Each year when the HSC results make the headlines, James Ruse High School keeps getting mentioned. It is held up as some sort of icon of achievement: so many elite passes in the exam.
On occasions this has prompted me to reflect in three respects.
Do I feel inferior to these students who excel? The answer is promptly – no
Would I have enjoyed going to a school like James Ruse, in order to be exulted in the HSC results. Again the answer is – no.
Should the education pressure have been greater at FSBHS, 40 years ago, so that the School, and so that I or we, could have been as renowned as James Ruse is nowadays. My answer is no.
There were boys who had the innate talent to be “champions” like the current pupils of James Ruse. To some pundits, they wasted their talents. They should have been better performers, had they not misbehaved and squandered their opportunity.
The cynical response is – who cares? I have not noticed anyone become famous after being glorified in the HSC. Has anyone ever heard again of a girl called Guiffre, who cam top of the 1969 HSC, with Level 1 passes in a bunch of languages? I do know what became of a pupil from Newington College who got seven Level 1 passes. He became an anaesthetist.
What I appreciate is that I – and might I say – we, had the opportunity to cruise through school and do other things. Those other things might have been sport; they might have been music; they might have been imitating Monty Python and savaging the population of central Sydney. I appreciate having had more of a life than would have occurred had I been made a competitive performer for the HSC. As it was, the 1969 results were not embarrassing. I dare say, they were a reflection of natural ability: what pupils could achieve with basically little study.
Has society changed that much that it is imperative to be a wanker at school nowadays? Or is this James Ruse fashion just a perversion?
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