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? 

So how do you meet your soulmate

these days?

I was thinking about this yesterday because of an unexpected visitor. This morning there is a "policy" being put forward by the present state government (which will be returned at the election next weekend) saying they will "ban" anyone convicted of domestic violence from "dating apps" for at least ten years. Apparently that will help to prevent at least some domestic violence because a third of victims meet their aggressors via a dating app.

Will it actually prevent anything like that? I rather doubt it. 

But my unexpected visitor was one of my nephews. He has just moved back to this state after a many years long stint in another state. His work is now based here and in yet another state. He will travel between the two on a regular basis. He is leaving behind his "girlfriend". I have not inquired about any of this. It is not my business. The "girlfriend" has just acquired a tiny kitten though and that has made me wonder.

My nephew already has two cats, both of them rescued from other people not caring for them. He is very much a "cat person" but I doubt he would be ready for a third cat and girlfriend to move in when he is settling in to a new and very demanding work role. The rest of us will just have to wait and see. 

But as I thought about this I also wondered at how my nephew had met this girl. He was in a role which meant he was working far more than a forty hour week. He was in a city where he had not grown up. He knew nobody apart from the mate he first stayed with on his arrival. So, how do you meet the girls? 

It seems you do meet them on a dating app these days. My generation met them at school and then at further education locations or out in the workforce or at sport. There were still youth clubs at church (and some of us still went to church.) We had often known one another for years before the first "date" as a couple rather than as a group. It was much the same for our parents' generation. The Senior Cat's Presbyterian Fellowship group was known as "the marriage bureau"! 

I met my late fiancé through a friend at university. It was the same for many of my friends at the time. We usually knew people at least a little before we agreed to go out together as just a couple. Now it seems people are warned to meet someone new in a public place "just in case". How much can you really know about someone when you meet them like that?

I wonder how well that proposed "ban" will work if this is really how people meet each other now. It says a great deal about the way in which how people entertain themselves has changed too. I suppose, apart from sport, my generation went to "the pictures" and the occasional concert on a Friday or Saturday night. They "hung out" in groups, perhaps with a record player and some "45s". Some of them indulged in a beer or two. Too many of them smoked and a very few tried "weed" or "acid" but it was not the problem it is now. There was still a bit of "let's do a theatre production" but it was growing less even while we were still largely entertaining ourselves. It was not as common as it was in the Senior Cat's generation but it was still there.

I know there must still be some of that around but it is not as common. Even if you do go out as a group on a Saturday night it is not the same sort of experience. It seems you head off to a venue which serves up alcohol, drugs and "live music". Someone else "entertains" you. It's different but is it better?

I wonder what will happen between my nephew and his girlfriend. Will the relationship survive physical separation - and yet another cat? 

Three of our Senators are claiming

racism is rife in our federal parliament. They are apparently so concerned about this they have come together to pen a letter of complaint.

One of the three is an immigrant from Afghanistan. Another is an immigrant from Pakistan. The third identifies as Aboriginal.

In Afghanistan the first would not even be able to leave the house unescorted by a male. Here she is free to wear a hijab in the chamber and does so. There are also some doubts about her eligibility to be a Senator here as she may not have fully renounced her citizenship of Afghanistan. No, it may not be entirely her own fault given the situation there but the matter has not been resolved in the manner it should have been resolved. It has certainly not been given the same attention others with problems relating to dual nationality have found it to be given.

The second would also find her life in Pakistan very different from her life here. She would certainly not be as free there as she is here. In the chamber she has been permitted to make a highly political statement in her manner of dress by wearing a keffiyeh.  

The third appears to be the only Aboriginal person in her family. Her parents do not claim to be Aboriginal. They merely think a distant ancestor "might have been"from the tribes from which the Senator claims to be descended. It has not prevented her from claiming a very full indigenous heritage and being bullied at school because she was "blak".

These three women are apparently under constant racial attack, so much so they feel the need to make a public issue of it. I, and no doubt many others, had no idea that "racism" was so widespread or so bad in this country. 

Yes, of course racism exists here. It exists in all groups where people have varied heritage. There will always be people who think less of someone because of who their parents or their grandparents or someone in their direct line of ancestry was or is now. The idea that it exists in our national parliament to the degree described by these three women surprises me and I doubt it. If it does then I suspect much of it is of their own making.   

The departure of the national security

expert Dennis Richardson from the Royal Commission into anti-semitism is a matter for alarm. It should not have happened.

He was originally appointed to run a different inquiry within the government. When the Royal Commission was set up he was moved to that instead. That is where the problems really began. 

He could have been and should have been as one of the Commissioners.  Instead we have just one Commissioner, the former High Court judge Virginia Bell.  

Yes, she is considered to be an experienced and highly respected judge. Yes, she knows far more law than I and most people will ever know. The problem is that she does not know, cannot know, about  national security and intelligence gathering in the way that Dennis Richardson knows. Quite possibly he knows more than anyone else in the country but he has resigned. He says he felt as if he was a "researcher, leading a team of researchers" and a "fifth wheel".

The problem with all this is not simply that the Royal Commission is losing his knowledge but that it will hamper the entire functioning of the Royal Commission. There are questions which need to be asked of those responsible for security issues and for intelligence gathering if the Royal Commission is to uncover the failures, the weaknesses and the influences on it. 

There will also be people appearing in front of it who will not be sure of what they are actually permitted to answer on national security grounds. Richardson's presence there would have been reassuring. They and Justice Bell could have referred to him, indeed would have needed to refer to him. There is information which will not go to the Royal Commission because of the terms of reference but it is possible that Dennis Richardson's presence there might still have helped. 

This is of course what the government was hoping for. Their apparent reluctance to hold a Royal Commission in the first place was carefully managed politics. The terms of reference are intended to prevent an investigation of the real issues of concern, particularly those in seats the government now holds. These are the things which do need to be investigated. It will be interesting to see how much pressure is now exerted on Richardson to return. I suspect the government is happy to see him gone. 

Cultural literacy or There are limits to my tolerance

for "multiculturalism". That has quite possibly been very evident of late but the idea that a young child can be accused of some sort of cultural insensitivity because they draw a picture of their mother or their father is absurd.

As I said here some little while ago I was "asked" not to drink water in front of a young Muslim boy recently. I was at the railway station. It was a hot day. Children are not expected to "fast" for Ramadan but he apparently was.  I didn't actually need to make a decision about whether to "offend" or not because the train came in.

But this is not a Muslim country. I do not have to cover my head at all times. I could eat pork if I wanted to eat pork. I don't eat pork but I could if I wanted to do so. I could own a dog. I am friends with Jews and Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists. I have a friend who plays cello in a symphony orchestra and have been to the concerts of that orchestra. I can write a letter to the editor and nine times out of ten it will be published. I recognise "free speech" has limits but it is there and will remain there if it is not abused. In the next two weeks I will vote in our state election because I have passed the age of twenty-one (now eighteen). 

There is a vast difference between my life and the life of women in not just Iran but other majority Muslim countries. At the same time I am being told I need to "accept", "be tolerant", "understand" and more when they wish to bring in restrictions on those things into this country. It may be that I do not need to abide by those things, although they would prefer me to do just that, but I do need to accept those things.

And now it seems that here, just as they trying elsewhere, I need to accept that children need to be "taught" that they cannot do what is deemed to be "offensive" to a belief system they have no part in. It seems we need to restrict their learning of our cultural literacy. Our cultural literacy is extraordinarily rich and diverse. It has taken in so much from everywhere and given back as well. All this apparently no longer matters. It matters more that others are not "offended".

Well, be offended. Be offended because failure to learn our cultural literacy and, with it, the capacity to understand the cultural literacies of others will lead to stagnation.  

No, it is not "safe"

and you will spend the rest of your lives looking over your shoulders. You will always be waiting for the tap on the shoulder and the "we know what you did" and "traitor" and more.

My days at teacher training college were mostly quiet. We did not go out and protest. We did not have much opportunity to do that. It is not that we were particularly hard working or that the course required long hours of us. (Looking back it was appallingly low level.) We were surrounded by people much the same as ourselves. Most of us had English, Scots, Irish, Greek, Italian, German, Dutch surnames (you get the picture I am sure). There were no hijabs or turbans in sight. 

University was different. I was in another country on the other side of the world. I mixed with students from Africa, from Asia, from the Middle East and the West Indies. It was suddenly and shockingly much more interesting.  It was still not that diverse in the sense we were all there studying aspects of education and psychology. There was still no "protesting" of any serious sort. I was the elected "student representative" who went to the staff meetings (and still wonder how I have not died of lung cancer from all the secondhand cigarette smoke). I went on to be more than that but was still largely unaware of something that was starting to come in.

It was at Law School where I lived in a hall of residence and tutored at the same time that I became aware of "issues" with the Asian and Middle Eastern students. At first I was naive enough to believe I was mistaken but it soon became obvious. Those students were being watched. They were being watched all the time. 

Yes, it was subtle I suppose. It was the apparently "casual" greetings and the apparently "casual" questions about results. Sometimes it would be outright questions about where someone had been or where they were going. Who had they been with? Why? What were they saying? What did you say?

I was confronted once by a male student demanding to know if a friend of mine removed her hijab inside the group house she lived in. There had been a male visitor, an elderly relative of another girl.  He would apparently have been "very distressed" to have this happen. Was I also supposed to cover my head? Yes apparently...and "dress modestly" in the presence of such elderly men. 

No, it is not a myth. There are students who are "spying" on other students. They are ensuring the "rules" are kept, that Ramadan is observed and students go to the prayer rooms. It does not happen to all of them but it happens to enough of them to add another layer of stress. Break the rules and, at best, you will find your career opportunities are limited on your return home. Your family, if they are not already the perpetrators, will suffer too.

So please do not think it will be easy for the Iranian girls who have decided to stay. They will know their families will suffer. They will be told they are "traitors" and that they are "selfish" and that they are disobeying what their religion demands of them. It is not going to be easy for them. They will be waiting for the rest of their lives.