Gin

..arrived
in England courtesy of the English soldiers who were then campaigning in the
Lowlands as part of the Thirty Years War.
Gin almost became the national sport. It was estimated that every fourth house
in England was a gin mill and employers provided gin as part of their pay to
workers. It is alleged that by 1720 male consumption of gin reached fourteen
gallons per capita annually, a fact which seems superficially almost incredible,
except that it means drinking a mere 1.2 litres per week. For wine drinkers
this is the equivalent of roughly a bottle a day. Doable, though not for long,
which didn’t matter given that average life expectancy was thirty five
years.
Mass drunkenness was a serious problem. Lord Hervey observed: “Drunkenness
of the common people was universal, the whole town of London swarmed with drunken
people from morning till night.”
Incidentally in tropical British colonies, gin was used to mask the bitter flavor
of quinine, a protection against malaria, which was dissolved in carbonated
water to form tonic water. What Schweppes had to do with it I don’t know.
Binge drinking seems to be an English phenomenon – emptying the bottle
to oblivion, stupefaction and the obliteration of time. It is also a very Ocker
thing, as seen in the clubs and haunts of King St. on most week nights and weekends.
Europeans appear to do somewhat better in the way of civilised drinking with
displays of mass public intoxication being rare, although the Russian apparently
use Vodka as ineffective human anti-freeze.
The question is what does this have to do with education in the state of Victoria
at the moment?
Currently the government can find no immediate reason for the fact that, even
after spending more than a billion dollars on school programs to improve literacy
and numeracy, standards have barely improved. In fact, in some cases, they have
got worse. Curiously, elsewhere in the The Age it says that the migration from
state to private schools continues its inexorable path. Public secondary school
enrolments grew by just one per cent whilst private school enrolments grew 21.9
per cent. The number of teachers in Victorian secondary schools fell, whilst
those in private schools increased.
First connection made perhaps?
Education is not the total responsibility of schools but a joint combination
of society, the family, and the importance that they place on education and
the aspirational value and utility of education being a way to escape ‘class’.
Become surrounded by students from eager, committed and interested backgrounds
and it becomes harder not to do well at school.
If the parents have taken all the kids who care about being educated out of
public schools the ‘thickness ratio’ has increased. The kids are
not necessarily any more stupid in terms of measure IQ, but they lack the motivation
to do well, despite the fact teachers in state schools are generally just as
good as their private counterparts.
Many years ago I taught a generation of teenagers in Melbourne’s northern
suburban technical schools in that truculent arc that swings from Broadmeadows
to Heidelberg. Apart from the very few hardened criminals and the genuinely
mad, the kids were quite fine. But they came to school with no idea of the potential
value of education. They had no giant’s shoulders to stand on to see what
options that the world could offer them. Teachers were eager to show them alternatives,
but in all too many cases the fact that there was a door to somewhere else was
never recognised. The only window that reflected their own way of life was television
Even I, with a cavalier rebelliousness to school and discipline, made sure that
I left with my University Entrance despite my avowed contempt for the system.
No matter how lurid my protestations I read voraciously – often two or
three novels a week – and knew that education, ability and real learning
counted more than a minor talent and a callow impression of sophistication.

Or even wanton boorishness and a bad tattoo.
And I never drank with the intention of getting drunk, although I often accidentally
achieved it and suffered the consequences. In truth I still, very infrequently,
do so but it is harder to do with a reasonable Pinot Noir. Somehow that would
smack of a betrayal to all the hard and harmonious work of man and nature
If you have essentially no hope, then obliteration seems the only option. For
the destitute poor of 17th Century London there really was no choice. Choice
isn’t an option when the coin has heads on both sides.
But let’s be hones – does it matter? Half the world is either stupid or
fat and drives into trees in a manner that can almost be predicted by suburb.
Would they be better off knowing that music didn’t start and end with
Def Leppard, that culture was not determined by New Idea and the Scotch shouldn’t
be mixed with Coca Cola?
I think so, but that’s only me.
You can’t change the culture of binge drinking without changing the way
that we regard alcohol – as an adjunct to living rather than an end in itself.

You can’t change educational standards without changing the importance
we see in education.
And for that you need to change parents.
Which means that we have all must set a great example -so remember that if you
break into someone’s house, at least do the kid’s homework.