The "social media ban" for under 16s

is just over a week away. 

I have had my say about this here and elsewhere. There is a High Court challenge coming up. The case will argue the legislation trespasses on the constitutional implied right of freedom of political communication. It will be interesting to see what arguments are put.

There is also the issue of "digital ID". At the moment the onus is on the big tech companies to deal with the issue. It is unlikely the legislation would have passed if it had been any other way because that would have meant bringing in some form of identification for everyone in order to get the proposed ban in place. The failure to comply will bring about large financial penalties for the companies.

In reality this is the first step towards some form of universal means of identification. It is going to be even easier for the government of the day to effectively "spy" on all we do. 

Whenever I go into the largest supermarket in the shopping centre I am asked if I have a "loyalty" card. The answer is "no". At times I have been asked if I want one. The answer is "no". The same thing occurs in the bakery. 

"But you could get..." I am told. No, I could not. I am all too aware that even "paying by card" tells them what  my shopping pattern is. I do not need to be inundated with "offers" for items I do not want. If an under sixteen year old pays for something with a card or, more likely, a phone "app" then the business and the government already know what they are spending their money on.  They know a great deal more about them as well. 

I reluctantly opted out of a medical information site because I was not certain it was secure. There is nothing particularly wrong with my actual health and certainly nothing I am ashamed of. I may not be "sane" in the eyes of some people but I have never been sectioned or talked to a psychiatrist as a patient. (My experience with them socially has been more than enough.) All that said I have no particular desire to share the details of my medical history with the world and any site can be "hacked". 

I can see a situation where the information being demanded by tech companies in an effort to abide by the age-related legislation will be used for other purposes. Really? 

Some people will say that teens only have themselves to blame for the ban. If they had used social media in a responsible manner then this legislation would not have been necessary. Give me a break! We are talking about children and young people here. 

Perhaps we should be putting much more responsibility on parents?

Are one in twenty seven children "autistic"

or have they have been diagnosed as such in order to get funding for sometimes very real problems?

I am asking the question because apparently around $9bn of the $50bn or so spent NDIS programs went to supporting those with "autism". The number of those diagnosed with autism has apparently almost doubled in the last five years. The article in the paper is suggesting we are "getting better at diagnosing the problem, particularly in women and girls". Is that correct?

I watched a short video recently. It was taken by the mother of an autistic man. He is around twenty now and nobody could doubt he is very severely disabled. In a photograph it is possible you would not see anything wrong but the video tells a different story. He can do nothing for himself. He still puts everything in his mouth. He cannot go to the bathroom alone. He cannot dress himself. He has no speech. His "play" level is less than that of a two year old. At the same time he is a grown man with a beard. He gets violent. It is sometimes without apparent cause but often because he is frustrated. Living with him is a constant balancing act. It is exhausting. 

The NDIS is, quite rightly, intended to help people like him and his family. They need more help than they are getting but there is limited funding. When his mother can no longer cope he will probably end up in some form of "care", possibly drugged in order to keep his behaviour from being a danger to others.

What the NDIS is not there for is to provide assistance to children with mild behaviour issues or learning difficulties. All too often though this is the way it is being used. Children are being diagnosed as "autistic" in order to get help that should be available elsewhere. "Autistic" is seen as an acceptable label. It is more acceptable than "behaviour issues" or "learning issues".

I have no doubt at all that some of those "issues" are due to changes in the sort of world we now live in. They are also due to changes in the way we expect children to function in classrooms which are also very different. 

Not so long ago I had an unexpected conversation with someone who had worked under the Senior Cat's leadership. When the Senior Cat went to take over the headship of the school there was one of the then popular "classrooms" with four teachers in a large space. It was considered to be a good learning environment where children would learn to socialise and work together in teams. There were units like this all over the metropolitan area. The unit was the responsibility of the deputy headmaster. 

It was not working well. The teachers had volunteered to be there but they were struggling. Even the most able students were not coping well. Quite simply it was not a good learning environment. It was too noisy. There were too many distractions. The idea that children could be taught in large groups and then be divided into smaller groups to do the activities which followed was not working. Children were not listening. They were distracted by other things. The supposed "team work" and "socialisation" was not being achieved in the intended way.  There were more issues in the playground.

It was Education Department policy to have these units. There was the intention to eventually make all schools work to this model. Like many other educational experiments it was a policy which was eventually discarded at least in part.  There are still times where classes come together but it is not an all day and everyday policy. It is interesting that teachers now tell me some children do not cope well when they are in a larger group or when there is a big change in routine. They inevitably include the children who have been labelled as being "on the spectrum". 

There must be children who are falling behind early in their school lives because of the learning environment in which they find themselves at school and also at home. Being "distracted" or "fidgety" or "restless" or something else seen as unacceptable surely does not mean you are on that catch all autism spectrum. It might be that the learning environment in which you find yourself is not one which allows you to learn as easily, if at all. Would it help if we started looking at the problems from a different direction?  

Being polite costs nothing

- or so we are told.

I was in the bakery yesterday. The expectation in there is that you will be served in the order you enter the shop. People do not queue as such but you know who is ahead of you and who is behind you.

I am short but the shop assistant had seen me. I am a regular customer there as they sell the type of seed loaf I like. My turn to be served was about to come up when someone moved in front of me.

"There is someone else next..." the assistant started to say.

"I am next. I want..." came the belligerent response. Other customers looked. 

"Is there anything else?" the assistant asked when she had handed over the bread.

"No." 

None of us said anything and the rude individual got away with it. She was served. She did not say "thank you" simply tapped her card and left. 

The assistant started to apologise so I said, "No, she is the one who should apologise."

There were murmurs of agreement around me. Someone mentioned a shop in another country where someone had tried something similar. The problem was they tried it on the owner who then refused to serve them at all.  I doubt a mere shop assistant would get away with that here.

At this time of the year, at the time the Christmas decorations are up and the shop assistants are wearing their Christmas t-shirts instead of the usual shirts, I am even more conscious of the need to be polite. I will tell the younger ones wearing red t-shirts with kangaroos in Santa hats that it is a "fun t-shirt" or the older one that the elf-hat "really suits" them. It is done in fun. They know it and we can smile at each other. I am planning on slipping a tiny little box with a single chocolate inside it to the person who delivers the mail and giving the girl who works at the phone repair booth the same. They have gone out of their way to help this year. Yes, they are paid to do their job but I want to be sure they are thanked again. I want to be polite and it really does not cost anything. I have had more than that in return.

Perhaps the very rude person in the bakery was just having a bad day but I suspect it was more than that.  

So boys are "falling behind"?

Apparently boys are not doing as well as girls in the NAPLAN games. (For Upoverites NAPLAN involves a series of tests of academic achievement at various points through your school career.)

It does not surprise me in the slightest if boys are not doing as well as girls in things like spelling, mathematics, reasoning and the like. Why should they? Psychological theory would have us believe the results between them should be about equal - but different. Perhaps the powers-that-be need to look at the tests.

That said I also think we need to look more closely at what we expect of all students. It may be different Elsewhere but there are expectations here in Downunder. If challenged people will likely deny that these expectations are expectations but I believe they do exist. 

Boys, especially teenage boys, are expected to be keen on sport. They are expected to play sport. They are expected to ride mountain bikes and go surfing. In school they are expected to be much more interested in STEM subjects than the arts. They are expected to be "better at maths" and to have better coding skills. They are expected to enjoy science experiments. We might want to say all this is not true, that "not everyone is like that" but the not so subtle reality is different. We don't want boys to be more interested in English, other languages or other arts subjects. Heaven forbid that they might be interested in art or cookery!

I remember someone with whom I went to school. He was a problem in a very small country school. With four year grades in one room there was no time to provide him with a lot of extension work. After some discussion he "skipped" a year...and then another year. He was hopelessly disorganised about his everyday life but he could multiply three figures by three figures "in his head". He could remember the spelling for any word he had come across. There was not a lot of reading material around but he swapped everything he had for everything we had. He had also read the Bible from Genesis to the end and was working his way through a dictionary when we left. 

He later went on to university and became a solicitor but I wonder what would become of him now. He would almost certainly have been pushed, none too gently, into maths of some sort. Would he have been any happier there? I doubt it. My brother and I once spent a happy weekend with him as we tried to work out how to calculate the height of a tree. It was the sort of problem which interested all of us but only because it related to how much ladder we had to build to get to the branch that looked perfect for a tree house. Now, if we were even permitted to embark on such a project, we would probably be introduced to the necessary maths behind such a task. I have long since forgotten what I knew and I am sure he has too. Maths was simply not our "thing". Being able to calculate something does not mean you are necessarily interested in the entire field around it.

No, sport is more important to many. The other likely activity is that of playing computer games. Yes, I know computer games can vary greatly but they are not all chess, Scrabble or Minecraft. Many of them seem to be quite violent, certainly involving killing off your enemies on screen. I know some girls do play the "kill your enemy" type but it is much more likely to be the domain of boys. That they are highly addictive I do not doubt at all because they work on the classic reward theory. There are boys who spend hours each day playing such games. If that sounds unacceptably "sexist" I apologise but I suspect I am right.

If we want to stop boys "lagging behind" then perhaps we need to think a little less about organised sport (and more about physical activity) and severely limit the computer games. We need to provide them with the ability and time to read actual books. We need to show them that art and cookery are acceptable activities. 

I do not think this will happen. There will be a renewed push to "bring them up to standard" with more of the activities in which they are possibly simply not interested.  

 

Putting a church on top of a hill

probably seemed like a good idea when it was built. The faithful could look up to it. The heathen could see it looking down on them. It was there. It was an important part of the community it was built to serve but also separated from it in some indefinable sort of way. The early parishioners came to it by horse and buggy or shanks pony. They often attended twice on Sundays and perhaps early in the morning during the working week. It was a busy place.

If you need to go to it by tricycle it is not such a good idea. I thought of this as I pedalled up there yesterday. 

The need to go was all my own fault of course. If I had been well organised I could have given my donation to their Christmas hampers for the poor to someone who goes there on Sundays. Of course that would have meant doing something at least a week ago. I did not do anything.

The Senior Cat used to take an item of food to church each Sunday. I would hand over something as he left. There would be cereal or pasta or pasta sauce or the inevitable baked beans in packs of four for individual servings and packets of cup-a-soup. The items would go to a centre in the city which feeds the homeless and provides food for families in need. At Christmas time they try to provide something a bit extra and a little bit more interesting than the basics. It is why I continue to do what the Senior Cat would have wanted me to do and what I feel I must do.  

As children our own Christmas celebrations were not extravagant but we did get our new Sunday clothes for the next year and a book or toy from our parents and grandparents. We were expected to make things for them as soon as we could - even if our paternal grandmother gave up some "very secret" help. 

We also had a special meal. To have none of those things is not what Christmas, apart from the religious aspect, should be about for children. I suspect most children will have no religion in their Christmas at all. We most definitely did. There is no tradition of midnight mass in the Presbyterian church but there were very definitely Christmas carols. The sermon on Christmas Day was likely to be short and all the children would participate in the nativity scene, mostly dressed in our dressing gowns as the robes for the shepherds and the kings.

To have none of that seems wrong so I pedalled up the hill with my small contribution - or pedalled as far as I could. I should have gone the long way around...the route I worked out from the old house. It is much longer but the hill climb is not as steep. But, I thought I would be smart and go a shorter route from here...I walked the last hundred metres pushing the trike...but I got there. It probably took me just as long, if not longer. 

I went in the back way. (There are at least four ways to get into the church grounds and the one I chose goes around the back of the church. It is useful if you do not particularly want to be seen.) The church was open. It was quiet, very quiet. The priest's car was not there but I knew "the red bin" would be by the side door of the narthex.  It was all I needed. 

The priest arrived just as I was leaving. He waved. I waved back and was about to leave but he called out to me and I waited.

"I didn't need to see you D... " I told him, "I was just putting something in the red bin."

He nodded. We chatted for a moment and then he said, "It's all down hill on the way back."  Yes, I could coast all the way down to the shopping centre and thus the post office. There was no need to pedal at all... but I could not help wondering if the journey was something like life. It is much harder to get to a good place at the top than it is to coast down to the bottom.

  

"A Super Progressive Movie" has been banned

from a private showing at the cinema room in our national parliament building. Apparently some people might be offended by it. 

Yes, there are rules about not showing anything which might be offensive. Apparently it does not matter that this was intended to be a private function. Presumably the people who were going to see it would be supporters of the party whose members made the film.

There is a trailer up on the net if you wish to watch it - just type in "A Super Progressive Movie" and you will find it. You will find it along with a range of other "Please Explain" short pieces by the same mob.

I looked at it on the request of one of the neighbours. He wanted to know what I thought of it. My reaction was, "I would not want to see any more and I don't care for what I did see." 

That said...a lot of people are going to like it all. It pokes fun at a lot of woke ideas and some issues which are coming under more serious discussion. There is also a point at which one of the characters says someone has to be listened to "because he's one sixteenth aboriginal". That could be viewed as very racist but many will see it as having an uncomfortable grain of truth in it. There are other words spoken which are potentially equally damaging and harmful and hurtful and more. 

What little I saw, and that was too much, worried me. I did not care in the least for the slick, speedy, noisy presentation. It is not done in a way which would allow me to think about serious issues. 

Yes, there likely are some serious issues there. For all their burqa wearing red headed firebrand leader is seen as a loud mouthed trouble maker she is appealing to more and more people if the polls are right. The major parties need to look more closely at her, not just dismiss her and her party's policies as some sort of aberration which will go away if ignored.   

All that said I do think it was foolish to prevent the film being shown. It has given it a great deal of free publicity. Downunderites do not like being told by governments what they can watch and what they can think. It is a pity they are apparently all too ready to allow other groups and individuals to influence them. They are too fond of their sporting "heroes" and "radio personalities" and more. 

The problem will only get worse with the proposed social media ban for those under the age of sixteen. I note there is now a High Court challenge with respect to that legislation. It will be interesting to see if the court recognises where it is really leading us - and whether they will allow it.

  

So clumsy you "walk into walls"?

There is a case before our courts at present in which a mother is accused of both neglecting and harming her daughter. The daughter committed suicide. At her death she weighed a little over half of what a healthy child of that age would weigh.

Her mother claims that the bruising shown in the evidence being presented was due to her daughter being so clumsy she would walk into walls. She also claims that her daughter liked sleeping in the cold in the laundry and that she was a fussy eater. These claims are being made in order to cover the fact that the child was sleeping there and that the lunches she was taking to school were highly inadequate - if she took any at all. 

I have no idea how the case will end but, at a meeting yesterday, someone asked me, "Why didn't the girl tell someone what was happening?"

I think this person was genuinely puzzled but I do not find it hard to understand at all. I once taught a child whose father often hit him. He had bruises sometimes. I queried the bruises. The head of the school queried it. We spoke to his mother as well. What happened? Nothing. His mother was clearly frightened by the idea of anything being said. The boy in question did not want us to do anything. He was willing to put up with the abuse in order to go on staying at home. I can remember him telling me, "It's all right. My dad loves me really."

Looking back I believe he was terrified that something worse might happen to him. He almost certainly believed he would be taken away from his parents if he said anything. I also think he genuinely believed his father loved him. He needed to believe it. Believing it made his life "normal". The need for "love" was more important than the beatings. Perhaps his father also believed he loved his son. He was a policeman and well known in the district for his willingness to prosecute wrong doers. 

This is surely like women and, rarely, men putting up with an abusive relationship? To believe it is not their fault is just too difficult.  Children are even more vulnerable than adults when this sort of thing occurs. The girl who committed suicide must have seen this as the only way out. Others are going to be asking "Why didn't she say more than she did?" They will blame themselves.

If I had a child who was so clumsy they were bruising themselves by walking into walls I hope I would make an appointment with a doctor, an urgent appointment. If I was that child's teacher I hope I would insist on the same. When I taught that boy corporal punishment was still legal and often used. It is no longer the case. But is life really any different for a child now? They would still be afraid of losing more than they believe they would gain.  

I