Padraic P. McGuinness, “Few school terms of endearment for this old boy,” The Australian, December 20, 1993, p. 11.
This is the season of school speech days, prize-givings and so on. Once upon a time it was sometimes thought appropriate for such speeches, especially in the case of the more prestigious schools, to be reported. Like many other areas of community activity this is now neglected.
Perhaps that is not a bad thing since the last thing one expects to hear on such occasions is a frank appraisal of what school really means to most kids, and the fact that most of them cannot wait to be shot of the whole affair at the earliest opportunity. Instead one tends to get prominent citizens delivering homilies along the lines that “you will remember your school days as the best days of your life” — few do — and a lot of guff about leadership, playing the game and so on.
Often enough these addresses are delivered by “old boys” and “old girls” of the relevant school who have since achieved the status of prominent stuff shirt.
Despite being an old boy of quite a few schools — indeed, I am one of the very few able to claim to be an old boy of the Kincoppal convent which used to be in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney — I have never been invited to give such an address. This no doubt is primarily owing to the fact that I am not considered sufficiently reputable, distinguished or reliable in my hypocrisy. Mind you, I was not expelled from any of them.
It might also have to do with my deep unpopularity with the teaching profession, which is not fond of criticism that adverts to its parlous state. This is especially true of the cohort that flooded into the business in the 1960s and 70s, ill-educated and ideologically obsessed as they often are. (Needless to say, there are numerous exceptions, even in this cohort, who are excellent teachers.)
My last school was Sydney Boys High School, then as now a selective high school with a deservedly high reputation. Earlier on this year I was asked to write a nice piece for the school magazine. Despite having achieved some considerable underground circulation (especially in Sydney Girls High School), the letter I sent to the editor in reply has not to my knowledge yet been published. So, in the spirit of contributing to the wave of self-congratulation which overtakes our schools at this time of year (and in order to ensure there will be no speech day invitations next year), let me quote the letter in full:
Dear Emil, I am afraid that I cannot really help you with a contribution to the Sydney Boys High Record which would be “warm, nostalgic, anecdotal and inspiring”, since I have no such feelings about school. Nor would those of my contemporaries who were involved, and who now are distinguished members of the establishment, care to be reminded of their marginal participation in the Sydney High School Marxist cell which I set up, half-seriously.
The best thing to do about school days is to forget them as soon as you can possibly get on with the real business of life. If you make good friends and keep them, well and good; but it is foolish to judge grown men and women by your memories of them in childhood and youth. Teachers are, with rare exceptions, either obstacles or sufficiently benevolent not to get too much in the way. I remember only two teachers with any respect — Lenny Basser (physics) whom I had little to do with, and Philip Leblang (economics) who accepted that he had little to teach me, but helped. The rest were either irrelevant or positively malign.
Teachers can help, to the extent that they are themselves well trained and generous in their instincts. Unfortunately for a selective school, the selection of teachers is not conducted on the same criteria as the selection of pupils, and hence there will always be a leavening of not very good teachers, certainly below the average intelligence of their students, who resent ability.
My most productive study was done in the reading room of the Public Library (now State Library), and to do this I had to absent myself from school as much as possible. (It would not be possible to do this nowadays since teachers have the power to prevent students who are disobedient from sitting the HSC.) My real teachers were a small group of highly intelligent students and graduates who also used to work at the Public Library, and drank coffee at Repins in the evenings. Add to this the Sydney Libertarian Push, both academic and downtown, including the poet Harry Hooton, and art students from what was then the East Sydney tech; and the Labor Party.
As for avuncular advice: get through your exams as best you can, while avoiding as much in the way of collective activity, especially mindless and violent team sports, as you can, and get into the world of work or advanced education. Thanks to the harm done to the university system in recent years there will still be immense problems, but the best universities have sufficient people of brains and dedication to make real education, research and training possible.
And my warmest memory of school? The day of my last exam when I walked out the gate on to Anzac Parade knowing that I would never be obliged to walk into it again.
Yours sincerely, Padraic Pearse McGuinness (Sydney Boys High School, 1954-55).
According to some at least of the kids at the boys and girls’ schools, this is widely considered to be among the more sensible and constructive comments about school they have encountered. I am assured that its non-appearance so far in the Sydney Boys High Record has more to do with production difficulties than with censorship.
In those days, it was the custom for the headmaster to write a reference for departing students to help them in their future employment applications. I have long since lost mine, and fortunately I have never needed it, since it included the delightful sentence, “In the two years he has been at this school it is doubtful whether he has ever really become a part of it.”
There was a certain truth in this of course. I never became a “part” of any school which I attended, in the sense of acquiring some kind of corporate feeling. Indeed, I found that this characteristic mainly belonged to thick-skulled footballers, yobs or bullies — again, with some exceptions. Those who remember their school days with affection and nostalgia are mainly those who were emotionally stultified by them.
This is particularly so in the case of boarding schools. I spent four years at one — and swore as a result never to send any child over whom I had any control to boarding school except in case of dire necessity. There are those for whom it is a necessity, particularly for diplomats and business executives who have to take up overseas assignments, and remote country dwellers. But sending children to such institutions always scars them.
Those who do not recognise the emotional harm they suffered as a result are those whose personalities were successfully corrupted. Even when, like myself, it was the result of the loss of a father, it would always be better to remain with the family. Not that such schools cannot provide good education. The one I went to — St Ignatius, Riverview — did.
And this is my last, all-purpose school speech day contribution.
