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The Forum > Article Comments > Listening to our young people > Comments

Listening to our young people : Comments

By Michael Bernard, published 13/12/2007

It is difficult to eliminate the negative effects of young people growing up without, among other things, positive parental interest and support.

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What Crap,

Your job as an education institution should stay just that. These are not adults, they swing to extremes in terms of moods and interaction.

You can try to fix things all you want, there's simply not the time nor the resources to attempt these types of things.

Kids will never be happy, in the age where there is technology, choice and a myriad of opportunities like never before, we should not get away from what a school is meant to do. Teach kids fundamentals.

It annoys me that bleeding hearts want to help troubled kids emotionally, the end of the day kids dont want to be reminded when they are at school of their situation, and most children at that age 'dont know what they dont know' therefore they can adapt to most situations at home, the school 'helping' only makes things worse. Every time my principal told me how sorry he was for me and how hard i must have it, it made me feel 10 times worse.

I was one of the discussed kids who lacked adult role models, had a hard home life etc etc, school is not a place of emotional support, It is an institution for learning where just like in life if you work hard you can be successful. It is the first and sometimes only time in a persons life they may face these type of obstacles, this is why it is vitally important that they develop their own way of dealing with things, because school wont be there when your on your own, and no matter what you say it cannot be taught and everyone will not deal with things in the same way.

Any by the way, my background meant i had to do alot of 'surveys' too like this, and let me tell you we all used to tell fibs or exaggerate, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Teach kids about money management, about finances, about how to deal with others and communication, because they are the key problems facing this computer, mobile phone generation.
Posted by Realist, Thursday, 13 December 2007 9:35:09 AM
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Although a report and analysis such as this is welcome, it continues to surprise me that it takes such a long time for things that are so obvious to become apparent to educators.

Naturally, emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing are central to the lives of not only young, but all, people. But so too is the integration into their lives of the practice of democratic values, most especially freedom, responsibility, justice, fairness, equity and trust. They are also absent from their lives, along with human rights. Listening to the voices and needs and interests and aspirations of young people is rarely a part of education, although International Human Rights Law that Australia ratified stipulates that they have as much right to be heard and involved in decision making as anyone else. And so they should.

After years of neglecting its vital importance to the development of young people, is play (not contrived, directed or curriculaised) being recognised by the British Government. They're also introducing "restorative justice" to deal with youth crimes - yet our school was doing these things years ago.

It is this neglect of the patently obvious and necessary elements of life that causes people to reject mainstream education and its centralised controls, because it's so much experimentation, without being labelled as such.

Once politicians put aside their twisted takes on social justice, they might look around and see that the personal development of individuals is vital to their contribution and role in community, work and learning.

Narrow minded thinking of the Queensland Labor Government arbitrarily closed an independent school that believed that the needs, interests and personal wellbeing of students as individuals were far more important and relevant to their lives than academic achievement. Academic achievements follow from the state of a person's wellbeing. Yet their emotional intelligence, the responsibility they took for their preparation for their lives as effective adults, their contribution to the wider community's social and human capital led to Graduates succeeding in further study, and being better prepared for it in their fields of interest, in their own enterprises, and in their employment.
Posted by Derek@Booroobin, Thursday, 13 December 2007 10:37:46 AM
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Realist. Just because you feel you didn't need or want emotional and psychological support and understanding doesn't mean that it is the why things should be for everyone.

Maybe the problem was that there was too much talk and nothing actually being done!

The Education system does not care about children's emotional and psychological wellbeing. They only care about marks. This is wrong.

Education - Keeping them Honest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better
Posted by Jolanda, Thursday, 13 December 2007 12:59:55 PM
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I'm gonna concur with realist on this one.

Sure, there needs to be some assistance for children with additional needs, but honestly - we have a limited amount of resources for education, and all this politically correct emotional support stuff really should be left for parents to handle.

We keep palming off more and more responsibility to educators and the education system. Schools are there to teach, not be a parental crutch.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Thursday, 13 December 2007 1:15:07 PM
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On the contrary Yolanda,

I would have appreciated all the crap that the findings found probably at the time, but it would have done me worse to delve into private issues away from schooling that frankly was not the schools business as sometimes bringing things to the surface does not help like many would argue it would, even though they may have best interests at heart.

The absence actually did more for me than offering support. When your young, it is more kind to allow you to grow on your own with trials and tribulations than to shelter you and turn you away from your ability to handle your own emotional wellbeing, and the obstacles life throws at you in general.

I have seen my mates with all the support in the world, great parents, stability, no household worries and they end up plodding along in society with no real motivation to get anywhere, because they have had their needs catered for from the time they have been born.

Kids will end up worse off in life if we baby them. Sometimes a bit of pain or a bit of stress can be a good thing for a learning, developing, generally naive adolescent with everything in front of them. No matter how much money the government could throw at this it would still be ineffective anyway, it would send kids mixed messages and may cause family break ups and flow on effects.

These days kids get wrapped in cotton wool too much. They will end up an emotional wreck if they are offerred all the support in the world only to hit the real world and realise their is no shoulder to cry on out there.
Posted by Realist, Thursday, 13 December 2007 1:21:17 PM
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Realist. Fair enough if it wasn't the schools business but if you are at school, not happy and have behavioural or performance issues then it does become the schools business as it impacts on you and other students.

I feel sorry for young people today. There is such a negative attitude towards them.
Posted by Jolanda, Thursday, 13 December 2007 1:27:12 PM
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Realist begins with:
"What Crap."

Eventually continues with:
"Teach kids fundamentals."

and with:
"It annoys me that bleeding hearts want to help troubled kids emotionally....."

And finally ends with:
"Teach kids about ....how to deal with others and communication,...."

Does that tell you something "Realist"?
Posted by Ron H, Thursday, 13 December 2007 8:39:29 PM
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Even more difficult when the polticians and media colude to create a climate of "terror" and "fear", so they can go and plunder the Middle East. I'm glad I haven't been experiencing my 'formative' years during the last 6 years. Good grief, methinks the author looketh in the wrong direction!
Posted by K£vin, Thursday, 13 December 2007 9:36:09 PM
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I would think that teachers and schools can have either a positive or a negative affect on students, depending on what the teacher does and how the schools are being run.

This would be particularly the case for boys.

"We've set up project teams and one of them is the boys education project team, which is made up of interested teachers. They then work on an action plan and they set up their own key outcomes which is to basically increase teachers' awareness of the educational needs of boys, and then they work with them to develop the specific learning strategies, talk about the different types of methodologies, about much more hands-on, practical. Boys need that, technical. And then they're in the process of collecting and analysing the data on the achievement. And it's about teaching the boys explicitly, how to organise themselves, high order thinking skills, positive reinforcement, because boys need that. And there's a lot of affirmative action programs for boys that we are doing, like getting boys to run assemblies, and having a boys' magazine, lots of things like that."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2002/720116.htm

Unfortunately I think that this school is the rare exception rather than the norm.
Posted by HRS, Thursday, 13 December 2007 10:59:38 PM
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