Church bells may not be

rung on Sundays.  The "adhan" is allowed five times a day.

Some years ago one of our local churches was ordered by a court to cease ringing the church bell on Sunday mornings. It had been rung ever since the church had been built. It had been rung for three minutes before the mid-morning Sunday service and for funerals. 

The reason it was ordered to cease ringing the bell was because a young couple had bought a house in the square in which the church stands. They found the bell annoying. It interfered with their ability to sleep in on a Sunday morning. Their right to peace and quiet on a Sunday morning was seen to be greater than the right to remind people it was time for the Sunday morning service. 

The young couple had bought the house knowing that the bell would be rung on Sunday mornings but they proceeded anyway. The court ruled in their favour.

It was a decision which still causes concern today. I believe it was the wrong decision. The bell may well have been an irritant but it was doing no harm. Even more than that the young couple knew and could have avoided the problem by buying a house elsewhere. (At the time this would have been very possible.) 

The polling booth at which I voted is opposite that church and someone I know reminded me of the story as I was leaving. They went on to say, "I wonder what would have happened if it had been a mosque and they had that prayer thing." It was an interesting idea. What would have happened if it had been a mosque and the adhan had been called five times a day?

My guess, and I am certain I would be right, is that the mosque goers would have won. They would certainly win now. There would be absolutely no question about that. No court in this country would rule against such a practice. 

The adhan does not bother me. I would probably cease to notice it if I lived near a mosque. I am far more bothered by the recent public gatherings and displays of "prayer" by Muslims. Christians have been prevented from praying in public spaces - and not just outside abortion clinics. I am certain if a large group of Christians descended on one of the squares in the CBD and started to disrupt traffic, even just pedestrian traffic, with prayer they would be held to be a "public nuisance" and moved on. When Muslims do it we are asked to move around them. There is no reason for either group to do such a thing but it seems we must view such acts differently according to the beliefs of those committing them.

I am aware of what recently happened in another state. I am aware that our Prime Minister and one of his Ministers were "invited" to Eid prayers at a mosque. I am aware they went although I believe they should have found excuses not to go. I am aware that a British MP is in hot water for expressing concern about a public display of "faith" for Eid. I also believe it is likely that any attempt by Christians to do the same sort of thing on Good Friday would be blocked.

There are double standards here. Muslim extremists are demanding and getting the "right" to make public displays of their faith. Christians are being told that any sort of public display of their faith at Christmas or Easter is not acceptable. Schools provide "prayer rooms" for Muslims but not chapels for Christians or temples for Buddhists. 

I remember going  to the loo on the plane to England last year. I had to step around a man kneeling on a prayer mat. He still had to shift. He glared at me. He was blocking access to the facilities and obviously believed his right to pray was greater than my access to bathroom facilities. I find it hard to believe that any higher being actually requires me to avoid going to the loo just so someone else can perform a ritual five times a day. 

Perhaps we need to start asking, "Who is being controlled here, who is doing the controlling, why and what do they hope to get from it?" 

  

No, they are not "autistic"

and it is time to stop saying they are.

I refer you to those people who would once have been labelled "a bit eccentric". They functionally perfectly well in society. They may have traits which irritate or annoy you but they are not "autistic". 

I know I have said similar things elsewhere but I will say them again. It is important people know the difference. 

There is a vast difference between someone who does not relate to other people, is not toilet trained, cannot feed themselves, is frequently destructive, cannot entertain themselves at all and has no means of any form of communication and a person who has the ability to hold down any sort of job in open employment. The latter person may not be able to read or write or they may have a doctorate in organic chemistry or physics. They may appear to be "a bit odd", "strange", "not exactly shy but not very sociable", "obsessive" or a range of other things others (who do not share those traits) find uncomfortable. It does not make them "autistic". 

Once upon a long time ago these people would almost certainly have been considered "normal". Now apparently they need to be labelled. They need to be given a "condition".  

It is rather like "high blood pressure" and "cholesterol". The "acceptable" readings for those things have been lowered over time. I did a little research about that. In the 1940's an "acceptable" reading for a fifty year old was apparently 190/50. In the 1950s it had gone down to 180/100. By the 1960's it had gone down to 160/95. In 1970 it had gone down still further to 140/90. I will stop the history there and say that an "acceptable" level now, according to my doctor, is "no more than 120/80".  Cholesterol readings show a similar sort of pattern. If we do not reach these levels then we apparently need to be medicated.  

What you believe about these things and how you handle them is entirely your affair. Is it however a similar story with human behaviour? Have our ideas about what is acceptable, what we can tolerate in the behaviour of others changed? 

I think it might have. The "fidgety" child in the classroom has now been diagnosed with "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" or ADHD.  Does that child really have a disorder or do they need a different level of before school activity and a breakfast consisting of good quality fuel and not sugar laden cereal? Do they need to have walked or run to school and then spent time running around the playground? Is their friend who appears to be failing to pay attention and constantly wandering around doing so for some external reason? Might it possibly be one related to modern technology or a means of gaining attention in a world where  parents are too busy to care? Is something wrong at home? 

Is there a possibility, as I have said elsewhere, that the classroom is the problem? The child really is "normal" (whatever that is) but the way the classroom is set up and run is not one which provides the best learning outcomes? Is it actually providing the best learning outcomes for any child? Might there be reasons for the "drop in standards" which actually have nothing to do with the child(ren) and everything to do with the way we expect them to learn?  

I might be wrong but I am not sure medication is the answer to everything.  I would like to see some changes in the education policies of the party which will get re-elected today. Unfortunately it is likely to be more of the same policies which I suspect are not working.  

I voted yesterday

and it is something I am told I am required to do. What the law really says is that I must "attend" and "mark" the papers. In other words I must turn up, take the papers handed to me and make some sort of mark on them before folding them up and putting them in the relevant boxes.

Actually mine when into an envelope because I made a "declaration" vote outside my electorate. This was because the electoral boundaries were changed after the last election and I am now in a new electorate.  Getting to the next available early polling station would have meant a long pedal there and back.  Going on polling day would have meant standing in a queue. I am not good at standing in queues. 

This actually annoys me a little because questions do need to be asked how the electoral boundaries get changed. The Electoral Commission is supposed to oversee this being done in a "fair" manner. The reality is that it sometimes leads to changes that are not sensible.  My old electorate and my new one were once divided by a major road. People knew that one side was X electorate and the other side was Y electorate. That has changed. There is a wiggly line that ends at the end of the street I now live in.  I heard one of the candidates trying to patiently explain to someone that no that person could not vote for him. He does not live in the electorate the candidate is standing for even though he has previously "lived in that electorate all his life". Quite possibly he has too. It is a long time since it would have affected that particular person. I know where he lives.

I know enough about early polling stations to know timing is important if you want to avoid a queue and I did avoid any sort of queue. I was in and out very quickly...and I voted. I voted properly. I did not just fill out the ballot papers according to what any party told me to do. I had thought about my choices. I know my first choice of candidate is almost certainly going to lose but in reality she is the better choice. Her only serious rival, another female, will simply do as she is told.  Yes, I know them both by reputation.

I left wondering how many people will actually vote at this election. They will go along and fill out their ballot papers and believe they have voted. The majority of them will "vote" according to the way they have voted all their lives. They will have no idea what the party policies are. "Why bother?" and "Nothing will change" are the way many of them will approach the problem.  It is not voting. It is simply marking boxes and doing it in a "what's in it for me" way. 

Am I feeling concerned about the almost certain result? Yes. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.  

So what language are you learning at school?

It should be a serious question. 

My attention was drawn to an article in the Spectator. Punjabi parents are apparently asking their children be taught Punjabi at school. 

My nephews went to "Greek school" on Saturday mornings - and hated it. I taught a child who was profoundly physically disabled and unable to speak. He wanted to go to Greek school like his brother and his brother admitted it was the only reason he liked going as well. (The child I taught can read both Greek and English now.) 

My goddaughter objected so strongly to learning Chinese that her mother eventually ceased trying.  She has had to try and learn Chinese as an adult pursuing a profession because it is essential in Singapore.

Children who go to school in an English speaking country are probably fortunate they are learning in one of the most difficult of all languages. Their linguistic achievements however will almost certainly be lower than a child who learns English as a second language or a foreign language. 

But which other language should you learn apart from English? It is an easy question and a difficult one. It is often easy for a child whose family speaks another language at home. They may already have some of the basics. There will often be good family, social and cultural reasons to learn such a language, even a "minority" language. 

We "teach a language" in junior primary and primary years here. The most common ones in this state are languages like Chinese or  Japanese, Italian,  Greek or perhaps French. It depends on who is available to teach and how fluent they are. The classes are concerned as much about "culture" as they are about the actual language. The result is that children really learn very little.  In high school they are faced with the same issue. They may not even be able to continue with the language they were supposedly taught in primary school.  More likely than not their teacher will not be a native speaker of the language.  They might get five forty-five minute lessons a week if they are lucky. You will learn very little Chinese or Japanese in that time and not much more Italian or French or Vietnamese.  We are told that Asian languages are important (and they are) but the reality is they are often badly taught in school. The head of an Asian studies department told me he would prefer to have students who had never studied the language they were there to study. They could start from scratch and not have to "unlearn" so much.

Part of the problem here is the insistence on being "multi-cultural". That sounds fine until you get a very small minority group demanding "their" language be taught so they do not "lose their culture". It cannot be done. There are more than eighty languages spoken at home in this country.  The SBS caters for all of them to some extent. It is an incredibly expensive exercise. 

There are about 240,000 speakers of Punjabi here. It is the fifth most spoken language in the country. That said there are only 20,000 in this state. How do you cater for their children? Is it the most important second language for them to learn? 

There are around 2,200 speakers of Pitjatjantjara in this state. A great deal of money is spent teaching the even smaller number of children who speak it. We are told this is essential so as to retain their culture and keep the language alive. It brings with it as many problems as it does benefits. Punjabi has a stronger case in terms of numbers but trying to suggest one language should be retained and another be given resources to expand is much more complex. 

It might help if we first really taught English in school - just so we can actually speak to each other.  

 

 

  

There was another suicide

over the weekend. This was before the Reserve Bank raised the interest rate yet again. 

I wonder how many more there will be in the coming weeks because people can see no way out of a financial mess created by weather, by rising production prices and falling market prices. How many will be caused by problems over which people had no control but feel they can no longer handle? 

Suicide is more common in rural areas than city dwellers are usually aware of. If it happens in a sparsely populated area it is much more likely that it will be someone known to you, perhaps very well known indeed. 

It sounds so obvious writing that but it is also true.  When it is someone you know it is frightening. It stays with you for weeks, for months...perhaps for the rest of your life. If you are very close to it the incident remains etched in your mind. You do not forget the details.

I tried to explain this to someone recently. They could not see why the problem of rural suicides was any greater than a suicide in the city. Cities can be lonely places too, very lonely. 

In a small rural community however it is likely that "everyone" will know you. There is no hiding many things city dwellers can keep quiet. Your marital relations, you financial circumstances, the state of your health, whether you have been caught wrongdoing, who you argued with and much more are all there being scrutinised. People generally just shrug and accept these things. It is part of living in a rural area. 

Life in rural areas is hard. Farming is not easy. It is a lonely occupation. Much of your day will be spent alone. Increased mechanisation and the gradual amalgamation of farms into one large unit may seem more efficient but it has increased the sense of isolation. The distances which need to be travelled have increased. You don't simply "hop in the car and go into town". You plan to go at certain times. You need more anti-depressants. Is the medical clinic open then? Will the seed you ordered be available? How are you going to pay for it?  Is the only JP available so you can get your signature witnessed on the papers which will extend the loan repayments yet again? Will there be enough money available to buy the fuel essential to keep the machinery running? You look at the sky and wonder when you will next see a rain cloud.

When we lived in one of the smallest such places there was the "footy" or cricket on Saturdays. People would travel many miles to get to a match. It was a social event. It would be followed by the "footy tea" and the "dance" accompanied by someone playing on an out of tune piano in the community hall. The men would drink beer and the women would do most of the work. Children would run around outside late into the night until they were called for the long drive home. Sundays were much more serious. People came to church. It was the time of the week when you stood around afterwards and talked about problems, issues and who was doing what and how well. You arranged the harvesting with your neighbours and worked out in which order the farms would get the shearers in. If someone needed extra help then it would often be organised then. It didn't stop all suicides but it must have prevented some.

I wonder what happens now. Is there still some of that sense of community? I wonder if it has gone along with the smaller farms and the advent of the internet (accessed by satellite) and the ever increasing costs of power and fuel.

The suicide over the last weekend will go down as an "accident" but the person who spoke to me told me, "We all know what it really was...and it was just too much for him."   

School "refusal" or refusing

to go to school is apparently a big issue now.

Our state newspaper has been running a series on "neuro-divergent" children. There have been stories about children with "autism" and "ADHD". There have been stories about "anxiety" and "school refusal" and more.

I have read all these with a growing sense of bewilderment. Are there really so many children out there with these problems? At very least, are there so many children out there with these problems that they all need specialist attention at great expense?

I tried to find some information about a school I visited during my teacher training. It was a state run primary school. It was an experiment in "progressive" education. I am not sure how long it lasted. It is unlikely it lasted very long at all. 

The idea was that all the students would "progress at their own pace". They were given work sheets to complete. Some teaching was done of course but it was done in small groups. Teachers were "monitoring" the progress of each child and giving them "extra help" where needed.

The Senior Cat knew the headmaster of that school of course. It was not too far away from the school he was responsible for. The two schools were almost exactly the same size and social mix. I know the Senior Cat had his own concerns at the time - more of that in a moment - but they were nothing compared with his concerns about what was happening in the other school.

It was chaos. It was not the sort of "organised chaos" which can occur in some settings where people know what the outcomes should be and have the experience to work towards them. What was happening in this school was just chaos.

There were children constantly moving all over the place. Some of them were working but others were not. Of those who were working there were children who appeared to know what to do and others who looked anxious. I remember one child sitting in a far corner, hands over ears and a frown on her face as she tried to read an assignment sheet.  There was a teacher who told a child, "You need to do a maths sheet. You haven't done any today and I don't think you did any yesterday." 

Above all else it was noisy, far too noisy. Some people can work against noise and others cannot but there are certain types of noise and this was not the sort which is conducive to learning at all. 

I have no idea how long the experiment lasted. The school has an entirely different focus now but I cannot believe many of those who attended it at the time look back on it with delight and I wonder what their parents felt then and now. 

The Senior Cat had been transferred to his own school the year before this. It had one of the new "open space" units. This meant having three or four teachers and classes in one open space. The students in these were supposed to benefit from being able to move from one year level to another as their ability demanded. They were supposed to be able to be taught as one big group or in smaller groups. There were supposed social benefits and more. 

I recently met the man who was the Senior Cat's deputy at the time and he reminded me of how concerned they both were by this unit. It simply did not work the way the theory said it should work. They were told it was the "policy" and it had to continue to function but both of them knew that it was not working. It was too big. There were too many distractions. Children got "lost" there as other children demanded more attention. 

In other parts of the school, not run on the "open plan" unit teachers had done what they believed to be "right". The children were sitting in groups. They did not always face the front of the room. Some had to twist around to see and hear their teacher. 

It still happens in some places but the teachers under the Senior Cat 

voiced their concerns. As far as possible they went back to the old style "in rows facing the blackboard" - or a horseshoe shape. They did it because that is what, for most of the time, actually worked well.

The open plan unit soon had divisions up so that the classes were separate. The divisions, built by several parents, could come down occasionally for group activities but teaching and learning took place in old style class groups.  The low reading standards rose to acceptable levels. There were still issues with "new maths" but every other area was improving. Behaviour was improving too.

I have no idea what sort or report the school inspectors gave the other school but I had a "proud daughter" moment when the Senior Cat was highly praised at a conference of teachers of those with special educational needs. Everything being said and done for children with special needs had been turned on its head - and it worked. 

 

---

Three more "asylum" seekers have now

"decided to return home".

No, they have not. They are going because they must. Their families are already in custody and they have been told those same families will not be released until they do return. Even then there is no guarantee their families will not be "punished" for the actions of the Iranian women's football team. 

Just imagine yourself for a moment. You are a member of sporting team. That is one thing. You are good enough for it to be the "national" team. That is another thing. You are sent abroad to represent your country. That is yet another thing.

Someone made the decision that you should not sing your national anthem at an event. It was not you who made that decision but you are told you must abide by it. You really do not have a choice. You do what you are told to do. You do it because you have been told over and over again what a huge privilege it is to represent your country abroad. You do it because you have been told how much money has been spent on getting you there. 

In a country where many women would not even be permitted to play a sport all that would matter. It would matter more than the rest of us can hope to understand. 

When you have done as you were told to do then you are told there is a problem. You should not have done that and the people who really have control over you are angry. You really should not be going home at all. Your hosts offer you a safe place to stay. It sounds good. You accept the offer only to be told by your home country that you had better get home quick smart or your family will be punished for your outrageous behaviour.

Five of those seeking asylum have now "changed their minds". The others may now do the same. They will have been told their families will not be punished, that they will get no more than a dressing down, that "everything will end up being all right". 

So far there have been no happy pictures of the players being reunited with their families. Need I say more?