Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 14:49:03 +1200
From: The Lorax <lorax-AT-inet.net.nz>
Subject: Re: Mass paranoia?


My old high school was enormously divided along class lines, although it was
verboten and treason to mention such things.
Most of the kids, including me, were from the surrounding suburbs of Linwood,
Woolston and Bromley and Aranui, grimy, run down working class suburbs.  Not the
worst place in the world, but if you listened to the people from the "nice"
suburbs you'd think they were fucking South Central LA or something.
The other kids came from up the hills, or from Sumner, a small upmarket village
by the sea.  Most of the parents on the Board Of Trustees were from this area.
Together with the principal they had to be the most arrogant bunch of morally
superior hypocritical tossers I'd ever come across.
Regular uniform crackdowns.
An irrational and vaguely disturbing ban on male facial hair.
Two expulsions for a piddling amount of flaky low grade pot, followed by a
decree that Linwood High School had no drug problem and anybody that said it did
would face discipline.
When I was in my last year there I was forced to do a "Life Education Module"
because I had commited the heinous crime of being originally from the extension
class but altogether uninterested in a middle class career, which translates as
an attitude problem.
Anyway, the general theme of the class was "So you're an unambitious fuck up?
Here's how not to have children and take drugs"
The teacher however, was a good woman.  When it came to learn about teen
pregnancy, she actually got some teenage mothers to come in and talk to us.
We got the message that it was a hard thing to be a teenage parent, that there
was still a lot of stigma attached to it, but shame was useless and damaging to
both parent and child.
The principal's response?
"I'm not having unwed mothers in my school!"
The teacher quit shortly after.

The Lorax