Dear Hasbeen,

I can only speak from my own experience.
I've found that an enlightened adult does not look
at children as his natural friends but sees them as
complex human beings, capable of hating, loving, and
feeling ambivalent.

Children are dependent on their
parents in so many ways. A parent should provide
children the opportunities to experience independence.
Get them interested in an activity they enjoy - like
a sport, or martial arts, or the scouts, and so on.
The more autonomy, the more self-dependence.

Parents have to take an interest in their children's lives
and give them a voice and a choice in matters
that affect their lifes.

Even in anger we shouldn't yield to sadism or insults.
Communication, like health, depends on acts of
prevention. An enlightened parent learns to omit messages
that demean a child. A parent that shows respect for the
child, treats them as a person, will get better long term
results. The parent who attacks and insults the child
won't. One educates; the other emasculates.

Lexi we are not talking about parents here, we are talking about academic results.

Where we have failed, or simply disinterested parents, sending unruly delinquent kids to school, every other kid suffers.

In this stupid feminists school system, where streaming is a dirty word, the kids who can profit from school are held back by this rabble. Teachers without the means of enforcing discipline in their class watch helplessly as the chances of the worth while kids fly out the window.

I am disappointed with you talking about sadism, & emasculating kids, this is emotive rubbish, & beneath you. A few cuts of a head masters cane never did anyone any harm, & helped many.

The way we can enforce discipline at home is not available to class teachers. Having them have to concentrate on the less suitable so called students is wrong, achieves nothing, & robs most.

I an not interested in the rabble, except to minimise the disruption they cause, & perhaps reduce the chance of them becoming career criminals, by enforcing some discipline before it is too late to save them, & I do mean save them.

If you can find the interest & time to put into turning a few rabble around, I commend you, but it is not the job of the average teacher, who has enough to do as it is.

Individual,

When I was at school, our primary school 'streamed' us. Those who were thought bright enough went on to Grammar school, and the others went to what was called secondary school where they learned more practical, mainly manual skills.
It's anyone's guess what percentage from both types of school became successful in the adult world. At that stage many other factors would determine their future. In my own family, our home environment must have also come into play as we went out into the world, as 3 out of 4 children followed in my father's footsteps, and became small business owners.

Runner,
You say loving parents, but in our society it is so often parent in the singular - usually the mother, and probably a working mother.

Hasbeen,
With such confusion parents have induced in their kid's lives, maybe we can forgive them to some extent for gravitating to gangs in place of the nuclear family they don't have for their support. It is not so unusual for children to share one mother, but they and their siblings to have different fathers, and in some scenarios no father at all. Then we have 'blended' families which can also prove problematical. Or the fathers who show up occasionally and indulge the kids, then hand them back to mother.

How about a school for parents, to teach them how to be responsible ones. That too would alleviate the burden on teachers, the police, the courts, and society in general.

Pied Piper,
Well said! Children do seem to come well down in the list of priorities, don't they? A few thousand Ron Clark's would also help.

Lexi,
Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can drum up a copy of that movie. Don't you think it would benefit some of the current crop of educators to watch it too? Wonder how much difference we would see if it became mandatory for all new teachers to watch this before they ever set foot in a classroom for the first time?

Worldwatcher you write

'Runner,
You say loving parents, but in our society it is so often parent in the singular - usually the mother, and probably a working mother. '

hence a large part of the problem. Where is the dad? drunk, on drugs, with someone else. Sure puts the kid at a great disadvantage and often in a rebellious state.

Hasbeen,

I remember just the sight of that cane made me really, really, not want to be on the receiving end.

I was lucky to have both parents so interested in my achievements, and the sight of the pride on their faces when I took home my school reports was enough reward for my efforts.

I also remember my 8th birthday. My parents presented me with a set of encyclopedias, and we explored them together. There was a reference to the Anasazi indians, and photos of their cliff dwellings. It became a dream of mine to actually go see them one day. Many years later I was able to show my parents the photos I had taken on my own visit there. They were as excited to see the photos I showed them as I had been all those years ago, and my father especially was so happy that he'd been the one who planted the dream in my head, along with so many others.

BTW, you may have heard of Timbertop school in Victoria. When discussing education with a friend, he mentioned that this was a school with a difference. Wanting to learn more I Googled it. Oh yes, it's different all right. No cell phones allowed, no t.v., tablets used for school work are locked away at night, and children in bed by 9.30. If they want heat they chop their own wood, they do their own chores, etc. etc. Sounds like a make or break school, and must be quite a shock to today's kids to be so deprived of their 'goodies', but would think overall the experience can only be to their benefit.