S.C.U.M

by
Danny Katz

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S.C.U.M

by Danny Katz

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 6 ratings · 2 reviews

Paperback, 264 pages

Published 2012 by Allen and Unwin

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Nov 04, 2012 Steve lovell rated it 5 of 5 stars

He was a big, barrel-chested, larger than life man. He was the BOSS. Mr P was the newly appointed principal to the rural school that I was about to commence twenty plus years service at. It was fair to say his new domain had seen better days, but he hit the ground running, and within a few terms he’d nearly doubled the student intake by encouraging townies from down on the coast to consider a place for their offspring with country air, a farm based curriculum, and strong discipline, isolated fro...more He was a big, barrel-chested, larger than life man. He was the BOSS. Mr P was the newly appointed principal to the rural school that I was about to commence twenty plus years service at. It was fair to say his new domain had seen better days, but he hit the ground running, and within a few terms he’d nearly doubled the student intake by encouraging townies from down on the coast to consider a place for their offspring with country air, a farm based curriculum, and strong discipline, isolated from the pull of urban distraction. He put faith in his staff to shake off its lassitude and to do their bit. A former footballer of repute, it was all black and white – the colours of his beloved Collingwood AFL club– for him; for our leader there was no grey. As he repeatedly proclaimed – you were ‘either for him, or agin him’. He had the booming voice that could bring a rowdy corridor to deathly pin drop quiet, and was always barking for the team approach, when in reality, it ‘was his way or the highway’. I couldn’t agree with all he did, but the few times we crossed swords, I was very quickly disarmed. Gradually respect for each other grew, he promoted me and we became friends. The BOSS was ‘old school’, and sadly passed away whilst contemplating his retirement years. I was humbled when his family asked me to give the elegy at the school’s memorial service – and all this brings me to S.C.U.M. and the day the headmaster called me into his office – something always sure to invoke a certain hollowness in the pit of one’s gut. One of the yarns in Katz’s book caused this memory to come unsettlingly back.
I have been a long time fan of the scribblings of this author/columnist. Thursday’s issue of my regular broadsheet, the Age, was always eagerly anticipated, not only for the week’s viewing highlights in the ‘Green Guide’, but also for his regular column. I thought it hilarious; his ruminations on the human condition an apt prelude to TGIF! It was oft used in my teaching of senior students. Nowadays it is a Saturday feature, and I fear he has gone off the boil a tad, but still classics emerge such as recent jottings on SEX and MUSIC SNOBS – I’ve noted Katz regularly uses capital letters for emphasis. It is gift of taking an everyday happening and turning it into an uproarious tale that makes him a natural for kids’ books – as the ‘Little Lunch’ series attests. Taking an individual spin on the ‘naughty’ approach developed by Jennings and Gleitzman, and perfected by Andy Griffiths, his printed entertainment for the younger brigade is fresh and somehow realistic, despite its frequent absurdist overtones.
Reading S.C.U.M. (Students’ Combined Underground Movement) I wished I was still teaching – how I’d love to use this novel in the classroom! The adventures of Tom Zurbo-Goldblatt, and the other freakishly named bunch of Year Nines who made up the gang, would cause whoops of joy from the type of student I have ‘performed’ to over the years. Put into the mix , as Katz does, a liberal dose of the stereotypical teacher, raging hormones, toilet humour as well as the author’s own offbeat artwork, and we have something that should be compulsory for all L-plated teachers-to-be to provide a reality check. He has the playground pecking order down pat and, sadly, also its unrelenting cruelty towards those perceived as not fitting the mold. The members of S.C.U.M. are the late-developers of the cohort – they lack the worldly ‘done it all, seen it all, know it all-ness’ of the average teenster of fifteen summers. S.C.U.M. members are nerdish, having not quite left childhood and ‘pretend’ behind – the ‘pretend’ that leads to Katz’s glorious piss-take on a David and Barbara movie review.
All and all this is a sublime read and I loved it, especially when Shakespeare entered the fray, which brings me back to that ominous summons to a principal’s office many moons ago.
As I seated myself down afore the BOSS in the days prior to our ‘bonding’, he waited for effect and then posed, ‘Well, sir, why indeed are we not teaching Shakespeare at this establishment?’ or words to that end. In return I spouted off platitudes concerning the worthiness and relevance of the source materials I was using with my students, garnered from the likes of Marsden, Crew and other

luminaries of YA literature, as it stood back then. I explained I felt that my approach – a) kept the troops entertained, with them - b) learning something at the same time. He was not appeased, and I was sent off to teach the Bard forthwith.
Now all this shouldn’t have floored me, for in truth I knew where this request/demand was coming from. The previous day was ‘student free’, an occurrence which many of my colleagues embraced as a break from stressful routine, but as one who loved the theatre of the classroom, to me they were an unwelcome interruption. On this day practitioners from all over the region gathered in a large room to consider the issues supposedly vital to our profession, whatever they may have been way back then. The session was to start with the usual ‘ice-breaker’, and on this occasion it was to be, on a volunteer basis, our success stories, and this is what fired up my venerable leader. Most of the jaded multitudes were rolling their eyes. They knew that any putting of oneself forward was only attempted by those –a) wanting to get noticed as a prelude for going up the greasy pole, or were – b) young P-platers with stars in their eyes about how wonderful their new vocation truly was. (You could almost hear them thinking ‘What is wrong with all those grumbling, cynical, burnt out old chalkies I teach with??? Why the job is a doddle, an unfettered joy!’)
Sure enough, the first was from the latter category. She was from the West Coast – notoriously hard to staff because of isolation, foul weather and fouler clientele. She was sure to catch the eye with voluptuously largish proportions and enthusiasm oozing from every pore. Our shiny heroine from Coppertown regaled us about her undoubted success in teaching Macbeth, King Lear, and Richard 111, et al, to her Grade Eights. They were, she assured us, truly hanging off every Sixteenth Century word she uttered from her luscious lips, such was her expertise in making it all so fascinating with her inspired pedagogy. I reckoned, though, I had it all sussed. I suspect, as was usual for down that way, her class would be heavily weighted towards the male gender. These lads would be used to a more boganish female type than the well groomed, lustrous and bouncy apparition in front of them. Her ample, youthful bosoms would have more to do with their attention than her golden words – in much the same way as the ‘super-spicy’ Miss Valderama inspired a certain part of her boy-pupil’s anatomy in Danny K’s delicious descriptions of her science classes in ‘S.C.U.M’! The BOSS was similarly smitten, and I had my fate. As it turned out his enthusiasm quickly waned - I didn’t really have to prove whether I was ‘for him, or agin him’ on this matter, and I went back to my old ways.
With this in mind we return to ‘S.C.U.M.’ and, for this reader, the wonderful pages dominated by Mr Greg Moss and his genuinely awesome way of teaching Othello and R and J to his mixed class of ratbags, swots and all ports in between. Fantastic stuff – made me wish I could have another go at following out those instructions from several decades ago. My first attempt, while it lasted, to enthuse the sons and daughter of the soil by reading to them something half a millennium out of date, at my bucolic school, was only marginally adequate.
The book is ultra-good Mr Katz. There were a couple of jarring notes that didn’t ring quite true in my experience, but it would be churlish of me to labour them. I would have liked the ostracism of Greenie to have had a stronger positive outcome (couldn’t she have been Tom’s date at the bush dance, or was that too much of a cliché?) All and all ‘S.C.U.M.’ had me a hankering to return to the fray – to go back to the days when I was ‘on fire’ ‘conducting’ my charges. Retirement is great but, Danny Katz, you bugger, you’ve put something back in there I thought I no longer had the appetite for!
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Mar 16, 2013 Sally rated it 3 of 5 stars

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This is an odd book - told over the course of one day at school from the perspective of a less than eloquent teenage boy! Really very clever, the voice is spot-on - the problem, teenage boys are generally idiots and I was mostly irritated by the character. I read this as I am studying teenage literature and I LOVE Danny Katz - it's a good book but maybe for 12-25 year old males, not for a 30 something female. Wish I'd read it in high school though, might have confirmed my theory that teenage boy...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Kate Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Danny Katz

Danny Katz is a Canadian-born, Jewish Australian columnist and author who writes for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. His columnn is also syndicated in The West Australian. He is the Modern Guru in the Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald) magazine. He is also known as the author of the award winning children's book series, "Little Lunch", published by Black Dog Books and features...more

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