big mistake

Professor Penington, who led Australia's successful response to the AIDS epidemic, told an obesity summit in Canberra this week that the inclusion of weight in primary school reports could spark discussion between teachers and parents about diet and levels of physical activity.

Not once, the whole time I was at school, did anyone turn up on a parent/teacher day to discuss my academic progress. Well, perhaps it would have been a lack of academic progress. In either case, a day’s pay was too much to lose.

One of my school chums was in strife one day. I can’t remember why, but I do remember Sister Tortia saying to her “tell your mother I want to see her”. I went home with her that afternoon and was there when she walked into the kitchen and told her mum, “Sister Tortia said she wants to see you.” Quick as a flash her mother replied “you can tell her I don’t want to see her.”

This did not surprise me, as my chum’s mum had not passed through the front door of her home in over five years.

The nuns had other creative solutions to compensate for a lack of personal discussion between teachers and parents: the letter. Every time there was an election, we were given letters to take home informing our parents they must vote DLP. My mother used to snort and put them in the bin.



If this plan was implemented, wouldn’t it be a little like giving a child a letter to take home, addressed to the parents and telling them they were inadequate, or somehow defective? Or not, depending on the level of insight or the resources of the parents.

Toast and dripping was one of the four main food groups in our home. If there was little money or food left at the end of the week we ate pancakes. Or toast and dripping. Or fried bread. I know times have changed, but maybe it's only the type of junk that has changed, really. 

As for activity levels, we went to Royal Park on Fridays for an hour to play stuff like softball, or basketball. The equipment the school had was minimal, but I always took a book to read. There were a few kids left over after two teams were full, and no one ever picked me anyway, praise be.

On the other hand, why shouldn’t teachers solve the problem of childhood obesity? Many people assume they can solve all the world's other problems.