CRN Segments Round 5: What I Meant To Say (RPP FM)

Letters to parents from boarding school, but written 60 years later.

• Producer: Brodie Goozée
• Station: RPP FM, Victoria
• Duration: 06:00 minutes per segment
• Tags: story-telling, literature, radio plays, nostalgia, history
• Suitable for: history programs, literature and writing programs, standalone broadcast, between programs
• Download  What I Meant To Say Cue Sheet

Each week of term we would write home and every letter was read by school staff. There was no such thing as ‘redacting’; if you were anything other than upbeat about your previous week’s activities, your letter was torn up and you had to write another. Thus the parents never knew the truth of the workings of boarding school life in the 1950s – and probably would have done nothing at the time in any case.

Today’s schools would be sued and teachers jailed for allowing the unbridled cruelty to be perpetuated. But that’s now – then it was a paid prison, with many a grim tale.  To survive you had to take what was coming, take the tests of passing into early manhood in your stride and wear your scars both physical and mental as badges of honour. This series is all true and was cathartic in the writing, allowing the writer/reader to face some long-buried demons.

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