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30 Comments
OMG did you really go to Yarralumla Primary?? I went to Yarralumla Primary!! I was made to feel ashamed in Year 6 because I didn’t know about fractions (my family had gone overseas for a year and they weren’t up to fractions yet there and so I missed fractions and I’m still very sensitive about them). And then as an adult I discovered our school anthem was actually “Mr Tambourine Man” with different words! (“O Yarralumla my school sheltered ‘neath the trees…” &c). Totally freaked me out, man…
At my ‘prestigious’ christian ladies’ college we were subjected to unannounced spot-checking of our undies by Matron to ensure that the colour of our Bond’s Cottontails matched that day’s uniform. The same matron who was VERY friendly with the spinster Home Ec teacher, kept her cask of Coolabah in the Home Ec fridge and wondered why us ‘young ladies’ had to keep checking our chilling Jelly Slices. Strangely, the levels of the communion wine in the unlocked chapel cupboard were dropping unusually quickly too. Years 11 and 12 > ‘hic’
Fractions BOO!
Buzz’s revelations makes me wonder if one of the indicators should be level of religious indoctrination - maybe correlated with the behavioural hypocrisy of those teaching it.
My School. EHBHS ! FD has already exposed the nastiest maths teacher in the Universe - the late Col Davis. Fancy saying that Stephens and I were “barnacles on the ship of progress”. D- for motivation, late Col !
I doubt that George Deans (English teacher) loved the school much either - particularly when the (then) year 4 students bundled him into a large galvanised garbage bin and rolled him down the library steps Niagra-style. Shortly before the routine paddy waggon arrived (apologies to Paddy when (s)he gets here).
But just to get even, I was learned statistics and I can be seeing that the rool My School website - much sweated over by crappy schools and good schools alike - is about as useful as a hip pocket in a singlet. Fear factor four; fact factor fuck all.
Not surprisingly, I’m no longer the same religion as I was required to be at that school. Have only been to church about 5 times since anyway. A private education: $$$$$$. A real education: priceless.
Gee, Buzz, at least they left our Y-fronts alone. Spot-checking undies in a ladies college sounds, um, a bit um, intimate, doesn’t it ?
For the last 34 years, I have never realised the school song was actually Mr Tamborine Man. Indeed, freaky.
SWOW RULED!!!!
…until the miserable gradgrinds in the Dept of miseducation shut it down…
Ahhh AME. All is explained. Innovation always encouraged. Rubber band guns apparently too conformist.
At my ”prestigious Christian girl’s school’ we had the healthiest kids on earth. The school nurse was a vile, sadistic bitch who, no matter what form of sickness manifested itself, would be armed with a huge blunt hypodermic syringe. With a run-up of three to four metres of tiled floor she could almost get the needle through to the other side of one’s arm.
Finally, none of kids would own up to being sick. It just had to be me who, happily endured two weeks of measles rather than report to the matron, who managed to infect almost half the school. I would have kept silent for longer, however, my spots became too visible.
Grrrrrrrr.
No wonder you were admonished at Yarralumla Primary, when the second line of the school song starts with ‘I’m not sleepy’.
Maybe Mr Dog was experimenting with magic swirling ships at even that tender age.
I similarly wish to withdraw my crude and insensitive comment on yesterday’s cartoon. My humble grovel to Red Ferret.
AME! I went there for eleven years. I built my own desk in year 4 and experimented with superconducting magnets in year 9. After year 10 I went to a gigantic government college and hated every minute of it.
I’m no expert on statistics, in fact quite the opposite, but as a sad dumb dog I’m concerned. I like green. I don’t like red.
In my owners’ school last year there were six grade 5 children and nine grade 7 children (yes we are part of a small semi rural community that’s fought for years to keep its identity including through the local primary school (and when I’m there I get to bark and jump and lick sooooo many kids – I love this school!)).
Now First Dog, I just don’t think these class sizes are big enough to be “valid” because they are so susceptible to the influence of one individual performance. I put the following example together this afternoon, after digesting a very nice pig’s ear supplied by my owners, to stimulate my deductive juices.
So for example say that eight of nine grade 7 kids got over the national average for reading, say 555 and one kid got half that, say 280. The average over the nine kids is 524, which is below the national average of 541.
If there were 15 grade 7 kids under the same scenario (ie 14 get 555 and one gets 280) the average would be 537 – getting there
If there were 20 grade 7 kids under the same scenario (ie 19 get 555 and one gets 280) the average would be 541 – bingo; at the national average…not green but not red
If there were 25 grade 7 kids under the same scenario (ie 24 get 555 and one gets 280) the average would be 544 – yay; green at last
Same one kid that needs help (and derr – the school already knows it and is addressing it) but massively different impact on the NAPLAN average for the school depending on where they go t school.
And, I’m reliably informed by my statistically adept canine neighbour, the influence of one ‘severe’ performance gets more severe with smaller size groups.
I guess the point I’m trying to illustrate is that the performance of one hypothetical dog who does have problems can overwhelm the results in a small cohort. In my examples, all the other individuals are each performing above the national average, but the grade 7 average results are pulled into the red with group sizes under 20 or so. If two out of nine have problems, it just gets worse. I could just eat my own tail!!
Ironically of course, in small schools, one brilliant individual performance in a small group could equally distort their average upwards, and disguise the fact that the rest of the cohort are below the national average and need assistance. Oh wooowwlll.
If there are questions to be asked about this issue, they are; what is the minimum sample size that the designers of the website are using at the individual school level, and is that sample size valid? I would argue that 6 is way too small.
Anyway just some dog food for thought.
Actually having got here I’m not sure it’s funny and you’ve already done a great cartoon on My School so I almost deleted this but……
Buzz - the principal of Cheltenham Girls High in Sydney back in the day did that same stunt - stood under the stairs to check the Cottontails. Same old biddy I wonder? Name was Beryl from memory.
Mrs Foot at Gladesville Primary insisted I share my packet of Jaffa’s with everyone on first day so I did and got a blue star on my hand. I was so excited I couldn’t lie still or close my eyes for sleep time so she wiped the star off. Wonder if giving with one hand and taking with the other is part of today’s litmus test?
Grant - was a different old biddy. My school was in Adelaide. But 41 years later I still remember Mrs Ayling who, in Divinity class in Grade 7, sent me to stand alone in the middle of the quadrangle lawn (overlooked by the waist-to-ceiling window walls of 5 other classrooms) and to stay there during “playlunch” because I didn’t know what the shortest sentence in the bible is*. She later left to accompany her husband (a minister) to be a christian missionary in the Solomon Islands.
*It’s “Jesus wept.”
yay Yarralumla!
Probably I should say that for most of the time Yarralumla Primary School was lovely and in fact the funnest time I had at school. Bright green carpet and funny-smelling Gestetner machine notwithstanding. Cor - remember when we got COMPUTERS??
Let me see. Yarralumba is/was a wine maker(?) Yarralumla…Isn’t that where the queen of England’s far away representative- in this the Crown Colony of Orstralia-lives? And now we have a Primary School called Yarralumla; or do I need a new key-board/computer screen?
There is a South Australian wine biz called Yalumba. Yarralumla is indeed a suburb in Canberra and where the GuvnorGen’s abode is located. The Primary School has been there for sometime; long enough that some hippy teacher used “Mr Tambourine Man” as the inspiration for the school song. Also we used to have to sing “God Save the Queen” at assembly and do the “Health Hustle” to songs like that one that goes “Hello darkness my old friend” by Simon & Garfunkel.
For those who have always hated the lyrics to Mr Tambourine Man, I present to you alternate words for singing!!
Oh, Yarralumla, my school sheltered neath the trees,
well you’ve taught me all the lessons of my childhood.
Oh, Yarralumla, my school cooled by lakeside breeze,
Certamen, Preater, Palman is your motto.
Teachers and your pupils pass
but fleeting through your doors,
yet brief though their pause,
your guidance none ignores
and your patience with its flaws
has helped them to be more just and understanding.
I wonder if the books I wrote are still in the school library? They were highly derivative of Garfield.
Sorry I am getting a bit carried away.
OK. I know Mr Onthemoon is satire/comedy. But does that extend to his commenters as well?
Surely these comments from ‘acannon’ about the school song can’t be true?! And if they are true for then, surely these aren’t still the real lyrics/tune of the school song now?!
The lyrics in fact I cutnpasted from the Yarralumla Primary School website. So there, Andrew-Bartlett-person!! As if anyone could make up something like that!! (Except maybe for Mr OnTheMoon). But as the school song says, I am (more) just and understanding so I forgive you for your doubt.
Wow. I guess school songs are required by law to be as naff as possible (at least that’s I presume that’s why they always are), but that’s really something.
Christine Johnson — your little star story is a heartbreaking tale.
I find the comments on this post are far more hilarious than the cartoon because I have a mental illness.
Amber, I just lurve your hat!
Amber - yeah it DID break my heart. But Mr Trim won it back by suggesting I read the scripture to third class because I did it so well! After that I gave up on Mrs Foot to idolise Mr Trim and his love of English. It’s amazing what Jaffas, a blue star and praise can buy.