The thin chalk line.

Spent most of the day so far sitting at my local cafe correcting VCE work listening to Eyehategod and Arab on Radar on my discman and to other table's conversations. There was this family birthday lunch taking place which seemed to represent every negative stereotype of my current locale. The whole family smoked including their youngest daughter (who couldn't have been more than 13) and mummy was supplying the cigs. They were having an extremely distracting conversation, a conversation that has solidified in my mind the meaning of the word bogan. Inbetween complaints against multicultural Australia they exchanged gossip... forget work the VB and mullet hair cuts this is what it is all about!


They discussed who of the daughters' friends was into self harm, who was annorexic or bulemic, who had parents into hard drugs, dole-bludging, cheating their partner and neglect of their responsibilities. Being a bogan is more than just a pair of tracksuit pants for every occaision or a cigarette brand that boxes their product in 50 packs, it is a lifestyle. Bogans are the unsung heros of counter-culture, self destructive, drug addled, dropped out and sex mad. They embody everything Tim Leary spoke out for gone wrong.


As I sat there distracted drowning in work, pen in hand something of the irony of my own situation also became glaringly obvious to me. Like all the cliches about the nuthouse where the only thing seperating the doctors from the patients is a white coat, I started to understand that all that seperates the teachers from the students is the direction they face in relation to the whiteboard. I am a conditioned institutional animal: like Pavlov's dogs a bell rings and I come running, I take my homework home each night and I eat a packed lunch of cut sandwiches, my students and I live mirror image lives.


There is an imaginary chalk line drawn through the middle of every classroom or as a student of mine put it last year-

"It's the kids who really run this school, we just let the teachers feel that they have control but it's in our hands and there's nothing you can do."