Being 17 years old and political in Feilding

I’m watching a 17 year old from Feilding take a wild ride in politics this afternoon and thinking be careful what you wish for.

So here’s something I wrote last year for Stuff…

"It can't be easy being the parents of David Slack" and "he seems to be mercilessly persecuted" and "he's a lazy little b...... who needs a b..... good kick in the a..." are all things that were said to my mum and dad by teachers at Feilding Agricultural High School.

The last of those came a few minutes into a dance at a PTA evening from my sixth form dean, a World War II fighter pilot with a walrus moustache and a taste for the whisky who had just met my mother and was enjoying the repartee and the foxtrot until it was established that her son was me.

He would have been one of the teachers who, the following year, declared they would resign if I were to speak for the school on Anzac day. I was indignant, but I came to see the truth of it. They saved me from myself.

People will say that only certain kids get the care a school should give them. I thought I saw that happening at our daughter's primary school. We were invited to class one morning to see the fabulous teaching and self-instruction.

What I saw was the noisy boys getting all the attention and our daughter and her friend quietly self-instructing themselves into a vacuum. Our response was to ditch the local intermediate and enrol her in a private girls' school. She came out of that place four years later with great diction, stage presence, and an eating disorder. Learning is a lifelong experience that certainly extends into parenthood. Until she became critically ill, we didn't see her getting all that much attention from them. 

I was a noisy kid, the one with the hand up, until the sixth form, when I tuned out. Possibly my mind wandered. Possibly it had become clearer to me that I didn't fit in. Possibly I was a lazy little b.......

Whatever, I started missing class and once you don't know what you're writing about, you stop passing exams. I did just enough, late enough, for them to wave me through for UE accrediting. I would surely have failed. My childhood friend Jane was next to me at the noticeboard reading the results. I can still see her turning to me with hurt, angry eyes at the injustice of it.

They had saved me from myself. They had left it to Jane to see what she could do.

A few weeks later I answered a job ad. PSIS, Palmerston North, management trainee. Why not? I was 16, I was ready to get out into the world. We had a cheerful interview, the job was mine. They would just need my high school testimonial.

I told the school office, they rang back the next day to tell me it was ready to collect. It set out my record and concluded with the observation that I had many years of fruitful university study ahead of me.

They had ankle tapped me. They had saved me from myself.

Back I went for a seventh form year, tuned back in. Would I like to give the Anzac day speech? Don't mind if I do. Would I mind if they took a look at it? Not at all. Get a load of this blistering diatribe against the hateful Muldoon regime.

I don't know if the returned servicemen on the staff even saw the script or just objected in principle but they did me a favour by vowing to walk out. It would have been an unhappy morning in Feilding for me and the parents of David Slack if that thing had been read aloud.

I wasn't all that likeable. I don't think they liked me very much. But my teachers clearly cared what happened to me, and I'm very grateful. I couldn't say how the quiet kids felt, though.