MP.
Okeroa I think got told off as the next he told me off for not telling him straight away what happened – which was because I was too upset.
Okeroa also used to have a smoke with the Maori kids at lunch time out the back of the 40s block.