Sammy and I watched a show the other day, where a bunch of young adults were given a sort of GCSE business studies project, and they had to prove that they could complete it as though they were fifteen-year-olds.
Yeah. It was great! The grizzly teacher appeared (suit, tie, world-weary expression) and told them that they’d have to do a sort of treasure hunt around Jersey, buying up items from a list, for the lowest price they could.
That’s why we watched it - we were in Jersey last summer and we wondered how much of the island would feature.
The kids set off. Break into teams first and pick a leader.
“I’ll be brilliant at this!” said one chap. He was doing an excellent job of imitating a fifteen-year-old, I thought. All the confident swagger of a boy unaware of the world but somehow believing it was entirely in his possession.
“We’ll go into all our negotiations with a 75% discount!” he said, firmly. School football team captain vibes. Bless him. Amazingly, nobody else said a thing. They were all too good at pretending to be sheepish teenagers.
Meanwhile on the other team, a girl was throwing her hand into the air and volunteering herself as team leader. Another girl said she wanted to do it, so they had a vote, resulting in a sort of cat-like standoff between the two - one smug, one obviously sulking. That’s the Year 10 spirit!
“Is you any good with maps though?” asked one of the others. I looked at Sammy, and she reminded me it wasn’t an odd question as they were about to race around a strange island and the grumpy teacher had banned them from google. I raised an eyebrow.
Off they went. The usual hijinks - the 75%ers were quickly laughed at by oyster salesmen and vintners. The girl with the maps sent her team in the wrong direction. Arguments followed, someone couldn’t figure out how to use a tape measure, then time ran out and they all headed back to class for the teacher to debrief them on how the project went and what they could have done better.
Now, I thought he was cross when he gave them the task, but when they all stood in front of him, looking at the floor and twiddling their fingers, he was incandescent. He had his bearded head in his hands, stared at each of them, shouted, and eviscerated the teams with sarcasm. He read the results out. Awful. Missed items, fines for being late, the tape-measurer had bought the wrong sized thing - it was (as he said) a proper shambles.
It was a good job they were only pretending to be in a Year 10 project, because what followed was them all blaming each other in a sort of cross-fire of shouting and hands in the air. I don’t think that’s very nice, but it lampoons the stereotype well, and I quite like a bit of satire now and again.
They squawked and they squabbled and they pointed and blamed and huffed, just like the real thing. It was actually hard to believe that they were proper adults at times; they were so convincing. The teacher and his two TAs looked on, trying to get to the bottom of what had happened. In the end, two people were sent out, maybe to the headmaster’s office? and the rest of them breathed a sigh of relief and were allowed to go home.
Weird show. I’m not quite sure what the point of it is. Next week, the class are back apparently, to take on another business studies project. Thinking about it, I don’t know why they don’t just film an actual Year 10 class doing the project. I have a strange feeling that they’d do a lot better somehow.
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