Odyssey School

Odyssey School

In 1959, a new elementary school principal of Blake Town. His initials were the same, and for us it was more the second coming of John Corkill.

After two years of a reign of terror under the regime of the SS commander Bill Leach, the children began to relax and take it again the interest in their studies, to smile and laugh, and actually see time at the lessons . participate Never have been made forcibly to school in the morning creep, head down, fearing that the inevitable moment when they would be chosen to be beaten for no reason, in an ambush by the creeping, armed has ruler Gestapo officer, the breath to be mean and nasty, brown-teeth smile.

Corkill

Dickensian nightmare ended, but has brought a new life in the school. He was jovial rugged sort of chap came an active rugby referee, in the best traditions of Arnoldism, the children in their sports and games. He proved to be a most formidable opponent in the British Bulldog, a man defending an entire half of the field. He laughed when I called Taranaki” Bull” – the game was also known as bullrush

known.

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Remember, British Bulldog? It has been since the days when children were in school after class for a long time and plays in the field of education to their own Olympics, FA Cup, Test Match Cricket-stage … and the Titanic, memorable All-kind, all-age struggles of the British Bulldog.

In these jokes, we have unwittingly supported the history and tradition.

Corkill

was robust, but not robots. He knew he was telling the children to communicate, was involved with 10 -. And 11 years to his students are involved, be alert and know things

We do not, because we felt we needed to learn something, but because we warmed to him, he liked, respected him and wanted him to show how much we enjoyed his presence and his steady stream of pleasant distractions. He was always dealing with new ideas: we have a newspaper class, we went down a coal mine, we have brought to our favorite class thing, not just talk, but to explain and defend in a robust debate at times. Seemingly mundane tasks into an opportunity to discuss the words, their meanings and origins.

John Corkill I started the other day when I read in the Canberra Times that some spark had the idea to come up with a robot to bring the school children on virtual tours of museums .

five nights a week, from Sunday to Thursday is my job, every word, read every line in every sentence in every story that appears in The Canberra Times . Some laugh a little, “make me think, I like some – like the picture story of Hannah, 10 year s, five years Wanniassa Hills Primary student who told a Canberra Time journalist last week, he has enjoyed NAPLAN tests because” is not the usual thing you do in class.”

Some stories make me sad. The words that I had read about the robot-class driving under the saddest thing I read in a very long time I read. How can you get the idea of ​​denying children the unbridled joy of a class trip?

In 1960, organized John Corkill with some of the parents in our class to Wellington to take to the National Museum, Parliament House and Alexander to visit Turnbull Library. This was an adventure at the highest level. It meant, in the early morning drive through the Southern Alps by rail car, an overnight ferry from Lyttelton to Wellington, and a day in our national capital, is shown the treasures our national heritage. This is the kind of experience that will last a lifetime.

We were not very interested in Phar Lap skeleton or the rich, deep leat her chairs of the political scene, or dusty, smelly old books in themselves. No much more important long-term as these memories is that the ability to create a lasting appreciation of history and tradition, I’m on record to say glad I never left.

I can not imagine for a moment, like a machine could do, and how gadgets and images on a monitor failed to convey that feeling to see and touch history and tradition in order to hear these things at the core of his being. Children find it funny for five minutes to get a robot to a national lead institution, but would not leave a lasting impression, though not perhaps a vague idea of ​​respecting the denial.

surely the CSIRO would be better spent focusing its efforts on climate change, or something else that our younger generations who spend $ 3.5 million, to build a robot that could deprive the will benefit a class trip to the National Museum and the chance to see our heritage first hand.

As for the museum to be involved in all the seems somehow to fit me unshakable sense that I feel when I visit the museum, I stumbled across a long abandoned set for 2001: A Space Odyssey , or that this is exactly the kind of place he had in mind when Kurt Vonnegut Billy Pilgrim has put in an exhibition in a zoo Tralfamadorian. If I were a modern John Corkill, I would take the children from third countries to Old Parliament, by hand, in person, and they something really remember.

oztypewriter@hotmail.com ■

the Sydney Morning Herald article