Scotch Reports Issue 174 (April 2019)

SCOTCH STORIES
Andrew Saies
I attended Scotch starting in the Junior
School in 1969, finishing in Year 12 (or
matriculation), in 1974. Scotch was
an all-boys school until 1972 when it
became co-educational. Those students
and teachers of my era were part of
a significant transition in culture and
attitudes, from a traditional hierarchical
autocratic ‘public school’ approach of
teaching and disciplining students, to a
much more liberal environment where
students addressed staff by their first
names, questioned ethical and political
assumptions and negotiated a “casual
uniform” of camel corduroy jeans for boys
and green “cords” for girls, complete with
desert boots for shoes for both! Both were
a far cry from the grey suit and tie I was
compelled to wear to weekly Chapel only
two years prior.
The girls gradually transformed the
ingrained all-boys culture of ‘riding’,
which varied from good natured rivalry
between day-bugs and boarders through
to behaviour that would be described
as bullying today. With the arrival of the
girls, we all turned our hearts and minds
to winning the attention and friendship of
our new school yard colleagues. There was
a palpable difference in the tone and beat
of the school. A very young Phillip Roff had
been appointed Headmaster in 1970 and
steered the ship through this time of rapid
change.
And like Bob Dylan said the times really
were “a changing”.
We went to a seven-day time table and
school finished at 5.00pm. We sang Monty
Python songs in Chapel instead of hymns
and the school Chaplain wasn’t sure that
he believed in God. Evan Hiscock and Col
Butler were our Goose Island heroes. Ken
Webb was our soccer crazy Chemistry
teacher and Wendy Johnson the best
theatre director we had ever worked with.
As School Captain in ’74, I convinced the
Headmaster to include a Government
lesson in the timetable; forty minutes
dedicated to discussing and debating
student issues and passing any motions
that would then be taken to be tested at the
Student Representative Council. If passed,
they would be implemented into school
policy. Living, breathing democracy - and it
was supported by those in authority!
Of course, there is always one who pushed
freedom of speech too far, and for us that
was Stan, a declared student ‘communist’
who had copies of the banned Chinese
manifesto, “Little Red Book” with which he
subversively tried to convert students to
the cause under the cover of the house
locker room. Stan and his beliefs were felt
by many senior students to be anti-Scotch
and unpatriotic. Consequently, he became
the subject of the infamous public hanging
incident, in which he was found guilty after
a brief trial conducted by the prefects of
the day. He was strung up by the waist from
a rafter in the Year 12 common room during
lunch time, witnessed by a large crowd of
bemused students. The proceedings were
rapidly halted by a furious Headmaster!
Perhaps enough has been said on this
incident, other than to say that I am told
Stan, who came to no physical harm in the
incident, subsequently suffered a serious
hand injury when a smoke bomb that he
was making for use at an anti-Vietnam rally
exploded prematurely.
Revolution was certainly in the air in the 70s,
and at Scotch it all came to a head over hair!
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