I am an ex-Friends' School Lisburn alumnus. I'm sorry. I'm not proud of it, but that's the way it goes. Of all the things I regret doing in my life, taking the grammar school system seriously was one of them. Going to this no-brainer, bourgeois, uncaring, inept-shower-of-bastards school taught me a lot about real life. Graham Montgomery must be thinking to himself "hmmm...Murdock has actually learned something from us...".
Yeah - by doing the exact opposite.
In my neo-nazi Christian days as a callow, pasty faced seventeen year old, I took the school's view on my brother. He was a problem and needed to be disciplined (just to put him in line with the good boys such as myself). Only on later reviewing what actually went down here, my brother had SERIOUS trouble at Friends and they didn't give a flying dog's bollock. All they cared about was shipping him off so that he didn't give the school a bad name. And I, ashamed to say, AGREED with them.
You see, the problem with Friends' School Lisburn is that the administration there are COMPLETELY up their own arse and stuck dead in the early 1900's when all a boy needed was "a good beating to keep him going the right direction". They were so wrapped up in their own image they missed some serious details they could have done with paying attention to:
1 - They were shit at rugby.
2 - The kids who didn't perform so well could have done a lot better if they WEREN'T made an example of.
3 - Mr. Thompson (Maths and Technology) single handedly destroyed my confidence so soon after regaining it after the move, and there were so many teachers the same - stunting kids progress for a cheap laugh.
4 - They were shit at ALL SPORTS.
5 - God isn't real (in my opinion). And sex isn't evil (FACT).
6 - They were nothing special, especially being less than 100 yards from the other grammar school.
So why, oh why do they hide behind this socially acceptable facade, when any parent who REALLY gives a toss about their kids (you know, the type that don't force their kids to over perform just so they can follow in the footsteps of their doctor/dentist parents or not be a disappointment like they were to their parents' overbearing parents) would take their kids out of there if they knew what was going on.
I believe Friends' School has a policy for issues such as bullying, drugs, teenage pregnancy, self harm, etc: if you ignore it, it will go away.
I was lucky enough to never be in the situation where I was so miserable at school I felt suicidal. I could have been, given that I was thrown to the lions at the start of Year 9 (fat, English and a stupid haircut; what more of a stigma for cruel middle class kids do you need?), but I struggled along nonetheless with the thought "it's not worth this and one day it will all be over". And three years ago, in June 2003, it did end.
However, there are a ton of kids in that school who DO feel like that; and as Jonny was saying when he was tearing into cognetal behavioural therapy, the school's view is discipline, humiliate, ignore and let the kids pick up their own pieces.
Anyone who humiliates a kid for doing something perfectly normal should be sacked. End of. I was rubbish at art at school (like the other lads in class) and what Ms McPoland didn't realise is that some people just aren't artists. You can't humiliate kids into being good artists - if anything they'll hate the class and hate art even more. And plot your grisly destruction every waking hour. I remember one maths lesson where Eric Thompson had me stand up and be a human scale from -10 to 10. He tore me to shreds, calling me stupid for not grasping something as simple (and pointless) as negative numbers. Needless to say in my diary entry for that day (14th October 1999) I've a picture of a hanging man with "Mr. Thompson" written next to it with an arrow pointing to the hanging man.
Shit it I've run out of space. NEXT PAGE!!