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School sent him home
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 27377" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Needabreak, your son's school sounds like a good place. There ARE schools out there who do the right thing by our kids. Unfortunately there are others who do not, but who instead use every niggling regulation that they can to make kids' and parents' lives a misery. Their aim is to persuade 'difficult' people to find an education somewhere else. </p><p></p><p>The trouble is, it's very hard to pin them down as doing the wrong thing. I attended a lecture on educating and raising adolescents and I mentioned the problems of schools who not only do nothing about bullies, but in fact seem to endorse bullying behaviour and also can be guilty of it themselves at staff level. Students do what they're told to do - report bullies - and get into trouble form staff for 'dobbing' (aka tattling).</p><p>The lecturer said that all schools now are having to fill in reports every year on the actual incidence of bullying in the school as well as what they are doing to minimise it. I told her that this school (and others like it) would simply insist that they don't have a problem any more with bullying, but crikey, do they have a problem with dobbers.</p><p></p><p>It's not only in how it's perceived but it's also in how the truth can be twisted to make life easier in the short-term for teachers like this who should have been retired long ago. We have no accountability that can be brought home. If we have a complaint and put it in writing, maybe complaining over someone's head to make sure we're heard, we find that the complaint has simply been referred back to the person we're complaining about. This person writes back, "There is no problem, it's all in the imagination of this person making the complaint," and the complaint is overruled. No proper investigation, no right of reply, no cross-reference with the many other complaints because no such files exist. We get told, "You're the first person who has complained about this" when we know we are not, but past complaints never get considered.</p><p></p><p>When it's this bad, you can't turn it into a school like your son's, needabreak. I wish we could. With a lot more fighting and an extremely resilient child who also doesn't age, maybe we could. But teachers know (and the system knows) that eventually, your child will 'age out' of that school and they will no longer have a problem with you. So everything they do is a play for time and a hope that you will give up and go away. And so often, it's what we end up doing because to stay and fight would damage our children and damage us, with no satisfactory outcome to even come close to making it worthwhile.</p><p></p><p>We need some sort of group advocacy to deal with this on a broad level, and to present (and lobby for) a simple, unified solution. My recommendation - for an independent review board (or person) whose main job is to resolve these conflicts between parents and schools, in an impartial way. The ultimate aim - to learn from negative experiences and put improvements in place to prevent recurrences. Focussing on blame and restitution won't work, but if we can focus on change for the better as the ultimate outcome, we're all winners, including the schools. But it will take ongoing concerted effort on a broad scale, often from people with no spare energy left.</p><p>I'm working on this now in our area. I need to nag my fellow lobbyists but maybe it's time for me to write another letter to my politic ians.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 27377, member: 1991"] Needabreak, your son's school sounds like a good place. There ARE schools out there who do the right thing by our kids. Unfortunately there are others who do not, but who instead use every niggling regulation that they can to make kids' and parents' lives a misery. Their aim is to persuade 'difficult' people to find an education somewhere else. The trouble is, it's very hard to pin them down as doing the wrong thing. I attended a lecture on educating and raising adolescents and I mentioned the problems of schools who not only do nothing about bullies, but in fact seem to endorse bullying behaviour and also can be guilty of it themselves at staff level. Students do what they're told to do - report bullies - and get into trouble form staff for 'dobbing' (aka tattling). The lecturer said that all schools now are having to fill in reports every year on the actual incidence of bullying in the school as well as what they are doing to minimise it. I told her that this school (and others like it) would simply insist that they don't have a problem any more with bullying, but crikey, do they have a problem with dobbers. It's not only in how it's perceived but it's also in how the truth can be twisted to make life easier in the short-term for teachers like this who should have been retired long ago. We have no accountability that can be brought home. If we have a complaint and put it in writing, maybe complaining over someone's head to make sure we're heard, we find that the complaint has simply been referred back to the person we're complaining about. This person writes back, "There is no problem, it's all in the imagination of this person making the complaint," and the complaint is overruled. No proper investigation, no right of reply, no cross-reference with the many other complaints because no such files exist. We get told, "You're the first person who has complained about this" when we know we are not, but past complaints never get considered. When it's this bad, you can't turn it into a school like your son's, needabreak. I wish we could. With a lot more fighting and an extremely resilient child who also doesn't age, maybe we could. But teachers know (and the system knows) that eventually, your child will 'age out' of that school and they will no longer have a problem with you. So everything they do is a play for time and a hope that you will give up and go away. And so often, it's what we end up doing because to stay and fight would damage our children and damage us, with no satisfactory outcome to even come close to making it worthwhile. We need some sort of group advocacy to deal with this on a broad level, and to present (and lobby for) a simple, unified solution. My recommendation - for an independent review board (or person) whose main job is to resolve these conflicts between parents and schools, in an impartial way. The ultimate aim - to learn from negative experiences and put improvements in place to prevent recurrences. Focussing on blame and restitution won't work, but if we can focus on change for the better as the ultimate outcome, we're all winners, including the schools. But it will take ongoing concerted effort on a broad scale, often from people with no spare energy left. I'm working on this now in our area. I need to nag my fellow lobbyists but maybe it's time for me to write another letter to my politic ians. Marg [/QUOTE]
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