Foundation Studies

At our school, sex ed, drugs warnings and all those other classes that were designed from faddish government posturing - classes that should really be umbrella-termed as "miscallaneous" - were covered in Foundation Studies. "FS" as we called it, was the dud subject. Not least because they gave us condoms and plastic penises for starter activities, or we were challenged to walk in a straight line with beer goggles on (they were somewhat inevitably stolen), but because they were taught by the worst teachers from every subject. It seemed that either they were being toughened up or that it was some big sick joke being played on them by the rest of the faculty, but they were definately the most easily-wound up teachers available. They were cannon-fodder - the first out of the trenches. This ran to such an extent that my class (9G) was notorious for sending teachers on their way - I think the record was six.

Getting us to make a presentation on the dangers of cannabis (for year nines, there are no dangers) was the downfall of one chemistry teacher; group-discussing our career prospects was another's (he got so annoyed he told one boy that they needed a "good old fashioned spanking"). But the most memorable class was when they had a fireman in - presumeably just to scare the shit out of us. Anyway, his hour-long presentation was similar to that scene in Mean Girls. He simply showed us pictures - apparently the best of his personal collection - of chewed up cars and chewed up drivers. Even though we were too young to even be thinking about driving he wanted to terrify us so much we'd never even be able to look at tarmac again without weeping. He had such wonderful motivational phrases as "One in three people die from their airbags!", "Ever sawn a man's legs off? No!?! So stop fidgeting!!" and "Seatbelts can cut you in half" or even "This guy had to be identified by a combination of his dental and fingernail records".

Bascially each slide was just a fleshy collage of mashed red pulp splashed across bits of twisted cars. Havoc-strewn carriageways with ripped limbs and eyeball sockets littered about the scene. Horrific carnage, and sobering stuff. Not the sort of thing you show to a class of 13 year-olds on an afternoon. I'm pretty sure he wasn't actually a fireman, because he had a prison haircut and no firetruck; he was the sort of guy who would fault the Saw franchise for being conservative with the gore. He just had a powerpoint full of torture porn and a single message: "Don't get in a car. Don't even think about cars. Why? Because YOU'LL DIE. YOU'LL BE CUT INTO A THOUSAND PIECES AND BLENDED AT 70MPH, AND I'LL HAVE TO TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR SHATTERED BRAINS. Don't even look at a wheel BECAUSE YOU'LL DIE. Class dismissed, be careful not to DIE".