The little darlings skipped school

yesterday. They went to "protest" on the steps of the state's Parliament House.

I was supposed to attend a meeting in the city. It was cancelled because of the "event". 

The person who cancelled informed me about the event later. He had to get into the adjacent building and was booed and heckled on the way in. That he had nothing to do with the protest was apparently the point rather than not the point. According to the protestors he should have been joining in their revolt. Anyone passing should have been joining in according to some of them. The people they were protesting about are, according to them, that dangerous.

These young people were using their "right" to "freedom of speech" to call for another group to be banished. I cannot say "banned" but many of those in the group may well have agreed with a ban if such a thing were possible. That group is political party. It is not a radical far right group attempting to bring in a different legal system or espousing anti-Semitic views. It has a homosexual person in a prominent position in the party. It is not, despite reports to the contrary, anti-immigration or opposed to all environmental measures. 

So, what was it they were protesting about? They do not like the "policies" of that particular group? That is up to them. I happen to think the so-called policies lack any detail and are likely unworkable. I would not vote for the party myself and I know surprisingly few people who will admit that they might. There are other ways of getting my own views across. They don't include attending expletive ridden rallies organised by a student who is a member of an extreme left group.

The person I was supposed to be meeting went into his office. He could hear what was being said. He is most definitely not a fan of the political party being protested about but he has seen many protests come and go. He accepts they are part of student life. 

This protest? "I would like to have taken some of them in, sat them down, chatted to them. I would like to know whether they really believe the drivel they were being fed. My guess is the majority of them were not thinking at all. They were caught up in the thrill of the protest, the time out of school." 

Yes, I suspect he is right. It is said most students were university students or from the two city high schools. There were about a thousand of them. That is all. They did not come in their thousands from all over the state. There were far more people who protested the Vietnam war when I was that age. I suspect we might, even without the benefits of easy social media communications, have known more about the issues we were concerned about. 

The "leader" of the protest is a young radical with ideas that often appeal to the young until they think about them. They appeal until how they might be implemented and what the consequences might be become apparent.

The little darlings will be back at school today. Some of them will be enthusiastically informing those who did not go how much they missed by not attending. I hope they discover they also missed an important lesson or two or three.  Late yesterday afternoon I also overheard one who apparently had attended saying it was "boring".  Hopefully more of the attendees will feel that way and work towards being able to actively and positively participate in the future of this country.   

Transgender athlets who compete

on women's teams are again in discussion. The football people have just cleared a transgender person to play on women's teams. There were, and still are, concerns because this person is considerably larger and stronger than others on the same team or the teams they play against.

Comments are now being made by well known figures and not just those who are required to play on the same or on opposing teams. I have also heard a good many other comments from local people. The general consensus is that this person should not be allowed to participate if others are at risk.

Some clubs are now saying they would prefer to forfeit rather than play on or with teams who include trans players. Those at the top are demanding they continue playing.

Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost something called "common" sense.  This is something which would say, "some people are different" and "it is not always possible to be inclusive". It would recognise potential harm to the majority. 

There are some things it is not possible to be inclusive about. Is the exclusion of this person really any different from excluding a blind person from driving a car on the roads? The blind person may want to drive but the safety of others demands they do not. 

I am a short and not very mobile person. I have a poor sense of balance. It would not take much to knock me over. If I had wanted to play basketball in my childhood I would have been told I could not. This would not simply have been because I was hopeless at such things but because it was considered "dangerous". I would have been knocked over. There were some rare occasions when the team did include me. I would be the person with the ball at the very start of the match. My instructions would be to "throw the ball to X... and then get off the court". Even so there would be an adult there ready to grab me and get me off safely. The opposing side was pretty good about it too. They knew the game was going on safely without me. It was the team and the game which mattered.

Now it seems that the individual matters more. In this case it is an individual who has all the characteristics of a sex with whom that individual does not "identify".  Teams are being asked to consider the individual before the group. That can be important but in this instance the individual does have alternatives. They are not barred from playing. It is just more appropriate and safer for everyone else if they do not play with that group. Is that exclusion or is it something else? 

    

Farming is not an occupation

for the faint hearted or the lazy. It is not "easy". You do not simply fling some seed into a machine and drive up and down a field or a paddock and hope the seed goes in to the right space at the right time. You cannot just leave it there to grow either. Cows do not milk themselves. Sheep do not shear themselves. Fruit does not pick itself.

I have never lived on a farm. I occasionally visited on one as a child. Whenever we did my brother and I were expected to help with the work in just the same way as the children who lived there. Brother Cat could drive a tractor at age eight because it was expected he would do just that when he spent a weekend with a friend. He had just one lesson and then he was, slowly but carefully, taking the tractor down the rough lane to where it was needed. There was no "mucking about". This was serious adult work done by children because there was nobody else to do it. I was left behind to feed calves and the family  hens, collect the eggs and help in the kitchen. Sexist? Perhaps it was but it was, and still is, essential. 

I could still feed a team of shearers. Their work may not be quite as onerous as it once was but it is still hard work and I was taught to appreciate that. They need to be well fed. My paternal grandmother taught me that.

My paternal grandmother came from a farm and she came into her marriage with a work ethic that never left her. She knew how to make the most of every cut of meat and just how far it would go. The fruit trees in the garden were there to feed the family all year round, not just when the fruit was in season. There would have been hundreds of women like her who could do just the same things. They had to do them or the family would not have had enough to eat. 

Yes, they may have been farmers but they were not "rich". The idea that farmers are "rich" is probably one of the greatest falsehoods ever perpetuated. The farm land may well be "worth" something but that something does not translate into actual wealth. 

It is these things that governments seem to willingly misunderstand. Governments want to dictate what can be planted, how it can be planted and when it can be planted. They want to charge for allowing it to be planted and they want to tax the fuel and the fertiliser being used. They will tax the money obtained for selling the crop while telling you how much it can be sold for and to whom you can sell it. 

All these things will supposedly come from a "department of agriculture" where the "experts" work. They are the same experts who told the farmers to plant the wrong sort of clover which caused the sheep eating it to drop the lambs too early. They advised one sort of wheat which brought in lower yields and was prone to a disease. There are gluts brought on by their advice and market demands.  Farming now requires computer programs - and not just to work out how much hay to give the cow in the milking shed. 

Perhaps it is good we have moved on from the "shoe box record keeping" of the farmers of my childhood but the idea farming is "easy" still exists. Farming is not easy. It has never been easy and the new tax regulations are just making it harder. If politicians thought about where the food for their "business" lunches came from would it make a difference?  

   

It is Census day

and we are all supposed to be counted. I have filled out the form on-line and most people probably will do it that way. It will make putting the results together and analysing them much faster...but will it really tell the government what it needs to know?

A census is supposed to assist in planning for the future. The most famous census in history was supposed to do that...and tell the Romans how much they could expect in the way of taxes.

Yes, it is important to know how many people were in the country on the night...and whether they are residents or visitors. The form does not ask you about residents who are out of the country on the night.

The form asks you which languages you speak at home. It does not ask if you speak another language elsewhere or if you can use another language. 

The form asks you for "sex assigned at birth". That's a fair question. It goes on to ask how you "identify" with respect to "gender". Was that really necessary? Are we suddenly going to have ten or twenty percent of people deciding to identify as something other than their assigned sex and is that so important that it has to be part of the census? 

There are other questions that could be simplified. There was no category for "Christian" in the question asking about religion. There was one for "no religion" and there are some very public figures who are currently trying to encourage people to use that if they no longer go to church, chapel, mosque, temple or synagogue. That people might believe something and not attend a place of worship is apparently not something of importance to them. It might also be said nothing was asked about "Sunni" or "Shia" in relation to Islam, 

I went on through the form and finished feeling as if the really important things had been left out. There was no question about undertaking any sort of physical activity. In this sports mad country that might be very useful to know.  Did you play sport in the past week or go for a walk or ride a bike or swim? Do these things matter? We are told they do.

And there was the other question they did not ask....have you used you local library. There are figures from elsewhere that the use of libraries is far higher than the government wishes to acknowledge. They are the most used resource in the community, far above even the beloved ovals and courts of sport. We should have been investigating that.

Instead of these things the "gender diversity" crew had their questions included. They will now use the results to demand more specialist places and services while telling us how we need to be inclusive. 

I just wish the census had been a bit longer and a bit more inclusive.  

Unschooling?

There are apparently around three thousand children in this state who do not attend school. Some of them are being "home-schooled" but others, according to something I have just read, are being "un-schooled". 

I had not heard this term before but apparently around seven hundred or so children in this state are not on any sort of regular time table. They are apparently deciding what they will do and when they will do it almost all the time. There is supposed to be some sort of "learning plan" but they are exempt from the other requirements.

I wonder how that works. Are they actually learning? I suppose they must be but what are they learning? 

According to the article the unschooling approach accommodates children with autism and ADHD.  Perhaps it does.

I have a friend who, due to a disability, did not attend school until she was thirteen. She had a range of people who helped her learn but she largely taught herself. I say that advisedly. A... was a self-starter. She wanted to know things. From a very early age she was curious about everything. She was reading at two and has never stopped. I know people think it has all been easy for her but in reality she has worked extremely hard. There was a timetable of sorts. It was flexible. It had to be because her teachers were not always available.  A...found school frustrating. I remember her complaining about the amount of time that was wasted there changing lessons, waiting for a teacher and for the rest of the class to catch up. She ended up at a very well known university. There she has written books and her lectures are popular. The latter surprises many people. It does not surprise me. She understands "learning". I often wonder what would have happened if she had gone to school from the usual age of five. "Unschooling" suited her.

I wonder how many children "unschooling" really suits though. The problem is that the rest of the world does not work that way. Most people's work involves routines. There are regular tasks that need to be done and done at certain times.  If you have gone through your school age years not needing to do that then how do you cope? 

 

Old family photographs can be

interesting, frustrating, infuriating, dull and matters for debate. Who is the person third from the left in the front row? Is that Uncle S.... in the back row? Which one is Aunt J... and which one is Aunty R....?

Brother Cat came across a photograph last week and sent it on to me and Middle Cat to see how many people we could identify. He could remember the occasion but could only name a few in the extended family photograph. 

I have not heard from Middle Cat. She has probably only glanced at the photo as she is in the middle of helping the sister of the man who died last week.  I only found time to look at the photograph last night. Brother Cat had named the few people he knew correctly but, quite rightly, assumed I would know more.

The event was the family gathering we had to celebrate the Golden Wedding Anniversary of my paternal grandparents. Both of them came from large families. There were eleven in Grandpa's family and nine in Grandma's. Not all of them were there of course as some were no longer alive and others had moved a considerable distance away. Those that were there must all have been living in the city by then.  

I found the photo disturbing. Yes of course many people in the photo were elderly even then (my grandparents married rather late) and I did not expect them to still be with us. It is what you expect with a very old photograph and this one was taken half a century ago.

It was not that which disturbed me as much but two other ideas. The first was that so many marriages do not last a great many years now. I was talking to a teacher recently and she mentioned that just over half the children in her class are from "single parent or blended families".  Her school is in a "good" area. I could not help wondering what other schools might be like.

The second thought I had was that the photo was of a family occasion - the sort which does not happen as often now. Of course that relates to the breakdown in so many marriages. It also relates to the smaller family sizes. I am one of four. Both my parents were one of only two but that was exceptional at the time. My paternal grandparents wanted more children but my grandmother was unable to carry them to full time. My maternal grandparents would have stopped at one if the first had been a boy. They did not really want children at all. It was all so unlike the eleven in my paternal grandfather's family and the nine in my grandmother's. And Grandpa's family was particularly close and supportive. Even my generation maintains contacts within it.

I wonder what will happen if people come across photos fifty years from now? Will they know any of those people? Will they recognise others? Will any contacts have been maintained? What sort of society will they be living in? 

Does anyone else find it disturbing? 

Speech and sign language or....

just speech? The perennial issue came up in a discussion on a website yesterday. There are strong views on either side when discussing the education of the profoundly deaf.

I am in the "speech and sign language" camp. I have been right from the first time I met a profoundly deaf person. She was a girl about my own age. We managed to maintain a sort of friendship for as long as the long bus journeys back to our homes in the country took. 

It was very clear to me even then that lip reading cannot do all the work for the vast majority of people born with a profound hearing loss. Lip reading requires intense concentration. No two people speak in quite the same way. It is impossible to lip read some people. To ask a person with a profound hearing loss to rely on nothing but speech is unreasonable. It adds immensely to the stress of their lives - and often the lives of those around them.

Of course the argument is made that allowing the deaf to sign from a young age means they will not make the effort to lip read or communicate with speech. It is an argument I have heard many times. I disagree. Other people feel differently.

I was not really involved in the discussion yesterday. I was much more concerned with trying to sort out something else. Despite that I was trying to keep an eye on what was being said and eventually found a moment to add something that is not being addressed in most discussions. 

It is this. Deafness is a very, very isolating thing. It is even more isolating if you do not have spoken language learned naturally as a child. The acquisition of sign language can be just as important here. Older people need stimulation just as much as younger people. A profoundly deaf person who cannot sign also has to make a far greater effort to communicate. If they do not have the capacity to use a sign language they are at even greater risk of developing dementia because they are not getting the same level of stimulation.

Age related deafness is of course common. Many people mask it well. They unconsciously learn some lip reading skills among people they know. They rely on other cues as well. The problems associated with all this should concern all of us but they are not the same as the problems are for a person who has always been profoundly deaf. We need to be aware of that. Wanting a child to be "only aural-oral" may seem right to parents and others but it may not be the best thing for the child, especially later in life. If both speech and sign can be achieved might that not be a better option?