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?  

There was a violent altercation

in the street yesterday. Two boys from the local high school were pounding each other and another, much smaller boy, was sitting on the footpath with blood streaming from his head.

I was about to stop (very cautiously) when someone else came running up. One of those fighting ran off and the two who were left were being questioned by someone who obviously knew them. I left them all to it.

What was going on I do not know. I suppose I do not want to know but I am aware that there has been more of this sort of behaviour since the Covid lock downs. There is less tolerance. 

The one sitting on the pavement obviously has Chinese parents. That might have been enough. There was an article about the origins of Covid in the paper and it might, if a parent had said something, caused a teenager to say something to a younger and more vulnerable child.

It could have been anything else at all. The young one sitting on the pavement may not have been blameless. That two more were fighting in a serious, hard way was what I found so disturbing. There were the occasional physical altercations at schools I went to but I was never aware of anything quite as serious as yesterday's violence,

Yes, it was violent. I found it quite frightening. I have been left wondering whether the amount of violence seen on screens has left us somehow believing that this is how we now settle arguments. Is there any room left for discussion and negotiation in our lives?

It is not helped by those in authority who appear to condone violence even when they appear to be condemning it.   

"No you may not go and protest"!

Apparently school students are "going out on strike" to "protest" next week. They are "protesting" against "racism".

Now I will protest against "racism" too. Nobody should ever be treated as any less or more worthy on the basis of their identity. I could not care in the least what colour your skin is or where you come from. My only concern is the colour of your thinking and how you care for other people.

Does it mean I would go out and "protest" like the students are being urged to do? Absolutely not. 

The protest is supposedly about a far right political group, one currently (and alarmingly) popular in the pseudo-polling done by the so-called "polling" companies.  The protest is being organised by the leader of the national student union. That person is a member of a group called "Socialist Alliance". It is about as far left as it is possible to get without actually saying "old style Communist". It is inevitable the two will clash. 

Students, many of them secondary school students, are being "encouraged" to walk out of classrooms and attend the "rallies" being organised. All this can now be organised via social media.

We could not have done anything like this as teenagers. There was no social media. We would not even have considered doing it. The closest anyone came to anything like it were the few brave souls who skipped school for an afternoon.  The reason they did it was to see the plane carrying the Beatles land at the airport. There were not many of them who did it. I did not know anyone who did it,

We were kept firmly in school. Our Latin teacher had an alarm clock with her. It rang at the moment the plane was supposed to be landing.

I was asked last night what I would do now if students left to attend a protest. My answer was, "Nothing."  I would say nothing. I would instead have set a series of short tests which counted towards final marks in the subjects they missed. I would inform them of my intention. I would tell them the tests would not be repeated. They would tell me it was "not fair" and I would agree that life is "not fair".  I might suggest they write me a piece about the issues they were protesting about, why they felt so strongly about it and how protesting had helped. When they had done that then we could discuss it...actually discuss it.

Of course I would almost certainly be overruled in all of this by a school principal worried about the potential publicity, one who might even believe they should be protesting. My fellow teachers would be equally and possibly vehemently opposed to my proposed actions. I would perhaps even be accused of supporting the far right. After all if you do not support the far left you must surely support the far right? That there might be a much more reasonable and balanced position somewhere between them is not to be contemplated.

I am grateful I am not the school principal who will have to handle this. I also wonder how the student organising all this is doing in their studies.