Dialogue: Streetwise students of 5C are the true Aucklanders

Who are the real people of Auckland? DAVID HILL says that he discovered and grew to respect them while teaching in the city long ago.

Thirty-six years ago this month, I took the longest walk of my life.

I opened the door of Room 4 in an Auckland high school and, in front of Form 5C, I walked to the teacher's desk to begin my classroom career.

I had applied for four jobs; 5C's school was bottom of my list. Inevitably, it was the only one I was offered.

They would call it Decile 2 now. Even Decile 1. It was - still is, of course - down in a hollow, in an Auckland suburb of state houses where power pylons outnumbered trees.

I drove through the area a couple of weeks back. There are more trees. One of the two big pubs is a retirement complex.

But people still park their cars on the lawn. The suburb still looks gritty, four-square, real. So do the people - and I pray that doesn't sound patronising.

As I drove, I looked for 5C faces. A couple of times, I almost believed I saw them.

I remember their names: Gary, Brenda, Joy, Colin. Westie names, though it isn't a Westie suburb geographically.

Back in 1965, they scared the hell out of me. I was new and wet-eared from four years of academia. They were streetwise, no-nonsense, and unimpressed by the letters after my name.

The boys intended to leave school at the end of Form 5 to start apprenticeships. (Remember apprenticeships?) The girls were going to be hairdressers or shop assistants - except Linda, who was going to join the Navy. Many expected to be married by 19, just like their mothers.

Those mothers were then 35 or 34, or even 33. They looked about eight years older. Like their teenage children, they were watchful and shy. Their teeth weren't all that good. Their haircuts were usually the cheapest ones possible.

My Auckland 5C of 1965 were two years less sophisticated than fifth formers now. Saturday night meant the suburban movie theatre. Guys and girls rode their bikes round to friends' places.

At home, they and their parents watched Auckland's one television channel. Eating out meant fish'n'chips. The whole city had about three licensed restaurants.

I taught 5C for School Certificate English. We did business letters, reported speech, clauses and phrases. It wasn't too irrelevant.

The literature was Joseph Conrad, Wordsworth, The Importance of Being Earnest - it might have been Urdu as far as 5C were concerned, but they plugged away.

Correction: most of them plugged away. Teachers could cane then. I did so three times and my stomach churned for hours. It probably stopped my class becoming chaos. In later years, I learned other control tricks.

The girls of 5C wore grey gym-slips, white shirts and ties. The boys had just stopped wearing caps and older staff reckoned this was the end of civilisation as we knew it.

Halfway through the year, I realised I liked my fifth form. I began to see them as people: little Sharon, who came to the school social in white ankle socks; Peter, big and easily led, with a mother who worried; Eric, whose father wanted him to leave the month before exams to work in the family shop.

These were the days when if you didn't get the magic 200 marks, you repeated the whole School Cert year. You also didn't get your apprenticeship. For my middle stream (it was 5C out of A to E), every mark counted.

Near the end of the year, I became engaged. They bought me a present that was stunningly expensive and stunningly awful. I treasured it, and carefully broke it when we moved flats.

After I moved schools, a colleague kept me in touch with 5C. None of them moved far. Linda almost got into the Navy, but had to get married. (Remember had to get ... ?)

Little Sharon with the ankle socks was engaged at 17. So were a couple of others. Joy was in a bakery. Brenda was in her uncle's business. A number of the boys had their apprenticeships. Peter wanted to join the Army, but a juvenile shoplifting record was counting against him.

I don't know where any of 5C are now. As I say, I thought I saw some faces in the streets, but those could be their grandchildren. That would be quite likely; I suspect a number of my 1965 class still live in the same block they grew up in.

I honour them for it. I was too young and arrogant then to respect the conservatism and sturdiness of their lives.

Now I understand a lot more that they, their school and their suburb are the real Auckland. Not the gang-and-graffiti ghettoes or - at the other end of the scale - the two-car-and-swimming-pool estates. Where 5C lived and probably still live is where it's at.

They won't have had it easy. In a city where such areas are ignored by the media and neglected by local bodies, and in a country where these people are the first to be hit by Governments' silly economic policies, the times must have been tough.

I would like to think they've hung in. While 5C are there, Auckland has life and hope.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.

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