The histories I have/had some form of qualification to teach are British, Australian, US, European and a very old major in US/USSR Relations [positively decrepit]. History was not my specialisation - English Language was, then English Literature [which I've taught at university level fourth course], in later years IELTS [British council]. Overseas, I was always attached to English faculties, usually teacher training. Here I was, at Prep School level, also gamesmaster or overseas - sportsmaster - at various schools. Always independent schools. I've tutored O level/CSE Mathematics but that's been privately.
With that in mind, it's with interest that I watched, at times with a wry smile, this American girl's take on Australian history, sent by haiku from South Africa, love it:
Potted history from me:
Yes, convicts needed guards - that class has always been present in Oz history and brutal they were too, esp. on the goldfields, hence the Eureka reaction. There were also free settlers who came out on spec to NSW, then much later in history, the small communities of Germans etc. expanded and then came the postwar influx.
The issue we need to address is why Australians on the whole are so naive and thick - nice enough but as thick as pigs***. Though Barry Humphries overdid that in Barry McKenzie, he wasn't complete off beam - Australians think the good life first, the great outdoors, sport, some succumb and become the 'intelligentsia', almost all with a leftwing 'Bulletin' and Melbourne Age bent, these infest universities, there's always been the suburban boy v dirty red commies underlying tension - Evatt was a dirty rotten commie in many eyes in the 50s.
The influence of foreigners from Europe, inc. Malta, and esp. Italy and Greece, has also had a major effect - the latter offering their mafia and helplessness culture, plus great souvlaki.
Australians have an exaggerated version of the English 'steady on, chaps, that's a bit harsh' when looking at unsmiling people like us dissidents. Dissidents downunder were seen by many as dirty rotten commies in beards and Jesus sandals who disrupted South African rugby matches in Melbourne.
Other than that, they can't claim national exclusivity to the tendency to gutlessly moan, succumb, weakly smile and say 'mustn't grumble'. They're vitally interested in the rest of the world but only what is handed down to them by the MSM and leftwing books and youtubes. They really are, like the British public, quite childlike in their simple trust of the authorities and the 'independent' MSM.
Therefore, they're prime cut meat for experimentation, as are the British. It's sad but I know some of the folk down there, I can feel the downunderness in their communications, whereas Adam, being expat, is a much harder character in the South African tradition. So was Chuckles but haiku is far more urbane about it all. Amfortas is more in that soft tradition, same age range as haiku.
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Good readers, I'm running right behind here, it will take me most of today to catch up, I have ten missals from the boys and gals to post but that will be late morn onwards, some domestic issues first.
"foreigners from Europe, inc. ... Greece": in South Australia when we lived there it was well known that if the body of a gangster was found, with his dangly bits stuffed into his mouth, it was Greeks wot dunnit.
ReplyDeleteThe delights of multiculturalism, eh?
Soft old Amfortas is getting mightily pissed off. The politicians and the police have crossed too many lines. Bloody police thugs act openly, with cruelty. Politicians act with no understanding of what they are doing or why (Andrews an exception). Health bureaucrats who have not seen a patient in thirty years behave as though they were elected and have authority. Most pollies hide behind their skirts. And for the most part it is skirts that are ruling (again Andrews an exception. He wears traditional Mandarin costume to bed).
ReplyDeleteWe don't have guns. That is the next step. There will be blood in the streets soon and I know whose it should be.