There is another thing I can say about teaching, and additionally this is not the last thing as far as the education system of Victoria if not all of Australia is concerned. It is just a small part, one part of many things that I observed during my time with the Education Department.

The vision of a man painting the main office of the Defence Standards Laboratories (DSL) back in 1972 where I worked still intrigues me. He had a degree in civil engineering and he was painting walls for a living. And that is because he liked painting, as someone pointed out to me.

Strangely enough I like painting and I like doing many other things as well, like engineering and explaining technical stuff. There was no career path in civil engineering via painting walls for that civil engineer at DSL. Similarly, I wasn't seeking a career in either teaching or in engineering through my involvement with schools, teachers and students. I was simply reacting to the environment that I found myself in, I was being an existentialist.

There were unforeseen benefits for me in not striving to advance my position up to the principal class. I wasn't enticed by the lure of extra remuneration that career advancement provides and I didn't have an egotistical need to advance my second-choice career beyond the classroom teacher. I was happy with teaching physics and maths. This was a huge academic and financial advancement for me. It was a quantum leap from herding sheep in Macedonia. So now I could sit back, observe and enjoy the social interactions that went on at schools and I could participate in interesting extracurricular activities of my choice.

By now Antonio and I were very close friends, our friendship extended beyond school hours. And Nick, the student teacher, mastered the skill of teaching, which freed me of my obligations to him. Now an opportunity presented itself for me to make a beneficial change to my lifestyle within the schools and I was in the position to take advantage of it.

It all started when Northcote Tech announced that it had a teacher "in excess". I chose to declare myself in excess at Northcote Tech and I asked the principal to relocate me to Mitcham Technical School, which was no more than one kilometre away from my home. The benefits of this relocation were:

1. Closer to home, saving on transport costs and reducing travel time.

2. I would cycle to work for exercise and I could cycle home at lunchtime to see my baby daughter.

3. An opportunity to make new friends.

4. Mitcham Technical School had a good reputation and it was a fully functioning technical school with a well-equipped workshop, which made it an ideal school for technological projects.

The transition between the two schools was arranged and it went smoothly, but my reception at Mitcham Tech wasn't smooth and it was different to that at Northcote Tech. In fact, it was so different that it didn't leave a positive-memorable impression on me. I had a cold reception at Mitcham Tech, especially in the staff room where nobody looked up as I was introduced to the staff. I never entered that staff room again.

I kept warm, figuratively speaking, by the reunion at Mitcham Tech with my friend Aleko Papas, whom I met at our training school of Ringwood Tech and who is now another of those lifelong friends.

In due time, Aleko and I met a few other teachers who felt the cold ambience at Mitcham Tech and within a semester at the school we formed a group of teachers to stay warm with and to drink Turkish-style coffee as we socialised during morning recess.

The group consisted of Aleko Papas - Greek; Johannes Dajik - Dutch; Lee Ching - Malaysian; Xin Hong - Chinese; Ian (Major) Savic - Croatian; and George Harrison - he wasn't of an Anglo-Saxon background despite his name, he was Palestinian, but he insisted that he was a French Canadian. And of course there was me, the Macedonian who brewed the Turkish-style coffee every morning recess.

There were few other teachers of other ethnicities who kept to themselves, notably a physical education teacher from Macedonia who represented his country at the Olympics, another physical education teacher who played soccer for the Dutch national team, and there was Orlando Aprila who persevered towards an impossible goal of becoming a school principal.

I say impossible because he didn't read the body language of the school administrators who were brought up during the reign of the White Australia policy, even though the White Australia policy was abolished by the time Orlando was striving towards his goal. The school and Education Department administrators could not adapt quickly enough to the workplace changes that were taking place during the late 70s and 80s. It takes generations to affect changes involving racial matters. Up to the age of his retirement, Orlando did not progress past level 6 (an automatic incremental promotion) classroom teacher. That is even though he had a university degree in chemistry and a diploma of education and he was bilingual. Having an Italian background impeded his career progress at Mitcham Tech.

Sadly, Orlando also missed out on drinking Turkish-style coffee with us and de-stressing during the Turkish coffee breaks because he sided with the ambitious group of teachers at Mitcham Tech. Destressing is what saved many of us from depression during the "high school and tech school" amalgamations and during the protracted and eventual closure of the technical schools.

Members of the Turkish coffee club still see each other and discuss such issues, long after our retirement from teaching. The Turkish-style coffee club was therapeutic for us, the ethnics.

Several years went by, the Turkish coffee club survived, and it was still a mystery to the rest of the staff.

Meanwhile, the car park exhibited some interesting cars (mainly mine), which attracted the attention of an inquisitive trade teacher who happened to like interesting cars, and who was appropriately named Neil Wolseley (but not a descendent of the founder of the Wolseley motor car company).

That year the trade department decided to enter into a newly introduced car fuel-economy competition (dubbed the Shell Mileage Marathon) that was sponsored by the Shell motor oil company. The trade wing of the school sent Mr Wolseley to ask me, the driver of the interesting cars, if I could help with the design of a suitable car for the car fuel-economy competition.

The design and construction of an efficient, minimalist three-wheeled car was what I was waiting for. Needless to say, the car was completed in time for a run at Amaroo motor racing circuit in NSW. I calculated the required engine power and the gear ratios of the car that would be sufficient for it to perform to the specifications that were stipulated by the organisers of the event.

But I wanted to test the vehicle to make sure that it would be able to successfully complete the economy run. According to my calculations, the car with a 30 kg driver in it had to attain a speed of at least 15 kph within a distance of 20 metres from a standing start to successfully complete the stipulated course in the specified time.

The only level surface of more than 20 metres in length that I could find was within the school buildings. The long corridor of the maths wing was an ideal test track for our entry into the Shell Mileage Marathon competition. The 30 cc two-stroke engine burst into life, the 30 kg driver opened the throttle of the engine and the car roared along the corridor at twice the required speed. The head of the maths department grumbled under his bushy beard that we disturbed his maths class. But he couldn't hide his green-with-envy facial expression. Everyone else was conspicuously silent or absent.

Somehow the secret got out and it found its way into the pages of the Herald-Sun newspaper. Next day a Shell oil company representative came to our school to congratulate the team.

A few days later I received a call from America via a physics teacher whom I knew and who taught at Camberwell Grammar during the teacher recruitment period. He informed me that our car project made it into the American evening news. The segment stated: Mitcham High School tested their racing car in the school's corridors (they made two errors, the class of school and the type of car).

Within a week a TV crew came to our school to film and to produce a short episode of this new extra-curricular activity that was taking place at a technical school. The episode was shown on a television science program titled "What's Out There?". The participating students who were featured in the TV segment spoke enthusiastically about the project, without prior rehearsals.

This was how I wanted the project to evolve. This was a project of major educational benefit - five teachers and twenty students were involved, all with the blessing of the school council that funded the project. The school council also paid for the hire of a medium-sized bus and for the training of one of the staff members for his bus driver's licence.

The bus driver got his licence, but he wasn't taught how to drive a diesel-powered bus.

"Change into a higher gear now, don't rev the engine," I advised him.

"Huh, you think you know how to drive a bus now," an ignorant teacher remarked.

"He is right, diesel engines don't need to be revved," replied Mr Wolseley.

This was a technologically important event and a serious undertaking by a school that was participating alongside formidable opponents such as the Ford Motor Company, several colleges of advanced education, some universities and many private enthusiasts, one of whom towed his amazing looking car all the way from WA. I was happy that we made it to the starting grid.

The article in the Herald-Sun on 16 April 1985 about the students' entry in the Shell Mileage Marathon.

On the day of the run I walked with my two drivers around the racing track and showed them the path that they should follow during the run. The first corner might have needed braking, I thought to myself, but I instructed the drivers not to use the brake as this eats into the fuel consumption of the car.

"Approach the corner slowly, use the whole width of the track and accelerate slowly after the corner," I said to them. To stress the point even further of not using the brake, I taped a sheet of A4 paper over the brake pedal and said to my number one driver: "I don't want to see a footprint on the sheet of paper."

The economy run was executed perfectly by young Peter Allis; he completed the run with twenty seconds to spare and recorded an amazing 401 MPG figure for fuel consumption. Mathew, the second driver, who was transported to the venue independently by his father, was given an unofficial run and completed it within the allocated time and probably recorded a better fuel consumption than what our number one driver did. Mathew was thrilled with that. We could not have done any better.

We returned back to school triumphant with a Best Inaugural Team trophy and $250.00 in prize money. The first teacher to congratulate me on running the event was the one who questioned my know-how about the diesel bus.

The reception back at school was as cold as the South Pole. The administrators and the humanities department ignored us. They thought that we went on a personal adventure (they were partly right, at least as far as I was concerned); one staff member asked if we enjoyed our personal trip to NSW.

The trade teachers on the other hand couldn't hide their disappointment that the science department hijacked a trade department project and completed it successfully. Nobody spoke to us about the event, but they immediately started designing the next year's entry.
The principal of the school, who had not spoken to me for six years and now he had a good reason to say something to me, chose silence instead of praise. That was his way of praising teachers, I took his silence as a compliment. The principal's deputy had a go at me but stumbled over her feet (more about this later).

As soon as we came back from the Amaroo racing track, I heard that a group of electric car enthusiasts had formed the Electric Vehicle Association of Victoria and organised a race for home-made battery-powered cars to be held at the VFL Park in June 1986. The Shell Mileage Marathon car was ideal for this competition. All we had to do was to fit a 12 kg lead-acid battery into our car and to exchange the petrol engine with an electric motor.

By June 1986 the electric battery powered car was on the starting grid, ready for a two hour Formula 1 style race on a track mapped out on the VFL's car park in Glen Waverley.

A local newspaper article about the students' entry in the Electrathon electric car race.

Mitcham Tech's car started well and was leading the competition for the first hour until it started to slow down at a concerning rate and it eventually came to a halt. The battery ran out of Coulombs (electrical charge).

Unbeknown to me, new batteries need to go through a charging and discharging cycle to get the maximum energy out of them. Our small team gained valuable experience about electrically powered cars.

Back at school, the battery-powered car project was ignored again by the academics and was shunned by the tradies who vowed to build their own Shell Mileage Marathon car. The administrators on the other hand were preoccupied with the impending amalgamation of the tech school with its sister high school and had no time for our battery-powered car.

After the unappreciated work that I put into the car projects, I distanced myself from the extracurricular activity and concentrated on inner school activities which included introducing cycling as a sports option for the students.

I love coincidences and this coincidence involving cycling, a car and a hatchet is extra special as it showcased my apparent ability of diffusing dangerously violent situations.

Whilst I was riding with the cycling sports group on the streets around the surrounding suburbs of Mitcham, I saw an abandoned car in the backyard of a house in Blackburn. It was a convertible Triumph Herald in original condition (these cars are collectable now). After school, on my way home I purchased the car at a bargain price of $50.00 and drove it home to include it in my car collection.

But I lost interest in the car and I offered it to one of my cycling students, Michael Schuman, at the same bargain price of $50.00. Michael and I rode two-abreast during the sports activity and spoke enthusiastically about his future plans regarding the Triumph Herald. Those discussions formed a trusting relationship between us. That trusting relationship was put to the test one day in the school yard.

I was on yard duty when a riot started at the far end of the school yard. Students were chanting and two teachers were rushing to the scene where a student was wielding a hatchet and was cutting down small potted trees. The two teachers were directing the students away from the violent scene. The teachers appeared startled and warned everyone to stay away.

I saw that the culprit was Michael, who was menacingly wielding the hatchet. I walked up to him and calmly asked him to give me the weapon.

"Give me the axe, Michael," I said.

Michael handed me the hatchet as if he was giving me a piece of his birthday cake. The tense situation calmed down and there was an air of disbelief as Michael and I walked two-abreast towards the vice principal's office. The other two teachers were stunned by the way I diffused the situation and how I calmed a distressed student.

That day Michael couldn't hold his rage after he found out that his parents had divorced.

Academic and sporting activities at Mitcham Tech settled down to normal again. And then I was summoned to the vice principal's office for what I thought might be a delayed congratulatory appraisal for either the Shell Mileage Marathon car project, the electric car project, the cycling sports activity, or the disarming of the armed student.

But no, I was invited to the vice principal's office for a mysterious interrogation. The vice principal positioned herself on a high chair and offered a low stool at her feet for me to seat on. This is a standard intermediating method used to intimidate students.

Mrs Blueberry looked like a character from a Charles Dickens novel who was reading a book by the fireside, the only things missing were a cat on her lap and a blanket covering her legs. She began interrogating me in a deceivingly casual way. She had taken the customary approach of interrogation that was used in shaming petty criminals in Charles Dickens's era. Mrs Blueberry began with the usual customary complementary statements.

1. "You know that as a professional teacher, you have responsibilities."

2. "The school has set-working hours."

3. "You are well paid and you are required to reflect this by your actions."
I answered yes to all three statements. The vice principal lost her train of thought and forgot the next statement, she tripped over her own feet. And then, with a gentle nod of her chin ended the futile interrogation. I still had a few more "yeses" left to reply with. But Mrs Blueberry didn't expect such compliance and the interrogation came to an end. I left her room confused and disappointed that she did not praise me for my extracurricular activities.

Back at the Turkish coffee destressing hub I related my confrontation with Mrs Blueberry to Aleko, who immediately cleared the bizarre mystery. He told me that the previous day he was seen leaving the school early and that I must have been mistaken for him. Aleko and I are not twins, there is a substantial physical difference between us. But I understand the mistaken identity, the informant would have told Mrs Blueberry that "one of the Greeks absconded".

There are so many more examples that I can tell you that are based on prejudice, but I will describe the most blatant examples of pre-judgements that I observed and then I will close this chapter.

At the beginning of 1987, I volunteered to go to Burwood Technical School. It was the last stand-alone tech school and there I met a scruffy looking trade teacher who was full of anger and was not afraid to express it. His name was Robert Butcher. He was a carpenter by trade, but he taught a maths-based subject that hardly anybody understood including the maths teachers. He taught 'solid geometry'. I saw something of myself in him. We both came from a poor background. He told me that he used to hunt rabbits for food around Hobson Bay when Hobson Bay was open farmland. He showed me how to cook rabbit terrine. From then on I socialised with Butch, as he liked to be referred to.

And then one day Mrs Bloomfield, a teacher from the humanities department who lives in Surrey Hills and whose daughter is a dancer in the Melbourne Ballet Company, approached me. Mrs Bloomfield, who was at the top-end of the social scale, asked me: "How can you socialise with that feral person?"

I gave her a true assessment of Robert. I told her that: "Mr Butcher might look a bit rough around the edges, but he has a heart of gold. I have seen how he treats his wife and his two daughters," I explained to Mrs Bloomfield.

Well now, you have to imagine the "Toyota ad" where a person jumps, clicks his feet together and says "Oh What A Feeling" to visualise the next scene. Picture Mrs Bloomfield skipping away with delight and I could just faintly hear her telling a colleague of hers: "Olie said that Robert Butcher has a heart of gold."

Are people like Mrs Bloomfield for real? Yes, they are real and that's why we have prejudice, and that's because one person judges another person relative to his frame of social reference. I bet Einstein could have formed a "prejudice" equation for this human trait.

Butch on the other hand returned my compliment when the head of the science department of Burwood Tech, who thought that he was as smart as Einstein, because he drank his coffee from a beaker, asked Butch "Why do you hang around with that wog?"

Butch answered thus: "Because I like him and that he is smart."

I was horrified at observing acts of prejudice at Burwood Tech for the next three years before it closed down without amalgamating with a neighbouring high school. By now the tech school students were out of control, their educational future was uncertain, and corporal punishment was replaced with a form of collaborative agreement between teachers and students that students couldn't understand and therefore the discipline method did not work.

Evidence of students being out of control was not hard to see. A one-eyed person could see it. I saw one act when Mrs Bloomfield was skipping with joy along the corridor. I managed to get a glimpse of a teacher's hair on fire in an adjacent science room. Felicity, the teacher from Northcote Tech, was now transferred to Burwood Tech to have her hair charred by an out-of-control student.

Teachers had no effective method of controlling students and they didn't have the support of parents. One mother by the name of Mrs Murphy came to me for a parent-teacher interview regarding her son, named Taylor, to bluntly tell me that I could not control the class that her diligent son was in.

"Taylor says that you can't control your classes, Mr Gee errr mant sus."

"Yes, you are absolutely right, Mrs Murphy. But it is Taylor who is the most disobedient student in my class. Could you please help me, Mrs Murphy, and tell me how you control Taylor at home?"

Mrs Murphy stood and left before I finished my question.

Oh, how I wished I was back at Northcote Tech where parents of ethnic backgrounds would come and ask "Is Johnny good?"

"Yes, Johnny is very good."

"If Johnny is no good, you smack at school, I smack at home. No more problems with Johnny."

The technical school era that started in 1873 came to a regretful end in 1992. A new and undefined educational era was now emerging. And then I was "exiled" (exiled is not quite the right word, next chapter will deal with this) to a genuine secondary college which made my parents proud of me. Because now they could tell their peers that their son is a "college professor".

Before I went to Brentwood Secondary College, and where I encountered a different form of prejudice, which will be described shortly, I wrote a poem to mark the end of the technical school era. And then I asked "Einstein" to read it out to the school staff because of his clearer Aussie accent.

THE OLD TECH

Where are your sons?
The ones you took to your heart
And shaped and formed with
A loving heart and a firm hand
Call out to them, in this your hour of need
Don't lay down and pass unnoticed
You have put this nation on its feet
In oil-stained rooms you have toiled
In rooms full of sawdust you have
Perfected their skills
Memories linger on, a whole army of
Skilled workers were spawned from your soul
No false men, in fancy clothes making megadeals
With non-existent companies
Your sons earn their meal by the sweat
Of their brow and the skill of their hand
Don't leave us in despair
For we need honest men
Men forged, shaped and honed to serve our nation
Go now, we are not afraid, we know you
Will be back again.

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