There’ll Be No Fun in Melbourne Schools

It should surprise no one that ‘progressive’ socialist Melbourne is the anti-fun capital of Australia. This is the state, after all, that banned people from beaches and golf courses for nearly a year.

What also isn’t surprising is that the Boomers, who can’t stop bragging about how wild and free their youth was, have smothered successive generations from having the same freedom and fun they demanded of their ‘straight-laced’ parents.

“These people were given everything,” as George Carlin so perspicaciously noted, back in the ’90s. “Everything was handed to them. And they took it all: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they stayed loaded for 20 years and had a free ride.”

But now they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don't like it. So they've turned self-righteous. They want to make things harder on younger people. They tell ’em, abstain from sex, say no to drugs; as for the rock and roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago.

And so we’ve become burdened with a culture obsessed with ‘safety’. Especially at the cost of fun.

Like ‘Rag Week’ in Britain, ‘Muck Up Day’ is a longstanding tradition for Australian school leavers. Usually, it was an excuse for some semi-sanctioned silliness: water-bomb fights, TP-ing teacher’s offices, throwing flour-bombs at teachers. My own was a toga-clad water fight in the school quadrangle, followed by a hire-bus ride to the beach for a roast pig on a spit and a piss-up.

Occasionally, as with anything involving teenagers and collective stupidity, things get out of hand. As does bureaucratic pearl-clutching.

Enter the cat’s-bum-mouthed wowsers with their collectivist obsession with rules.

Schools are replacing traditional muck-up day antics with sanitised end-of-year celebrations, encouraging parental involvement and keeping kids on campuses.

Ordnung muss sein!

At least some kids still know how to have fun.

Most students appear to have heeded the call to stop vandalising school property and pranking the public this year, although there were some exceptions.

Students from Sacre Coeur, an all-girls Catholic school in Glen Iris, dressed as Ronald McDonald and took over a McDonald’s store. Other schools, including Epping Secondary College, made liberal use of shaving cream and streamers to “decorate” their campuses.

As soon as anyone starts using wholesome in conjunction with teenagers and Muck Up Day, stomachs should start to churn.

But a more wholesome trend appeared across Australia as year 12 students adopted “senior sunrise”, which originated in the United States. Students meet on the beach to greet the sun together and take selfies.

In Melbourne’s south-east, Beaumaris Secondary College kicked off the year 12s’ final school week by holding a senior sunrise, with parents at school serving breakfast from 6.40am […]

Year 12 students across Melbourne donned face paint and costumes for their final day on Friday, many participating in a rebranded “celebration day”.

Eaaasy, stomach. It’s all so very ‘happy holidays’, isn’t it? Or, as James May would put it, ‘All very Strength Through Joy’.

“[Carey Baptist Grammar] does a really good job at having such a fun and well-structured last week ... it really doesn’t make anyone want to do a proper muck-up,” said school captain Zara Woodrup.

Sounds like the sort of person who’d wear their school uniform on weekends.

Carey has always had end-of-year celebrations for year 12s but has ramped up its event management.

‘Fun’ and ‘well-structured’ don’t belong in the same sentence. Nor does this prat.

School captain Luke Vallely said […] “Why would you do something silly to just tear down your whole reputation?”

Because it’s fun?

And it’s not as if anyone going to remember, let alone care, in two years’ time.

Melbourne: it’s just like East Berlin, only minus the good weather and fun.