Schoolies have a right to party
AS A mother, I can’t believe I’m writing this, but bring back Schoolies. Not the nangs, the dicing-with-death balcony lunacy, the drugs, booze or any of the other questionable behaviour.
It’s the rite-of-passage scenarios we have denied these kids and if anyone needs them in 2020 they certainly do.
The kids who are crazy at school are the ones who go nuclear at events like Schoolies, a former attendee told me, and that’s because their hardearned brand is one of running amok.
Yes, we live in pandemic times. But we must also remember this.
These Year 12 students have run a mental marathon this year and must continue to climb over the carcasses of their broken dreams to surge towards the exam finishing line.
Instead we’ve cancelled our kids — their formals, graduation ceremonies, competitive sports, choir and theatre performances, valedictorian dinners and the exhibitions of major works by art and design students. The concerts, where the band played and the young singers sounded like angels.
And all of those other critical milestones that mark the moment when they wind up childhood and become, officially, young men and women. Think back to your own Year 12. That final year of secondary school isn’t really about the exams. Yes, we remember them, but not the details and barely the marks.
It’s about jostling for space in the wonderful rush towards adulthood.
Is it fair to deny them these pivotal moments because of a disease that barely affects them?
Especially as we are working so hard to get on with other areas of life.
Yes, something like Schoolies might seem to fly in the face of all the COVID safety messages now so familiar to us they are like breathing.
But I find my heart breaking for the thousands of school leavers who will mark the end of one of the most significant eras of their lives with little more than a whisper.
Anyone who thinks these kids have been on a level playing field all year is ruefully ignorant. Those students in families fortunate enough to afford private tutors and extra study sessions are at a distinct advantage. I’m not for a second begrudging them, but if HSC results and ATARs have a scaling component to them, it hardly seems fair to compare a student who had all these things with a student who had to muddle along on their own, or even a student unable to study because their household could not afford internet. And that’s just the academic side of the ledger.
Cast your mind back to your final year of school. There were so many rites of passage that by the time you walked out of the gates for the last time, you felt you were closing an important chapter and starting a new one full of promise and your friends around you, many of whom would go on to be friends for life.
All through that last year there were social milestones — 18th birthdays, young romances, driving lessons and tests, staying out late, breaking the rules, drinking with pals all night, staying up to watch the sunrise, living for the moment. How many of these milestones did our teens have to leave behind this year?
Too many. Probably most of them. On binning the annual Gold Coast event, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk explained it was a difficult decision. “It poses high risk … not only to the people who attend, all of the young people, but also all the people they come in contact with, and of course their families … friends … grandparents,” she said.
With social distancing and the fear of COVID, it has been near impossible to have fun. No meaningful life experiences other than avoiding getting sick. I realise it is impossible to consider the mass crowds in places like Surfers Paradise of years gone by. But that doesn’t mean we have to abandon the tradition completely.
Next year is fast approaching; in four months it will be 2021. And the stroke of midnight will not bring a happy ending to this COVID nightmare. So, do we choose to wait, or do we as parents and communities find a meaningful way to farewell their school days and celebrate safely and with freedom? We can create a new breed of Schoolies, so at least our young adults will have something to look back on, rather than the Year 12 jersey gathering dust in the corner or the year book they will get — if they are lucky.
If we can have major events, surely we should be allowed minor ones too.