Journal articles on the topic 'Boys' Brigades'

Abstract: When World War I began in 1914, Britain had neither a conscript army nor any bureaucratic mechanism for implementing conscription. By 1916, however, it had the largest volunteer army in the history of the world. Such an astounding achievement was credited to patriotism and the efforts of Field Marshall Kitchener. In reflecting on this development, contemporaries and historians largely overlooked the religious culture of militarism that dominated the pre-war years as well as the impact of the church brigade movement. The brigades fused military discipline and training with religious teaching and spiritual formation, and they ensured that well over 50 percent of British boys received a form of military training in the decades prior to the conflict, popularizing the ideas of military organization, drill, and serving in the armed forces.

With over sixty plays to his credit, the Florentine notary Giovan Maria Cecchi (1518–87) was the most prolific Italian dramatist of the entire Renaissance. Not surprisingly, his fellow Florentines nicknamed him il Comico (the playwright) not only because of his great productivity, but also because of the unquestioned success of his works. In fact, his plays seemed to please audiences that ran the gamut from adolescent boys in confraternities to the grand-ducal court, from cloistered nuns in convents to carnival brigades of carefree young men. Clearly, Cecchi knew something about theatre and about audiences that worked to his advantage. This article proposes that Cecchi’s dramatic talent rested, in part, on his keen sense of language and on his ability to adapt it as required not only by the plots and characters of his plays, but also by his audiences, their context, and the changing social political situation of sixteenth-century Florence.

AbstractRecent research has shown that programs provided by youth development organisations are of considerable benefit to those young people who engage with the aims and activities of such programs. These programs (e.g. Scouts, Guides, Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, Surf Lifesaving) are generally provided and run by adult volunteers. This article seeks to explore the main issues for volunteers with regard to implementing these programs, including the reasons why people volunteer in the first place, what community support and resourcing are available and the difficulties of running a program with too few volunteers. The main limiting factor in the success of these programs is the available volunteers, their individual skill levels, the time they have to give and whether they feel the return for their efforts is worthwhile. Community and parental recognition is also a significant factor in their satisfaction and longevity. Volunteers generally gain satisfaction and motivation through a mix of self-worth gained through community service and being able to pass on the program and ethos of their particular organisation. How long a volunteer serves as a leader is closely connected with their satisfaction level. The author's many years of experience at local and state level provides insight into the recruitment and retention of volunteer leaders and their important role in continuing to provide youth programs at the local level.

Handbook merupakan buku pegangan bukan ditujukan untuk memberikan seperangkat aturan semata, tetapi diharapkan menjadi panduan untuk memberikan landasan, rasa aman dan keyakinan dalam hidup bersama sebagai satu komunitas di dalam Kristus. Senior program handbook digunakan sebagai panduan gerakan kepanduan The Boys Brigade Indonesia. Boys Brigade adalah gerakan kepanduan remaja pemuda Kristen yang lebih dari 50 sekolah Kristen di Indonesia. Namun, berdasarkan wawancara langsung kepada dua orang pembina dari dua sekolah yang berbeda dan seorang advisor, Focus Group Discussion (FGD), dan wawancara tidak langsung kepada Presiden BB Indonesia didapatkan informasi bahwa buku panduan kegiatan yang ada saat ini perlu dilakukan pengembangan. Penelitian ini akan dilakukan menggunakan metode penelitian dan pengembangan, secara khusus model Borg and Gall. Dari penelitian ini, dapat disimpulkan bahwa telah dihasilkan produk berupa handbook The Boys’ Brigade program senior berbasis grand narrative, berdasarkan uji mikro kepada officer dan member serta wawancara langsung kepada NCO dapat disimpulkan handbook The Boys Brigade program senior berbasis grand narrative yang dikembangkan layak untuk dijadikan buku panduan dalam menjalankan kegiatan program senior The Boys’ Brigade.

A technological innovation project is presented based on the design and manufacture of a robot prototype that supports studies oriented to the understanding and application of scientific methodology in rescue areas, as a support for the safety of brigades, which promotes it as relevant research. The use of nanotechnological resources leads it as a study of original technological innovation. The objective of this project is to innovate a search and rescue robot prototype so that in case of disasters the lives of the rescue brigades are not put at risk and in this way contribute to society. In order to contribute to the effort made by the nations in the face of the environmental impact, PEEK plastic, which is resistant to high temperatures, shocks, and is also considered a biomaterial, is contemplated as a material for the robot's structure.

The aims of the present study were to evaluate possible gender differences in the prevalence of physical aggression among adolescents, and to examine the association between sociodemographic factors and physical activity participation with physical aggression in boys and girls. The sample was composed of 6,529 high school students (aged 15-19 years) from public schools of the state of Santa Catarina. A questionnaire was applied to collect data regarding sociodemographic factors, involvement in physical aggressions and types of physical activity. Crude and adjusted binary logistic regression models were performed. Boys reported more involvement in physical aggression episodes (36.9%) compared to girls (26.0%, p<0.05). Boys who lived in urban areas (OR: 1.45) and did not live with the family (OR: 2.22), as well as girls enrolled in the night shift were more likely to engage in fights (OR: 1.26). Adolescents aged 17-19 years had reduced chances of getting involved in fights (OR Boys: 0.66; OR Girls: 0.80) compared to younger ones. The practice of team sports among boys (OR: 1.56) and the combined practice of team sports and individual physical activities among boys (OR: 1.91) and girls (OR: 1.36) were associated with physical aggressions. It was concluded that boys were more likely to engage in fights, mainly younger boys, who did not live with family and lived in urban areas. In boys and girls, the involvement in physical aggression was greater among those who are engaged in team sports.

"Since the fall of 2016, Cameroon has been the scene of a fratricidal and separatist conflict in its English-speaking part known as North-west and South-west (NWSW). This war has to date caused more than 3,000 loss of human lives, 700,000 Cameroonian refugees, and the closure of nearly 80% of schools. This conflict, orchestrated by a group of secessionist fighters known as ""Amba-boys"", which constitutes the ""Ambazonian movement"", has made the English-speaking regions the most militarized part of Cameroon. At the same time, a protest movement against the capture of power by the Biya regime has been formed since 2018 within the Cameroonian diaspora: the Anti-Sardinards Brigade (B.A.S). The objective of this work is therefore to understand the logic of action and the protest strategies of these two movements. To achieve this, we used a qualitative research method. It appears that these movements are fighting against a common adversary, namely: the regime in power for 40 years. However, their divergence lies at the ideological level and in their conflicting strategies. The Ambazonian movement advocates, through direct violence, secession in order to promote Anglophone sovereignty. While the B.A.S fights for the socio-political change of the country, through indirect violence. Keywords: conflict strategy, protest, movement, Anti Sardinards Brigade, ambazonien movement, conflict, secessionist, sociopolitical change "

In 1999, there were 14 002 fires in Lithuania. Their losses reached 24 mill Litas. Comparing with 1998, the number of fires increased by 50,2% and loss—10.4%. Fires destroyed 1006 buildings, 215 vehicles, 4,4 tons of grain and other technical cultures. In 1999, 202 inhabitants died during fires in Lithuania, 13 including children; 214 inhabitants were wounded. For 10 000 inhabitants were 37.8 fires. In 1999 there were 10.11% arsons in Lithuania. The most of fires were in open places, in forests, in meadows and peat bogs. 35% of fires occurred in dwelling sector. The essential fire causes are: careless contact with fire (49.66%), violation electrical equipment rules (11.06%), naughty children (9.11%). 4412 duty persons are working in Lithuanian fire and rescue service. Fire and rescue service has 44 branches in the cities. 430 duty persons guard three the most important industrial objects. 202 firemen brigades are financed from the magistrate budgets. They include 2225 staff. In 1999 State inspectorate for fire prevention worked effectively. New statute, instruction of work organisation was prepared, all-important industrial objects were inspected. The strategical work of branches was improved. 28% of fires were eliminated faster than in 15 minutes, the number of fires which elimination takes more than 2 hours decreased. In 1999, Lithuanian fire and rescue brigades made 5781 rescue works. 800 of them were car accidents, 305—search for drowned men, and 9 people were saved in the water. Diving training section was established in the firemen training centre. Officials raise their qualification constantly. 1301 officials have a qualification category. In 1999, 202 privates and 18 officers were trained in the firemen training centre, 980 privates and 206 officers were requalified. 102 officials were retrained with the help of Norway firemen association. 24 Lithuanian officials raised their qualification in Sweden and 22 in Denmark. 51 divers were trained and 74 divers got their rating. Priorities of work: further reorganisation of Fire and rescue service; development of legal regulations; improvement of fire-fighters training and further qualification raising process; widening of rescue works spectrum; better supply of technical equipment of Fire brigades.

This study aimed to identify the reality of decision-making practice in public schools for boys in the Directorate of Education Amman Brigade. To achieve the goal of the study the researchers used the descriptive survey method, and the questionnaire was applied to a study sample consisted of (62) principals of public schools for boys for the academic year 2018/2019. The study results showed that, the degree of school principals practicing decision-making in public schools came with a moderate degree. The most frequently practiced phrases were: I care about decisions that make the school a better environment for the educational process, the decisions I make are subject to the school external environment conditions, and I specify the goals of the decision before issuing it. Where the highest obstacles facing principals in decision-making in public schools are the large burdens placed on the principal, the lack of participation in decision-making, the scarcity of training courses for school decision-making processes, and the lack of powers granted to the principal in decision-making. The study recommended that teachers must participate with the principal in the school decision-making process. When selecting school principal, it is preferable to be a holder of a master's or a doctorate in the field of educational administration, to hold special programs for preparing school principals according to the requirements of school accreditation

Aim: The analysis of the cases of cooling the burns by NFRS firefighters. Material and methods: The data of Decision Support System of State Fire Brigade made accessible by the State Fire Bureau of the Operation Planning was analyzed concerning cooling the burns among the children between 1.01.2019-31.12.2020. 49 incidents were analyzed in terms of the mechanism, localiza¬tion, depth, extend of the burns, season of the year and day. Results: Burns were cooled in 1211 out of 126241 casualties, including 1023 of 7616 in fires and 188 of 118625 in local threats. Burn were cooled in 49 children out of 1211 casualties- 23 in local threats and 26 in fires. Cooling burns more often concerned in thermal (45), contact burns (27), I/II (48), up to 10% TBSA (32), in boys (25), 14-17 years (18), in October (9), from 1-11 p.m. (27) and in IV quarter of the year (19). Conclusions: 1. Among the injured the minor ones with the burns are not often cases. 2. Cooling the burns is more often associated with those ones injured in the fires and in boys. 3. Among the injured up to 17 years cooling the burns is more often seen during afternoon and autumn-winter season. 4. The fire¬fighters more often cool thermal, contact, superficial ones of minor burns and concerning different parts of the body within the upper its parts.

Der massive Abbau von Arbeitsplätzen im industriellen Sektor infolge neoliberaler Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen seit den 1970er Jahren besiegelte das Schicksal der sogenannten ‚roten Vorstädte‘ als traditioneller Bastion der Gewerkschaften und der kommunistischen Partei in Frankreich. Heutzutage werden mit dem Stereotyp ‚banlieue‘ überwiegend Politikverdrossenheit, Unorganisiertheit und mangelndes politisches Interesse beziehungsweise Engagement verknüpft. Doch gerade die landesweiten Aufstände von 2005, die mit dem Tod der beiden Jugendlichen Zyed Benna und Bouna Traoré in Clichy-sous-Bois ihren Ausgang nahmen, führten zu der Gründung einer Vielzahl an politischen Assoziationen und Initiativen. Im Oktober 2015 jährten sich die Aufstände zum zehnten Mal. Zeit zurück zu blicken. Eine Bestandsaufnahme aus Sicht von Aktivisten des Kollektivs Brigade Anti-Négrophobie (BAN) und der Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR) aus Paris.

Aviation medicine came into existence as a recognized entity when certain standards were established during and shortly after World War I.1 During this time, accident rates were high.2 In fact, a larger number of pilots were dying in accidents than in combat. Figures from Great Britain's casualty list at the close of the first year of World War I indicated that for every 100 aviators killed, 60 died as a result of some individual physical defect, 30 from some form of recklessness or careless behavior, 8 as a result of some mechanical defect in the airplane, and only 2 at the hands of the enemy.3 Aviators were found to be in poor physical condition. Because there were no established regulations with regard to workloads, aviators were frequently found to have been flying to a point beyond exhaustion. Because of workload, chronic fatigue, and emotional stress, aviators were constantly called upon to perform superhuman feats when not in peak physical condition. Errors in judgement were common. The majority of pilots lost weight as a somatic sign of stress. This was recognized by Theodore Lister who had recently been appointed as the Chief Surgeon, Aviation Section of the U.S. Army. Such problems were not diagnosed by medical officers because they were not trained to recognize them. Theodore Charles Lister was the son of Captain William J. and Martha Doughty Lister. He was an Army “brat” who entered the world on July 10, 1875. His childhood was spent in various posts around the country. At the age of 7, Lister contracted yellow fever while living in Fort Brown, TX. The boy was treated by William Gorgas, a young post surgeon. Gorgas was credited with the young boy's recovery. Later, Gorgas was to marry Lister's aunt making Lister his nephew by marriage. Having survived the yellow fever infection, young Lister had a lifelong immunity to the disease.

Dizem que, em tempos de guerra, os velhos enterram os jovens. Como estamos em tempos de paz e somos velhos, os jovens terão que nos enterrar.Dizem que ficamos bons depois que morremos. Mas alguns já foram bons mesmo antes de morrerem. Bons, generosos e honrados, sábios e carinhosos, efetivamente humanos.Algumas pessoas falecidas nos davam sombra acolhedora e protetora, e sua ida nos deixa às intempéries, sozinhos perante o perigo.Há muito tempo, um de nossos filhos nos perguntou: “Quando morre um velho sábio, para onde vai seu conhecimento e experiência?”. Não sabíamos o que responder.“Quando uma pessoa tem família e amigos, um aprende com o outro. Assim, muito ficará nos corações e nas mentes, sua bondade, cultura, sabedoria e feitos formarão parte da memória que será transmitida de geração a geração; é assim desde que a humanidade existe. Se essa pessoa tem atividades e trabalhos divulgados por escrito ou em imagens, serão suas palavras e a pessoa que poderão ser vistas e revistas, de tempos em tempos. Às vezes, as palavras ficam mesmo sem sabermos quem é o autor, como é o caso do poema de Gilgamesh. Outras vezes, a autoria fica negligenciada, apesar de sabermos quem é o autor, como é o caso de Aristóteles. Ainda, outras vezes a memória é viva e recente, como acontece com a obra de Albert Einstein”.Naquela ocasião não pensamos – mas agora sim – que quando um gigante morre, ficamos sem sombra.Bárbara Starfield, uma gigante da Atenção Primária à Saúde (APS) faleceu, e sua sombra protetora nos abandonou. Era uma mulher sábia e idosa, mesmo parecendo jovem e ainda uma estudante. Teve amigos e familiares que serão capazes de passar às gerações futuras seu legado de conhecimento, bondade, cultura e sabedoria, incluindo muitos de seus feitos e de suas anedotas.Bárbara Starfield deixa também diversos registros em artigos, livros e apresentações, os quais servirão de ponte para que outros possam ir além do que foi abordado. Foi uma pessoa boa, mesmo antes de sua morte. Agora, é a hora dos tributos, elogios e epitáfios, dos obituários elogiosos e da recordação pública, na qual mistura-se o medo da morte que escreve seu próprio show, e o desejo de esquecer os erros de quem se elogia amplamente. Agora é a hora dos tributos à morte e aos mortos.Houve tempo para amar, para querer, para a amizade, para a partilha, para o respeito amigável; mas muitas vezes não houve tempo, e já é tarde para voltar atrás, é tarde para reparar danos e erros.“Até o infinito e mais além”, como dizem os netos quando querem que os avós os empurrem com mais força nos balanços. Outros virão, anos, décadas, séculos e milênios se passarão, e o tempo nublará as lembranças de uma gigante, cuja sombra deixou de proteger os anões (e é assim que somos).Agora somos conscientes de quão anões éramos, expostos ao ambiente avassalador de uma Medicina arrogante, que despreza tudo e ignora quase tudo.Agora somos conscientes de que criamos danos, de que conseguir um visto foi um inconveniente constante para Bárbara Starfield em suas viagens para o Brasil. Teria sido merecido, e mais fácil, nomeá-la cidadã honorária brasileira!Somos conscientes de que criamos dano, e muito dano, quando em Zaragoza (Espanha), negou-se a ela fazer parte de uma banca universitária de doutorado, por não ela possuir o título de doutora em Medicina. Era merecido, e era muito mais fácil, nomeá-la doutora honoris causa!Agora somos conscientes de seu pequeno impacto na política pública de saúde dos EUA, sua pátria. Não há “santo de casa” que faça milagres, e nem gigante que faça sombra em seus vizinhos muito próximos. Como seria mais fácil ter seguido suas recomendações sobre uma APS forte no sistema de saúde de seu país, que era o menos desenvolvido.Bárbara Starfield foi mulher de esquerda. Sempre foi sensível ao sofrimento alheio e ativista contra as injustiças. Conheceu seu marido, que também era estudante de Medicina, num ato a favor dos veteranos da Brigada Lincoln, uma das brigadas internacionais que apoiaram a República Espanhola contra a barbárie nazista.Foi pediatra de formação e cosmopolita de ação. Iniciou suas pesquisas sobre a organização dos serviços de saúde com KL White, mestre e amigo, o mesmo da “ecologia da atenção médica” e do “mais vale acertar por aproximação, do que errar com precisão”. Este gigante a acompanhou nos EUA, assim como, no Reino Unido, ela foi acompanhada por outros gigantes ímpares, como John Fry e Julian Tudor Hart.Teve uma atitude crítica positiva, assinalou os erros de atenção sanitária baseada em especialistas e demonstrou seus perigos (com destaque para o texto sobre a prática médica como causa de morte evitável); desenvolvendo, com o tempo, um lastro teórico impressionante na defesa da APS como melhor resposta aos excessos da Medicina e da prevenção. Soube analisar os excessos da aplicação incorreta da estatística, o que resumiu em seu artigo “Elegância interna, irrelevância externa”. Soube comparar países, abrir caminhos e fornecer repostas às mudanças tecnológicas e sociais. Nunca se esqueceu do impacto da desigualdade na saúde.Muitos citam seu nome em vão. Muitos justificam barbaridades em nome de Bárbara Starfield. Muitos são os que confundem a APS com uma solução exclusiva para os pobres, de baixa qualidade e baseada em programas verticais. Dá vertigem pensar na manipulação de suas ideias por aqueles que carecem delas.Já não cabe mais o recurso de escrever coisas para assinalar novos caminhos e reivindicar seu trabalho e sua trajetória. Agora, fica a recordação, o consolo da reza em alguma sinagoga e deve-se seguir o caminho que foi aberto “até o infinito e mais além”.

A cidade de São Paulo (SP) há muitos anos atrai migrantes, que a consideram um lugar com capacidade de prover melhores oportunidades. Dos grupos que migraram para São Paulo, os nordestinos merecem uma atenção à parte, tanto por representarem parcela expressiva nessa população quanto pela contribuição inegável para o desenvolvimento da cidade. Motivados por fatores diversos, os nordestinos tinham algo em comum: a busca por trabalho e em consequência a melhoria das suas condições de vida. A partir da década de 1970 um bairro em particular tornou-se destino atrativo para eles, em virtude da presença de edificações com baixo custo de aluguel e a sua proximidade com o centro da cidade: o Bixiga. Ocupado inicialmente por ex-escravos, o bairro recebeu significativo contingente de imigrantes, sobretudo os italianos, que acabaram se tornando “símbolo” de representação do bairro. Esse foco na temática italiana, contudo, acaba ofuscando as demais comunidades que coexistem no bairro cuja combinação sociocultural o torna um local multiétnico, rico em diversidade, onde o contato com a alteridade é frequente. Esse trato com a alteridade impacta diretamente a formação dos processos identitários desses migrantes, que a partir das relações interculturais passam a encarar suas identidades como múltiplas; a comida, representante das culturas e sociedades, porta-se como elemento essencial nesse processo. Encontra-se associada ao processo de afirmação de identidades e adaptação dos migrantes à cidade. Também é tida como um meio de reconectar o migrante à sua origem, preservando raízes mesmo estando longe, criando um “senso de casa” onde quer que tenha ido morar. Os migrantes nordestinos possuem forte laço com a comida, e frequentemente ela se torna labor; eles são identificados como atores importantes na cena gastronômica de São Paulo. No Bixiga, hoje representam proprietários de empreendimentos do ramo gastronômico, chefs, cozinheiros, brigada de salão, dentre outras funções. Os migrantes nordestinos são considerados mão de obra versátil, tidos como bons observadores, sendo hábeis em se relacionar com diferentes cozinhas étnicas, rapidamente se familiarizando com elas e não se limitando apenas à sua cozinha típica, sendo assim imprescindíveis para a manutenção do status do Bixiga de polo gastronômico da cidade. Assim, o objetivo geral proposto nesse trabalho é discutir o papel do migrante nordestino na cena gastronômica do Bixiga. Para tanto foi adotada a etnografia, cujas técnicas de coleta foram a observação participante, entrevistas abertas semiestruturadas gravadas e transcritas, com a finalidade de registrar as experiências vividas pelos indivíduos. Como resultado, foi observado que apesar de merecerem reconhecimento, os empreendimentos nordestinos possuem baixa expressividade na cena gastronômica do bairro e a presença nordestina nas cantinas como mão de obra, apesar de imprescindível, é apagada.

This study examines the extent of implementation and influence of the Boys and Girls Brigade Philippines (BGBP) programs. Its objectives are twofold: first, to assess the extent of implementation of its programs and determine their impact on its recipients; and second, to introduce a quality program for other institutions to adopt in addressing current societal challenges and preparing students for the VUCA world. The research employs a descriptive comparative design, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods. The quantitative data analysis used mean scores, frequency count, Kruskal-Wallis H Test, and Post-Hoc Analysis (Dwass-Steel-Critchlow-Fligner Pairwise Comparison). Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The study involved 144 respondents, including administrators, teachers, students, and alumni of BGBP. Key findings reveal that all the BGBP programs are highly implemented. Also, all the BGBP programs are highly influential. There is a highly significant difference in the perception of administrators, teachers, and students on the implementation and influence of the programs. The program offers numerous benefits, such as spiritual growth, learning to live and lead for Christ, and developing leadership skills. Challenges faced include leadership issues, financial constraints, inconsistency in implementation, students’ attitudes, and parental support. To enhance the program, recommendations include strengthening the set standard, elevating the mentoring system, reinforcing parental involvement, and seeking financial support. Additionally, policymakers and curriculum makers may consider adopting BGBP as a benchmark, as it addresses current challenges and prepares students for the rapidly changing world.

John Randal Baker , who was born at Woodbridge in Suffolk on 23 October 1900, was well provided with genes and memes by both his parents and, as this account of his life unfolds, it will become clear that his interests and the qualities of his character were closely akin to those that had appeared in earlier generations of his family. John was the youngest of the five children, three girls and two boys, of Rear Admiral Julian Alleyne Baker, R. N., and of his wife Geraldine Eugénie, née Alison. On his mother’s side, his grandfather was General Sir Archibald Alison, G. C. B., who served in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny and was second-in-command of the Ashanti expedition in West Africa in 1873. In 1882 it was his leadership of the Highland Brigade at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir that ended in the victory which proved to be the turning point of the Egyptian Campaign of that year. The General was a direct descendant of the Alisons whose family, together with that of the Gregorys, was discussed in Gabon’s Hereditary genius (1869) as an example of genius inherited over five generations.

Abstract Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)—both during times of war and peace—can have impactful negative social and health outcomes. Reports of rape being used as an act of war in Ukraine are drawing global attention to the need for specialized care for sexual and gender-based violence survivors during times of war and thereafter. While data remains limited, in 3 November 2022.7 million people in Ukraine were reported to need GBV prevention and response services. Services offered by the government and civil society include: a coordination centre of free legal aid, online and mobile platforms, chat-bots, hotlines, assistance centres, shelters, crisis rooms and mobile brigades. Rehabilitation services to support women and girls who have experienced SGBV during times of conflict and war, however, remain limited. We must make sure that our understanding of rehabilitation extends beyond providing physical modalities or recovery after surgery, and that SGBV survivors are not excluded from necessary care. This is particularly important if we want to ensure that rehabilitation services are meeting the needs of the most vulnerable populations. We call on the international rehabilitation community to ensure availability of and access to these vital life-changing services.

Rousseau dizia: “O homem nasce bom, a sociedade é que o corrompe”. Esta bondade natural do homem é sem duvida questionável, embora haja correntes filosóficas, sociológicas e psicológicas que comungam do mesmo entendimento, muitas contestam tal afirmação. Dentro deste contexto, a escola não se constitui uma exceção, antes passa, sofre os reflexos malignos imperantes na sociedade brasileira, com tudo o que há de atos indisciplinares e sua correlação com subseqüentes atos de violência de alguns sujeitos da educação. A presente pesquisa é um estudo de caso de uma unidade de ensino da Polícia Militar do Estado de Goiás, o Colégio da Polícia Militar Doutor César Toledo - CPMG. Buscamos responder através de pesquisa de campo e bibliográfica quantiqualitativa, a relação existente ou não entre a hierarquia e disciplina e a não violência na escola. Faz-se também uma abordagem dos resultados dos alunos do CPMG no Exame nacional do Ensino Médio – ENEM, e nos vestibulares, e a correlação existente com a hierarquia, a disciplina e com a segurança na escola. A Unidade de ensino já viveu três períodos distintos, o primeiro com o advento do convenio com a antiga Universidade de Anápolis, atual Universidade Estadual de Goiás; o período pós convenio, e o atual que é o do Colégio Militar. O primeiro foi caracterizado pela disciplina, bons resultados nos vestibulares e pela paz e segurança, o segundo o caos na escola, com brigas, depredações e até uso de drogas. Este trabalho representa uma possibilidade de compreender o funcionamento de uma instituição de ensino que tem como orientação disciplinar os princípios militares. Depois de acurada analise de todos os dados colhidos nesta pesquisa podemos caracterizar o momento atual como hierarquizado, disciplinado e seguro.

Introduction «I have never worked in the technocratic exaltation, solving a constructive problem and that’s it. I’ve always tried to interpret the space of human life» (Vittorio Garatti). Vittorio Garatti (Milan, April 6, 1927) is certainly one of the last witnesses of one “heroic” season of Italian architecture. In 1957 he graduated in architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan with a thesis proposing the redesign of a portion of the historic centre of Milan: the area between “piazza della Scala”, “via Broletto”, “via Filodrammatici” and the gardens of the former Olivetti building in via Clerici. These are the years in which Ernesto Nathan Rogers established himself as one of the main personalities of Milanese culture. Garatti endorses the criticism expressed by Rogers to the approval of the Rationalist “language” in favour of an architecture that recovers the implications of the place and of material culture. The social responsibility of architecture and connections between architecture and other forms of artistic expression are the invariants of all the activity of the architect, artist and graphic designer of Garatti. It will be Ernesto Nathan Rogers who will offer him the possibility of experiencing these “contaminations” early: in 1954, together with Giuliano Cesari, Raffaella Crespi, Giampiero Pallavicini and Ferruccio Rezzonico, he designs the preparation of the exhibition on musical instruments at the 10th Milan Triennale. The temporary installations will be a privileged area in which Garatti will continue to experiment and integrate the qualities of artist, graphic designer and architect with each other. Significant examples of this approach are the Art Schools in Cuba 1961-63, the residential complex of Cusano Milanino in 1973, the Attico Cosimo del Fante in 1980, the fittings for the Bubasty shops in 1984, the Camogli residence in 1986, his house atelier in Brera in 1988 and the interiors of the Hotel Gallia in 1989. True architecture generates itself1: an approach that was consolidated over the years of collaboration with Raúl Villanueva in Venezuela and is fulfilled in Cuba in the project of the Art Schools, where Garatti makes use of a plurality of tools that cannot be rigidly confined to the world of architecture. In 1957, in Caracas, he came into contact with Ricardo Porro and Roberto Gottardi. Ricardo Porro, who returned to Cuba in 1960, will be the one to involve Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi in the Escuelas Nacional de Arte project. The three young architects will be the protagonists of a happy season of the architecture of the Revolution, they will be crossed by that “revolutionary” energy that Ricardo Porro has defined as “magical realism”. As Garatti recalls: it was a special moment. We designed the Schools using a method developed in Venezuela. We started from an analysis of the context, understood not only as physical reality. We studied Cuban poets and painters. Wifredo Lam was a great reference. For example, Lezama Lima’s work is clearly recalled in the plan of the School of Ballet. We were pervaded by the spirit of the revolution. The contamination between knowledge and disciplines, the belief that architecture is a “parasitic” discipline are some of the themes at the centre of the conversation that follows, from which a working method that recognizes architecture as a “social transformation” task emerges, more precisely an art with a social purpose. Garatti often cites Porro’s definition of architecture: architecture is the poetic frame within which human life takes place. To Garatti architecture is a self-generating process, and as such it cannot find fulfilment within its disciplinary specificity: the disciplinary autonomy is a contradiction in terms. Architecture cannot be self-referencing, it generates itself precisely because it finds the sense of its social responsibility outside of itself. No concession to trends, to self-referencing, to the “objectification of architecture”, to its spectacularization. Garatti as Eupalino Valery shuns “mute architectures” and instead prefers singing architectures. A Dialogue of Luigi Alini with Vittorio Garatti Luigi Alini. Let’s start with some personal data. Vittorio Garatti. I was born in Milan on April 6, 1927. My friend Emilio Vedova told me that life could be considered as a sequence of encounters with people, places and facts. My sculptor grandfather played an important role in my life. I inherited the ability to perceive the dimensional quality of space, its plasticity, spatial vision from him. L.A. Your youth training took place in a dramatic phase of history of our country. Living in Milan during the war years must not have been easy. V.G. In October 1942 in Milan there was one of the most tragic bombings that the city has suffered. A bomb exploded in front of the Brera Academy, where the Dalmine offices were located. With a group of boys we went to the rooftops. We saw the city from above, with the roofs partially destroyed. I still carry this image inside me, it is part of that museum of memory that Luciano Semerani often talks about. This image probably resurfaced when I designed the ballet school. The idea of a promenade on the roofs to observe the landscape came from this. L.A. You joined the Faculty of Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic in May 1946-47. V.G. Milan and Italy were like in those years. The impact with the University was not positive, I was disappointed with the quality of the studies. L.A. You have had an intense relationship with the artists who gravitate around Brera, which you have always considered very important for your training. V.G. In 1948 I met Ilio Negri, a graphic designer. Also at Brera there was a group of artists (Morlotti, Chighine, Dova, Crippa) who frequented the Caffè Brera, known as “Bar della Titta”. Thanks to these visits I had the opportunity to broaden my knowledge. As you know, I maintain that there are life’s appointments and lightning strikes. The release of Dada magazine provided real enlightenment for me: I discovered the work of Kurt Schwitters, Theo Van Doesburg, the value of the image and three-dimensionality. L.A. You collaborated on several projects with Ilio Negri. V.G. In 1955 we created the graphics of the Lagostina brand, which was then also used for the preparation of the exhibition at the “Fiera Campionaria” in Milan. We also worked together for the Lerici steel industry. There was an extraordinary interaction with Ilio. L.A. The cultural influence of Ernesto Nathan Rogers was strong in the years you studied at the Milan Polytechnic. He influenced the cultural debate by establishing himself as one of the main personalities of the Milanese architectural scene through the activity of the BBPR studio but even more so through the direction of Domus (from ‘46 to ‘47) and Casabella Continuità (from ‘53 to ‘65). V.G. When I enrolled at the university he was not yet a full professor and he was very opposed. As you know, he coined the phrase: God created the architect, the devil created the colleague. In some ways it is a phrase that makes me rethink the words of Ernesto Che Guevara: beware of bureaucrats, because they can delay a revolution for 50 years. Rogers was the man of culture and the old “bureaucratic” apparatus feared that his entry into the University would sanction the end of their “domain”. L.A. In 1954, together with Giuliano Cesari, Raffella Crespi, Giampiero Pallavicini and Ferruccio Rezzonico, all graduating students of the Milan Polytechnic, you designed the staging of the exhibition on musical instruments at the 10th Milan Triennale. V.G. The project for the Exhibition of Musical Instruments at the Milan Triennale was commissioned by Rogers, with whom I subsequently collaborated for the preparation of the graphic part of the Castello Sforzesco Museum, together with Ilio Negri. We were given a very small budget for this project. We decided to prepare a sequence of horizontal planes hanging in a void. These tops also acted as spacers, preventing people from touching the tools. Among those exhibited there were some very valuable ones. We designed slender structures to be covered with rice paper. The solution pleased Rogers very much, who underlined the dialogue that was generated between the exhibited object and the display system. L.A. You graduated on March 14, 1957. V.G. The project theme that I developed for the thesis was the reconstruction of Piazza della Scala. While all the other classmates were doing “lecorbusierani” projects without paying much attention to the context, for my part I worked trying to have a vision of the city. I tried to bring out the specificities of that place with a vision that Ernesto Nathan Rogers had brought me to. I then found this vision of the city in the work of Giuseppe De Finetti. I tried to re-propose a vision of space and its “atmospheres”, a theme that Alberto Savinio also refers to in Listen to your heart city, from 1944. L.A. How was your work received by the thesis commission? V.G. It was judged too “formal” by Emiliano Gandolfi, but Piero Portaluppi did not express himself positively either. The project did not please. Also consider the cultural climate of the University of those years, everyone followed the international style of the CIAM. I was not very satisfied with the evaluation expressed by the commissioners, they said that the project was “Piranesian”, too baroque. The critique of culture rationalist was not appreciated. Only at IUAV was there any great cultural ferment thanks to Bruno Zevi. L.A. After graduation, you left for Venezuela. V.G. With my wife Wanda, in 1957 I joined my parents in Caracas. In Venezuela I got in touch with Paolo Gasparini, an extraordinary Italian photographer, Ricardo Porro and Roberto Gottardi, who came from Venice and had worked in Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ studio in Milan. Ricardo Porro worked in the office of Carlos Raúl Villanueva. The Cuban writer and literary critic Alejo Carpentier also lived in Caracas at that time. L.A. Carlos Raul Villanueva was one of the protagonists of Venezuelan architecture. His critical position in relation to the Modern Movement and the belief that it was necessary to find an “adaptation” to the specificities of local traditions, the characteristics of the places and the Venezuelan environment, I believe, marked your subsequent Cuban experience with the creative recovery of some elements of traditional architecture such as the portico, the patio, but also the use of traditional materials and technologies that you have masterfully reinterpreted. I think we can also add to these “themes” the connections between architecture and plastic arts. You also become a professor of Architectural Design at the Escuela de Arquitectura of the Central University of Caracas. V.G. On this academic experience I will tell you a statement by Porro that struck me very much: The important thing was not what I knew, I did not have sufficient knowledge and experience. What I could pass on to the students was above all a passion. In two years of teaching I was able to deepen, understand things better and understand how to pass them on to students. The Faculty of Architecture had recently been established and this I believe contributed to fuel the great enthusiasm that emerges from the words by Porro. Porro favoured mine and Gottardi’s entry as teachers. Keep in mind that in those years Villanueva was one of the most influential Venezuelan intellectuals and had played a leading role in the transformation of the University. Villanueva was very attentive to the involvement of art in architecture, just think of the magnificent project for the Universidad Central in Caracas, where he worked together with artists such as the sculptor Calder. I had recently graduated and found myself catapulted into academic activity. It was a strange feeling for a young architect who graduated with a minimum grade. At the University I was entrusted with the Architectural Design course. The relationships with the context, the recovery of some elements of tradition were at the centre of the interests developed with the students. Among these students I got to know the one who in the future became my chosen “brother”: Sergio Baroni. Together we designed all the services for the 23rd district that Carlos Raúl Villanueva had planned to solve the favelas problem. In these years of Venezuelan frequentation, Porro also opened the doors of Cuba to me. Through Porro I got to know the work of Josè Martì, who claimed: cult para eser libre. I also approached the work of Josè Lezama Lima, in my opinion one of the most interesting Cuban intellectuals, and the painting of Wilfredo Lam. L.A. In December 1959 the Revolution triumphed in Cuba. Ricardo Porro returned to Cuba in August 1960. You and Gottardi would join him in December and begin teaching at the Facultad de Arcuitectura. Your contribution to the training of young students took place in a moment of radical cultural change within which the task of designing the Schools was also inserted: the “new” architecture had to give concrete answers but also give “shape” to a new model of society. V.G. After the triumph of the Revolution, acts of terrorism began. At that time in the morning, I checked that they hadn’t placed a bomb under my car. Eisenhower was preparing the invasion. Life published an article on preparing for the invasion of the counterrevolutionary brigades. With Eisenhower dead, Kennedy activated the programme by imposing one condition: in conjunction with the invasion, the Cuban people would have to rise up. Shortly before the attempted invasion, the emigration, deemed temporary, of doctors, architects, university teachers etc. began. They were all convinced they would return to “liberated Cuba” a few weeks later. Their motto was: it is impossible for Americans to accept the triumph of the rebel army. As is well known, the Cuban people did not rise up. The revolutionary process continued and had no more obstacles. The fact that the bourgeois class and almost all the professionals had left Cuba put the country in a state of extreme weakness. The sensation was of great transformation taking place, it was evident. In that “revolutionary” push there was nothing celebratory. All available energies were invested in the culture. There were extraordinary initiatives, from the literacy campaign to the founding of international schools of medicine and of cinema. In Cuba it was decided to close schools for a year and to entrust elementary school children with the task of travelling around the country and teaching illiterate adults. In the morning they worked in the fields and in the evening they taught the peasants to read and write. In order to try to block this project, the counter-revolutionaries killed two children in an attempt to scare the population and the families of the literate children. There was a wave of popular indignation and the programme continued. L.A. Ricardo Porro was commissioned to design the Art Schools. Roberto Gottardi recalls that: «the wife of the Minister of Public Works, Selma Diaz, asked Porro to build the national art schools. The architecture had to be completely new and the schools, in Fidel’s words, the most beautiful in the world. All accomplished in six months. Take it or leave it! [...] it was days of rage and enthusiasm in which all areas of public life was run by an agile and imaginative spirit of warfare»2. You too remembered several times that: that architecture was born from a life experience, it incorporated enthusiasm for life and optimism for the future. V.G. The idea that generated them was to foster the cultural encounter between Africa, Asia and Latin America. A “place” for meeting and exchanging. A place where artists from all over the third world could interact freely. The realisation of the Schools was like receiving a “war assignment”. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara selected the Country Club as the place to build a large training centre for all of Latin America. They understood that it was important to foster the Latin American union, a theme that Simón Bolivar had previously wanted to pursue. Il Ché and Fidel, returning from the Country Club, along the road leading to the centre of Havana, met Selma Diaz, architect and wife of Osmany Cienfuegos, the Cuban Construction Minister. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara entrusted Selma Diaz with the task of designing this centre. She replied: I had just graduated, how could I deal with it? Then she adds: Riccardo Porro returned to Cuba with two Italian architects. Just think, three young architects without much experience catapulted into an assignment of this size. The choice of the place where to build the schools was a happy intuition of Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara. L.A. How did the confrontation develop? V.G. We had total freedom, but we had to respond to a functional programme defined with the heads of the schools. Five directors were appointed, one for each school. We initially thought of a citadel. A proposal that did not find acceptance among the Directors, who suggest thinking of five autonomous schools. We therefore decide to place the schools on the edge of the large park and to reuse all the pre-existing buildings. We imagined schools as “stations” to cross. The aim was to promote integration with the environment in which they were “immersed”. Schools are not closed spaces. We established, for example, that there would be no doors: when “everything was ours” there could not be a public and a private space, only the living space existed. L.A. Ricardo Porro recalled: I organised our study in the chapel of the former residence of the Serrà family in Vadado. It was a wonderful place [...]. A series of young people from the school of architecture came to help us […]. Working in that atmosphere, all night and all day was a poetic experience (Loomis , 1999). V.G. We felt like Renaissance architects. We walked around the park and discussed where to locate the schools. Imagine three young people discussing with total, unthinkable freedom. We decided that each of us would deal with one or more schools, within a global vision that was born from the comparison. I chose the Ballet School. Ivan Espin had to design the music school but in the end I did it because Ivan had health problems. Porro decided to take care of the School of Plastic Arts to support his nature as a sculptor. Gottardi had problems with the actors and directors, who could not produce a shared functional programme, which with the dancers was quite simple to produce. The reasons that led us to choose the different project themes were very simple and uncomplicated, as were those for identifying the areas. I liked hidden lands, I was interested in developing a building “embedded” in the ground. Ricardo, on the other hand, chose a hill on which arrange the school of Modern Art. Each of us chose the site almost instinctively. For the Classical Dance School, the functional programme that was provided to me was very meagre: a library, a deanery, an infirmary, three ballet classrooms, theoretical classrooms and one of choreography. We went to see the dancers while they were training and dancing with Porro. The perception was immediate that we had to think of concave and convex spaces that would welcome their movements in space. For a more organic integration with the landscape and to accommodate the orography of the area, we also decided to place the buildings in a “peripheral” position with respect to the park, a choice that allowed us not to alter the nature of the park too much but also to limit the distances to be covered from schools to homes. Selma Diaz added others to the first indications: remember that we have no iron, we have little of everything, but we have many bricks. These were the indications that came to us from the Ministry of Construction. We were also asked to design some large spaces, such as gyms. Consequently, we found ourselves faced with the need to cover large spans without being able to resort to an extensive use of reinforced concrete or wood. L.A. How was the comparison between you designers? V.G. The exchange of ideas was constant, the experiences flowed naturally from one work group to another, but each operated in total autonomy. Each design group had 5-6 students in it. In my case I was lucky enough to have Josè Mosquera among my collaborators, a brilliant modest student, a true revolutionary. The offices where we worked on the project were organised in the Club, which became our “headquarters”. We worked all night and in the morning we went to the construction site. For the solution of logistical problems and the management of the building site of the Ballet School, I was entrusted with an extraordinary bricklayer, a Maestro de Obra named Bacallao. During one of the meetings that took place daily at the construction site, Bacallao told me that in Batista’s time the architects arrived in the morning at the workplace all dressed in white and, keeping away from the construction site to avoid getting dusty, they transferred orders on what to do. In this description by we marvelled at the fact that we were in the construction site together with him to face and discuss how to solve the different problems. In this construction site the carpenters did an extraordinary job, they had considerable experience. Bacallao was fantastic, he could read the drawings and he managed the construction site in an impeccable way. We faced and solved problems and needs that the yard inevitably posed on a daily basis. One morning, for example, arriving at the construction site, I realised the impact that the building would have as a result of its total mono-materiality. I was “scared” by this effect. My eye fell on an old bathtub, inside which there were pieces of 10x10 tiles, then I said to Bacallao: we will cover the wedges between the ribs of the bovedas covering the Ballet and Choreography Theatre classrooms with the tiles. The yard also lived on decisions made directly on site. Also keep in mind that the mason teams assigned to each construction site were independent. However the experience between the groups of masons engaged in the different activities circulated, flowed. There was a constant confrontation. For the workers the involvement was total, they were building for their children. A worker who told me: I’m building the school where my son will come to study. Ricardo Porro was responsible for the whole project, he was a very cultured man. In the start-up phase of the project he took us to Trinidad, the old Spanish capital. He wanted to show us the roots of Cuban architectural culture. On this journey I was struck by the solution of fan windows, by the use of verandas, all passive devices which were entrusted with the control and optimisation of the comfort of the rooms. Porro accompanied us to those places precisely because he wanted to put the value of tradition at the centre of the discussion, he immersed us in colonial culture. L.A. It is to that “mechanism” of self-generation of the project that you have referred to on several occasions? V.G. Yes, just that. When I design, I certainly draw from that stratified “grammar of memory”, to quote Luciano Semerani, which lives within me. The project generates itself, is born and then begins to live a life of its own. A writer traces the profile and character of his characters, who gradually come to life with a life of their own. In the same way the creative process in architecture is self-generated. L.A. Some problems were solved directly on site, dialoguing with the workers. V.G. He went just like that. Many decisions were made on site as construction progressed. Design and construction proceeded contextually. The dialogue with the workers was fundamental. The creative act was self-generated and lived a life of its own, we did nothing but “accompany” a process. The construction site had a speed of execution that required the same planning speed. In the evening we worked to solve problems that the construction site posed. The drawings “aged” rapidly with respect to the speed of decisions and the progress of the work. The incredible thing about this experience is that three architects with different backgrounds come to a “unitary” project. All this was possible because we used the same materials, the same construction technique, but even more so because there was a similar interpretation of the place and its possibilities. L.A. The project of the Music School also included the construction of 96 cubicles, individual study rooms, a theatre for symphonic music and one for chamber music and Italian opera. You “articulated” the 96 cubicles along a 360-metre-long path that unfolds in the landscape providing a “dynamic” view to those who cross it. A choice consistent with the vision of the School as an open place integrated with the environment. V.G. The “Gusano” is a volume that follows the orography of the terrain. It was a common sense choice. By following the level lines I avoided digging and of course I quickly realized what was needed by distributing the volumes horizontally. Disarticulation allows the changing vision of the landscape, which changes continuously according to the movement of the user. The movements do not take place along an axis, they follow a sinuous route, a connecting path between trees and nature. The cubicles lined up along the Gusano are individual study rooms above which there are the collective test rooms. On the back of the Gusano, in the highest part of the land, I placed the theatre for symphonic music, the one for chamber music, the library, the conference rooms, the choir and administration. L.A. In 1962 the construction site stopped. V.G. In 1962 Cuba fell into a serious political and economic crisis, which is what caused the slowdown and then the abandonment of the school site. Cuba was at “war” and the country’s resources were directed towards other needs. In this affair, the architect Quintana, one of the most powerful officials in Cuba, who had always expressed his opposition to the project, contributed to the decision to suspend the construction of the schools. Here is an extract from a writing by Sergio Baroni, which I consider clarifying: «The denial of the Art Schools represented the consolidation of the new Cuban technocratic regime. The designers were accused of aristocracy and individualism and the rest of the technicians who collaborated on the project were transferred to other positions by the Ministry of Construction [...]. It was a serious mistake which one realises now, when it became evident that, with the Schools, a process of renewal of Cuban architecture was interrupted, which, with difficulty, had advanced from the years preceding the revolution and which they had extraordinarily accelerated and anchored to the new social project. On the other hand, and understandably, the adoption of easy pseudo-rationalist procedures prevailed to deal with the enormous demand for projects and constructions with the minimum of resources» (Baroni 1992). L.A. You also experienced dramatic moments in Cuba. I’m referring in particular to the insane accusation of being a CIA spy and your arrest. V.G. I wasn’t the only one arrested. The first was Jean Pierre Garnier, who remained in prison for seven days on charges of espionage. This was not a crazy accusation but one of the CIA’s plans to scare foreign technicians into leaving Cuba. Six months after Garnier, it was Heberto Padilla’s turn, an intellectual, who remained in prison for 15 days. After 6 months, it was my turn. I was arrested while leaving the Ministry of Construction, inside the bag I had the plans of the port. I told Corrieri, Baroni and Wanda not to notify the Italian Embassy, everything would be cleared up. L.A. Dear Vittorio, I thank you for the willingness and generosity with which you shared your human and professional experience. I am sure that many young students will find your “story” of great interest. V.G. At the end of our dialogue, I would like to remember my teacher: Ernesto Nathan Rogers. I’ll tell you an anecdote: in 1956 I was working on the graphics for the Castello Sforzesco Museum set up by the BBPR. Leaving the museum with Rogers, in the Rocchetta courtyard the master stopped and gives me a questioning look. Looking at the Filarete tower, he told me: we have the task of designing a skyscraper in the centre. Usually skyscrapers going up they shrink. Instead this tower has a protruding crown, maybe we too could finish our skyscraper so what do you think? I replied: beautiful! Later I thought that what Rogers evoked was a distinctive feature of our city. The characters of the cities and the masters who have consolidated them are to be respected. If there is no awareness of dialectical continuity, the city loses and gets lost. It is necessary to reconstruct the figure of the architect artist who has full awareness of his role in society. The work of architecture cannot be the result of a pure stylistic and functional choice, it must be the result of a method that takes various and multiple factors into analysis. In Cuba, for example, the musical tradition, the painting of Wilfredo Lam, whose pictorial lines are recognisable in the floor plan of the Ballet School, the literature of Lezama Lima and Alejo Carpentier and above all the Cuban Revolution were fundamental. We theorised this “total” method together with Ricardo Porro, remembering the lecture by Ernesto Nathan Rogers.

Hundreds of thousands of Australian children were born in the shadow of the Great War, fathered by men who had enlisted between 1914 and 1918. Their lives could be and often were hard and unhappy, as Anzac historian Alistair Thomson observed of his father’s childhood in the 1920s and 1930s. David Thomson was son of a returned serviceman Hector Thomson who spent much of his adult life in and out of repatriation hospitals (257-259) and whose memory was subsequently expunged from Thomson family stories (299-267). These children of trauma fit within a pattern suggested by Marianne Hirsch in her influential essay “The Generation of Postmemory”. According to Hirsch, “postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (n.p.). This article attempts to situate George Johnston’s novel My Brother Jack (1964) within the context of postmemory narratives of violence that were complicated in Australia by the Anzac legend which occluded any too open discussion about the extent of war trauma present within community, including the children of war.“God knows what damage” the war “did to me psychologically” (48), ponders Johnston’s protagonist and alter-ego David Meredith in My Brother Jack. Published to acclaim fifty years after the outbreak of the First World War, My Brother Jack became a widely read text that seemingly spoke to the shared cultural memories of a generation which did not know battlefield violence directly but experienced its effects pervasively and vicariously in the aftermath through family life, storytelling, and the memorabilia of war. For these readers, the novel represented more than a work of fiction; it was a touchstone to and indicative of their own negotiations though often unspoken post-war trauma.Meredith, like his creator, is born in 1912. Strictly speaking, therefore, both are not part of the post-war generation. However, they are representative and therefore indicative of the post-war “hinge generation” which was expected to assume “guardianship” of the Anzac Legend, though often found the narrative logic challenging. They had been “too young for the war to have any direct effect”, and yet “every corner” of their family’s small suburban homes appear to be “impregnated with some gigantic and sombre experience that had taken place thousands of miles away” (17).According to Johnston’s biographer, Garry Kinnane, the “most teasing puzzle” of George Johnston’s “fictional version of his childhood in My Brother Jack is the monstrous impression he creates of his returned serviceman father, John George Johnston, known to everyone as ‘Pop.’ The first sixty pages are dominated by the tyrannical figure of Jack Meredith senior” (1).A large man purported to be six foot three inches (1.9 metres) in height and weighing fifteen stone (95 kilograms), the real-life Pop Johnston reputedly stood head and shoulders above the minimum requirement of five foot and six inches (1.68 metres) at the time of his enlistment for war in 1914 (Kinnane 4). In his fortieth year, Jack Johnston senior was also around twice the age of the average Australian soldier and among one in five who were married.According to Kinnane, Pop Johnston had “survived the ordeal of Gallipoli” in 1915 only to “endure three years of trench warfare in the Somme region”. While the biographer and the Johnston family may well have held this to be true, the claim is a distortion. There are a few intimations throughout My Brother Jack and its sequel Clean Straw for Nothing (1969) to suggest that George Johnston may have suspected that his father’s wartime service stories had been embellished, though the depicted wartime service of Pop Meredith remains firmly within the narrative arc of the Anzac legend. This has the effect of layering the postmemory violence experienced by David Meredith and, by implication, his creator, George Johnston. Both are expected to be keepers of a lie masquerading as inviolable truth which further brutalises them.John George (Pop) Johnston’s First World War military record reveals a different story to the accepted historical account and his fictionalisation in My Brother Jack. He enlisted two and a half months after the landing at Gallipoli on 12 July 1915 and left for overseas service on 23 November. Not quite the imposing six foot three figure of Kinnane’s biography, he was fractionally under five foot eleven (1.8 metres) and weighed thirteen stone (82.5 kilograms). Assigned to the Fifth Field Engineers on account of his experience as an electric tram fitter, he did not see frontline service at Gallipoli (NAA).Rather, according to the Company’s history, the Fifth Engineers were involved in a range of infrastructure and support work on the Western Front, including the digging and maintenance of trenches, laying duckboard, pontoons and tramlines, removing landmines, building huts, showers and latrines, repairing roads, laying drains; they built a cinema at Beaulencourt Piers for “Brigade Swimming Carnival” and baths at Malhove consisting of a large “galvanised iron building” with a “concrete floor” and “setting tanks capable of bathing 2,000 men per day” (AWM). It is likely that members of the company were also involved in burial details.Sapper Johnston was hospitalised twice during his service with influenza and saw out most of his war from October 1917 attached to the Army Cookery School (NAA). He returned to Australia on board the HMAT Kildonian Castle in May 1919 which, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, also carried the official war correspondent and creator of the Anzac legend C.E.W. Bean, national poet Banjo Paterson and “Warrant Officer C G Macartney, the famous Australian cricketer”. The Herald also listed the names of “Returned Officers” and “Decorated Men”, but not Pop Johnston who had occupied the lower decks with other returning men (“Soldiers Return”).Like many of the more than 270,000 returned soldiers, Pop Johnston apparently exhibited observable changes upon his repatriation to Australia: “he was partially deaf” which was attributed to the “constant barrage of explosions”, while “gas” was suspected to have “left him with a legacy of lung disorders”. Yet, if “anyone offered commiserations” on account of this war legacy, he was quick to “dismiss the subject with the comment that ‘there were plenty worse off’” (Kinnane 6). The assumption is that Pop’s silence is stoic; the product of unspeakable horror and perhaps a symptom of survivor guilt.An alternative interpretation, suggested by Alistair Thomson in Anzac Memories, is that the experiences of the vast majority of returned soldiers were expected to fit within the master narrative of the Anzac legend in order to be accepted and believed, and that there was no space available to speak truthfully about alternative war service. Under pressure of Anzac expectations a great many composed stories or remained selectively silent (14).Data gleaned from the official medical history suggest that as many as four out of every five returned servicemen experienced emotional or psychological disturbance related to their war service. However, the two branches of medicine represented by surgeons and physicians in the Repatriation Department—charged with attending to the welfare of returned servicemen—focused on the body rather than the mind and the emotions (Murphy and Nile).The repatriation records of returned Australian soldiers reveal that there were, indeed, plenty physically worse off than Pop Johnston on account of bodily disfigurement or because they had been somatically compromised. An estimated 30,000 returned servicemen died in the decade after the cessation of hostilities to 1928, bringing the actual number of war dead to around 100,000, while a 1927 official report tabled the medical conditions of a further 72,388 veterans: 28,305 were debilitated by gun and shrapnel wounds; 22,261 were rheumatic or had respiratory diseases; 4534 were afflicted with eye, ear, nose, or throat complaints; 9,186 had tuberculosis or heart disease; 3,204 were amputees while only; 2,970 were listed as suffering “war neurosis” (“Enlistment”).Long after the guns had fallen silent and the wounded survivors returned home, the physical effects of war continued to be apparent in homes and hospital wards around the country, while psychological and emotional trauma remained largely undiagnosed and consequently untreated. David Meredith’s attitude towards his able-bodied father is frequently dismissive and openly scathing: “dad, who had been gassed, but not seriously, near Vimy Ridge, went back to his old job at the tramway depot” (9). The narrator-son later considers:what I realise now, although I never did at the time, is that my father, too, was oppressed by intimidating factors of fear and change. By disillusion and ill-health too. As is so often the case with big, strong, athletic men, he was an extreme hypochondriac, and he had convinced himself that the severe bronchitis which plagued him could only be attributed to German gas he had swallowed at Vimy Ridge. He was too afraid to go to a doctor about it, so he lived with a constant fear that his lungs were decaying, and that he might die at any time, without warning. (42-3)During the writing of My Brother Jack, the author-son was in chronically poor health and had been recently diagnosed with the romantic malady and poet’s disease of tuberculosis (Lawler) which plagued him throughout his work on the novel. George Johnston believed (correctly as it turned out) that he was dying on account of the disease, though, he was also an alcoholic and smoker, and had been reluctant to consult a doctor. It is possible and indeed likely that he resentfully viewed his condition as being an extension of his father—vicariously expressed through the depiction of Pop Meredith who exhibits hysterical symptoms which his son finds insufferable. David Meredith remains embittered and unforgiving to the very end. Pop Meredith “lived to seventy-three having died, not of German gas, but of a heart attack” (46).Pop Meredith’s return from the war in 1919 terrifies his seven-year-old son “Davy”, who accompanies the family to the wharf to welcome home a hero. The young boy is unable to recall anything about the father he is about to meet ostensibly for the first time. Davy becomes overwhelmed by the crowds and frightened by the “interminable blaring of horns” of the troopships and the “ceaseless roar of shouting”. Dwarfed by the bodies of much larger men he becomestoo frightened to look up at the hours-long progression of dark, hard faces under wide, turned-up hats seen against bayonets and barrels that are more blue than black ... the really strong image that is preserved now is of the stiff fold and buckle of coarse khaki trousers moving to the rhythm of knees and thighs and the tight spiral curves of puttees and the thick boots hammering, hollowly off the pier planking and thunderous on the asphalt roadway.Depicted as being small for his age, Davy is overwrought “with a huge and numbing terror” (10).In the years that follow, the younger Meredith desires emotional stability but remains denied because of the war’s legacy which manifests in the form of a violent patriarch who is convinced that his son has been rendered effeminate on account of the manly absence during vital stages of development. With the return of the father to the household, Davy grows to fear and ultimately despise a man who remains as alien to him as the formerly absent soldier had been during the war:exactly when, or why, Dad introduced his system of monthly punishments I no longer remember. We always had summary punishment, of course, for offences immediately detected—a cuffing around the ears or a sash with a stick of a strap—but Dad’s new system was to punish for the offences which had escaped his attention. So on the last day of every month Jack and I would be summoned in turn to the bathroom and the door would be locked and each of us would be questioned about the sins which we had committed and which he had not found out about. This interrogation was the merest formality; whether we admitted to crimes or desperately swore our innocence it was just the same; we were punished for the offences which, he said, he knew we must have committed and had to lie about. We then had to take our shirts and singlets off and bend over the enamelled bath-tub while he thrashed us with the razor-strop. In the blind rages of these days he seemed not to care about the strength he possessed nor the injuries he inflicted; more often than not it was the metal end of the strop that was used against our backs. (48)Ironically, the ritualised brutality appears to be a desperate effort by the old man to compensate for his own emasculation in war and unresolved trauma now that the war is ended. This plays out in complicated fashion in the development of David Meredith in Clean Straw for Nothing, Johnston’s sequel to My Brother Jack.The imputation is that Pop Meredith practices violence in an attempt to reassert his failed masculinity and reinstate his status as the head of the household. Older son Jack’s beatings cease when, as a more physically able young man, he is able to threaten the aggressor with violent retaliation. This action does not spare the younger weaker Davy who remains dominated. “My beating continued, more ferociously than ever, … . They ceased only because one day my father went too far; he lambasted me so savagely that I fell unconscious into the bath-tub, and the welts across my back made by the steel end of the razor-strop had to be treated by a doctor” (53).Pop Meredith is persistently reminded that he has no corporeal signifiers of war trauma (only a cough); he is surrounded by physically disabled former soldiers who are presumed to be worse off than he on account of somatic wounding. He becomes “morose, intolerant, bitter and violently bad-tempered”, expressing particular “displeasure and resentment” toward his wife, a trained nurse, who has assumed carer responsibilities for homing the injured men: “he had altogether lost patience with her role of Florence Nightingale to the halt and the lame” (40). Their marriage is loveless: “one can only suppose that he must have been darkly and profoundly disturbed by the years-long procession through our house of Mother’s ‘waifs and strays’—those shattered former comrades-in-arms who would have been a constant and sinister reminder of the price of glory” (43); a price he had failed to adequately pay with his uncompromised body intact.Looking back, a more mature David Meredith attempts to establish order, perspective and understanding to the “mess of memory and impressions” of his war-affected childhood in an effort to wrest control back over his postmemory violation: “Jack and I must have spent a good part of our boyhood in the fixed belief that grown-up men who were complete were pretty rare beings—complete, that is, in that they had their sight or hearing or all of their limbs” (8). While the father is physically complete, his brooding presence sets the tone for the oppressively “dark experience” within the family home where all rooms are “inhabited by the jetsam that the Somme and the Marne and the salient at Ypres and the Gallipoli beaches had thrown up” (18). It is not until Davy explores the contents of the “big deep drawer at the bottom of the cedar wardrobe” in his parents’ bedroom that he begins to “sense a form in the shadow” of the “faraway experience” that had been the war. The drawer contains his father’s service revolver and ammunition, battlefield souvenirs and French postcards but, “most important of all, the full set of the Illustrated War News” (19), with photographs of battlefield carnage. These are the equivalent of Hirsch’s photographs of the Holocaust that establish in Meredith an ontology that links him more realistically to the brutalising past and source of his ongoing traumatistion (Hirsch). From these, Davy begins to discern something of his father’s torment but also good fortune at having survived, and he makes curatorial interventions not by becoming a custodian of abjection like second generation Holocaust survivors but by disposing of the printed material, leaving behind artefacts of heroism: gun, the bullets, the medals and ribbons. The implication is that he has now become complicit in the very narrative that had oppressed him since his father’s return from war.No one apparently notices or at least comments on the removal of the journals, the images of which become linked in the young boys mind to an incident outside a “dilapidated narrow-fronted photographer’s studio which had been deserted and padlocked for as long as I could remember”. A number of sun-damaged photographs are still displayed in the window. Faded to a “ghostly, deathly pallor”, and speckled with fly droppings, years earlier, they had captured young men in uniforms before embarkation for the war. An “agate-eyed” boy from Davy’s school joins in the gazing, saying nothing for a long time until the silence is broken: “all them blokes there is dead, you know” (20).After the unnamed boy departs with a nonchalant “hoo-roo”, young Davy runs “all the way home, trying not to cry”. He cannot adequately explain the reason for his sudden reaction: “I never after that looked in the window of the photographer’s studio or the second hand shop”. From that day on Davy makes a “long detour” to ensure he never passes the shops again (20-1). Having witnessed images of pre-war undamaged young men in the prime of their youth, he has come face-to-face with the consequences of war which he is unable to reconcile in terms of the survival and return of his much older father.The photographs of the young men establishes a causal connection to the physically wrecked remnants that have shaped Davy’s childhood. These are the living remains that might otherwise have been the “corpses sprawled in mud or drowned in flooded shell craters” depicted in the Illustrated News. The photograph of the young men establishes Davy’s connection to the things “propped up our hallway”, of “Bert ‘sobbing’ in the backyard and Gabby Dixon’s face at the dark end of the room”, and only reluctantly the “bronchial cough of my father going off in the dawn light to the tramways depot” (18).That is to say, Davy has begun to piece together sense from senselessness, his father’s complicity and survival—and, by association, his own implicated life and psychological wounding. He has approached the source of his father’s abjection and also his own though he continues to be unable to accept and forgive. Like his father—though at the remove—he has been damaged by the legacies of the war and is also its victim.Ravaged by tuberculosis and alcoholism, George Johnston died in 1970. According to the artist Sidney Nolan he had for years resembled the ghastly photographs of survivors of the Holocaust (Marr 278). George’s forty five year old alcoholic wife Charmian Clift predeceased him by twelve months, having committed suicide in 1969. Four years later, in 1973, George and Charmian’s twenty four year old daughter Shane also took her own life. Their son Martin drank himself to death and died of organ failure at the age of forty three in 1990. They are all “dead, you know”.ReferencesAWM. Fifth Field Company, Australian Engineers. Diaries, AWM4 Sub-class 14/24.“Enlistment Report”. Reveille, 29 Sep. 1928.Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29.1 (Spring 2008): 103-128. <https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article/29/1/103/20954/The-Generation-of-Postmemory>.Johnston, George. Clean Straw for Nothing. London: Collins, 1969.———. My Brother Jack. London: Collins, 1964.Kinnane, Garry. George Johnston: A Biography. Melbourne: Nelson, 1986.Lawler, Clark. Consumption and Literature: the Making of the Romantic Disease. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Marr, David, ed. Patrick White Letters. Sydney: Random House, 1994.Murphy, Ffion, and Richard Nile. “Gallipoli’s Troubled Hearts: Fear, Nerves and Repatriation.” Studies in Western Australian History 32 (2018): 25-38.NAA. John George Johnston War Service Records. <https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=1830166>.“Soldiers Return by the Kildonan Castle.” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 1919: 18.Thomson, Alistair. Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend. Clayton: Monash UP, 2013.