its true that romance amd friendship will not solve everything but. objectively speaking its very hard to get sad when you can say ‘lets go get cake tomorrow okay’ and someone will go get cake with you. like there is some good at least. you know
As a holdover from when churches used to run schools, many states in Australia legislate that the local church can come into schools to teach religion classes for an hour each week.
These ‘scripture teacher’ roles generally do not require any formal education training, and can be filled by just about any random off the street, which means that for one class a week Australian students are subjected to some of the most unhinged people on earth teaching them all kinds of made up stuff with zero supervision.
Aussies: This is a free thread to reply with the stories of the funniest things your scripture teachers said or did when you were a kid.
Ours always gave us Christian themed crosswords that she made herself, but she could never format them properly for some reasons so some boxes had two letters in them, and some had little doodles of flowers or crosses to fill gaps (????). She also told us candy canes were shaped that way because they are a J for Jesus (this is, shockingly, not true), and easter eggs are actually not eggs but a chocolate representation of the stone rolled in front of Jesus’ tomb (this is also, SHOCKINGLY, not true)
This is exactly the kind of unhinged educational material we’re talking about!
Also shoutout to this gold in the tags:
And we forgot, “having to sit in silence on your own for an hour” was up until recently the most common alternative if your parents opted you out of the dumpster fire:
Keep em coming!
Okay this has very much broken containment outside of Aussie tumblr, but we’ve read back through the *hundreds* of amazing replies and here are a handful of the most Batshit so far:
Pretty sure this one is a legit hate crime:
And the absolute pinacle:
I am worried for the Christians.
Oooo, I’m not Aussie, but I went to a private christian school in the US and they seemed to require about the same level of qualification for our bible teachers in middle school. In elementary we just had it as a topic that our main teacher taught same as all the others, and I believe the high schoolers at least had a seminary or religious studies graduate, but in middle school we had a string of just… completely random seeming guys. And we had this class EVERY DAY.
The thing that stuck with me most was the guy in 7th grade who showed us a video on “satanic abuse”, satanic ritual murders and other crimes, and the evils of rock music. It was 1000% intended for parents of teenagers, not for 7th graders, and it included very realistic looking “ritual murder” reenactments, as well as clips from some sort of music video that had fully bare tits in it, and instead of just not showing a bunch of 12 year olds any of this, he fast-forwarded through the tits (so we still saw them, just faster) and let us just experience the rest of it.
And then when they fired him after parents found out about that, the next guy was uncomfortably handsy, and the guy after that seemed to think Song of Solomon was the perfect part of the bible to focus on teaching, again, a class of 12-year-olds.
I fucking despise when a middle schooler is like “I hate being 13.” and everyone is like “Oh honey, it only gets worse. You don’t know the meaning of struggle.” like no. Let’s be honest. 12-15 is a really difficult age to be. It’s usually when you start waking up to how fucked up the world around you is but you’re still so young and immature that you can’t begin to fix it. It’s a time of horrible change, mentally, physically, prospective-wise.
Personally, it was when the onset of my mental illness developed. My parents’ marriage dissolved in a series of drunk sometimes violent arguments, I was stuck in the house with them, helpless to leave. I would rather kill myself than be 13 again in all honesty. The best part of being 13/14 is that you’ll never be 13/14 again.
Also I don’t think telling distressed teenagers that it gets worse is okay in any circumstances. Middle school should not be the best years of your life. High school should not be the best years of your life. It’s ok to feel a little powerless and unsure and unhappy. Your life hasn’t started yet.
My mom was horrible about this whenever I complained that things were hard for me. She’d scold me aggressively and tell me that I had it easy and being a grown-up was miserable and someday I would have to “pay my dues.”
Turns out I have ADHD and an anxiety disorder and things were really hard for me, she was just a massive bitch who stole what joy I might have taken in being a child and who made me so terrified of the future I have never been able to stop worrying about when things will get worse, and can’t trust a single good time I have.
So like, yeah, don’t fucking do this to kids. Do things suck? Yeah, a lot. Are they as bad as they were when I was 13? NO.
Even if it’s true.
Even if you’re a 13 year old with normal 13 year old problems & struggles…
If it’s the hardest life has ever been For You, it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to suck sometimes. Yeah you may have harder days as you get older, but you’ll have better days, more freedoms, new friends.
Your first crush is an agony. Your first friendship breakup is utter heartache. Not getting a part in a play or a spot on a team can be crushingly disappointing. Meanwhile you’re trying to figure out who you are, who you want to be, and pass all your classes. You’re going to have friends who confide scary shit to you, like how they have an eating disorder or are suicidally depressed or were sexually assaulted.
And you’re still “just kids” in some ways while not being “just a kid” in other ways.
So even if, you’re 13 with a good family life & no major tragedies or mental health struggles or whatever? 13 is hard.
So many kids in that age group are just having a terrible time for any combination of reasons AND they are being confined together in schools for the greater part of the day with absolutely no control over their situation
This is the age when I experienced the worst bullying of my school career and in retrospect it’s easy to understand why, we were all just so fucked up and upset all the time and the adults often seemed to be actively encouraging us to take it out on each other
