'Imagine Believe Achieve' SIMPLE?

School mottos are often just a bit self congratulatory or masturbatory or just bullshit latin for 'pull your finger out'. I hardly ever pay any attention to 'em, but as I was driving at 40km/hour in the school zone during the week I had time to read and re-read and question and read again.

Unable to believe that I had read it correctly I came home and got onto google, and yep my mind was not making things up. IMAGINE, BELIEVE, ACHIEVE was indeed the motto, and not only at this school but at schools all over the world!. Yep a very quick search showed schools in WA and The USA and England which had all picked this motto.

It all seems so 'Disney' to me

There are a number of interpretations but I reckon kids who let's face are basically lazy, self centred, hormone factories, could easily be forgiven for reckoning that if they can dream something up it will simply drop into their laps.

Is it any wonder that graduates have no interest in starting at the bottom of the ladder? They have been imagining that corner office and bags of money since they were old enough to answer the perennially asked question, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'

Of course kids are not stupid. They know that that Disney shit is just make believe and mostly they have left the kids' movies well behind them before they get to high school.

So why then do schools put this crap up on their walls?

Years ago Rod, my all time favourite Head Teacher, put me in charge of the school notice board. Yep this was back in the day when there was a big board one the school fence and every week I would write something pithy and kids would take the appropriate letters down and slide 'em into place. I'd pop down to check the spelling and start working on the 'saying' for next week.

Rod had head hunted me after I had fallen foul of another school's Head Teacher, who was hell bent on sending me to Coventry. A little bit of anarchy was not beyond him.

He always congratulated me on the board.

Don't believe everything you are told.
Question everything and everybody.
Think for yourself.
Strive to be the best you can be.
Reward requires effort.

Rod and I rocked along very well together and the years I spent working with him were the happiest in my career. We both had great faith in young people and were always prepared to go at things from outside the square. He brought school visitors to my room and it's possible he did this just to give 'em a bit of a jolt. 2 mavericks together.

It was a very sad day when he was retired and was replaced by a pain in the arse ex-catholic priest. I lasted only a few months under that wanker's leadership, and I use the term loosely.

I am of the opinion that perhaps all the mottos in the world will make bugger all difference, cos kids will find their own ways and are blessedly cynical of just about anything that is spruiked by adults or institutions.

Hmmm ....Imagine Believe Achieve. Hmmmmm .....nope still over weight and unemployed. Shit, where's my fairy godmother?