Transcript of AE 1348 - The Goss: Aussie Teachers Used to Beat Kids with Sticks

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen. And we talk about the week's news whether locally Down Under here in Australia, or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

Primary school. Schooling in Australia?

Yes.

How has it changed over the years?

It's been a while since I've been.

Why does our schooling system suck?

Like, every schooling system sucks except Finland.

Finnish. Yeah. That's it. And that's. Yeah. Isn't it crazy that they have, like, the least number of hours per week? Contact hours?

They don't start school until they're eight.

Yeah.

Eight till 19 is school.

Is that it? Yeah. And it's probably also hours of the day as well. I imagine they probably have much fewer, shorter periods. Yeah. But what was it like going to school when you were a kid? And has that changed much do you think, over the years, although you obviously haven't gone to school again more recently?

No, but I was a teacher for ten years in the 80s and the 90s. And then you were at school.

And now grandkids...

And our grandkids are at school. Well, two of them are. Um, I don't think much has changed. Like, you think about your son's experience at primary school.

Mhm.

I don't believe that's much different from what you experienced.

Besides the technology.

30 years in. Yeah, but 30 years, the same number of kids, similar sort of rooms, similar sort of day to day..

Activities and everything. Yeah.

You go back 30 years before that, when I started primary school.

And you guys were like using rocks.

Yeah, exactly.

Painting on cave walls?

Exactly. Um, but no, we. Well, we started. Yeah. Started writing with. We weren't using slates, but you go back 30 years before that where they were, we were using small blackboards, chalkboards and a piece of chalk to start writing.

Really? Okay!

Because paper was expensive.

Wow. Okay.

Um. And. Yeah. Practice writing. Rub it off. Start again. Um, but, you know, we had 45 kids in the classroom.

Jesus.

And we all sat at little pairs of desks, rows of these paired desks. And, you know, so the idea of, uh, doing sort of communal work just didn't happen. It was you sit down, shut up and do as you're told.

And here's the individual tasks.

Was, what was what it was like.. Yeah, exactly. Well, you could talk to the person next to you and maybe the person behind you, but there wasn't a bunch of, you know, like Noah. Your son's experience now at school will be here's 4 or 5 kids sitting around a table and they're working on a project. The project might be just a sheet of arithmetic to do.

Yeah.

But they're working on it together.

When they get moved around...

And they get shuffled around. And so you didn't. I sat next to the same person for half a year.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

And, and if there was a, there was never a spare desk, but if somebody was away, you might go. Oh, please, sir, please, can I move over to sit next to Johnny today?

Billy here...

No you can't, because all your stuff is in your desk.

Yeah.

Like you opened the desk lid would flip up and you'd have your pens and pencils and books and stuff in there. And that was..

You also had corporal punishment.

I certainly did. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I got, I got two beatings when I was at primary school.

What happened?

One was deserved. I was just being cheeky and to a teacher and she objected..

You? Cheeky?

I know. Can you imagine, listeners? Yeah. Um, yeah. So, yeah, I was just giving cheek. It was fourth grade teacher, I pitied her, I was giving cheek to her one day. It was friendly. It wasn't. It was rude, but it wasn't malicious.

What was it? Do you remember specifically?

No, I don't. But..

Was that stuck with you?

It was just taking the piss, basically. And she'd, she'd put up with it for long enough. And she said.

She'd had enough.

But, and the 'she' part of this is important. Because she didn't dish out the corporal punishment. She sent me to one of the senior teachers, the male senior teachers in the school, to go and tell him that I needed a belting. Yeah.

Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? If it's that delayed, like, I need you to go to a different classroom ten minutes later..

Yeah, it's long term punishment. It's not. It's not stopping what you were doing now.

Yeah.

It's the You can go and stand outside Mr. Steele's class.

And then hold your hand out..

And then tell him that Miss Ackley has sent you there to get a smack in the hand because you were misbehaving.

And so how was it done? What was used?

Uh, well, in his case, it was a cane.

And what's a cane?

A cane, like, probably 70 or 80cm long piece of cane.

Like a small round..

Stick, basically. Yeah.

And would they have a real go at you?

No.

Would they really try and..

Oh they hit you hard enough to make it seriously hurt.

But they wouldn't try and, like, beat the shit..

But it wasn't. Yeah. It wasn't back in the 19th century. It was, you know, bend over and drop your pants and we'll give you ten of the best across the backside..

Ten of the best!

Which is basically just lashings.

You won't be sitting down again.

Exactly. So it wasn't that, but it was. Yeah. It was definitely intended to cause pain.

Yeah.

That's what corporal punishment is there for.

Yeah.

It's the, A, it's the threat, the fear of it happening.

Yeah.

And then B, it's the pain that is supposed to be a deterrent.

How ever present was that at school? Was that something that as a school student, you were freaking out about at all times?

Oh, look, there was one teacher at the school who used to be. He was just cruel and malicious.

He just gave it out like candy.

Exactly. And..

Everyone line up..

And he didn't use the cane. He used a small. It was only probably 30 or 40cm long, and it was thicker and heavier.

Ahh, great.

And he called it The Thumper.

The Thumper! Oh, God.

So you'd go to Mr. Sweeney? He'll be dead by now so I can say his name. You go to Mr. Sweeney's room to get The Thumper.

Jeez. And otherwise, why would he be 100 or so years old? Right?

Oh, yeah. He's probably. Yeah, he'd be in his 90s if he was still..

He going to listen to this episode..

He's going to listen to this episode and go, you've outed me!

I'll give you another one!

Here you go. I've still got The Thumper! Yeah.

He kept it.

Yeah. No, I got The Thumper once and that was not deserved. That was when..

You're just being a piece of shit.

Basically.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? You wonder how many teachers would have been like, oh, sweet. I get to beat kids. You know, like..

I know.

Finally, it's like those, you hear those stories about policemen who who like, abusing authority, right?

Yeah.

Whether it's here or America or wherever, and that those jobs attract those people. And you wonder back then how many teachers were just like, Oh, sweet!

But it's funny, though, because it's one of those things where you go, it was the form of education that required it.

Why is that?

Because if you've got 45 kids in a room.

Yeah.

And my, I can remember my Grade One teacher. So, you know, after Prep, my Grade One teacher, she was first year out. So back in those days to be a teacher at primary school, you had to do a, it was a two year diploma. There was no degree or anything. So she was probably 20 years old. And she's put in a classroom with 45, six year olds.

Yeah. Bloody hell.

And sit down, shut up and do as you're told.

For context, my son's class has 17 kids in it.

Yeah.

So less than half.

Yeah. Prep is usually less than 20. And then it'll go to 25 later on in the school. Maximum class size of 25 in state schools now. So um, yeah. So I think it's that sort of, you know, sit down, shut up and do as you're told, because there's no other way of doing it.

Yeah.

The classrooms are the same size as the room that your kids are in now. Exactly the same size. And so there was no space to do anything.

You chained to a desk effectively.

Chained to a desk! I remember the, my Grade Three teacher had the golden rule. The golden rule was stay in your seat.

Just sit down. Shut the fuck up and don't move.

Don't move.

Don't talk, don't breathe. Don't do anything. Close your eyes..

But the golden rule. The biggest one was Don't leave your seat.

Yeah. Jeez. I need to go to the toilet, Miss. Do it in your pants.

Do it in your pants. Don't leave your seat. If you can do it without leaving your seat, have at it.

Do you think it affected you? Or other kids?

Oh, I'm sure there were kids. I'm sure there were kids. I actually enjoyed school.

I thought you were going to say enjoyed being hit by the teachers.

No, I didn't enjoy being hit by the teachers.

I actually liked it!

Yeah. Well, there were some kids that did sort of Do it again! Doesn't hurt, you know. They just bait them. Yeah.

Have you, uh, what was it? There was a story in, um, the book The Fatal Shore.

Mmm.

Have you read that?

Yes.

A long time ago.

It's a bit predated me, but. Yeah.

Yeah. So this book is about the colonisation of Australia and the convict stories effectively coming out over here. And there were a few of those types of prisoners, prisoners where they had, they had these convicts that were, you know, from Great Britain, they had stolen a loaf of bread or whatever and been, you know, given seven years transportation over here to Australia, which was a life sentence effectively. And, um, they would get lashings and shit for, you know, whatever. It was usually trivial stuff, often not, you know, you're not going to murder someone and get lashes. They're probably just going to hang you.

Yeah, exactly.

So you do something that they didn't like.

Well, they hang you for stealing from the stores.

Yeah, well, there was this terrible dude. I can't remember if it was on Norfolk Island. It might have been there. Where there was. It was being run by this tyrant type prisoner warden or whatever, and he would just give out lash like 100 lashes. And there was one guy who, um, I think just kept saying like, he he was in court or something. And he's like, you need to pipe down. You need to stop talking or I'm going to give you another 100 lashes.

Do your worst.

And he's just Yeah. He's effectively just like, Go fuck yourself. And he's like, Here's another 100. And he's like, Nice, go fuck yourself. And he's, Another 100. And he ends up getting like 450. And I think I don't know if he died or if he nearly died, but yeah, it was such a hellhole where he was.

There were certain stories of..

.. fuck yourself.

There were stories of Norfolk Island, of, um, of people wanting to be hanged, punished.

Well, they..

To the point of..

The interesting story. And that was in, um, that was in The Fatal Shore as well, the book where they talked about that and they had, they had organised murder gangs where you would draw straws. The long straw would be the murderer. The short straw would be the murderer, the person, the victim. And they did that intentionally because when they were tried, when the murder trial went forward, they had to be taken back to Sydney.

Yes.

And they would not have, they would not be punished like they were at the prison. They would just chill out and go to the court case for a few months on ship or whatever. You don't have to do anything. And so they were like, anything is better than living here under the conditions.

Dying is better. And getting shipped back to Sydney for further punishment.

But they, he talks about a specific, uh, situation where they have like ten of these convicts in a, in a circle and they've got, I think they got like a bit of metal railway spike or something that they sharpened and they're like, Here's the the weapon, the duty of the day is to draw straws and decide who dies and who kills, you know, whatever. And, um, they do it. And the guy who's, you know, who's organising the whole thing is the one who ends up getting murdered or whatever it was saying, you know, Oh, well, guess it's me. And then he's like, Just do it. Do it quick, do it right. And the guy stabs him in the stomach, and it takes him two days to die. And he's just like, God damn it!

Smacked me over the head with it! Yeah.

Just like, God damn it, dude. But yeah, they all end up being taken back. And all the guys watching are witnesses, so they get to go as well. So they go on this little holiday, I guess. Back to Sydney for the trial of the murder of one of them, themselves, to avoid having to do the work at the um, penal colony there.

Yes. So it wasn't quite like that at primary school when I was there. It wasn't quite that bad.

Drawing circles. Drawing straws..

It was very different.

Do you think there was any positive to corporal punishment at all? Or do you think there was only negative? Like.

Oh, look, as I said, it was not so much positive, but it was understandable that there had to be in the context. There had to be a threat of crowd control.

Yeah.

That's really half their job was crowd control.

So do you think-

You couldn't make a lesson entertaining and interesting. I mean, I spent ten years as a high school teacher. A little bit different. You're dealing with teenagers.

Yeah.

So behavioural issues are a bigger problem, but, um. Yeah, they're easier to entertain in that sense, because you can give them intellectual tasks to do.

Yeah.

But, you know, the read and writing and arithmetic stuff, the three Rs stuff.

Rote learning.

Yeah, rote learning stuff was just crowd control.

Boring shit, I remember those. Here, I'm going to write all this stuff up on the board..

Copy it down.

And you're like, are you really sure this is an effective way to learn?

Yeah, like.

I can do this without concentrating. You know, like.

Exactly.

But do you think that when the corporal punishment was removed, which would have been, I imagine, just after your primary school years, was it maybe a bit later?

I was after high school. There were corporal punishment at high school, was much more difficult to do.

Do?

Yeah.

Why? Because you guys were bigger.

Well, yeah. When? When you're dealing with. Well, in the case of boys and girls, but girls very rarely got corporal punishment, which was a highly sexist thing. Only the male teachers dished it out, and only the boys ever got it.

Yeah. Wow. Imagine what it would have been like if the male teachers were dishing it out to the girls.

Well. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that would have been a cry. Like there would have been in the news.

Yes. Um, but. But it was. Yeah, it's it's very different saying to a seven year old. Hold your hand out and I'm going to smack you with a cane to doing that to a 17 year old who's standing there going, No, you're not.

Yeah. Do it.

I dare you to try.

Yeah. Have fun.

Yeah. And there were, there were. There have been a lot of kids that I went to high school with that most teachers wouldn't have tackled them.

Yeah.

Yeah. Even at, not 17. Even at 13. 14.

Yeah.

You know, big kids that have grown up quickly. Um, so, yeah, corporal punishment was different. It was still around and people did get a belting every now and then at high school, but it was usually the by then it was the, uh, the deputy principal or the PE teacher's job.

Oh, really? PE teacher, what, because they were usually fit?

Fit. And strong. And kids weren't going to tackle them, you know. And a lot of our PE teachers were VFL at the time, footballers, you know, so they were sort of worshipped.

Do you think the whole sort of setup of classes started changing because corporal punishment was removed, or and they no longer had that threat there and they had to do something about concentrating.

I don't know, because I think it's a correlation.

Or vice versa?

But I think the, um, education changed in the 70s. Really.

Yeah.

70s and early 80s. It had changed in the 60s. Theoretically, a lot of the, um, the changes that came in the 70s and the 80s in education systems. Well, not the system. The system hasn't changed in 200 years, but the approach to teaching in a classroom and curriculum and stuff was much more collaborative. Learning and stuff came in, and that then changed, and people realised that you can't teach effectively with 45 kids in a room. You've got to reduce that. So student to teacher numbers changed, which meant crowd control was less of a problem. The curriculum was more interesting, so crowd control.

More one on one time..

Was less of a problem. More one on one time more. Yeah. And so I think a lot of that sort of changed simultaneously. I don't think it was, Right, we're taking away corporal punishment and so everything will get better, or everything gets better. We don't need corporal punishment. The two things just happened in parallel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was just wondering if it was one of those things that was used to control kids. You know, you sort of like. Well, did they work out that we need to just change the makeup of the classroom in order to control them better? And we don't need the physical violence..

I think student numbers was the big thing that did it. Yeah.

So why do you think what do you think the problem is with our education system? Because I know there is that story of like it was set up the way that it is.

You're told.

Yeah.

It's a problem.

It was set up that way to rote learn all the stuff that you would need to know to work in a factory..

Until you're 12 years old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And why? Why have we kept that, that way of teaching worldwide.

As I mentioned in the what will possibly be a previous episode or a future episode one we have just recorded. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Yeah.

Yeah. Our entire infrastructure is built around that Effectively, a agricultural becoming industrial 18th-, 19th- century model of kids going to school.

Yeah.

And the reason that we have holidays over summer is because people wanted farm workers. They wanted shop workers, they wanted..

You had to go home.

You had to go home to the- you didn't want to be sitting in school. Um, it wasn't that, you know, 40 weeks a year was the appropriate amount of schooling. It just we needed kids at home. We no longer need kids at home. You know, I'm sure you find it a pain in the ass, you know, to have kids at home during the day when you work at home. But if you don't work at home, you're going to have to have somebody at home to look after your kids.

Yeah.

So it became institutionalised child minding, um, as well. Um, and so all of that model is just impossible to undo. Um, we've done a pretty good job of changing curriculum structure and modes of teaching, but the physical thing of having 25 now 25 kids in a classroom for 5 or 6 hours a day, five days a week, for 40 weeks a year is ridiculous. Yeah, there has to be better ways, and there have been better ways. There have been experiments done in the 70s. Um, ideal way of teaching. Funnily enough, they're always looked at as alternative schools, and it was always the, the alternative kids who went to those schools, or..

The alternative parents who sent the alternative kids.

Well, exactly. Yeah. Or the kids who just couldn't succeed in the typical structure of a school ended up going to. And there was a couple of them around Melbourne when I was a high school student and then a university student, there were a couple of those schools where they were teaching in ways that I think is ideal of. You get a teacher or two teachers for 20 kids, and those two teachers and those 20 kids learn stuff together for a year.

Yeah.

And they cover the curriculum the same way, but they don't sit down and go, Right, for this 48 minute session, we're going to do arithmetic or algebra. For the next one, we're going to read English literature. For the next one, we're going to do art or whatever. It was all project-based learning. We're going to do this project right. We're going to build a garden shed or we're going to build a vegetable garden. What do we need to know in order to build a vegetable garden? How big is it going to be? What material is it going are we going to need? How are we going to construct it where there's your algebra and your geometry and everything else goes in, and we do the woodworking skills and the building skills and all of that stuff. All gets done by the same group of people together, and it's all facilitated together. That's the way to learn.

Why haven't we moved towards that?

It's expensive.

Yeah.

You've got to have effectively a teacher student ratio of 1 to 10.

Yeah.

Um, it's expensive and nobody's, no government is going to go, you know what we're going to do? We're going to treble the education budget for forever because you can't go back forever. And we've got hundreds of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure in the country that is built in classrooms that fit 25 kids sitting around tables in a room. We don't have the, oh, we're all going to be outside for three weeks doing this outdoor project.

Do you think that you would end up reaping more money back as a result of changing the education system? And that's the the difficult thing that the government would have to work out, because I'm sure if there was an outline of this is how much money back you will get on your investment into changing the education curriculum. They would um, but I guess the hard part is you don't know. You would assume there's going to be an improvement in outcome, but you don't know if it's going to be worth..

The improvement in outcome should just be, you know, how happy are kids at school?

Yeah. Well, and just how happy are people in society.

And then, and then if you're happy at school, you're going to be happy in most of your life. I reckon that's. Yeah.

It is sad. Like looking back, I. I recently had one of my students who's a doctor pretty much say, yeah, you've definitely got ADHD, dude. And I was sort of like, yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right. Thinking about how obsessive I get about things and how I, I find it so hard to concentrate. And looking back, I do think about just how schooling for me was always pretty difficult in terms of like, concentrating and wanting to, I don't know, it was if I was interested and passionate about the subject, it was easy. And if I didn't give a shit, if I wasn't,

You didn't..

It was really hard.

Yeah.

So this is like maths, any of those sort of things where I'm like, there's no kind of interaction, direct interaction. It's not about animals, it's not science based. It's just numbers on a page. And I'm sort of not tickled by this at all, you know, even though I'm sure there would be teachers out there who could make it fun in their own ways, and doing setting up situations like you talk about where if you were done activities that involve building things, making things. You know, if you did like a maths class and you were doing parabolic arcs or whatever, and you were like, well, let's go outside and throw a ball and we'll use gravity to talk about all these.

You work out what it is. That would have been so much more entertaining and fun than just sit down and hear some sums to to complete. But it's funny how much it seems like that is such a common problem now with boys. Like, we have this whole ADHD thing that's gone bananas in recent years and was even, you know, a sort of a big thing when I was younger. But it's like, is it really a, um, a diagnosis or is that just how boys are sort of programmed, by and large, to be much more physical and wanting to do stuff. And I keep thinking that too, with my son, you know, because he's always so fucking fucking full of beans and wanting to do shit all the time, and you're just like, can't you just sit still and concentrate? And you think, that's so unnatural, that is so unnatural? Why the fuck would he want to sit still and do nothing.

Do nothing, or do what he's told to do that he doesn't want to do? That's even worse than doing nothing!

Yeah. Part of me is like, the only reason I want that is because my life is stressful and I have to work or do these other things..

Exactly. Because you're not going to run around the house and kill himself by running into a door.

Exactly. Yeah. But it's looking back. You're like, I wonder how much we sort of stigmatised or problemised, problematised these kids and said, ADHD is this big problem we need to solve with Ritalin or whatever drugs, when really it was just the education system is sort of unreasonable in the way that it's set up.

And it's all spectrum.

Yes, yeah.

There would be some kids who just like being quiet and sitting and doing what they're told.

I was always so envious of those. Like the kids that were, and that ironically, that's the other side of it where people would be like, Oh, maybe they've got, you know, autism or, you know, they're on the spectrum. They're on the..

Everybody's on the spectrum. That's why it's a spectrum.

Exactly. But they would say that about those types of kids who had insane concentration skills. And I was always envious of those kids. I'm like, fuck, I wish I had your discipline and passion and interest in just being able to carry out a task that you apply yourself to, no matter what the task is. And there were always those sorts of kids at school and they would always get such good marks, but then it would always blow my mind at how dumb they were with plenty of other like, common sense type things and surviving in the world, or just being really uncoordinated with with sports or whatever. And you're just like, it's it seems unfair that schooling is pretty much just based on being able to remember things and then, you know, complete exams.

Yeah, that's what it was.

And I'm like, there there is a whole group of people who seem to be, um, unfairly advantaged in this area..

Pre-programmed to succeed.

Yeah, exactly. And that seems to be not a problem for them.

I was one of them.

Yeah, well, good at that. Yeah, I know.

Give me a task. I'll just do it.

Yeah.

I might not like it, but I'll just do it.

Yeah, it's just nuts. Anyway, um. So. Yeah. You reckon Noah's got it better these days, or do you think it's much of the same?

Oh, no.

It's that set up.

I think you're, more kids enjoy school these days than did when I was a teacher. And when I was a student, I think that's. Yes. Yeah. It's just different.

And do you think it's going to improve? Is there much that we can do to change it, or do we..

We just have to spend more money on it.

Yeah.

We've got to assume more money. And that's not just school, it's universities. It's the same thing.

Yeah.

We've got to spend money on it. And, and it's investing in the country. And the trouble is that we're in this sort of ridiculous cycle of trying to apply 19th century Keynesian economics, to 21st century social problems like education and saying, well, you know, and you asked the question, you know, will we make our money back? That's not the point. You know, governments are a cost centre. They're not profit centre. They're not making money.

Yeah.

This is about Will the country be better?

Yes. Well, I guess that could be. That could be a way of seeing return on investment, though.

Yes.

Are you actually improving things?

Yeah. But then..

Or just throwing money away.

But then, you know, and with this is sort of slightly off the topic. But when you get this, in the case of federal politics, a three year, three three years or less, cycle of elections. Um, we have this sort of stupid thing of everything that they have to be, that they do, they're accountable for. Mostly, they're never accountable for it in the end, because the cycle, the election cycle happens so quickly that there are never these long term things. It's like in order to change the education system, there's got to be a 20 year plan.

Yeah.

Which government is going to put their hand up and say, I'm going to spend $1 trillion over the next 20 years fixing education? There's nothing wrong with it.

Yeah.

Well, everyone..

You're just wasting money!

Wasting money. Vote them out. Done. Yeah.

Well, I think that's the downside of democracy, right? It's an incredibly bad way to run a country, but it's the best we got.

Yeah. Well, benign dictatorship is always the best form of government. But the benign part is optional. As soon as you create a dictatorship, you go from Singapore to North Korea.

Well, it's almost like one of those things of, um. Ah. What is it like, getting sick? Your body has to be fighting it off all the time. The virus has to win once.

Yeah.

And it's like, if you want a benign dictatorship, you have to constantly be fighting off fuckheads who want to take over the country and enrich themselves. And they only have to win once to completely destroy the place.

Yes.

And again, no, no pointing out any other countries at the moment.

Yeah.

In the throes of this kind of issue. USA.

Yeah.

But yeah. So. Wow. Cool. Well hopefully that was a fun conversation guys. Hopefully you enjoy that. We'll see you next time!

See you next time! Bye!