I noticed an advertisement recently for a reunion of teachers from Merrylands High for the "A.M.Meyers Foundation Years 1959-1966" Of course, this is the same Allen Myers who inspired fear and loathing in so many students and teachers at Killarney Heights High School, which was the site of his second foundation principalship.

Mr Myers now looms large as a kind of mythical figure for those who had significant contact with him. I don't know how his first term as headmaster proceeded, for the times may have better suited him. Australia was a little slow to take to the happening swinging sixties - in fact, I suspect that they were delayed by half a decade at least.

By the time of his second term at Killarney Heights, the winds had changed and the tide on the conservative post-war educational consensus was being challenged. And much else besides. Not for Allen Myers the long hair, casual dress and groovy mind-set of the late sixties and early seventies. This was pre-Woodstock Man, set in the verities of an earlier time. Was he confused or perplexed? Or did he just double-down on how it should be done knowing that he was right?

Maybe I will try to attend the reunion as an observer and find out. He was a tough man in every respect but I think he mishandled the chance for gradual reform.

Another little article below from December of 1971 demonstrated clearly that the man was not for turning.