Toothbrushing and doona covering: The lessons that should be taught to our children in classrooms

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In the UK, the Labour Party wants school children to be taught how to clean their teeth. I say about time. I still don’t really know how to clean mine. Apparently, you are meant to go round and round in little circles, which seems difficult to achieve. I just scrub back and forth, as you would if cleaning a tricky stain off the front steps of a city pub.

Besides, I don’t know why it’s called a “toothbrush” since you are always cleaning more than one tooth at a time. Shouldn’t it be a “teethbrush”?

I also still don’t know how to shave. No one teaches you this stuff. At 14 or 15, your parents buy you a razor and send you into the bathroom. If you emerge with your head still attached, they figure they’ve done their job. Most days, I look like Norman Gunston, scrunched-up toilet paper stuck on my various wounds.

English and Maths are good, but who is going to teach our children everything else?Credit: iStock

At least I know how to be a pedestrian. Most parents teach their children to drive, so why can’t they also teach them how to walk? Walking in any Australian city now is like being a victim of a zombie apocalypse. Every day, you face a shuffling army, heads bent towards their telephones, moving inexorably forward, oblivious to any barrier – roads, railway lines, or the few sentient humans yet to be infected by the mobile phone virus.

It’s carnage out there. Sticking to the left when on a pavement or escalator is an idea that long ago disappeared. City streets are a perpetual game of Rugby Union. Any forward movement towards your goal – a metre or two snatched from the enemy – is rated a triumph achieved against considerable odds.

Could our teachers, inspired by the British, help civilise our children in other ways? In Australian primary schools there is already a “pen licence”, marking the transition from “pencil” to “pen”. I’d like to see a swearing licence, given to a child when they are 11 or 12 and mature enough to know when a situation demands some serious cursing.

A thumb hit hard by a hammer, a burnt finger when preparing dinner, a politician interviewed on the nightly news: in such circumstances, swearing, let’s face it, is a must. Not so much when it’s your dad refusing you a Twix bar while he’s trying to do the shopping at Colesworth.

The doona certainly demands its share of an admittedly crowded syllabus.

Far too often, we come across the eight-year-old addressing his parent with the sort of language you might expect from a Sydney wharfie. What an advance if that child could be politely approached by other shoppers: “I say, young person, I wonder if your teacher has granted you a swearing licence, because, of course, without it…”

Some, of course, will mock the British Labour Party for trying to divert teachers from their preferred topics such as English, Maths and Science, but really there is so much to be taught.

Most days, I have to re-button my shirt once I get to work. I’ve done it skew whiff. You’ve got to feel out the lowest button, and the lowest buttonhole, make sure they align, and then work your way up. Or down, as you prefer. It wouldn’t take long to teach, maybe in Year 4, or possibly Year 5.

The doona certainly demands its share of an admittedly crowded syllabus. I understand the children need to understand ancient history and algebra, but much of their life will involve the attempt to put a cover on a doona without yearning for the sweet release of death. Day one, they could teach the wriggle method, in which you lay the doona cover out and try to insert the doona into it, and then on day two, the Casper the Ghost method, in which you put yourself into the cover, get hold of the upper corners, grab the doona, and somehow pull the whole thing inside out.

We could then move onto to other skills which appear regrettably absent among most of the adult population.

Oh, and one final thing: treat your teachers with respect. If you are lucky, one day they might show you how to clean your teeth.

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