Quickies part 2

[nomadpete]

20 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Happy 78th young Fella. Nev

Plus one for that, Peter

[nomadpete]

From here, you don't look that old!

[facthunter]

It's all relative. Clint Eastwoods a Hundred. . Once you've reached say 80. Most of the people you knew are dead. That's NOT fun.  Nev

[onetrack]

Peter, good to hear you made it to 78, a huge number of people don't. I trust you had a good day. My sole surviving brother made it to 82 in fairly good shape at the end of last month.

Once he's gone, I'm the sole surviving family member. It's scary when you look back and see the number of people you knew/worked with or associated with, who are gone. 

[red750]

Yes OT. My brother died in 2006 when he was 58 from bowel cancer. He was four years younger than me. My eldest cousin died of cancer in the spine a few months later, resulting from a fall he had on the farm. I have been lucky enough to have had a good urologist and oncologist, so my cancer eight and a half years ago did not claim me. And of course, my wife who passed away with cancer this year, aged 77. 

[Yenn]

Red I have got to that age and the surprising thing is that my son looks more like me than I do.

Congratulations, it all gets easier from now on.

[facthunter]

Chances are that you are his  father. Is that surprising?   Nev

[red750]

Heard a Doctor on TV recently (Norman Swan on ABC) telling us that we needed children to play in the dirt with their dogs and cats and be allowed to build up some immunity! Well bugger me! Who would have thought?

 

Those were the days -   A Bit of Australian Nostalgia.

 

My mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs, and spread butter on bread on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting E.coli.

 

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the creek, the lake or at the beach instead of a pristine chlorinated pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then either?.

 

We all took PE . And risked permanent injury with a pair of Dunlop sandshoes or bare feet if you couldn't afford the runners instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built-in light reflectors that cost as much as a small car.

 

I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

 

We got the cane or the strap for doing something wrong at school, they used to call it discipline yet we all grew up to accept the rules and to honour & respect those older than us.

 

We had at least 40 kids in our class and somehow, we all learned to read and write, do maths and spell almost all the words needed to write a grammatically correct letter....... FUNNY THAT!!

 

We all said prayers in school irrespective of our religion, sang the national anthem and saluted the Flag and no one got upset. Staying in detention after school netted us all sorts of negative attention, we wish we hadn't got.

 

And we all knew we had to accomplish something before we were allowed to be proud of ourselves.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. We weren't!! Don’t even mention about the rope swing into the river or climbing trees.

Oh yeah ... And where were the antibiotics and sterilisation kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! (A hives of bee stings for me....)

 

We played "King of the Castle" on piles of dirt or gravel left on vacant building sites and when we got hurt, mum pulled out the 2/6d bottle of iodine and then we got our backside spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of antibiotics and then mum calls the lawyer to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

 

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

 

We never needed to get into group therapy and/or anger management classes. 
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

 

*BUGGER ME!!*  How did we ever survive?

 

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT 
YOU MISSED. WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

 

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

 

AAAh, those WERE the days!!!!

[facthunter]

They say the Mind tends to remove the BAD stuff.   You didn't need much to amuse yourself. Just a drain with some water in it and some mud. A few Dinky toys a slingshot a crystal set. I bought a Waratah motor bike at age 12. Three Pound and ten shillings and no permission. then a radio set Model Planes  More motor bikes to ride through the bush. Maybe not SO simple but you couldn't do it now. The Planes I flew aren't around now.  No TV No fridge No washing machines.. It's certainly DIFFERENT. I walked RAN or rode a pushbike everywhere till I got a bike licence. Fit as.   Hmmm . Nev

[onetrack]

I can't agree with a lot of it. I got caned nearly every day at primary school, for petty reasons, by a vicious, perverted old runt of a headmaster who would've been rightfully charged with child abuse today.

And his deputy was no different. And this was a State School, not a Church school, full of more depraved bastards.

The yard of our newly built school was just a jungle, and I slashed a big chunk out of one knee on a broken bottle, whilst crawling around in the metre-high wild lupins whilst playing during school recess.

The contractors should have been held responsible for leaving the school yard just a jungle, unsuitable even for animals to roam in.

 

No, the "good ol' days" are looked at with rose-coloured glasses by too many people. This was the era when people got badly injured or killed, and no-one took any responsibility, and no-one got penalised.

My newly-married brother was killed by a scumbag of a drunk driver in a truck, in a head-on collision, where the truck was totally on my brothers side of the road - and despite evidence being given in court of the truck driver having downed at least 14 schooners before driving home, he employed the "finest criminal lawyer" in the State, and he walked out of court, scot-free, without even a fine, thanks to that lawyers manipulation of the truth and accident circumstances.

 

We have gone too far in some cases today, thanks to over-reach by the same class of greedy lawyers - but overall, we have a far safer and healthier nation than 50 or 60 years ago, and people who shirk responsibility for their actions largely get held to account today. However, I still think many penalties dished out, are too low.

[Old Koreelah]

Some of Red’s nostalgia resonates, but I also remember classes of forty- where quite a few kids fell by the wayside and left school with little more than bitterness. Where poorly-trained teachers were overwhelmed and resorted to violence in order to survive.

 

During my decades as a schoolteacher, I enthusiastically joined the kids in playing this anthem: 

 

 

 

[facthunter]

OK I didn't know you were a chalky. Some of my classes had 55 pupils. The MAX was supposed to be 48.. Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

I think the problem is that the pendulum of humanity swings from side to side but is only in the centre for a short period of time. Utopian society sort of lives between the "good ol' days", the present, and the future.

 

 

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

12 hours ago, facthunter said:

OK I didn't know you were a chalky. Some of my classes had 55 pupils. The MAX was supposed to be 48.. Nev

Crickey Nev! Baby boom days I guess.

I recall our biggest group was born 1972- the children of Boomers.

 

I was fortunate to have much smaller classes: my biggest was 33 but most were low twenties- an advantage of small rural schools. Some senior classes dwindled to half a dozen. That’s where I got my best HSC results, even teaching two different courses in the one room.

[Jerry_Atrick]

47 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

HSC results

PTSD right there! 😉

 

[facthunter]

I started teaching in 1959. High class load was due to Education Dept underfunding. (NSW).  Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

I started teaching in 1959. High class load was due to Education Dept underfunding. (NSW).  Nev

What has changed? In the outer southwestern suburbs of Sydney, where all the housing developments are, they are going to open a primary school on a vacant block for the start of the 2023 school year. Between now and then they will only be able to build permanent toilet blocks and the Admin building. The classrooms will be trucked-in demountables which will stay in use for probably longer than the first intake of Kinders will take to get their University Degrees.

 

As I have said. We need a few no-nonsense leaders who are prepared to toss away the lovey-dovey stuff and put the very basic needs of the people to the fore. Just meet the lower levels of Maslow's heierarchy of needs.

[facthunter]

The last Government we had didn't believe in the concept of anything but PRIVATE schooling.  Nev

[red750]

Is that why Albo was on TV this morning talking up the budget measures for Catholic and other non-government schools?

[facthunter]

THEY jump up and own all the time IF he doesn't. I'm sure the State Schools won't be as neglected as they have been up till now. That would be hard to do.  Nev

[Yenn]

Are we so much better off and safer now, with better health.

From what I see a majority of today's kids are sexually abused, bullied, have some kind of mental problems or should be looked after by today's biggest money sink The NDIS.

I wonder if anyone is normal nowadays.

There seems to be no will to achieve anything except get a handout from government.

My upbringing was full of some form of adventure whether it was riding a bike too fast or climbing a tree too high and I managed to carry this through my working life, to my enjoyment. Nothing was better than to give the bureaucrats who tried to stop me doing something a poke in the eye. One of those bureaucrats who annoyed me for two years on 3 jobs, greeted me as a long lost friend when he thought I was going to save him work by driving a hoist that he had installed. Wasn't happy when I pointed out to him that it was unsafe according to the rules he had for years tried to enforce.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Yenn said:

Wasn't happy when I pointed out to him that it was unsafe according to the rules he had for years tried to enforce.

Karma is a bitch!

[pmccarthy]

In 1959 my classroom was a hall in the Albury Showgrounds. And my classes were always 35 to 40 until senior high school. We were the boomers.

[Old Koreelah]

9 hours ago, old man emu said:

What has changed? In the outer southwestern suburbs of Sydney, where all the housing developments are, they are going to open a primary school on a vacant block for the start of the 2023 school year. Between now and then they will only be able to build permanent toilet blocks and the Admin building. The classrooms will be trucked-in demountables...

 

My grand kids have been in a public school that adds more demountables each school vacation. The playground is getting smaller and classes are enormous. Our ten year old does her best, but a couple of misfits regularly disrupt the lessons. The kids report that the poor teacher often retreats to the storeroom to cry. 

 

Lately, they have had a series of casual teachers. If this is how The Clever Country educates its kids we’re buggered.

 

  

[Jerry_Atrick]

It's a sad case of perennial underinvestment, and importantly, lack of management. Why we skimp on the leaders and doers of tomorrow, I will enever know. In your example, OK, clearly, the teacher is in over his or her head. There could be any manner of reasons from outright incompetence and teaching.managing kids, to overworked and overstressed with no support, simply not experienced enough before being unleashed into the furnace, may be experiencing family breakdowns, etc.

 

For a school, the headmaster/mistress (here they are called head teachers) is ultimately responsible, but who is providing oversight of the head teacher with the risk of cronysim being mitigated? What guidance does the education department put in place for teachers to be overwhelmed, What independent support is offered for teachers in these cases?

 

Having lived through both primary and secondary schools in the rough end of town, leafier suburbs, and, for a couple of years, in a posh private school, quite naturally, more quality teaching seems to gravitate away from the disadvantaged areas - as even an average teacher in a state school in a good area can look good as, generally, the students are better behaved and want to do better.. generally. But, on the opposite side of the coin, some of the best teachers pu their heart and soul into the less well off areas and in relative terms achieve so much more.  What is for real is that those is less affluent areas or remoter areas don't get quite the same level of resources nor management thrown at them.