In a middle-of-the-road Comprehensive high school, somewhere on the Australian coast, a student teacher is bravely taking a year 12 English lesson on Transformation. Hamlet, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead are the texts, and I'm the qualified teacher down the back. In front of me is a Venn diagram, illustrating the themes of Order (Hamlet's Elizabethan world, when not out of joint) and Disorder (the shambolic world of R&G)
The class is a shambles too. iPods and mobiles rule, and the girl in front is discussing her new 'vampire' boyfriend. 'Have you seen the new werewolf?' she whispers to her friend. 'I think he's cute. His eyes are like, bright blue, and he wears his hair back, like he's just been running. He's in 12B. I can't take my eyes off him.'
In her other life she's Guildenstern. She finds her place. '"Give us this day ... ". What's this "Give us this day" business?'
'"Our daily bread",' says the student teacher. 'It's the Lord's Prayer.'
'But why does he keep saying it?'
'"And forgive us our trespasses."' A pause while he thinks. '"as we forgive those who ... those who ..."'
I'm reminded of Percival Wemys Madison in Lord of the Flies, gradually forgetting his home address, which was taught to him by far-away and long-ago parents.
He rallies.
'It's talking about religion, and the absence of a God to look after you, when things are no longer tickety-boo.'
He's doing his best, trying to teach abstract ideas in a difficult play about a postmodern world, where he himself is a player. The current English syllabus is awash with the theories of postmodernism and relativism, theories which have stalked the university cloisters for a long time now. Earlier on, the vampire girl airily told me that her opinions were of equal value to those of the 'Creators' of the texts (Shakespeare and Stoppard).
The lesson ends. 'Things are looking up,' I say, brightly, as we dodge our way back to the English staffroom.
'Yes, but they still ignore me,' said the student teacher.
'You could always tell them to sit down, shut up and listen!'
He gives me that look generation Y reserves for the dinosaurs they occasionally encounter. He feels sorry for them, he says. He can remember being 17. Horrible. An identity thing. Their identity, he says, is really important.
More important than the HSC? It seems so.
Next morning, driving to school, I listen to Dr Clive Hamilton,