Primary School Confidential (29 page)

PLEASE REPORT TO THE OFFICE

In 1974 the Reverend Ted Noffs and his wife Margaret established the Life Education Centre to help inform children about the dangers of drugs. Mobile classrooms are parked in schools around the country to help deliver the anti-drugs message. So when the note came home that Healthy Harold was coming to our hood, I signed that piece of paper giving permission for my kids to be taught about the evils of drugs.

Then word came through that some of the kids had caught the Healthy Harold lady smoking behind the van. The principal was alerted and Mrs Healthy Harold was warned not to smoke on school property anymore. It was the most scandalous thing that had happened in our suburb since some brain surgeon wrote FUK on the side of the IGA with spray paint.

School visitors are nothing new. One of my own most vivid memories involves a lady coming in to talk to us about Dr Barnardo's Homes. It was the late 1970s and this striking-looking lady with the biggest afro I have ever seen came through the door of the classroom and took her place in the circle. (We were, of course, on the floor, while she took a seat on a chair.) And when she opened her mouth to speak, well, she sounded like she had walked straight off the set of a movie.

For she was an American! A real-life American! And so I hung on her every word. She told us a story about Dr Barnardo, who lived in London, and how he was horrified by the number of homeless children living on the street. So he opened homes to house the kids.

By all accounts Dr Barnardo was a very nice man who did very good works. But that's not why I remember the details of Dr Barnardo's Homes all these years later. No, it's because of the exotic visitor to our classroom who spent thirty minutes hypnotising us.

‘Dr. Barnado's. Homes.' She must have repeated these three words dozens of times, always with a dramatic pause between each word. ‘Dr. Banardo's. Homes.'

At first, she simply asked us to repeat the words back to her.

‘Dr. Barnado's. Homes,' we chorused obediently.

Then she mixed it up a little. ‘Dr . . . ?'

‘Barnado's. Homes,' we replied.

‘And so you will ask your parents to put money into these envelopes for . . . ?'

‘Dr. Barnado's. Homes.'

And then she left, while we all looked at each other and wondered what the hell had just happened.

Primary schools are almost always crawling with visitors, from the plumber who's come to unblock a dunny that had been stuffed full of unwanted sandwiches to the school district superintendent who has come to assess the quality of the kindergarten class's finger-painting. But there is one thing that they all have to do: report to the office.

Every visitor to the school must sign in and declare their business. This is meant to weed out any undesirables. But some still get in.

Much like my glamorous American brainwasher, corporate businesses are keen to get in front of a large group of kids and sell them their message. Like:

Or what about the beverage company that will trot out a couple of AFL players to talk to your kids about fitness and health?

And of course there is the burger giant that gives out grants to community sporting groups with one hand, while shoving hot salty fries into your children's mouths with the other.

A few years ago, one of my children suffered an addiction. An addiction to jumping rope. A team of skipping professionals had been bussed in and they proceeded to put on a fantastic, artistic display of skipping. It was enough to inspire my youngest to abandon his dream of being a world-class handball player and reach for a skipping rope—and so my nightmare began.

My nightmare was fuelled by a school program sponsored by a national healthcare, financial services and retirement living organisation, providing services to more than half a million Australians and health cover to close to 300,000 Australians.

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.

The noise drove me to drink. It was the first thing that I heard every morning.

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.

Every afternoon after school.

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.

And all day on weekends.

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.

I'd had no idea a five-year-old was capable of such commitment.

And then the Jump Rope for Heart day came around, a glorious festival which culminated in a whole school skip-off. And
smack me across the face with a piece of rope if my kid's class didn't triumph over all the other kindergarten classes!

So of course I was as proud as punch. My son, skipping champion. Despite the fact that he had only raised $7.15, which was the amount I happened to have on me at the time.

And while we are speaking of fundraising, whose idea was it to send kids home with a box of giant Caramello Koalas to sell? So, you get a box of forty-eight giant chocolate-covered, gooey, caramel-centred koalas, proceed to eat them all yourself, then—filled with guilt and shame—fork over $50.

But at least with the giant koala caper you are getting something for your dough. At one Sydney private school, you can pay a thousand dollars and, in return, they will give you a brick. But—here's the catch—they don't actually give it to you. They use it to make a walking path. Now, I would never stand accused of being an astute businessperson, but even I can tell that a thousand bucks for one brick offers a very poor return on my investment.

Another visitor to my primary school was a dental nurse. She would set up in a small demountable and the children then lined up at the door. One by one, our teacher would usher us in. The nurse would ask us to open our mouths, and she would have a little look around. If you got a note to take home, it meant that you had a cavity and needed to go to the dentist. If not, you were good to go.

I didn't get the note of doom, but I was rewarded with a liberal dose of a gross pink slime—fluoride, apparently—and I can still remember the taste vividly all these decades later. It was
so offensive it brought several kids to tears. But that was nothing compared to what happened to you in Year 6 . . .

If you were a girl in Year 6, there was a vial of rubella vaccination with your name on it somewhere. We were all lined up and sent into the demountable one by one. There, the doctor came at us with a needle: JAB! There was much dramatic wailing afterwards, so if you were at the end of the queue, because your surname started with a letter at the end of the alphabet, you were completely traumatised by the time it was your turn.

But there were good visitors as well.

Like when the reptile man would come to town, laden with turtles and snakes for us to look at. I remember the delicious frisson of terror I felt as he explained how venomous the snakes were.

And then there was the day that the government realised too many kids were being badly injured when riding their bikes to school, so they asked Molly Meldrum—who was everyone's hero at the time, because he had recently interviewed a young Madonna—to endorse the Stackhat. And, boy, did this endorsement lead to sales! When the Stackhat was first introduced to the market in 1982, it was sold at a few bike shops but not in any head-turning numbers. By 1986, two million kids were riding the suburbs of Australia with their heads protected by Stackhats. Despite the fact that the helmet weighed about twenty-five kilograms and was Lego yellow, and thus was neither attractive nor comfortable, sales soared.

Our school immediately placed a bulk order for Stackhats and instituted a policy whereby all children who rode a bike to school must be wearing one. And because there was always a
reason to celebrate a mandatory policy, we had a special Bike Day with a representative from Stackhat on hand to show us how to put on a bike helmet. (Clearly we must have been considered deadly stupid.)

I can't say that Bike Day was a raging success. To begin with, because this was the day on which the Stackhats were to be given out, we all had to walk our bikes to school, as we were no longer allowed to ride lid-free. Then, once we were given our Stackhats, mayhem ensued. Face it, if you put 200 or so kids in clunky hats they are not used to and encourage them to ride around a fairly small area of concrete, you're just asking for trouble.

There were many, many accidents.

Luckily, we were all wearing Stackhats.