I was shaking this morning. Not due to the cold which pervades my bones, nor to any seismic activity (and my local area has had a couple of small earth tremors in the past week). No, it was due to an article I viewed on television this morning. It involves a teaching method employed by a nun at a Catholic school in the southwest Sydney area. I'm not going to name the school, but I'm sure if you really want to, you have the wherewithal to find out the name for yourselves.
In fairness, I will throw out there the possibility the entire story has not been reported. Let's face it, this is a strategy of mainstream media in order to create the biggest scandal which naturally segues to the biggest sales and the biggest clickbait. But what WAS reported is some nun (surprising given you just don't see nuns teaching these days), in order to teach Year 4 students about the horror of the Stolen Generation - a black and ugly stain in our history - informed the class the school had received a letter from the Prime Minister's office advising the children were to be taken from their parents. The children were left under this ghastly misapprehension for the duration of the school day, before being informed this was merely a strategy to instil in the children some empathy for those children who were taken from their parents. What it also instilled in the school children was deep trauma and fear. Some of the children contemplated running away. Could you imagine if a child did escape school grounds and was injured, killed, or abducted?
The school has defended it's fucked up policy, stating the method was used to teach Year 4 last year with no apparent problems (except some ten years down the track when Little Johnny is up on the roof with a gun taking pot shots at passers-by). Look, I'm not a teacher. I have the utmost respect for teachers. I loathe armchair experts, and here I am acting like one, but perhaps, just perhaps, it might be time to put that policy where it belongs. If the school is wondering where it belongs, let me enlighten you: right up your arses.
Yes, I sat there in my lounge room in a miasma of the most abject horror when I heard this. Perhaps I was triggered, being one of the survivors of a childhood with nuns for teachers. I bet there are quite a few people, people who were schooled by the Good Sisters (cough!) throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s suffering some utterly grotesque flashbacks today. Strewth, we had nuns that belted you if you forgot the 'rule' regarding pronunciation of a vowel when there is an 'E' at the end of the word (eg, 'hop' as opposed to 'hope'). We had nuns that would go on a mad screaming frenzy, whacking kids left, right and centre if they could not pronounce sibilant words (clearly seeking a referral to a speech pathologist was beyond their ken). The most calm nun we had was a New Ager who was concerned that we were not as coordinated as she believed we should be, and had us spending the period between bell and recess doing the most absurd exercises I have ever heard of. One such exercise entailed lying flat on your stomach, positioned something like a salamander, and dragging yourself along a sheet of linoleum with one arm before 'flipping' over to a mirror of that position, and dragging yourself with the other arm. We would be in two rows, manoeuvring ourselves in this ungainly manner along the lino. Because the exercises were as boring as fuck, we would liven them up by 'racing' the kid beside us along the length of lino. This often resulted in 'lino-burn'. You also ran the risk of sliding right up to the slower moving kid in front of you, and copping the feet of said kid right in your face, said kid having worn his socks three days in a row, or else having just removed his feet from a pestiferous gym boot, thus causing his socks to stink like a decaying deceased dog. Well, this is what always seemed to happen to me, anyway. It was with great relief the nun was transferred to another school, taking along with her the lino and her tomfoolery. I do not know which unfortunate community received her after us. I do know her teeth arrived ten minutes before she did (my friends and I still refer to her as Sister Tombstone-Teeth). Scary to think that she was the least harmful of the nuns we had.
Obviously, this pales in comparison to what those children were subjected to the other day. It cemented in me a thought I have had, that thought being if my children were ever abused in such a method as those employed by the sadistic old nuns, the abuser would want to hope he or she holds ambulance coverage in their insurance policy. Seriously, who terrifies children by letting them believe they are going to be forcibly removed from their parents? You wanted to teach the children empathy, you say? You've missed by a country mile, Sister. I shudder to think what you do when it's time to get the children ready for the Easter celebration, and you want to teach the Passion of the Christ. Do you drag some poor hapless mite, kicking and squealing, to the front of the classroom before subjecting him to thirty-nine lashes? Do you then empty the vase and wrap the roses around the poor kid's head, shoving the thorns into his scalp? Do you have an oppressively heavy wooden cross shoved onto the kid's back that you then have him struggle through the streets under? I suppose given Calgary is not within the realms of geographical possibility, you would make the poor kid trudge to Minto. And then for the piece de resistance, you probably have some other children - on the verge of succumbing to trauma induced catatonia - nail the poor kid on the cross. Now, just a hint: that kid is not going to get back up after three days.
Truly, some things leave me shaking my head. This sure did, and I was reminded of a view I formed years ago, that view being some nuns should be garrotted with their own rosary beads.
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