Weird school talks.

rustedtrumpet

We had some American priest come in with a briefcase who gave us some sort of religious lecture, then handed out small well presented leathercased editions of the New Testament. Cue him leaving the room, and between the time it took the teacher to return into the class the bibles were being launched around the classroom and out the window in a frenzy. One lad down the back also rolled a spliff with one of the ultra thin papers from it and smoked it behind the gym at lunchbreak. Gas

LoganRice

Not so much a talk, but last year our Irish class got a pro-choice comprehension detailing all of the positives for some Gaeilge practice. I think this was wrong because it ought to have given an argument in favour of pro-life, but that doesn't necessarily reflect my own views on abortion.

orangesoda

You seem to have a problem with 'nordies' fellow?

I enjoyed my school talks, we had sevetal talks from Mickey Harte, one was a few days after the all ireland final, also talks from 'jedi jim' before he made an appearence on the apprentice.

Memories

I went to that sellotape workshop, needless to say the religion teacher that brought us was not notified of the nature of the talk, and nearly died sitting in her seat. Keeping in mind she is one of those folks who turns off coronation street if it gets in anyway "rowdy" not that it could be...We just thought we were going to get out of school for a day of "reflection" :L

I was one of the sellotape girls, completely against my will. It was very much they chose the girls and the one boy and you had no real option, It was the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life and not just because you were being sellotaped to a completely random male stranger. They then went onto show a scene from Twilight where Edward says that he wants to wait.

It won't be a day I'll forget in a hurry.

Waitsian

Ghost Buster wrote: »

...was reminded of a similarish event back in my school days back in the late 80's.

Then he got onto the presence of SATAN in rock music ranted about Heavy Metal gigs with teenagers making the DANGEROUS horns of Horus sign, played some records backwards for us so that , as he insisted,we could hear the subliminal messages in them asking us to worship Satan and commit suicide.

I remember something very similar happening when I was at school. I don't remember much about the guy but there were a group of us, probably between 14-16, and we were brought to the gym. This fella was up on stage and kept playing records backwards and warning us off the devil's music ie heavy metal. I was at a CBS school in Newry, and this would have been mid-80s. Same guy as you encountered? Likely I'd say. For the record we all just laughed at him. Feckin' nutter.

Butterface

Bosco came and did a show in my primary school. He/she talks weird. It was loads of craic from what I remember!

nicowa

We had a guy come in to talk about how he "returned to Jesus". This guy was huge, 6 foot something and built like a tank and talking about how he was in a gang in London and used to kneecap people (but the Jesus came and put his hand on his head- and he had to wipe the hair gel off his hand at this point. Yes, he had just put his hand out onto some young lads head...)

It was the most respectful I'd ever seen my class (ie scared sh!tless...)

We also had a chastity group. One of the guys admitted to date raping his girlfriend... And like someone said earlier, too little, too late (in 5th year). For a rural secondary school we'd already had our fair share of teenage pregnancies (2 at 16, 1 at 13 - all in the same 12 mths weirdly).

cletus van damme

sabat wrote: »

Had this really camp guy from Cork who had a real 80's gay look to him (leather waistcoat, paisley shirt, ratty 'tache) talking to us about his life with HIV. For a room full of 16/17 year old lads, the atmosphere was surprisingly respectful, mainly because he was very funny and self-deprecating, but I'll always remember the face of the religion teacher turning a particular shade of puce as he talked about lying naked in bed with one boyfriend tyring to figure out which previous instance of casual gay sex gave him HIV.

We had him talk to us too - I think.
the bizarre thing was he was doing these speeches around the country but hadn't told his parents in cork he was gay or had HIV.

i remember thinking "dude, ireland is small somebody is gonna tell them if you keep at this "

Polka_Dot

Had a talk in transition year (not that long ago) from an Israeli woman spouting pro-Israel propaganda. It was bizarre. The talk basically boiled down to "Israel's not so bad, look, we do the same things as you do!" as she showed us the top charts in Israel at the time proving that they also like the same music etc. She mentioned the fact that they have to join the army once you reach a certain age but was singing the praises of military life, even showed us a video montage of her and her army friends set to the Friends theme tune. One of the teachers had been bemused by the whole thing and decided to ask her something about Palestine, can't remember what exactly the question or answer but I do remember that she was very anti-Palestine. Extremely strange talk.

FizzleSticks

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The naivety of schools for letting some of the groups in to give talks is amazing, when other parents and I complained about the batty talk the teenagers had been subject too, it emerged that the teacher doing the inviting and the principle had never looked at the contents of the talk they just assumed it was going to be fine, among the things they told them was that if the parents had an STI the baby would be born with an STI in its throat! and showed them a picture of a baby with sores in its mouth saying it had been born like this because the mother had an STI.

ivytwine

FizzleSticks wrote: »

In sixth class we had the talk about the pledge to not smoke or drink until we're 18. I said to my friends yeah I don't think I'm going to take that, it seems unrealistic and will probably make me want to do it more. At the confirmation everyone stood up except me and my Dad wouldn't talk to me the whole day.

There were moments like that in school when I felt trapped or a bit coerced into something and knew it wasn't right at the time. Like being marched down to confession and then having to lie and tell the teacher we feel too sick to do confession today I think we're just going to sit outside and get some fresh air. The teacher responded with "what do you mean you're too sick to do confession get in that queue and go to your confession!".

Then also in first or second year we didn't have sex education but a promotional event by Always! We were given these special packs and all the girls were hiding them under their jumpers because they were so embarrassed to be seen with pads.

We also had the pro life talk and I didn't want to wear the pin some of the girls were confused as to why I didn't as if I was some kind of pro baby murderer. At that age I didn't understand abortion but I knew there wasn't something right about that talk. EDIT: oh yeah I remember now because I thought if I wore it and someone saw it who had an abortion they'd be really upset by the pin so I didn't want to wear something that would cause upset, what a great little head I had on my as a young teenager eh. *pats past self on back*

Then the STI talk in 5th year which thanks to that talk up until my first semester of college reading one of those STI guides I didn't know that there were symptom-less STIs. We were shown such wretched pictures that I thought right that's what it looks like bumps or a gangrenous yoke, gotcha I'll make sure to look out for that!

Around that time we had a talk about how to be more presentable. It didn't go through why it's important, little tips and hacks but it was two gobsheens like the Trinny and Suzzanna of make up who gave us a colour chart. We picked our special colours that we should wear and eye shadow/lipstick colours we should go for. I'm 22 and I only wear a smokey eye and never wear lipstick but thanks your talk really reinforced the notion that I like the colour blue and navy suits me so much, I feel that it made me the woman I am today. They also went around and told us what our skin types are I was "clear", well I was hardly going to be olive or tanned.

Worst of all that load of tripe costs 10 euro each.

We had that colour me beautiful crowd too! This was in TY. They just told us whether we were winters, autumns, whatever. Sure I could have told you myself I was a winter, I look like Wednesday Addams!

At the time I thought it was great, but as you say there was no practical tips. Worked in a department store years later and I learned more about make up in a half an hour talk from a Mac artist than I did that whole day.

What makes me mad now looking back was the'one on one interview' where we went in, dressed up in whatever formal clothes we could find on our lunch break and the style mavens tore into us in the manner of Miranda Priestley. A horrible thing to do to sixteen year old girls really.

Best part was they charged €200 normally for a private consultation-could anything sum up the Celtic Tiger better?!

Freddie Dodge

sabat wrote: »

Had this really camp guy from Cork who had a real 80's gay look to him (leather waistcoat, paisley shirt, ratty 'tache) talking to us about his life with HIV. For a room full of 16/17 year old lads, the atmosphere was surprisingly respectful, mainly because he was very funny and self-deprecating, but I'll always remember the face of the religion teacher turning a particular shade of puce as he talked about lying naked in bed with one boyfriend tyring to figure out which previous instance of casual gay sex gave him HIV.

You are describing the first and only person I've ever known to be HIV positive, - don't know if he did school talks about it or not, but it would have been like him to do that. Dead now, sadly. RIP.

Rocket19

I remember in 6th year (4/5 years ago) getting a sex-ed talk where the teacher/speaker told us she had friends who had gotten pregnant from "heavy petting". Lol.

Also, in junior school (think it was in 4th class) we watched a video about puberty (just the girls, the boys were sent out to play rugby :S) which featured a naked woman talking whilst lying in a bathtub of water. It really didn't leave much to the imagination!!!

vermin99

Had the "talk" in second year which was done by the biology teacher, newly qualified and very goodlooking, all boys school so we were having the craic to say the least.then of course there was this one big bould fecker down the back who was fearless.so the talk ended , teacher goes "now any questions or anything you arnt sure of" this was the chance so the bould fella sais "miss are you good at maths?" Teacher goes " ye" bould fella"ok turn around,subtract your clothes and ill square root ya" had to be the best joke although he got suspended........it was some craic for the week.

Aspiring

In transition year in our school every year a guy comes in to do a module called "addictions" where you're supposed to learn drugs are bad but really all he does is explain his experiences on various drugs, often seeming sentimental about it all.

In fairness to him he manages to shut a whole class of people including scumbags up for 3 hours which is rare and is a really genuine man, his face is one which says "I've seen things"

languagenerd

Never had sex ed at all in our school (apart from the chapter of the JC Science book that dealt with the reproductive system). We had an excruciatingly awkward talk on puberty in 1st year that was meant to be followed up by something in 3rd year, but they never got 'round to it. The woman told us to go to our form teachers if we had any questions about puberty or sex. It was an all girls' school and some of the form teachers were male. I highly doubt anyone ever took her up on that advice!

We had another talk in 5th or 6th year (2008 ish) about HIV and AIDS, which was surprisingly open-minded for a convent school. It was a two-hour talk where a guy who seemed really frail told us his entire life story - before he was HIV positive, how he got it, how it changed his life, how he told people about it, how ill he'd become since it turned into full-blown AIDS. It would have been REALLY effective... if he hadn't suddenly revealed towards the end that he was an actor and immediately stopped the frail act, put back on his wedding ring and asked if we had any questions. Bizarre.

EDIT: Oh, I'd forgotten about the time in 6th year that the Year Head brought up periods out of nowhere during assembly and said that "we should be over all that by now!". Eh, what? You're talking to teenage girls, not middle-aged women...

Mr Freeze

Butterface wrote: »

Bosco came and did a show in my primary school. He/she talks weird. It was loads of craic from what I remember!

Off Topic. Reminds me of the fella here on boards, who posted pics of himself at a Bosco play, he rushed the stage and was photographed climbing up within reach of Bosco.

Photos are in You Laugh You Lose 1 somewhere.

the_monkey

Candie wrote: »

We had a woman come in to speak to us about grooming (all girls school), no warning she was coming at all. She started off inoffensively enough, talking about polishing shoes and makeup and other crap, and then - BAM! - she hit her stride with tampons. By god, that woman had a problem with tampons.

Tampons are the work of the devil, robbing your virginity and getting you used to inserting 'stuff'. They're part of a liberal agenda that makes innocent young girls think that inserting objects other than your husbands willy on your wedding night is ok. Well, it's most definitely NOT ok. Once you've used a tampon, you're not a virgin anymore and you can never have that hymen back you know. And what happens if you forget to remove it? Well you die, basically. And you'd deserve to. Tampons also stretch your vagina, reduce sensation, and cause mood swings. This went on, without repetition, for about ten minutes, until she was frothing at the mouth like a Westboro preacher in an abortion clinic.

If you'd panned a camera across the classroom you'd have seen a sea of 17 year old faces with their jaws on the floor. The teacher didn't believe us when she came back in. One girl started crying.

This wasn't in Holy Catholic Ireland either. Weirdest school day of my life.

Gold !!

When I was about 8 we had a substitute teacher for MONTHS, that just did religion, all day she just told us Bible stories and what was wrong with the world today.

Miss Rooney was her name - a mad oul bat.

Homework consisted of learning Bible stories by heart and writing our own
summaries of them.

Maybe it's because of this I'm so anti-religion and a militant Richard Dawkins supporter ...

Robbo

In 5th year, we were sent on a religious retreat 15 miles out the road run by the SMA "compound". Now what the Society of African Missions were doing spending what must have been €1-2 million building this behemoth in rural Galway rather than in Africa is anyones guess but I presume the retired missionaries were in a position to need a full auditorium and bar facilities in their dotage. It is gods will.

Throughout the day were were told of various dangers but the one that sticks in my mind is a lad who looked identical to Father Jessop, the most sarcastic priest in Ireland. He was here to warn us off the drugs.

Rather than tell us about the dangers of, say heroin or cocaine or the plight of the addict, he told us of an incident he had in the States. His cousins took him to an American Football game and told him to "take this". Allegedly they dosed him with acid for the craic. From what he described, he had a ****ing ball but apparently it was "a bad thing". Perhaps he wanted his wits about him to focus on the endless periods of no football happening that make up an American Football game...

The Verve were in their pomp at the time, so to drive the message home he took out the acoustic and played The Drugs Don't Work in all earnesty. When he finished, one of the lads pointed out to him that the song was about Richard Ashcrofts father dying of cancer and isn't about street drugs. It was like telling a child there was no Santa.

We also had the local chapter of Youth Defence in as well. Despite having a knowledge of human anatomy akin to a Victorian patent medicine salesman, one of the two speakers is now a medical doctor.