Muck-up days: Schools have emerged showing their students raising money
Shore and other schools have shown bad behaviour but there are still kids out there who care about others, these ones using their final schooldays to contribute to charity.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Shore grammar’s planned muck-up day axed after hunt list leaked
- HSC student suspended over muck up day threat
- How private school majority pay for the sins of a few
While some end of school celebrations are making headlines for all the wrong reasons, Year 12 students at Mackillop Catholic College on the Central Coast pivoted their muck up day to raise money for seriously ill kids.
Principal Debra Ferguson said despite the students from the school at Warnervale having a tough year due to COVID school closures and other restrictions, students said they wanted to
help their less fortunate peers by raising money for the Starlight Foundation.
School captain Ryley Small said while it had been a tough final year, they recognised some children had it tougher than they did.
“We wanted to give to a children’s foundation because some students might not have the opportunity to have a charity day themselves or the opportunity to graduate,” he said.
Pupils raised $1500 after they dressed up in fun costumes and collected money from 7am in exchange for offering an array of fun activities, including rafting in the school dam.
But their philanthropy will also have an upside — University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Michael Bowen said helping through charitable works often gave a powerful buzz by releasing feel-good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin in the brain.
EXPERTS WARN OF SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR KIDS TURNED BULLIES
Parenting experts say schools and parents are to blame for a trend among some students who are strident social justice warriors desperate to save the planet while victimising less fortunate people in everyday life.
Recent end of school celebrations have exposed a disturbing pattern in some schools, with students from Merewether High in Newcastle taunting a child sex abuse victim and Shore Grammar’s Year 12 cohort joking about spitting on homeless people.
One student from Merewether will face punishment after they were caught taunting a teenager who was sexually abused by her uncle from the age of four as part of their end of year scavenger hunt.
Students at the selective high school accrued points for sending the 18-year-old abuse survivor online messages to “start an argument about paedophilia” last Wednesday.
The plan to make students taunt the girl was devised by a student who graduated from the school last year who the victim had previously told about her abuse.
Following the latest Year 12 scandal, parenting expert Justin Coulson said the students devising these cruel games were emblematic of a society which was more individualistic, less empathetic to the disenfranchised and less mindful of civic duty.
“Saving the planet is a noble cause … but we seem to not be able to be nice to the person sitting next to us who is carrying a heavy burden,” Dr Coulson said.
Coulson added that parents also needed to stop being over protective of their children so they could face real problems in the world and develop their own moral compass.
Child psychologist Michael Carr Gregg said as a society we needed to focus less on individual self happiness and fashionable social justice causes and more on helping other people by doing the right thing in our own backyard.
“As we have become more woke, the morality narrative from schools has become much more focused on individualism, materialism, and of course getting this endless approval from peers on the internet,” he said. “Many of these kids have quite a significant sense of social justice broadly speaking because they have been influenced by social media to care about global issues.
“But where we have failed is the idea of actually having an understanding of how your action impacts another individual … A lot of young people don’t think about the consequences of their actions.”
SICK MUCK-UP DAY PRANK TARGETS SEX ABUSE VICTIM
Other challenges in Merewether’s scavenger hunt included flicking a dog’s testicles, abusing a teacher via email, filming sex acts and abusing new mothers.
One message sent to the young sex abuse victim said: “I really think paedophiles aren’t that bad.”
“My uncle was one and I think he’s a good bloke. Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Everyone is human. We are all the same, black, white, pedo, not pedo.
It is understood the girl is now at university and had never even attended the school.
The girl’s mother said on Wednesday night after she read the messages “She was sobbing, shaking.”
“The boy who created the challenge, she confided in him. She thought he was her friend and instead he’s turned her trauma into a joke.
“The days of throwing toilet paper over lawns and having innocent fun are gone … This is way too far.”
It is the latest muck up day scandal to plague a NSW school, after students at Shore were told to spit on homeless people as part of a student led scavenger hunt challenge while pupils from prestigious Monte Sant’ Angelo school recorded themselves drinking from a 700ml bottle of vodka and trespassing.