Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Look at this lot:
behaviour policy page 1
behaviour policy page 2
behaviour policy page 3
behaviour policy page 4
Make you weep, wouldn’t it?
Change the name to ‘Stalag South’.
There’s prisons with fewer rules, I’m sure.
Did you ever imagine anything like it? Was there anything like that when you went to school? When I went to school?
No.
This came to me unadorned in an envelope – no covering letter, no hello, goodbye, how you doing or whatever-you-like.
As impartial and impersonal as a vending machine.
It came as the result of an interview I had which I called for to express my dissatisfaction with the school.
At that interview my dissatisfactions were given short shrift and the final opinion was that my attitudes were so far away from prevailing attitudes and the attitude of the principal that it would be useless me talking to the principal.
How about that? Useless talking to him because you’ve got different ideas.
And then attention swerved monomaniacally onto the school’s disciplinary policy – daily notetaking of supposed faults and misdemeanors, accumulated ‘demerits’, escalating sanctions, culminating banishments involving peremptory commands to parents and carers……
Loving attention. Poring over the details. Proud display of these ‘books’ listing the evils of our children. Imperious ‘demonstration’ of the supposed ‘proof’ of the child’s wrong and the school’s ‘right’.
A farce.
Not one, not once, not for a minute, any suggestion of any cooperation together to discuss the child and his progress, his future, his past, his present, any problems he may have – up to and including those currently supposedly being demonstrated.
A clear enough demonstration in itself that the child’s problem was in fact the school, the authorities, the administration, the teachers.
Farcical.
All done with earnest straight face and real involvement in and belief in the reality and efficacy of these notebooks and their jottings and, in the background, this god-given ‘behaviour policy’ which any parent is to held remiss and culpable if they don’t at any time have it in the forefront of their minds.
Crap. Excuse me. My word for it all: Crap.
And this interview held in a room with an open door.
Two children I had in there. My two little children. The criminal offender and a smaller pre-school child.
I am discussing very sensitive, very personal matters. I’ve got two children liable to bolt through the door at any time.
Can we close the door?
No. Why not? ‘Because I am frightened of you.’ she said.
Contemplate that for character assassination.
Contemplate that.
Think of the bureaucratic cunning inherent in a ploy such as that.
All they have to do is tell their mates beforehand that they are going to have an interview with – what shall we say, what do you think they may have said – “I’m going to have an interview with a difficult customer”?
Possible.
What about “I’m going to have an interview with a dangerous man.” ?
How about “I’ll leave the door open because we don’t know what this man might do.” ?
Whatever they say the atmosphere is set.
And your character is stained.
And perhaps even your record is written.
You have dealings down the line with the Department of Education and the Minister calls for all available records of interactions with yourself and he sees that at least one interview was held with the Departmental Officer in fear of their safety and the door left open and officers forewarned………
It is lovely isn’t it?
In a primary school, for god’s sake.
They quite clearly can’t handle the children, are in fear of the children, are unconscious of the fact that they are people and their parents are people and that problems require a people solution.
And they can’t handle their parents.
They can’t handle truth, or sense or politeness.
All they can do hack out pages of rules and regulations and demand everyone abide by them – construct unproven histories of ‘transgression’ and demand whole families and whole lives be changed because of them – impersonally and unemotionally, inhumanly and automatically.
Yet when rules and regulations apply to them… what do they do?
They Ignore them.
See these links: Education Act
and note Part 5 of the Regulations:
Part 5—Dress codes
77—Dress code
(1) In this Part—
parents has the meaning ascribed by the Act and, in relation to a school, means the parents of students attending the school.
(2) The Minister may issue administrative instructions in relation to—
(a) dress codes to be adopted by schools; and
(b) the means by which school councils are to consult with parents and students in determining dress codes, and the Minister may, by further administrative instruction, vary or revoke such administrative instructions.
(3) The school council of a school may—
(a) in accordance with any administrative instructions issued under
subregulation (2)(a); and
(b) after consulting with parents and students of the school in accordance with any administrative instructions issued under subregulation (2)(b) and having regard to their views, determine a dress code for the school.
(4) The head teacher of a school must, on the adoption by the school of a dress code, inform the parents of each student of the school and, on the later enrolment of a student at the school, inform the parents of that student, in writing—
(a) of the dress code of the school; and
(b) of the parents’ right to request the exemption of the student from that dress code.
(5) The head teacher may, on being requested in writing by a parent of a student to exempt the student from the dress code of the school, so exempt the student.
(6) Subject to subregulation (5), the head teacher of a school must enforce the dress code of the school and may take appropriate disciplinary action in relation to wilful and persistent breach of that dress code but the dress code may not be enforced by the suspension, exclusion or expulsion of a student from the school or by otherwise precluding the student from participating in the educational programme of the school.
(7) Where this regulation provides for an act to be carried out by or in relation to the parents of a student, the regulation will, in relation to a student who is not less than 18 years of age, be taken to provide that the act is to be carried out by or in relation to that student.
See 3(b) and 4(b) and then 6.
My emphasis in bold up there at (a) and (b) Actually I probably should have put it ALL in bold. Because virtually all of it is very significant to parent and student and has implications for the relationship of both with the administration of the school in this instance.
Were you ever properly consulted about dress codes?
Bully for you if you were, for I wasn’t.
Were you ever properly informed as to your right to seek an exemption?
Bully for you if you were, for I wasn’t.
Are you aware that your child’s education must not suffer because of non-compliance with a dress code?
Because I am, and thank god for those good souls in South Australia that wrote it into the legislation.
But it takes a little consideration for what these humane, kindly, ‘educational’ authorities try to do, of course, is interpret this provision in their own way.
That is: anything but a class – or even a class on some occasions, I think – is taken as ‘not part of the education’.
So a child out of uniform can be excluded from anything that is not strictly speaking an educationally necessary or educationally defined ‘class’.
So they aren’t allowed on excursions, or even play activities, even out on the oval, or in the playground, or even to eat their meals with the other kids, I’ve heard, not sure if it applies to this school, though.
Now I’ve got something to say about that.
If my child is excluded from some activity on the grounds of this activity not being ‘educational’ then I don’t want my child at the school during the time of that activity.
And I, in fact, don’t want that activity as part of the school curriculum.
There are quite enough ways of educating a child in a fun manner, a sporting, outdoors, stimulating, environment and society embracing and involving manner to make it unnecessary to engage in such activities that are NOT part of the education.
You are simply wasting education time.
But that’s all part of a further discussion.
For the moment what’s this blog been about – this post?
About an unconscionable love of rules and regulations to the detriment of human educational feeling and a commensurate total failure to apply the same strictures to themselves.
In other words: they are hypocrites. Hypocrites without love or care for either the children or their parents. Hypocrites lost in their hypocrisy from love of their own bureaucratic selves.
A bloody shame.
I thought it was a good school. True.