Parents have to be held more responsible

for the alleged social media issues among children and teens. Schools need to be held more responsible too. 

There have been a great many people in and out of this house recently. Many of them are people I know but I do not know all of them well. Others have been strangers. All of them have said something about the proposed legislation to ban the young from social media. Only one thought "it might work". None of them believed that the "tech giants" should be responsible for implementing the ban.

I have listened rather than talked. I do not have children. I have only ever been responsible for one in the long term. The rest of my child caring experiences have been short term baby sitting experiences. Perhaps I should not be commenting at all but I found a list of papers looking for links between mental health/behavioural issues and the media interesting. It seems that, if there is a link, then the link is weak.

If that is so then what is causing the apparent increase in socially unacceptable and/or anxiety behaviours among young people? I asked that question of more than twenty people and the answers were all similar. Two things kept coming up over and over again. One was the failure of parents to have high expectations in relation to standards of behaviour. The other was what was being taught in schools. 

Yes, it is the responsibility of parents, and also schools, to teach what is acceptable behaviour. It is not the responsibility of schools alone. Parenting, it was generally agreed is hard work and it takes time. The willingness to put the time in is often hindered by the fact that it is now expected both parents will go to work - and that parenting is not considered to be work. What schools teach is sometimes at odds with what parents believe is right too and that adds to the problems.

Then there is what is being taught in schools. Instead of the "basic three R's" the people I have been listening to complained about the emphasis on issues like "climate change", gender issues, race issues and trying to instil a feeling of guilt into the young for the wrongs of the past. There was concern expressed about the culture of "victimhood" and the failure to get others to take full responsibility for their behaviours. 

More research is needed, much more research. It may be that those who are tempted to see the proposed social media ban as a solution will need to adjust their thinking. They may need to accept that they too have to take some responsibility for what their children do. 

 

I cannot find anything!

 At least it seems as if I cannot find anything. This is not just a serious source of frustrating but time consuming and...dangerous.

My BIL is still trying to insist that the house needs to be empty of absolutely everything even before the potential agents have a look. All of us have tried to explain that this is not the way things are done. We have even tried showing him photographs of how houses are sold now but he will not be convinced.

"No, come on. It has to be empty. We can't have any stuff lying around at all," he tells us.

Of course I am still here. Oh. "Well the bare minimum Cat needs," he tells us.

His idea of the "bare minimum" and mine are quite different. While he goes to work looking clean and tidy when he comes here to do something he is happy to wear the same dirty clothes for a week or more...and they are dirty, even absolutely filthy. I just cannot do that.

We have argued over the need to iron clothes. According to him "nobody irons stuff". Excuse me? Does he think the shirts he wears to the office do not get ironed? He thinks they are drip dry in the way his school shirts were drip dry...and I suspect his mother still ironed those. His business shirts are better quality than that now and they need ironing. P...who does the cleaning does it if Middle Cat cannot and, at the moment, Middle Cat is still in hospital.

But then it comes to the serious stuff. I could not find the nail scissors and I do need to keep them short - especially right now. More serious still are they perhaps with my medication. My BP is high enough with all the stress so not having access to that could be disastrous. I finally find these things "out in the shed where you will have to sort all the stuff I dumped". Sigh...but at least I have found it.

Then my personal file disappeared and it was panic stations again. The information in that is absolutely vital...I found it "put away safely".

I cannot find the household phone book - for the numbers we need but not often. It means I have not been able to contact some people I need to talk to about this or that...and BIL gets annoyed because I have not done. "You should have all those things in your phone Cat!" 

No, I don't work like that. The bank has just sent me a new card. I have to go into the bank to activate because I cannot and will not clutter up my simple phone with something called an "app". I won't need it after the card is activated. That sort of thing is clutter to me but my BIL says they are "essential". 

I think we are coming from two entirely different directions...so why in the heck do I feel so fond of my BIL? He really does mean well and he has done an awful lot of work here. It is just that I cannot find things.

Hosting the COP30 conference

would not be top of my agenda of "things to do when in government" but the Premier of this state believes it is important enough to jet off to Azerbaijan and lobby to do just that.

My own view is that these "climate conferences" are almost entirely a waste of money. They make some people feel good and warm, cosy and fuzzy. They allow others to feel a sort of righteous indignation at the way the rest of the world is treating them. Still others feel guilty about their "privileges". 

The most recent independent report on the cost of "going green" suggests that it is going to cost a great deal more than the government wants us to believe. The report estimate runs to "half a trillion" dollars more than current estimate. You can at least double that before you get a real figure. This is for a country which issues a tiny amount of harmful emissions. It is also estimated it would take up about half the size of Tasmania - just for the solar portion. The cost is astronomic - and of course there is no nuclear energy in the formula because "that is too expensive" and "it takes too long to build". Really?

I really do care about the planet, about the way we treat it, about the next generations being able to live on it...but I am not sure that "going green" in the way the government is proposing is the answer. And, I will ask the question again, why aren't we planting more trees?

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There are not enough apprentices

to service the building industry now or in the future. There are not enough apprentices for plumbing, the electrical trades and much more. Why?

When I was at school (yes, I know this sounds boring) we had a rather different system. The system divided kids up. At the end of primary school you went to either a "high" school or a "technical high" school. It was a bit like the "grammar" and "secondary modern" system in England.  If you happened to go to an "area" school you would be similarly divided into "PEB" (public examination board) or "Area" (school based). The "smart" kids went to high school or did PEB. The other kids did the more practical subjects. Even within high schools there were academic streams and you knew where you stood in the academic pecking order.  

All that changed when committees of people decided that this was the wrong way to treat delicate teenage minds and we needed just "high" schools and no technical schools at all. England went over to "comprehensive" schools at around the same time. Woodwork, metalwork, domestic science, dressmaking and the like faded away. You don't want students doing that because the idea is that everyone aims for university and, in this state, you hope that around eighty percent of them will get the necessary marks to get there.

Of course this means two things. The first is that those practical skills are no longer seen as valuable. They do not lead to university entrance. The second is that, in order to meet the target of so many more students going to university, the standard has to be much lower. It has worked. We no longer have students who know which end of a hammer to hold or how to measure up and calculate something. I read essays from students aiming for university who cannot actually write an essay at all. The best students are still very good of course. Some of them are outstanding but they are in the minority. 

I may be wrong but I do not believe university for so many is the answer. There are too many people I know who wish they had gone and discovered a trade at a technical college instead. They say it would have been "more useful". I listen to them talking about the way so many other things would not work without the people with the practical skills...and they are right.

Exams finished for year twelve (our final year) last Friday. The library will be deserted today. The worried faces will be gone - for a while. I hope they do well or, as the Senior Cat would put it, as well as they deserve to do. Some of them might have done even better if they had been given a chance to learn those practical skills. 

I have had enough of bullying

stories in the media and the same old failure to ask the question nobody seems to want to ask. Is bullying behaviour now really worse than it was when you were a child and, if so, why?

Bullying gets a lot more attention now. We are told about suicides which allegedly and actually occur because of bullying. Once they were hidden. 

For a short time I was a student at a big city high school. It was a single sex school. There was a suicide while I was there. We were not even told about it. The student was there at the end of one term and not there at the beginning of another. I remember some rumours about what might have happened among the girls but she had been in another class and considered "a bit odd".  It was only several years later, when talking to the deputy headmistress, my own suspicions were confirmed. I had left school by then.

"We were advised not to say anything," she told me, "But I think some of you knew."

Yes, I knew - or guessed anyway. 

Was bullying the cause though? Was is it bullying or something else? I remember that girl as distinctly strange. There must have been other signs as well. Perhaps coming from a family where both my parents were teachers I was more aware of the way teachers handled students? I don't know. 

I think we need to ask why there seems to be an increase in bullying behaviour. Is it really just the increased availability and use of social media? I genuinely doubt that. 

I was a mere kitten a very long time ago now but I remember my mother's constant, "What do you say?" to all of us. So much so that saying "thank you" became a habit. Other children were told the same thing. We were considered "polite". We remembered to say it even if our mothers were not there. Word might get back if we did not remember our manners. We were also told, "That was not kind" when we teased or pushed or snatched something back from another child. If we fought we were told it was wrong and we were punished. There were no lessons about differences between us. Nobody told us about racism or sexism or any sort of individualism. 

Now it seems to be nursery, pre-school, kindergarten, day care or somewhere else that children are being taught to say "thank you" because both parents go to work. On top of that children are being taught to see differences in lessons about "inclusion". Those lessons go on throughout the early years of school and even into the later years. It seems to me that differences are being emphasised in the name of "inclusion". 

Perhaps I am wrong but the idea that social media alone is responsible for the "explosion" of bullying seems too convenient to me. Do we need to start thinking about what we are teaching children - from the start?

 

Moving house is

apparently as stressful as divorce. I have never been in a position where divorce is even possible but the stress of moving house is getting to me. 

This is so even with the wonderful help from my brother, my SIL and my amazing BIL. My BIL may drive me crazy but things are getting done...even most of the timber has disappeared.

Then yesterday we had T...and J... to help as well. S.... had been there for each of the previous four days. Last night she let me know that someone her partner knows will take the two recliner chairs nobody used. They were recovered some years ago and look like new. The same people will take the small round kitchen table and chairs. I will take the dining table with me. It has an extension so collapses to about the same size. All this is good.

I have come across things that are interesting if not important. There is a photograph of Middle Cat in school uniform. She must be about ten I suppose. There is a school report booklet for the Black Cat. I glanced at it and sighed...she was causing problems even then.

I found a photograph of my uncle on his wedding day. Both G...and his M.... are long gone. I found all the photographs taken at the last "C" group reunion - this was Mum's teachers' college group which met each year. They are all gone too.

I think I will be even happier when the sorting is complete. I won't come across more unexpected reminders of the past. 

 

Donating to political campaigns

is under review here in Downunder. It is another suite of "reforms" the present government is trying to pass which sound good but may have unintended - or perhaps intended - consequences.

At the present time the proposals have conditional support from the Opposition. Even with that conditional support I am wondering how well the proposals will work and whether they will really be as "fair" as the government claims. 

Yes, the proposals may benefit the major parties in that donations will still flow to them but will they benefit smaller parties or independent candidates? At the last election the Greens did very well with donations. A lot of people saw them (and still see them) as the friendly tree hugging and environmentally concerned party. A closer look at their policies suggests their other ideas are so far left they would be impossible to implement.

There were also a group of "independents" who have been labelled "teal" independents - because of the colours they wore. They were largely supported by one particularly wealthy businessman. He put a lot of money into the last election and did it very effectively. All this was said to be a good thing at the time.

So now we could have the situation where the "independents" and the very small parties could no longer afford to run candidates or, at most, just one or two. Would that be democratic? 

The other issue is that the union movement may have a great deal more spending power. Unions do not have to be concerned about being partisan. They on Labor's side. They may have limits on their donations but they will still be able to advertise independently. They already do this and they will simply do more of it. Business on the other hand will be much more cautious about appearing partisan, especially if they have government contracts.

It is all something that needs to be reviewed a little more carefully - if we are going to retain something approaching democracy.