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Home education can help prevent bullying : Comments
By Susan Wight, published 29/12/2005Susan Wight argues home education is an answer to bullying
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Posted by Sam A, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 5:21:52 PM
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and how it feels to be treated as an ‘amateur’, but of course, that would be discriminatory.
Yes, hundreds of thousands educate in the system, many because they don’t know there is an option. There are tens of thousands of home educating families Australia wide, so we’re not that much of a minority. In Queensland, conservative estimates are above 8,000, Victoria and NSW have similar figures, not to mention the other states and the families too shy to come forward and be counted for fear of government persecution. Of course there is more to education than just absorbing information. Nicola was just trying to say that we have everything we need to effectively educate available to us nowadays. Home educators use relevant information and techniques to help educate their children. They expose them to a world where education is a lifestyle, not a ‘have to’. I would like you to show me just one positive thing a child can learn at school that cannot also be learnt at home. You can’t just blame the parents for the bullies, much as sometimes they are the source of the issue, it’s school that allows free reign on the pursuit. Perhaps all parents should go through a course before enlisting their children in school entitled ‘A guide to the institutionalisation of your child’ with a preface; this is for your information so that you can suitably enforce rules and guidelines upon your child that have been determined by the state. Please ensure that at all times you ignore the right of your child to be individual and ensure that he/she is brought into line with our framework so he/she can live a middle class mediocre lifestyle as a well behaved adult office clerk. Oh, and make sure to remind them to check their civil rights and freedom of speech at the door.’ Sometimes evolution forces you to let go and realise that perhaps we’re beginning to outgrow the need for something that once was valuable - schools. Now is the time to embrace the family unit – it has been disjointed too long Posted by Sam A, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 5:23:54 PM
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Sajo and Sam A.,
Teachers have been a pretty mixed bag for decades. In the sixties and seventies, they were often the bullies themselves, as I mentioned above. Twenty odd years ago, grammmer and dictation were removed from the English curriculum. I suspect that few teachers under forty years could rapidly "parse" a sentence. Moreover, the TERs for entry into education degrees are often fairly low for a profession. I believe the Late Carl Sagan was also quite negative about his school teachers. A messed-up system with its fair share of messed-up teachers. Posted by Oliver, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 5:53:15 PM
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Sajo,
A few facts from the full version of Susan Wight’s article http://www.home-ed.vic.edu.au/Otherways/Bullying.htm in response to your posts: 1. Dr Rigby’s research revealed that 50% of Australian school children have experienced bullying and that one in six is bullied each week. 2. The Kidscape survey found that whilst physical bullying between girls up until twenty years ago generally ended at hair pulling, it has now risen to include being stabbed, kicked in the head, having stones thrown, broken bones, being deliberately knocked down by cyclists, and other injuries requiring hospitalisation. 3. One study showed that some schools had four or five times as much bullying as others. The worst schools were found to be those who claimed that there was no bullying in their schools. 4. Neil and Marr, in their book, Bullycide found that “The most common responses of schools to allegations of bullying are either to deny it or to take ineffective action which makes the bullying worse.” 5. School bullying policies often fail to solve the problem. The great majority of bullying is not reported to teachers or noticed by them. A Canadian study videotaped children in a schoolyard. The teachers were aware of only 17% of the bullying observed by the researchers. Of the incidents they did see, they only chose to intervene 23% of the time giving an overall intervention rate of 3.9%. 6. Parents are not always listened to when they make a plea for help: “All to often complaints of bullying put forward by pupils and parents are dismissed; assertions of looking out, investigation and action are rarely supported by evidence.” The evidence clearly refutes your beliefs that school bullying is infrequent, minor, usually dealt with well and happens at a much lower level than in years gone by. More facts tomorrow on the ability of 'unqualified'parents to adequately educate their childen Posted by Susie Blackmore, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 7:09:22 PM
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I think you can find an insight into why teachers look the other way when students cheat on tests etc., in John Holt’s writing. Teachers are under pressure too, as are principals and schools, they need to look like they are getting the results, and if this makes it necessary to dumb down the tests, or look the other way when students cheat, then so be it.
And as for bullying, we are hardly likely to see bullying disappear from our schools, while our governments use bullying tactics on the population. Posted by RAW, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 10:11:35 PM
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Hmmm . . . Lots of interesting ideas and discussion! There are a few issues I can't resist commenting on. The first is the issue of whether teacher training is necessary in order to be able to teach one's own children.
1. As a trained and qualified teacher who has taught at infant, primary, secondary and tertiary levels I can say with some certainty that the main advantage offered by my training and background was that it gave me confidence in facing the questions which arose during the years I was educating my children at home. I knew from experience that what my children were experiencing out of school was superior in every way to what their peers were getting in school. 2. A teaching degree helps to give one strategies for teaching many children at once, and addresses the multiple issues involved. For a parent with one's own children these issues are irrelevant. 3. Anyone can teach anything to anyone else on a one-to-one basis. You don't need a teaching qualification to do this. All it needs is for the student to want to know, and for the teacher to be willing to help guide the student toward knowledge. The teacher - or parent - by reason of superior wisdom and understanding, is the guide and facilitator who can lead the child even if the parent has no knowledge of the subject matter. They can seek answers together via literature, the web, or asking someone who does know. Posted by titaniak, Tuesday, 3 January 2006 10:46:01 PM
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I don’t think Nicola has a chip on her shoulder, but a valid opinion. Often parents are considered less ‘learned’ than the teachers; I have seen many cases where the teachers simply ‘humour’ the parents concerns or ignore them. Consider the family of the girl who was repeatedly sexually abused and I quote:
“A child I know well was severely and repeatedly sexually assaulted by students at her primary school… Her Mother, noticing changes in her behaviour, even repeatedly enquired with the teachers as to whether there might be an issue, but they just blamed it on her temperament and ignored it. The young girl eventually told her mother; medical and psychological investigation confirmed the assaults…the boys involved are in the public system without any precautions taken to prevent recurrence, as this would impinge on the boys’ liberty.”
My greatest concern was that the teachers blamed the issue on the child’s temperament and effectively belittled the Mothers concerns. If you read through the comments on this discussion board, you will find many such comments and gravely concerning examples of teachers thinking they know the children ‘better’. This is not to say that all do this, but there are many, and they are very clannish to protect one another. A very scary combination.
Education degrees? When I was at primary and secondary school I used to be able to ‘correct’ the teachers spelling, grammar and even factual mistakes. One of my ‘highly educated’ teachers had such bad English skills that she needed an editor for all her classwork. I am not talking about 20 or 30 years ago, I finished school less than 10 years ago. I have also seen a similar trend at my daughters school (from my first marriage) where teachers often show incorrect English, manners and even at times teach unsubstantiated facts. They are obviously very well ‘educated’. At each home-ed network group, I see a set of parents, just as well educated, if not better.
I agree with you that there should be more teachers with their own children, hence an insight into a parents mind