Richard Tognetti has dismayed many people by describing Wollongong as a " dark - troubled place " - and suggesting that it has " nothing to beautify ". He comments that his time at Wollongong High were the most miserable of his life.
It is a familiar refrain from those who are gifted. Those that stand out from the crowd tread a lonely path, and as a boy playing violin in High school Tognetti would be as unusual as a boy learning ballet, or any other activity far removed from " footy and Meatloaf ".
He asserts that his time at school in Sydney was different because he was surrounded by " people that understand me." Undoubtedly he had the good luck to be placed in a school in an upmarket Sydney suburb. Had that school been at Mount Druit or any other Sydney western suburb he might have had a very different reception.
Change is taking place within the whole school system, but unfortunately those gifted people with rare talent are never likely to completely homogenise with their peers. They stand out as being " different " because their interests are not those of the common herd.
They can take comfort from the fact that those left handed people are no longer terrorised by teachers who insist that they must change to right handedness - and corporal punishment is no longer a weapon wielded by misfits who took up teaching when they would have been better suited as gaol warders.
For the gifted, the difficulty of being accepted seems to be a right of passage that makes their early years difficult. Tognetti must be congratulated because he stuck to his guns and weathered the hard times to become one of Australia's most successful musicians.
It says a lot that - despite his criticism - he remains a citizen of this city !
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