"Not enough time" to read

to your children? Do you think your child's teacher should be doing this instead?

The Premier of this state has been making much of reducing the dependence of children on screens for entertainment. The primary focus is still on "sport" as the most desirable alternative form of "entertainment" for children. "Reading" is, supposedly, second. This does not necessarily mean "just books" but also newspapers, magazines, comics and the like.

I have been thinking about this and there is a word which comes to mind - and that word is "control".

Playing sport in childhood is all too often controlled not by the children themselves but the adults in their lives. My generation played "cricket" and "footy" out in the suburban streets without the supervision of adults. This was in addition to the wild games where imagination took over and they hunted "cowboys and Indians" or "space men" or something else. These games were not played in teams under adult supervision with an emphasis either on "everyone" participating or the team "winning".  We did not go to "footy practice" or "tennis lessons" unless our parents were wealthy and we were keen to learn.  Now it is expected that children will do this so that they are "safe" and "supervised".  Perhaps it is understandable but is it a good thing?

There seems to be a similar issue with reading. Parents who are "time poor" are finding it difficult to read to younger children (and even older children) at night. Getting children into the "library habit" with regular trips to the library is also a problem. Once there I also believe there is another problem. 

Elsewhere in this blog I have mentioned how a young girl once looked up at me in the library and said, "I'm sick of AIDS and death and divorce. I just want a good adventure story."  The issues of AIDS and death and divorce have now been taken over by stories about "blended" families, same sex parents, same sex relations, "transitioning", refugees and drugs. These are the topics of many "serious" books being written and published for children here. It is what I have found on the library shelves but is it what children really want to read about? 

It seems to me children are "captive" readers. Unlike adults they only have access to what adults choose for them to read. There may be no way around this but it does mean that adults have more control over what children read than what adults read. 

There are a good many books on the library shelves that I have no desire to read. I do not have to read them because nobody is telling me I "must" or that "this is what is available because we think it is what you need to be reading about". I can still find the equivalent of a "good adventure story" if I want to read one.  The options for children are more limited and their reading time is also more limited as adults control more of a child's "leisure" time. It is possible that some children have very limited leisure time. Why would they want to spend it reading only about social issues instead of sometimes escaping into a fantasy world?  

If we want children to read and imagine and escape from climate change, war, refugees, racism and more then surely we need to give them well written "adventure" and more? Perhaps I am wrong but is it time to say "reading should be fun sometimes"? 

Farmers are not accountants

and why the government seems to think it is acceptable to add yet another layer of red tape to their office work is beyond me. 

It seems they are now expected to add a great deal more form filling to their load because of the government's "zero emissions target". I can hear you asking, "But isn't zero emissions what we should be aiming for?"

To put it bluntly it is not something which is possible in the farming sector. If (and it is a very big "if") we are to reach zero emissions it will not be done by placing additional burdens on farmers.  Our friends across the pond in New Zealand realised that when they discovered that a "burp" tax placed on methane emissions from cows simply would not work - unless they killed all the cows.  Yes, it is that ridiculous. 

I am old enough to remember when farmers actually farmed and when the job involved hard physical labour all day long and into the night as well. We may have been "the teacher's kids" but we were well aware of the life of the farmers around us. They waited, still wait, for the annual cheque for the wheat or the wool or the monthly milk cheque from the "factory" down the road from us. Their income is not regular. A good harvest depends as much on the weather as it does on their skills as a farmer. They can look at the sky and know whether it will rain or not rain but they cannot make it rain - or stop it from raining at the wrong time. They do the best they can to control diseases in crops and illness among their animals. Putting down an injured animal is as traumatic for them as anyone else. 

Add to that the ever increasing rules and regulations about what can and cannot be farmed and where it can and cannot be farmed it is a wonder anyone actually wants to be a farmer.  I am very glad I am not a farmer - or married to one. 

When I was a mere kitten some farmers would keep all their bills and receipts in tins or shoe boxes. They had bank books - and an overdraft at the bank. At tax time they would take these things to the local accountant and the accountant would deal with these things - once a year. It was perhaps wildly inefficient but not impossible. Now farmers are expected to have computers and keep everything up to date. Cows are fed and milked according to computer programs which register the amount a cow is fed and how much milk it gives on a daily basis. A computer program tells farmers how much fertiliser to use and much more. Deviate from these things and "regulations" come into play.

Farmers feed us. Farmers are the people who make it possible for the rest of us to go into a supermarket or to a market and buy food. They need support, not increased regulations which add to their work.  

Exams start tomorrow for

 the final year of secondary school in this state.The first one is a mathematics paper.  I don't envy these students.

The library has been very quiet recently. This is despite the fact it is filled with students. Heads are down. The mathematicians are scribbling arcane notes, frowning, sighing and nudging a neighbour who is working on the same thing.

If I need to go into the library I try to creep in very quietly. I look nervously around. Is there a student I know. Are they going to want to talk to me about a problem.

I cannot help with the maths. It is too long ago. I only did the old "Leaving" level maths. It was all I needed...and I loathed maths as a subject. It took all my skill to get through the compulsory statistics course at university...and I could not do that now. Things have changed. I can do the occasional statistical test - but only when I am questioning the validity of something. Anything more than that and I would need to go to an expert.

These students are using signs and symbols I am not familiar with at all. I leave them to that. 

But English or history, psychology, legal studies, their research project? I am fair game there...and so are the library staff and anyone else who happens to be around. Yes, we help if we can. We will do anything to try and reduce the stress.  

But really is it as bad now as it was for us? These exams represent just thirty percent of the available marks for the year. The rest is their course work. Our exams were one hundred percent on the day - pass or fail. Here there are students who already have enough marks. They know they have already passed the subject in question. 

"But Cat I need to do more because I want to get into...." The student saying this will name a tertiary course where the competition to enter is fierce. Well, it was fierce in our day too - just less obvious.

On Friday I prowled cautiously in to the library and passed over the remaining chocolate frogs from the night before. I had added another packet. I handed them over to one of the library staff and she went quietly around putting a frog next to each student. Another staff member and I watched as frowns turned to smiles. Chocolate frogs do help at exam time.

Is "racism" just one

way or does it flow in both directions?

One of our Senators, a renegade one, has just been successfully taken to court for telling another one to p... off back to Pakistan. It was not polite but was it actually "racist"? 

I have to say here that I have no time for this particular Senator. She now leads the "One Nation" party. Her debut speech in the Senate caused national headlines, perhaps international headlines. It was also accused of being "racist" when she argued that she had as much right to live in this country as anyone else, that it was her country too.  She strongly opposes things like "Welcome to Country" as well.

Is it these things which made her "tweet" appear "racist"? The other Senator found it "offensive" to be told, "If you don't like it here then p... off back to Pakistan".  As I have just said it was not polite but was it actually "racist"? It might be that it could be argued both ways.

We are often told that we are a "racist" society but the research suggests this is not the case. We have a "Race Discrimination" Commissioner in our "Human Rights" body. Any case of discrimination which makes it that far gets a lot of publicity... but are there really that many cases? The current Commissioner is not so overloaded with work that there are demands for a second or third person to do the job as well. If discrimination exists, and it must sometimes, then it is being dealt with at a much more local level. 

We were told that rejecting the proposed Voice to Parliament would show we are racist. We rejected it but did it make us racist? It could be argued the other way. People did not want to do something that might cause some people to feel discriminated against. I voted against it after talking to indigenous people I know and who told me they were voting against it. 

I sometimes hear someone complaining that our society allows certain things they find offensive because they are not part of their imported culture. When I do I wonder why they came here if things were so good in the country they came from. Of course they were not. Life is seen as "better" here. Does that make me racist? I don't tell them to "go back" but there is a tiny handful I feel are trouble makers. 

Yes, it is that tiny handful. It is the l.8% of university students who complain about racism or the one employee in one hundred thousand who complains about racism when they do not get promotion who cause us to be labelled "racist". If we went to India, Japan or Korea, to Zimbabwe or Tanzania would we feel the same way? Is racism really about which group is in charge? Is it about something which is different and makes us feel uncomfortable?

I suppose I just have to be thankful that my friends come in all shapes, sizes and colours and think differently. 

"Privacy" can be dangerous

although I doubt we recognise that or even agree it is the case.

Nevertheless a couple of things have happened recently which has made me wonder about our so-called "privacy". Let me ask you something.

Do you remember the old telephone books? Do you remember those big, fat books printed on the cheapest sort of newsprint where you could look up a name and find not just a number but an address? They would come in two parts - one for "business" and one for "residential".  Now the phone book barely exists. There was a thin apology for one thrown into the garden recently because I have retained the "land line". (I will keep that until I move because there are still a few very elderly people who occasionally need to contact me that way.)

Those phone books were useful, very useful. If they had a phone you could find out where someone lived. Yes, there were a few "silent" numbers but most people just accepted you would know where to find them.

If that did not work or you needed an address outside the area covered by the phone book then you could consult the electoral roll. In this country where inclusion on the electoral roll is compulsory it was possible to find out an address anywhere in the country provided the person was on the roll. There was more information there as well. It might not have been much but if you were looking for the right Mary Brown or John Smith then it was very useful. The electoral roll is no longer available for such everyday purposes. I went into the electoral office a couple of years ago to ask if they could confirm an address for me. I had the address there and simply wanted to know if it was correct. The office person refused to help because of "privacy" even when I gave a full name. 

Yesterday someone called in to pick up some items being given to their charity. We chatted for a moment and she told me how she had just come back from taking a neighbour to check on her sister-in-law. There had been no answer on the phone to the daily call that morning.  Even though they knew the name of a neighbour it was not possible to call them because there was no means of looking up a number to do so. The alternative of calling the police to check seemed rather drastic but would have been justified as an ambulance had to be called.

We are constantly being told to keep things "private" or that our "privacy is valued" by someone asking for our personal information. We are told the information we indulge will not be "shared". All this seems increasingly unlikely to me. Mailing lists are sold to other people, of course they are! I had a call yesterday from someone who addressed me by name but I had never heard from them before. I had never done business with the company in question and will not do business in the future. Asked how they had got my name the person at the other end said, "Well, you are on our books." No, I could not have been. I have never owned a car.

It seems to me we are isolating ourselves more and more from family and friends because we do not have ready access to numbers when we need them. This happens even when government and business can access us while claiming "privacy" is being "respected". I would prefer to be able to be concerned about the well being of an old woman who was feeling too ill to answer the phone.