Why must school awards nights be such an exquisite brand of torture?
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Version 0 of 1. My kids have just brought home my invitation to this year’s academic awards evening. “Dammit,” I say. “We’ve qualified again.” My husband and I argue over who has to go. To put it mildly, neither of us is keen. Speech nights, school presentation ceremonies, call them what you will but you have to admit that they are an exquisite brand of torture, inflicted mercilessly on well meaning parents and innocent community leaders. Last year’s event went on for three-and-a-half hours. It felt like six. One hour in I fell into a mild panic, realising that not one of the 100+ awards had yet been presented. I did the calculations: at this rate, we’d be stuck in there until 10pm. But I hadn’t factored in the principal’s address. The night wasn’t over until 11.05. Related: So long and thanks for all the flat whites: an English view of Australia | Madhvi Pankhania Before the principal was introduced, we had already heard from the school captains, the vice captains, the music captains, the sports captains, the house captains, the chairman of the P&C and the keynote speaker. We were told to follow our dreams, to soar to the sky, to choose our own paths. We were reminded that nothing is impossible if we live in the now while embracing the future. We heard that a great year had been had, that parents and teachers had been a great help, that great friends had been made and that in the years to come, the greatness of this particular high school would be remembered. These speeches were fine examples of the well-developed awards night genre. Vanilla in flavour. Smooth as satin bedsheets. There were no jarring new ideas. Not one word stood out and woke us up. Nothing interesting was said, not even by mistake. My phone battery was down to 5% when the principal rose to speak. She stood as a queen at the podium and looked out over us, her captive audience. For we were, quite literally, her captives. Before the evening officially began, we were reminded of the etiquette: polite, controlled applause only, no whistling, stamping or screaming, and certainly no leaving before the end of the event. At 7.30pm the last instruction seemed reasonable. By 9.15pm, when we were only half way through the program, the Entertainment Centre staff manning the doors looked like guards. I put my phone away (I needed to preserve the battery so I could find my kids at the end of the evening) and tried to calm myself down. How bad could this speech be? The speakers so far had mostly been kids. The principal was a grown up. A university educated woman. Surely she’d have something interesting to say. Or better still, she’d have nothing interesting to say, realise it, and sit down. No. On both counts. Because this was her moment. Her time on the stage. Her hour in the spotlight. She was taking full advantage of it. For the past 11 months, Ms P’s job had consisted of sitting in her office, drawing up budgets, having her plans thwarted by wayward students, parents and teachers, being unappreciated, disliked, watching skilled students triumph in the classroom, on the sporting field, on the stage, and seeing teachers and parents take the credit for their success. This was her moment and she wasn’t going to let it pass quickly. The principal’s address was bland and pompous, self-congratulatory, irrelevant and at times, indecipherable – she was apparently encouraging “explicit engagement with futurist pedagogical structures informed by current curriculum priorities.” It went on and on and on. She read from her script with little expression, turning over page after page with only minor variations in tempo, tone and volume. Related: Maggie Thatcher should have known: all parents feel guilty | Barbara Ellen I sat there wondering at the state of things when a school that prides itself in its academic achievements has this on show at its awards night. Was there no English department to which she could have outsourced the writing of the script? Was there no drama teacher who could have coached her in its delivery? But the problems of this evening went well beyond the principal’s speech. This awards night was three hours and 35 minutes of agony for the 2,000 of us who had to endure it. We were in the city’s best entertainment venue. With all the light and sound and stage professionals at the school’s disposal, could we not have expected something better than this? Apparently not. When it finally ended and the lights came back on, the man behind me stood up and said sarcastically, “Well, I think that could have gone on for longer!” Nobody laughed. We all just looked at each other. Traumatised. When I met up with my kids, they pushed their awards at my chest. The younger one looked like he was going to cry. “I don’t care Mum,” he said. “I’m not studying next year. I just can’t do that again.” The older one said, “Let’s get out of here.” |