kidattypewriter

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Whoops, sorry mum

I was playing around in the kitchen with an old space-time continuum, some super-dense collections of hydrogen, and some fundamental laws of astrophysics I found lying around - and I accidentally did this.



Anyone got a mop?

13 comments:

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

This reminds me of an occasion when an unidentified culprit from my year nine science class restored a beaker to the beaker cabinet while the beaker still contained a potion, the composition of which escapes me.

The entire grade was hauled into the hall, where the head science teacher proceeded to tell us Why We Mustn't Play With Chemicals, "Because if you mix x and y you could blow up the entire school." Dozens of year nine students furiously scribbled.

TimT said...

I love it when teachers do that kind of intelligence/pompous-ass double act.

I remember once at my finishing school all of us lads being lectured in assembly by some upper-level unctionary in the system. We'll call him the semi-principal, because he was semi-intelligent. Anyway, his peroration was about bullying, and how horrid we naughty boys had been to one another, and it went something like this:

... why, I had one boy come to me the other day in tears - TEARS! - because he was being bullied by other boys in his class. And why? Because he was a Sikh. And he has to wear a turban, it's part of the Sikh religion. This is absolutely unacceptable!

There was, of course, only one such boy at school, who had now been very effectively singled out and identified by this morally grandstanding twit.

Cue the sound of hundreds of boys grinding their teeth in unison...

Anonymous said...

my finishing school

Please do elaborate your choice of phrase!

TimT said...

I went to boarding school for years 11-12, where I learned all sorts of crazy whacked out things that they never ever bothered to teach me at public school, like algebra, trigonometry, and what a metaphor is (no joke!)

Anonymous said...

Ah, the obvious explanation. My mind was momentarily diverted by the idea of a finishing school for young gentlemen (probably because I was listening to something about Emily Post the other day). I must admit to having a bit of a prejudice against boarding schools, mostly because I've met a fair few people whose parents deposited them in one in lieu of actually raising them, but I can see that they would be necessary in some circumstances. I imagine you probably had the rest of your schooling up until that point at a country school, where the resources were possibly quite limited.

TimT said...

More like the teachers didn't know what to do with the resources they had - we kept on getting teachers from straight out of teaching college who didn't really have much of an idea how to teach the curriculum effectively.

We had a whole lot of musical instruments sitting around in a cupboard that, periodically, would cause an enthusiastic teacher to try and start up a school band. Also a whole bunch of weights, and assorted sporting items that sat in a cupboard in the assembly hall - we hardly ever used it.

Anonymous said...

we kept on getting teachers from straight out of teaching college...

Well, that's probably par for the course, given that more experienced teachers are likely to be older and to have family commitments and relationships that would be disrupted by a move to a country or regional school and given that state education departments are not usually willing to provide the extra support and finance to make the move more attractive or even feasible. Surely, however, "resources" means more than classroom facilities- it's also appropriate mentorship and support programs for teachers, especially teachers who are just beginning their careers.

Re musical instruments: my great frustration at school was that you were actively discouraged from taking music if you had not been playing the violin or the piano since you were five or six; there was no way into music if your parents were not wealthy enough to buy you these things. There were a lot of kids at the school who were extremely talented musicians and the school had bands and all the rest of it, but there was nothing there really for the rest of us.

F (thinks everything is a larger, structural problem and that nothing ever just is).

TimT said...

Oh yes, all that was evident. Incidentally, I'm reading Tom Brown's Schooldays at the moment, one of the original boarding school novels, in which the eponymous Tom Brown goes off to Rugby. The original illustrations (not available in my copy) are hilarious. Refer, for instance, to:

a) The battle with the Pats

b) Tom discovered by Velveteens

And so on.

Anonymous said...

Did you happen to catch the TV adaptation of Tom Brown's School Days that was on a few years ago? It was fairly well done.

Anyway, as I think I may have mentioned, my high school was all girls and I was bullied a fair bit, so I can't imagine anything more horrible than having to live with them! It's funny, because I was having a conversation with M about bullying just last night and he was teased mercilessly when he emigrated as a child, but it stopped after he beat the crap out of a couple of the chief perpetrators. He asserted that this should be the strategy of all children who are bullied and we were having quite the heated discussion (well, slight argument) about it.

Refer, for instance, to..

Now I feel like I'm being given a lesson! :P

TimT said...

I had no idea that there was a telly series! And a fine show it would make too; we've had a number of memorable incidents in the book already. I'm just imagining how 'The battle with the Pats' would come out on film...

Steve said...

I like the idea of Tim opening "Tim Train's Finishing School for Boys", in one of the leafier suburbs of Melbourne, of course. (Toorak mansions are going for a comparative song now, I read.)

Then I can further amuse myself by trying to come up with a good motto:

"Let me finish your boys for you!"

I'm easily amused.

TimT said...

No no. I like this idea. Maybe I could persuade the Department of Ed to put up the money...

Anonymous said...

Yes, Tim, it was in 2005, as imdb reminds me and, delightfully, Stephen Fry played Thomas Arnold and Jemma Redgrave was Mary Arnold.

As for the Tim Train Finishing School for Slightly Old-fashioned Yet Modern Young Gentlemen, you could no doubt take your funding model from the Exclusive Brethren schools. I imagine the curriculum would include tying a bow tie, gingerbread-making and occasional verse, among many other essential skills.

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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