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Richmond Secondary College * by Flick Ruby



Answering machines are pretty vile.  I never have my rave all nice and
compact for them and end up getting cut off half way.  During the Richmond
Secondary College campaign the telephone tree woke me up at 5.30 am so many
times I considered becoming a logger and setting up a protection society
against branch leaders.  Whoever our branch leader was, they got to speak
to our newly inherited answering machine and heard Richard Nixon and a few
chicken squarking messages but they were not swayed.  Unfortunately a few
friends up the road just kept ringing and singing so I would give them a
lift.

 I'm glad I went down because I really believe that the form and content of
education is the most insidious way of creating a uniform mentality of
conformity and passive, mute, obedient citizens.  Education is one of the
first state institutions that people find themselves in at age 5.  It's
like the first meat mincer we are forced into and we come out a bland kind
of hamburger mince at the end.  Basically, the mind is colonised in the
present school system by the ideology of patriarchal capitalism with its
scientific death fetishes and its great 'objective' knowledge.  While I'm
critical of the present system, what it is set up to achieve and what it
produces, I'm sure that learning could be different, much different.
Dawkin's great quantum leaps backwards in 1988 are being continued by
Kennett by reducing accessibility to education, by cutting socially
critical subjects and by making education a degree granting assembly line.
About 160 schools across Victoria have been closed down by Kennett, a
disguisting display of governmental priorities.  Lots of people down at
Richmond became actively involved for the first time which is good.  Others
saw it as a great oppportunity to further their careers as pyramid
newspaper sellers, some got a real ego preening out of the whole affair and
the state got to test out new and exciting ways to bash and spy on people.

The campaign isn't over but it's over for me.  I got pretty fucked off with
it all especially the repetitive ritual of being dragged away every morning
by cops who were politely allowed to cross the picket line en mass.  I
think that's madness and part of the great "We can placate the police and
let's not alienate the public" line.  I think some people woke up to this
one. At one stage I was standing linking arms with people in front of the
gates and a woman with a kindergarten teacher voice came up and said
'What's the key word? PASSIVE resistance'.  She should have brought flash
cards.