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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | ^
She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. |
She just doesn't know how to articulate what she means. If only she went to a separate school so she can truly get the help she needs as her attempts at mainstreaming doesn't seem to have helped her too much. |
Actual LOLs. |
Me too!
I don't hate Pauline, and I agree with some of her stuff, (yes David, halal for one!) and some of her other stuff only up to a point.
The reason I felt compelled to comment on this thread at all is the subject, basically, damaged children. As me and others have pointed out, there are a lot of damaged kids out there, in different degrees, for lots of different reasons. I'd like to trust each school to do what's best for both the damaged child, and those fortunate to not be damaged.
The kid in prep that caused so much strife, touched me deeply. I even got hauled into the principles office one day, I thought for a Thankyou since I saved his life - he took off out of class, we had a substitute teacher that day, she had no idea, so I took off after him and grabbed him just before he ran in front of a car. I got told off for touching him! Your not allowed to touch the kids apparently. In grade two he moved to another school, but not before punching two kids in the face, (thankfully he had a bit of a crush on junior, he was always nice to her!) and throwing a brick at the deputy principle, and another through a plate glass window. All day long the teacher had to watch him. He was dangerous. I later heard from a neighbour that he had been found sitting in the middle of the road one day, just waiting to get run over. He was about 6-7 at the time. A product of a failed marriage, he was the pawn in their game. I've often wondered what happened to him. So much anger in such a tiny little body. That poor kid. Do you stick him in reform school? And therefore make him a lifelong member of the 'system' ?
The kid in the wheel chair, and his not quite so badly damaged sister, are still battling on, but the boy especially, is on borrowed time. He was such a delight, happy, gutsy.
I was born dyslexic, left handed, with a heart condition, that medication fixed, but left me with permanent damage to my hearing, which wasn't picked up until I was 16. I just got belted because dad thought I wasn't listening. Since I could hear sound and understand clear speaking people, I thought it was normal. And it is my normal. And once I got a teacher (grade one in a one horse town named cotton end, Bedford, for a time the church was part of our school rooms), her name was mrs Guaghtry, (spelled wrong I'm sure, but that's how you pronounce it) who took the time to help me - I would write in perfect mirror formation apparently! I shot to the top of the class. Was I not worth that time?
Yes as Stui said it has to be a case by case basis, and in my opinion, it's not a point scoring excercise, kids with autism and their broken hearted parents face enough battles as it is. If a child can function in a main stream school with only some disruption to others, that's where they should be.
By the way, a lot of the teachers aids are not helping kids with autism, or any other diagnosis, they just happen to have learning disabilities or behavioural or concentration problems. I'd rather they have an aid than drop ADHD meds. But that's another story! The strap worked too!
Former hyperactive kid who made it through and was worth it. Cheers!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Tannin wrote: | Nonsense. Hanson deserves to be laughed at and ridiculed. Ridicule is an essential part of democracy and no-one ix exempt from it. Especially not politicians. Especially especially ignorant bigoted ones.
There is a difference, however, between laughing at a stupid, dangerous, evil tool, and blanket rejection of any and every issue that person raises simply because of who raised it. This isn't a trivial or minor difference, it's the crucial difference between the normal and healthy rough and tumble of political life on the one hand, and mindless, bigoted group-think on the other. One preserves and is an essential part of democracy, the other is imperils the democratic process and is an essential part of hate speech and mob rule.
Is the difference clear? Let's use your example to make it so.
Hanson makes clumsily-worded statement about Halal.
(a) People ridicule Hanson as a stupid, obsessed bigot. Harsh? Yes. Unkind? Yes. Unfair? Of course. Harmful? No. It's just making a fool look like a fool, which is both a democratic right and a democratic duty. (Sometimes people use this same method to make a decent, intelligent person look bad. That's unfortunate, and I hate it, but it's the price we pay for free speech.)
(b) Mobs of people rush in to defend halal killing simply because Hanson criticised it and poison all debate or opinion on the matter (other than their own). They allow their (perfectly reasonable) contempt for Hanson the Bigot to trick them into a form of bigotry every bit as bad as and probably worse than hers. They are no longer criticising Hanson or disagreeing with her point, they are crucifying anyone (no matter how civilised and decent) who dares to question their one-eyed, polarised view and making the subject impossible to discuss in public
"Do not make any small criticism and do not ask questions" they are saying, "because if you do, we will nail you to the cross and paint "Hansonite" across your forehead".
This is not healthy democracy. This is shutting down the debate in a way which would have made Senator McCarthy proud and Stalin happy. Can you smell the pink triangle? The "Juden" tattoo? This is where it starts. Not with ridicule and humour at the expense of politicians (that's natural and healthy) but with the mob-rule crucifixion of ideas. |
Well said. You can stick the name Trump in there just as easily. Even if he does a minute bit of good will it go unnoticed?
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Rundle's take on this:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/06/23/hansons-autistic-kids-comments-reveal-a-truth-no-one-wants-to-talk-about/
| Quote: | Hanson's autistic kids comments reveal a truth no-one wants to talk about
Guy Rundle
The shortcuts allocation on the keyboard is fast running out, but I suspect shift-control-F7 should be assigned to ‘”Pauline Hanson’s comments are appalling …” to save future time and energy. La Hanson’s comments about the teaching of special needs children are still ricocheting around the public sphere. They’re part of a longer speech about education and Gonski, and it’s a real One Nation special (pages 12 and 13 of the Hansard, for those who want a read) concerning the demise of standards of English comprehension and expression — expressed in sentences about one-in-three of which is well-formed — the failure to instil a sense of competition, and the decline of running writing (or cursive), inter alia. But it’s Hanson’s remarks on classroom problems that have attracted outrage, and it’s worth giving them in full, rather than the truncated reports of such. Here they are:
“There is another thing that we need to address, and I will go back to the classrooms again. I hear so many times from parents and teachers whose time is taken up with children — whether they have a disability or whether they are autistic — who are taking up the teacher’s time in the classroom. These kids have a right to an education, by all means, but, if there are a number of them, these children should go into a special classroom and be looked after and given that special attention. Because most of the time the teacher spends so much time on them they forget about the child who is straining at the bit and wants to go ahead in leaps and bounds in their education. That child is held back by those others, because the teachers spend time with them. I am not denying them. If it were one of my children I would love all the time given to them to give them those opportunities. But it is about the loss for our other kids. I think that we have more autistic children, yet we are not providing the special classrooms or the schools for these autistic children. When they are available, they are at a huge expense to parents. I think we need to take that into consideration. We need to look at this. It is no good saying that we have to allow these kids to feel good about themselves and that we do not want to upset them and make them feel hurt. I understand that, but we have to be realistic at times and consider the impact this is having on other children in the classroom.”
Well yes, this is expressed from the perspective of the non-special needs child, constructing the special needs child as the problem. It could have been done more even-handedly. But to go by the news reports you’d think La Hanson wanted any kid who likes trainspotting and has impulse management issues to be consigned to the workhouse in calipers. Hanson is saying nothing of the sort. As I read it, she is suggesting that education would be better managed for special-needs kids and non-special needs kids alike with some degree of separate teaching.
Her expression of the issue suggests a less than rigorous examination of the research, but let’s deal with that further down. The crucial point I want to make is that Hanson’s suggestion that both teachers and parents are anything from disturbed to at their wits’ end by increasing problems of classroom management is spot on and appears to be nowhere registered in the debate around Gonski and other programs. For reasons that are cultural and political, much of the debate has been conducted as the exact reverse of Hanson’s intervention: almost wholly from the perspective of special-needs children and their parents, and with an unexamined bias towards the doctrine of total inclusion.
Hanson’s statement about teachers and parents rings true to me, because I’ve been hearing it from state school teachers — especially primary teachers — for years, and in a way that has not been registered in the public debate. Many find themselves unable to teach because their attention, energy and focus is consumed by one, two or three students or more in each class with serious behaviour management issues. Such kids have extreme attention deficit problems, restlessness, poor impulse control, learning difficulties, anger management, extreme aggressiveness and other issues. Some of them have learning problems; others are gifted, advanced and bored, as well as having poor social skills.
This is hardly news to anyone with a child in school, but there’s a curious veil of silence drawn across it. Over the past three decades, such challenges have come to take more and more of many teachers’ time and energy, as the spread of behaviour and forms of subjectivity of children has changed. Nostalgic ideas about children dutifully learning times tables without a peep are an illusion, but so too is the idea that nothing has changed. In an industrial mass-culture society, behaviour could be more patterned and regimented because society was. In a post-industrial society with multiple flows of media, fragmented social structures and a degree of “everyday autism” among adults who live lives surrounded by screens, images and texts, such regimenting goes awry. If we now talk incessantly about a spectrum, it’s because our society produces large numbers of children spread right across that spectrum — of behaviour, of subjectivity, of integration of self, and with others.
Our culture and society have changed, the social-psychological form of children has changed — but the way they’re educated has not. Or not enough. The working assumption of the single-teacher classroom is that all the students can be shaped to purposive activity by their sought consent, and, beyond that, discipline. If we now have a culture where increasing numbers of children cannot govern themselves — even if they want to — how can the classroom then be governed?
That was, of course, one of the issues the Gonski process was set up to deal with. Its partial roll-out was utterly inadequate to that challenge, and everyone knew it. Gonski 2.0 will also fall short. But even the most generous implementation of it may do so, because it is arguable that what underpins the process is a bias towards total inclusion that has less to do with outcomes, and more to do with ideology. Many parents and teachers suspect this — I can only report that many such people are more open to me about these matters, and say they are, than they are to their colleagues and fellow parents; this may have something to do with my status as a man with no children, and no skin in the game — and many are sceptical that disrupted classrooms can ever be made functional if a small minority of children in them are in need of constant behavioural management.
For many of those parents and teachers, Hanson’s remarks will come as a burst of honesty, in a debate from which they have felt excluded, since the Gonski process was first inaugurated in the Rudd/Gillard years. Like much of what came out of that era it is both well-intentioned and oppressive to many: social-technocratic, top-down, expert-led, with consultation after the fact. For many teachers it is just another policy cloud that drifts across their working lives from time to time: the curricula that change with the government of the day, the endless shifts in benchmarks, goals, the switch from chaplains saluting the flag pole to two periods of compulsory banana-condom led by the double-denimed central committee of Socialist Alternative, and on and on.
They know that a lot of this means very little. They know something else too: that problems such as the steady rise in hard-to-manage classrooms has a social class aspect. Private schools find myriad ways to exclude the behaviourally challenged; increasingly that becomes a selling point for parents who can afford their fees. Consequently, state schools find the ratio of disruptive students increase. Many parents feel exactly that sense of panic that Hanson alludes to: that the more their children need a good education and good grades to get any sort of place in life, the more difficult it is becoming to get taught.
Crucially, this is not something that is felt only by the parents of non-behaviourally challenged children.There are many parents of behaviourally challenged children who feel that a bias towards inclusion is a) unrealistic about the relatively “fixed” nature of children’s subjectivity beyond a certain age; b) being used as an excuse to not provide special facilities needed; and c) the product of a simplistic, moralising idea of “potential”, connected to political ideology rather than evidence-based social practice.
Those parents and teachers who do feel that Hanson is airing a point of view that needs discussing, will not be reassured — to say the least — by the blast of outrage, emotion, first-person discourse, drama of the autistic child, “letter to my office” response that has come in relation to it. It will confirm everything many believe about this policy debate: that it has swung round overwhelmingly to the point of view of the special-needs child, that any social category — gender, race, sexuality and disability — will trump social-economic class in the list of progressives’ concerns, that their deafness to the concerns Hanson is articulating come from a progressive class identification with the autistic/spectrum child, rather than the unremarkable kid in a working-class state school steadily going backward because they are deprived of teaching time.
Here’s an idea — if nothing else, it will provide year 12s with an example of “clear thinking” — why not reply to Hanson’s arguments, her alternative proposition about education, with counter-arguments, rather than emotive breast-beating? After all, the notion of maximum inclusion and minimum separation needs to be argued, not simply asserted. Most people who support it, and say “Gonski” as a one-word response to every educational issue, have no idea of the evidence for and against it. The more we acknowledge the changing nature of children, and the spread of behaviours, the more consideration there might be for a more modular process of teaching, beyond the one-size-fits-all industrial classroom, which Labor figures tend to have too much of a hankering for (disastrously, in many areas, such as indigenous education).
And above all, let’s face what we all know: current regimes of inclusion depend on the mass use of prescription amphetamines for teenagers, without any real consideration of the long-term physical and psychological effects. This is a continuing betrayal of children that is not addressed, because it is simply too hard to do so in the current framework. It is more scandalous than anything Hanson has said.
So, another fail by the progressive class. A result of lack of attention, poor preparation, and NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION PUT. Must try harder. If you think no one notices these desperate and inadequate responses, think again. |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ he's often very good Rundle, and that article is pretty much spot on. The question is how w best this culture of "emotive breast beating" when many of the higher educated are so addicted to it ???
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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An excellent article, David, thankyou. This is exactly the sort of healthy, thoughtful response democracy thrives on. Note how very, very few responses to Hanson's speech have been in this vein, and how many have been in the mindless-opposition-to-anything-she-says-because-of-who-said-it mode I ranted about a couple of posts previously.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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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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Dave The Man 
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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Well that be Correct for the Ones with Severe Autism but not every kid has Severe Autism.
There are some good Points he Makes but I don't agree putting these Kids in Special School. Majority of them more need is a Integration Aid to help out.
I had one and made a Huge Difference
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I am Da Man |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| Once we get out the autistics, the asthmatics, the ones who can't concentrate, the ones who talk too much, the ones who talk too little, the ones who can't read, the ones who can't count, the ones who can't write, the ones who are too disruptive, the ones who are too creative and all of the others who need too much attention to learn, the task of teaching will be so much easier. The classes will be nice and small, too. |
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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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| Dave The Man wrote: |
Well that be Correct for the Ones with Severe Autism but not every kid has Severe Autism.
There are some good Points he Makes but I don't agree putting these Kids in Special School. Majority of them more need is a Integration Aid to help out.
I had one and made a Huge Difference |
Dave, I stand by my earlier comment, horses for courses. Each kid is different and that needs to be considered.
I just posted the article because it was relevant. His personal experience is obviously that his daughter would do better in a special school.
I found it interesting that the US apparently has special schools for autistic kids. I don't necessarily agree with that. Again, depends on the severity of their condition.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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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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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | Once we get out the autistics, the asthmatics, the ones who can't concentrate, the ones who talk too much, the ones who talk too little, the ones who can't read, the ones who can't count, the ones who can't write, the ones who are too disruptive, the ones who are too creative and all of the others who need too much attention to learn, the task of teaching will be so much easier. The classes will be nice and small, too. |
You just reminded me of a kid I went to high school with. Aboriginal kid, blond hair and whiter than me, the white sheep of the family. His brother left school at the end of year 8, this kid was determined to get his yr 10 certificate. Problem was, he was barely literate. No integration aids back then (at least not in the bush) so this poor bugger had just been pushed up a grade each year until he hit yr 10 with English and Maths skills at grade 3 level max.
I tried to help him out a bit in class a few times, but no good. he wasn't actually stupid or had a learning disability, he'd just never learned somehow.
you'd reckon somewhere on the journey, a teacher might have tried to do something?
Anyway, he got his yr 10 certificate and promptly left school. No pass or fail for Yr 10 back in the 80's in NSW, you do the test you get the cert.
How the hell you get a score of around 20% in a multiple choice maths test though has still got me stuffed. He just went down the questions and ticked A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D etc to the end.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Dave The Man wrote: |
Well that be Correct for the Ones with Severe Autism but not every kid has Severe Autism.
There are some good Points he Makes but I don't agree putting these Kids in Special School. Majority of them more need is a Integration Aid to help out.
I had one and made a Huge Difference |
Dave, I stand by my earlier comment, horses for courses. Each kid is different and that needs to be considered.
I just posted the article because it was relevant. His personal experience is obviously that his daughter would do better in a special school.
I found it interesting that the US apparently has special schools for autistic kids. I don't necessarily agree with that. Again, depends on the severity of their condition. |
and I agree with you. It's Horses for Courses.
I also found it Intresting that US had Schools for Autistic People. I don't where I stand on that
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I am Da Man |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| Uniforms with yellow six-pointed stars? |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | Once we get out the autistics, the asthmatics, the ones who can't concentrate, the ones who talk too much, the ones who talk too little, the ones who can't read, the ones who can't count, the ones who can't write, the ones who are too disruptive, the ones who are too creative and all of the others who need too much attention to learn, the task of teaching will be so much easier. The classes will be nice and small, too. |
yup!!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Teachers often put me to sleep, unless the topic is really interesting to me. |
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5150 
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | Once we get out the autistics, the asthmatics, the ones who can't concentrate, the ones who talk too much, the ones who talk too little, the ones who can't read, the ones who can't count, the ones who can't write, the ones who are too disruptive, the ones who are too creative and all of the others who need too much attention to learn, the task of teaching will be so much easier. The classes will be nice and small, too. |
I just think that's going too far.
There are only three types of kids in a class, those that can count and those who can't. |
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