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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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Post subject: Australian School systems. | |
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I looked for another thread, I'm sure there is one somewhere! If you find it David please merge!
Anyway, as I posted in another thread, one of my best friends is a career teacher, been at it for about 30 years, she is now deputy head master at a primary school that always has a high refugee intake, this year 90% of the school are syrian refugees. She's an amazing lady, always gets me with the compassion she has, no matter how much shit gets flung her way. We always have lunch (without our other halves) during school holidays. Yesterday was the first time I've ever seen her deflated. 5 teachers quit the school first term because of behavioural problems ranging from constantly being told to **** off, students walking out of class when they feel like it, having rocks and chairs thrown at them and being physically assaulted, sometimes on a daily basis. 3 say they will never teach again. Language barriers with parents make communication impossible at times. These kids are running amok and their hands are tied, they just can't win.
But it's not just migrant or refugee kids, although they do seem to be over represented in the 'news headlines'. Kids are increasing feral, it's frightening. Personally i believe parents should be held in some way accountable for their offsprings choices until they are classed as adults. They raised them and taught them their values. I think Morrigu posted somewhere that some refugees are at a loss when they are given social security because back home they had to work for everything, including simple things like water to drink. But that's another story. But it's all entwined. Teachers are at their wits end. Their hands are tied. I could see very clearly how effected by the schools problems she is, she just can't escape it. It's her job to implement programs and teaching strategies, she teaches one day a week, the rest of her time is her other role. Usually She let's it go while on her breaks, but She just can't.
Today She posted this on Facebook, virtually a cry for help from another teacher, not to do with the above, but the problems teachers are having with bureaucratic Interference:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australian-schools-will-never-match-finland-unless-teachers-can-tell-the-truth-20160411-go3cl4.html
While results determine funding without taking into account the, can't think of the word for it, (shitty public school student right here!) demographics of the area? Schools will continue to lie.
And that just hurts those that need the truth to be out there, the kids. _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ good article, but it's a bit deeper than that. Until teacher authority is restored via progressive and uncompromising discipline, everything else is spitting in the wind to some extent. Kids are like adults - when they push against a barrier and find mush, they keep pushing. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007 Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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It's unreal isn't it.
When i was at school, you wouldn't even dream of disrespecting your teacher. Any messing about and it was off to the office for a couple of cuts from the deputy head, then a kick up the arse from the old man when you got home.
Society is becomming so soft it's sickening.
This is just the beginning, imagine what these delinquents will be up to in adulthood!
Welcome to the basket case tge bleeding hearts have created. _________________ Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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yeah i agree with both of you,
And its doing the kids a disservice too, kids need boundaries, kids want boundaries, otherwise its so easy to fall into the trap of doing things because of peer pressure. and one shit kids shows them allll the way.
Its the same everywhere, school teachers, police, doctors, hell, just adults in general used to have the natural progression of respect, as in respect your elders. Firstly, they need to learn to respect themselves too. Its really very sad.
from when i was a class room helper for my oldest, till 2 years later for the younger daughter, it was markedly worse, and that was nearly 20 years ago. Cant imagine what its like now, bloody war zone.
everybody, (except maybe the armed forces!!) should be able to go to work without fear of having a rock or a chair thrown at you. its disgraceful. Just imagine the rates of PTSD out there. _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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What a world! _________________ “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Last edited by Morrigu on Thu Apr 13, 2017 10:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Teachers aren't allowed to exert any authority, so they don't have any
The bureaucracy and interference imposed on schools and other government entities by people who have basically NFI about what happens at the coal face is ridiculous.
Kids haven't fundamentally changed, they're still kids. All different personality types, levels of intelligence, needs,wants and desires. Society as a whole has changed and the kids attitudes and behaviours reflect those changes. Not their fault.
Does that make it any easier to be a teacher? No chance,
Whole different set of problems however when you get a whole shitpile of refugee kids at one school. That just points at dumb planning by putting large clumps of refugees together in one area. No chance of assimilation, you create enclaves. Proper balance would be to spread them around in smaller clumps so they can still have a familiar network around them but be outnumbered enough that the parents can start to assimilate. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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All true above. Humanity being what it is, a certain amount of force is going to be used. The question is whether the force lies with responsible and legitimate authority which is subject to some process when it is grievously misused, or with vandals.
The tragedy of all this is that the people who are failed by the vandal project of modern libertarianism are the children who are not disciplined and cannot learn. Literally millions of lives are degraded in this process.
I went to Vermont State School in the late 1960s, and I received a damn solid education in a classroom where the teacher's authority was unquestionable. If you pushed it a little, it hit back much harder than you could, so practically every child soon learned to accept the flow and try to behave and learn. That world is gone, unless parents have the money to pay for private schooling. So, if you are rich, a good education is a given. If poor, it is a lottery stacked against you. Socialists and liberals nearly always end up creating the opposite of what they seek. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Mugwump wrote: | All true above. Humanity being what it is, a certain amount of force is going to be used. The question is whether the force lies with responsible and legitimate authority which is subject to some process when it is grievously misused, or with vandals.
The tragedy of all this is that the people who are failed by the vandal project of modern libertarianism are the children who are not disciplined and cannot learn. Literally millions of lives are degraded in this process.
I went to Vermont State School in the late 1960s, and I received a damn solid education in a classroom where the teacher's authority was unquestionable. If you pushed it a little, it hit back much harder than you could, so practically every child soon learned to accept the flow and try to behave and learn. That world is gone, unless parents have the money to pay for private schooling. So, if you are rich, a good education is a given. If poor, it is a lottery stacked against you. Socialists and liberals nearly always end up creating the opposite of what they seek. |
I went to a bush primary school in the 70's then onto a bush high school. In hindsight, I must have been a handful for the teachers because as an only child who was serving adults behind the counter of a milk bar from age 7-8, I considered adults my equal. While I had respect for authority, I would argue with them and say No to things I didn't want to do.
I recall one example in grade 5, we were given an hour of reading. Go find something, sit down, read and shut up. Nothing on the shelves grabbed my interest so I got about a dozen "cowboy Sam" books, which were basically like comics for little kids. Not first preference, I would have liked some DC or Disney comics, or a hardy boys book, but beggers can't be choosers.
teacher came over to me after about 60 seconds of sitting down and told me I should be reading something more advanced, I was too smart to be reading those. I replied that if he wanted me to read, I'll read something that interests me. Right now, this is what interests me. I read what i like, not what people tell me to read. The teacher stared at me for a few seconds and walked off.
I could give you any number of examples when I pushed back against teachers and they backed down, not because i disrespected them or deliberatly tried to make a cnut of myself, but because I disagreed with them and argued my case. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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swoop42
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008 Location: The 18
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I guess the declining amount of male teachers in the public school system could be a little to blame.
While female teachers can certainly be intimidating (my grade 4 teacher for instance) less of them probably have that aura attached than men.
While I don't approve of corporal punishment and it wasn't in place when I went to school I can remember my male teacher in grade 5 and 6 on occasion getting physical and literally throwing kids who were prone to be troublemakers across a room and picking them up in the air by the jumper.
You wouldn't get away with that now and probably shouldn't have then but it was a different era and the threat of something like that happening to the rest of us kept us all in line.
Also back in my day being sent to the office for detention and having to face the principal (male) was also an intimidating thought. _________________ He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ I don't condone that kind of teacher violence either Swoop, but I consider it a much lesser evil than ruining a child's chance of a good education by denying them the right to an orderly learning environment. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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You never got the cane across the finger tips? _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^^ Stui, I think your comic book episode is a bit different. Any good teacher knows that education is a matter of directing the will of the child, and pulling it to heel when the child's behaviour is really destructive to learning for itself or for others, but otherwise respecting the kid's autonomy.
What you describe is behaviour short of the ideal, not disruptive or destructive. You were following the instruction. Like a good manager, a good teacher is not shrill about their authority and only comes down hard when it is necessary. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
fair call.
To be fair, i had a few god teachers and a few shit ones and some of the times I pushed back and did it my way, hindsight proved the teacher correct. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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This is an issue that concerns me greatly, but I think we do ourselves a disservice if we try to reduce it to one narrative (whether that be discipline, 'participation medal' culture, class sizes or fear/litigation-based mollycoddling).
Most of all, we need to make sure we're not exaggerating the problem: many people of my generation who went through the modern public education system have turned into perfectly functional, capable, intelligent adults. And on the flipside, kids have always played up in class; and while violence and bullying may have been kept at bay within the classroom to a certain extent, it certainly wasn't once the kids went out for recess.
But I do think there are problems, and one can't shake the feeling that something has gone seriously wrong at any rate, our declining literacy and maths results seem to suggest as much. It can't be that sensitivity and bureaucracy are problems per se; both, after all, are facets of the Scandinavian system, which consistently ranks as the best in the world.
It just seems sometimes like we have the wrong kind of bureaucracy; one which is way too focused on standardised testing and likely a little too protective of kids' physical well-being (though I do applaud the modern zero tolerance approach to bullying). Schools, I've noticed, often seem more focused on their image than anything else.
But I wonder if the biggest problem is a much larger cultural malaise that pays little heed to a given school's or state government's policy. We don't have a strong sense of community, and I think that there's only so much schools can do about that. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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stui magpie wrote: | To be fair, i had a few god teachers |
I too had a few god teachers, but they just kept crapping on about silly bible stories. Complete waste of time. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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