WTF is happening to us?

[Pag]

Like FC and Felch said, I teach at the school involved in the brick incident, and I'm unsure how much (or whether) I should comment on it in this type of forum or not, but I will answer some questions.

First off, how many Male Teachers are there at the School concerned as apposed to how many Female Teachers are there? I would suggest that like various public schools there are very few male teachers there and that the staff including the administration are predominantly female and I think that a part of the solution is to correct the Gender imbalance in schools and have similar number of male and female staff.

There are three male classroom teachers (myself included). The School Counsellor is a male, one of the PE teachers is male and the Aboriginal Education Worker is male. The other 30-35 odd staff are female. I should also add that the size of the school requires a Principal and 2 Deputy Principals. We are now five weeks into the school year and one of the Deputy Principal positions still has not been filled by DECS.

Secondly questions have to be asked why specialist schools like Bowden Brompton are not being used to their full potential by the Education Department? Students that act up in Private Schools are usually suspended or expelled fairly quickly. The State Schools have this option as well and can relocated students that display violent behavior into Bowden Brompton, that is what it is there for, so that the kids that no doubt have many social problems can get the help that they need and so that the local school students can get a decent education without having to put up with this social nannying of students who should not be present in the classroom.

The school itself cannot relocate a child. If a child is nearing exclusion, the school presents the options (Beafield, Bowden Brompton, another nearby public school) to the family, and although the school can recommend the best option for the particular child, it is ultimately the family's choice. There are plenty of students who should be at a Bowden Brompton or a Beafield, however the parents refuse to send their child there. Once they are excluded, they simply move to another public school for ten weeks.

I really don't think I should say much else incase of any legal or professional backlash. I would very much like to vent some frustration and how I really feel about, not just this incident, but the system in general, but I will stop myself for the time being. If anyone has any queries or questions feel free to PM.

[A Mum]

I'm sure we all appreciate what kind of 'situation' you are in Pag -
Thankyou for sharing what you feel you could.

Thoughts with you, your school and the teacher involved in this horrible situation

[Ian]

Bowden Brompton

My cousin teaches there, she and the other staff there could never be accused of not deserving their pay packet.

[locky801]

Thanks Pag, great post and explanations as such

[bayman]

would charging the parents/guardian with any criminal activity be a deterrent ?

[FlyingHigh]

There are some interesting viewpoints in this thread, but to me, this is such a complex issue that goes further than just the parents.
How about the world we live in - the capitalist structure, the economic rationalists that see money as the only goal and downsizing and continuous lay-off of lower-level paying jobs, whilst those who are making these decisions are rewarded more for doing so. People are being marginalised and the gap between richer and poorer keeps growing. Why wouldn't these people be somewhat bitter against society and pass these attitiudes onto their kids - you could argue they shouldn't, but (and this is a generalisation) if they were smart or aware enough not to, they would be intellectually smarter and not in blue-collar jobs to begin with.
Similarly, this structure keeps pushing and pushing people, so those with jobs have quality time to spend with their kids - all about rushing and their self-importance of having to be somewhere at a certain time and bugger everything else.

Has technology helped or hindered society? For example dishwashers replacing a household chore that teaches responsiblity, and given kids more "idle" time?

In such issues as this thread, I wonder how us, America and Japan (where I believe school bullying is rife and there are huge parental pressures on kids to perform) compared to some of the more socialist countries? Do they have these problems?

Psyber - Have (m)any studies shown any links between behaviour and diet or chemical exposure (either in the general air or the home) and behaviour?

To me, as a society we reap what we sow -the focus on careers and money rather than people - and this is the consequences of the way society has progressed(?) over the last twenty or so years.

[Psyber]

Psyber - Have (m)any studies shown any links between behaviour and diet or chemical exposure (either in the general air or the home) and behaviour?

There have been a very large number of studies about this, and other causes of change in human behaviour, but the methodology has varied, and so have the results.
And there has been debate and conjecture about interpreting the results.

Here are some quickly found on line samples about the chemical exposure issue, but not everything gets on line:
http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/17/2/136
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/552359_5
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2 ... 70_eng.pdf
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/104166.php
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/2006110 ... l-exposure

Apart from the issue of toxic contaminants and their possible effects on the genes, at conception, during pregnancy, or during breast feeding, before we even get to eating, there are other issues too.

There was one study I read pointing to a medication used in the 1950s and 1960s to prevented miscarriages, having triggered a high rate of homosexuality in males saved from death by miscarriage by its use. It's a long time since I rad that but I recall there were challenges to its validity too.

There have also been studies about the effect of visual stimulation on brain development and behaviour that suggest that the constantly changing images of TV and computer screens may predispose the developing brain towards shorter attention spans and reduced capacity for long therm planning, particularly computer gaming, where capacity to switch your attention rapidly rather than focus on a single problem may be advantageous.

Then there are studies looking at the effects on increasing population and crowding in man and other animals.
One particular study I recall looked at rats in increasing population densities and suggested that Rape and Murder which were rare in normal rat populations in creased with crowding - fairly rapidly once a particular critical density point was reached. Unfortunately, I can't recall the details.

Then there is the contention that exposure to scenes of violence frequently, even if not in real life but in film and on TV, makes it seem more normal and acceptable, and that while the first exposed generation may have had it toned down by parental adverse comment, that mitigation would be reduced in the next generation.

One of the problems in complex issues like this is that there is a lot of room for challenge, and vested interests will push one interpretation of data or another for their own reasons, so that it takes a long time to establish a reliable conclusion - researchers split into camps and resist re-examination of the set they first embraced, much like in other complex issues like the causes of global climate change now.