Cailleach wrote:
> On Jul 23, 9:35 pm, "Stephanie" <h...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> I am also flummoxed with the number of children who come to school
>> not ready to learn.
>
> But I thought you homeschooled - why has this become an issue for you?
>
>> I mean things like having had an adequate breakfast with a lunchbox
>> of snack and lunch provided. I mean having gotten an adequate
>> night's sleep
>> at least mostof the time. I mean coming to school free of stress from
>> monstorously disfunctional families.
>
> It probably depends where you live. At my son's school nearly all the
> kids come to school properly cared for - only a tiny minority come
> from non-functioning families, and the school sup****t those kids as
> best they can. (Like giving a kid double swimming lessons when his
> family had never taken him to a pool).
>
> Other schools in the area have many more social problems. My son's
> head teacher had recently moved from a different school and said it
> was refre****ng not to have to deal with drunken parents first thing in
> the morning.
My children have been lucky enough to attend state schools with about the
most nurturing environments possible. Most of that is probably due to just
the demographics of the families the schools draw on but the school
teaching
environments have a huge influence, as well. The teachers are very
professional and passionate, for the most part.
The principal in my youngest son's school has told me she found the warm
atmosphere a great change from where she'd been last, even though that was
an even more middle-class area than ours. While we also have families in
poorer cir***stances coming from public housing the children are all
well-cared for and any social problems that come up are driven mainly from
the differing needs of the individual children and not from parental
neglect.
>> If a child is a discipline problem or a disruptive
>> influence, instead of going through this weird discipline system
>> that has no
>> teeth (if a student does not want to be there, then sticking them in
>> detention is no great deterrent), kick 'em OUT, particularly in the
>> later
>> grades.
>
> If it's bad for society to have those kids *in* school, it's a lot
> worse to have them *out* of school, hanging around bored and
> unsupervised. Maybe where you live the older ones would be at home
> harmlessly doing nothing, but where I live they're out making trouble.
> And getting in to trouble - excluding kids from school is the fastest
> way to get them into prison.
Very true.
>
>> I am trying to kick up some sort of different conversation around
>> education in this country.
>
> Which country was that again?
LOL
Is there anything exciting happening on *your* political scene in
November?
;)
This might interest you, Cailleach! We're exactly half way through the
school year here and unfortunately my seven year old's teacher was taken
ill
at the end of last tem and has had to leave the school for the time being.
My son's Year 2 class has a new teacher who has been working in England,
in
an inner city school, and after a whole week ;) of teaching back in Oz she
had this to say about the differences.
The first was that Australian teachers are in great demand in the UK
because
of the different training they have. She mentioned a greater reliance of
work sheets and rote learning and drilling there, for example. Just as an
aside and directed more towards the US readers, children aren't expected
to
be able to read when they start school at five or even six here, although
some do, of course. None of mine, did. I followed non-hothousing and
child-led practices with my pre-schoolers and not one of them led
themselves
to reading early, despite being surrounded by books, the alphabet and
early
literacy games and toys! Toypup, my kids would have been crushed by the
academic expectations you've mentioned your son's school had when he began
kindergarten.
The second was that even though my son's school really isn't large the
children have much better grounds to play in. Where she'd been there were
a
few patches of asphalt rather than trees, grass and several sets of
imaginative play equipment. I'm sure outlying and country areas would have
more facilities but I can't think of any state school in Australia that
would lack those basic outdoor amenities wherever it was sited and we do
live fairly close to the CBD of our city, ourselves, although it's
definitely in suburbia.
The last was that instead of the multicultural environment being a
blessing
she'd been disappointed to find racism being exhibited by really very
young
children and it was an increasingly severe problem in the school the older
the children became. I wouldn't like to swear to that not happening in
some
schools throughout the country, of course, but it would be very few in the
seven primary school grades of Prep -Year 6.
|
