Random reminder

Press, 2 September 1977, Page 22

Random reminder

PIECE TALKS The ceremonial burning in Cathedral Square last night of a giant eff’"'’ C.E. .load, the celebrated English educationist .. •> invented Formula VOfi. the wonder chalk additive that squeaks agonisingly on contact with a blackboard and has been scientifically proved to set nine out of ten primary schoolchildren’s teeth on edge, is believed to be just the first step in a counter-attack by primary schoolchildren against teachers who have accused them of being dirty and smelly. In an anonymous letter to all leading morning newspapers in Christchurch, Sean Drudge, seven-year-old mastermind behind the entertainments and bastinado section of the newly-formed Body Odour for Democracy organisation, has issued a warning that his members “will carry this war of words into the teachers’ camp and will not rest until the leather patches curl from their tweedy elbows in fear and the synthetic fibres of their twin-sets fuse in confusion and disarray.’ Drudge, author of “Stuf

the Teechers” and many other lesser-known graffiti. says that the right to smell and to store fluff and other substances in and behind such protuberances as ears and knees has long been the subject of a “vitlal clas strugle” between teacher and pupil, a continuing fight in which the recent conflict in an Ashburton primary school is a mere skirmish. But Drudge, typically, according to those who have watched his rise over the years, refuses to be dogmatic about the dispute. He says that his followers are willing to make concessions towards some form of mutual stan d-off agreement, behind defensible borders. He has offered to dispense entirely with excessive ear wax. for example. something of which bis supporters are reported to be unusually fond, in exchange for the total eradication of mathematics on the teachers’ part. He suggests that the United Nations, the Snreydon Glee Club and Mutual Society c,f Arts, or some other mutually ■ acceptable,

internationally • recognised body be called in to supervise the destruction of all unlicensed ear wax and all books and equipment used in the propagation of mathematics. This would be a gesture of good faith, says Drudge, and he hopes it would be the basis for negotiations. “We must get round a table in Geneva and thrash this out. The wax-for-maths trade-off would be only the beginning of a new era. My members see no limits to the concessions we would make if the teachers and their fellow travellers, the parents, would come to the party.” Drudge envisages a gradual pyramid of tradeoffs to the point where ex-Playboy-Bunny go-go dancers teach skateboarding and the chemical structure of barley sugar for a maximum school period of two hours a week. “I give my solemn promise that even the most hard-line of my members would seriously reconsider an equitable redistribution of the contents of his nostrils tn achieve this final aim,’* he says;