The appearance of the anxious parent is a manifestation of failures higher up. Judges seem to think that kiddie fiddling is no more serious than double parking the family car. Also, members of religious bodies have been protected because exposure would bring shame on the house of god.

Who can blame parents for being anxious. They get little or no help from our politicians. Here's a short story about how politicians face up to kiddie fiddling: a woman meets some bloke at a railway station and asks him to mind her two kids. He has them in his charge for about 2 weeks during which time the 3-year-old boy is handed around at paedophile parties. While being raped the 3YO faints. The rapist tries to revive him by applying 240 volts to his body. The boy dies. It transpires that the 6-year-old sister was raped also. The Premier gets a 'heads up' about the imminent release of a report on the matter. The portfolio minister is a young person who shows a lot of promise and could be a future premier so she is moved before the report is released. Questions about the horrible event are met by the new minister with: I've only just moved into this portfolio so I'm not familiar with this case. Questions to the previous minister are met with: I'm no longer in that portfolio.

And we're asked to vote for filth like that.

Bravo Jenny.
You are dead right.
If parents could just learn to love their children as they are (rather than as they'd like them to be) the whole bloody world would be a better place.
Unfortunately, today's parents are the most neurotically terrified ever and I can heartily understand why many teachers wish they'd stay out of the classroom, the place, after all, kids learn to be part of ( not better than) the rest of the world.

My parents were pretty screwed up in the 70s and so were many of the teachers. I found some of the teachers at Pittwater High School to be the most insensitive pieces of S I have found to date and this is 2006. The guilty ones were pompus asses and some are dead now so I should wave my flag in their honour I suppose.

Another cheap experiment of the government to fix the education system without too much funding.
I agree that not all teachers do their job properly such as catering for ALL children.

But to support a system in where children need to fit in with the system instead of the school adapt to the children’s needs will cause many problems. Been there, done that!

If teachers have to do their job with the 'test' in the back of their head, I would be worried that the more gifted children will not be paid the attention that they need to keep progressing at their own rate, and that teaching will just become a routine thing, much like running a business as cheap as possible and where the childrens’ results are the profits, while children who struggle with the material will be pushed too much just to make the school look better.

The whole system needs a new set-up; not some quick experimental fixes.

I agree that this ‘bright’ idea will only cause parents, teachers, and children to become more stressed and anxious.

There are better ways to ‘fix’ things.

Perhaps we should rate our ministers on performance; they might suddenly come up with some ideas to really fix things!

Surely there is a pill to stop that?!......

In fact, there is, on the morning show the other day (TCN 9 - HI eddie!!), there was a doctor saying that clinical trials have started on using MDMA to combat PTSD & Anxiety. Great, all we need to do now is get it to the kids. You know, when I was at school we were all warned about drug dealer's hanging round the school to push drugs on unsuspecting kids.

Once the little horrors get MDMA along with teh everpresent ritalin & dexamphetamines, they will be able to have rave parties. Sh*t they won't be able to read (most cant now) but they will learn to mix.

Christ, they'll be standing outside the school selling drugs to unsuspecting drug dealer's.

Inshallah

2 bob

It didn’t surprise me when I checked on the background of the writer of this article only to find that she was a primary school teacher by profession. The problem and attitudes that are causing these issues is a lack of respect.

Parents fear for their children because most of the time their concerns are dismissed, their complaints are ignored and their observations are ridiculed and somehow the schools always seem to turn the situation around and blame the student or parent. It seems that schools are not responsible for anything - http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/.

I am sick to death of those in the education system trying to present the parents as the ones that make up the complaints and are pushing their children or are over anxious. I have children that have struggled in the system and I know that they are not alone because I have heard many students talk about how 'some' teachers are racist and they bully and they also ignore bullying by students and even go so far as to actively support bullies by doing nothing to stop it and how inappropriate and boring the work often is and how boring, slow and irrelevant some subjects are, how bad some teachers teach and how mean some teachers have become. Problem is that nobody is asking or listening to the children.

Parents complain, because the students complain or because they see, sense and feel that something is wrong. Children are not robots they feel, they talk and they understand and school is a long time and has a significant impact in their day and life.

When teachers started treating children and parents with the respect that they deserve and start valuing them as individuals then maybe things might change.

If good teachers don’t like to be painted with the same brush as those that are bad teachers well, nor the do parents!

Catching up with a backlog, I chanced upon this, so can say it's disappointing to see only half a dozen responses to such a well-written article.
Was surprised at attitude of last contributor, Jolanda. The attack on the writer as "only" a teacher appeared personal and smacked of prejudice prior to investigation.
School teachers, like most other tertiary educated workers complete several years of intensive generalist work to acquaint themselves with thinking and communicating in general.also acheiving acheiving a reliable body of knowledge concerning the real world,undergraduates seek to acquaint themselves also with specific syllabus and teaching issues.
Jolanda, what is your (presumably profound) level of education, that you dismiss a sincere writer as "only" a teacher?
For my part I would deeply sympathise with educated people having to cope with the interference of ignorant and prejudiced neurotics and uncomprehending control-freaks, in the course of their daily attempts at inculcating the techniques of thinking, communication and learning, as well as basic general knowledge denied by the odd flat-earther, into their students.
I go along with the writer.
Make education and learning an enjoyable process.
Keep the rednecks out, unless they are prepared to be open-minded and to contribute to the process, rather than just sitting back indulging in arm-chair criticisms. These only allow for unconscious demonstrations of personal ignorance and prejudice(s).
Another comment of value found indicates nothing has changed since the seventies though, as to parental uptightness and authoritarianism and resultant, inevitable drop out-ism.
Nothing new under the sun?

I didnt' say that she was only a primary school teacher. I said "only to find that she was a primary school teacher". There is a difference. The only person that was personal and attacked was you.

If teachers want parents to respect them and their position then they should do the same.

In every position there is good and bad and if teachers insist on focusing on the bad and discrediting the the parents and trying to blame the parents for everything then they shouldn't be suprised when parents and students learn and follow suit.

Everybody knows the education system is underfunded and under-resourced and children are being failed. Even the teachers complain but when the child isn't learning or things go wrong, they blame the parents - go figure.