Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The Plague

A lead story on today's Courier-Mail web page:

Plague of Yobs Hit Schools
AN alarming spike in student suspensions for being aggressive, disobedient, taking drugs and wagging school is plaguing the state's classrooms.
A few translations for my non-Aussie readers:

yob is short for yobbo, "an uncouth person"
wagging school means playing truant

And plague and plaguing are favourite words of the Aussie tabloid 'journo,' indicating "panicky sensationalism of an ordinary social problem."

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