Monday, September 14, 2009

My Old School Makes the News

My old high school in Burlington seems to have made the Globe and Mail. It sounds like some things have changed a bit since my day.

I don't normally link to the Globe since their articles vanish after a while but I thought I would chance it this time.

Another interesting aspect of the article is its use of the word "gummer" to describe students in grade 9. I don't think I've heard this term since high school and Jen says she's never heard it so I'm wondering if it is a Burlington specific term - or maybe even a MM Robinson term. Maybe there is a Burlington dialect after all.

4 comments:

Richard said...

It's amazing that this is still going on.

English words vary as you go mile-by-mile from, say, Toronto to Buffalo. "gummer" is probably a singularity.

Chris said...

Things do seem slightly different now in that the police are involved. In our day even the staff at the school would have ignored the incident.

Rick Collins said...

Growing up on the other side of Toronto, I never heard of the term "gummer". Then again, hazing became tightly controlled (one-day thing )in my time (25+ years ago), and I think it was gone by the time my younger sister went to high school.

Chris said...

I think the word "hazing" implies a level of organisation and formality that certainly wasn't present in my day. It was basically just an excuse to abuse younger kids at random.