I was deeply moved by dying teenager Shaun Wilson-Miller’s YouTube video. Filmed as a farewell to all his friends and a request that his father is taken care of, Shaun amazingly, talks positively about his life experiences and how his girlfriend Maddie has made him a very happy person. I commend Shaun for the message, which I feel will strike a chord with adults and children alike.
What I abhor is the vile, disgusting comments that are attached to this heartrending clip. They are crude, demeaning and completely unacceptable! YouTube has a responsibility to ensure that these sorts of comments are taken down and those writing them have their accounts banned! I am appalled that a dying child can be subjected to such bullying.
This YouTube clip presents the very best and worst of what life has to offer. It shows a child that refuses to play the victim, even when faced with the toughest and most dire of situations, and it demonstrates the most disgusting sections of society – those that hide behind false names and keyboards whilst taunting and degrading an innocent person.
Because of those awful people, poor Shaun has had to make another clip refuting their claims.
c. Free speech is not part of the modern day educational charter; and
d. You can be suspended nowadays for absolutely anything.
A Christian student suspended from a high school in Nova Scotia for sporting a T-shirt with the slogan “Life is wasted without Jesus” vows to wear it when he returns to class next week.
William Swinimer, who’s in Grade 12, was suspended from Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin in Lunenburg County for five days. He’s due to return to class on Monday.
The devout Christian says the T-shirt is an expression of his beliefs, and he won’t stop wearing it.
“I believe there are things that are bigger than me. And I think that I need to stand up for the rights of people in this country, and religious rights and freedom of speech,” he told CBC.
Officials with the South Shore Regional School Board plan to meet with Swinimer to hopefully reach a compromise.
Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, board superintendent, said some students and teachers found the T-shirt offensive.
“When one is able or others are able to interpret it as, ‘If you don’t share my belief then your life is wasted,’ that can be interpreted by some as being inappropriate,” she said.
So the school have just suspended him for 5 days for his horrendous crime (note sarcasm) and what is their first reaction on his return?
Officials with the South Shore Regional School Board plan to meet with Swinimer to hopefully reach a compromise.
Wow! Who gives a significant punishment and then seeks a compromise when that punishment has been shown up to be utterly useless? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? First you seek to compromise, then if nothing eventuates, you consider a punishment.
I don’t endorse the message of this boys’ t-shirt, but I fully stand up for his right to wear it. Free speech is a hallmark of a working democracy. Free speech entitles this child to wear his t-shirt, even if others feel a bit uncomfortable with the message. Sure, the Prinsipal can ask him to stop wearing it, but should not be able to force him.
We have got to stop getting tangled under the oppression of political correctness. Instead, we must leave suspensions for real behavioural offences and do everything in our powers to ensure that free speech and the other tenets of our democratic systems are alive and well in the schoolyard.
Thanks to the explosion of reality television shows we have a vast selection of horrendous parenting examples to choose from. Shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and The Real Housewives of New Jersey as well as Jon and Kate Plus 8 showcase styles of parenting that are not to be emulated.
These shows sicken me because they are intended to make deeply flawed parents feel better about their half-hearted approach to parenting by presenting them with examples of worst practice. It is not responsible for television networks to give parents the impression that as long as they resist spray tanning their toddler they are doing a satisfactory job of raising their kids.
The trials and tribulations of Octomom is a perfect example of gutter television appealing to parents who haven’t yet earned the right to judge. By focussing on the exploits of Octomom, we have denied parents what they should really be seeing on television – examples of good parenting. Adults, like kids, need to see positive rolemodels who can inspire them to make positive change, alter their priorities and help them make good, sensible and selfless life choices.
“Octomom” Nadya Suleman filed for bankruptcy this week, citing $1 million in debts to her landlord, her father, the water department, DirecTV and Whittier Christian School, where several of her 14 children are students.
In 2008, Suleman, 36, famously conceived octuplets through in-vitro fertilization (as she had done with her previous six children) by Dr Michael Kamrava, and became a national obsession. Since the birth, she has cut deals with media outlets and posed in tabloid photo spreads and promoted products and books that somehow never made it to market. In 2009 she turned down a $1 million offer to appear in an adult video for Vivid Entertainment and is currently relying on welfare, food stamps and Social Security disability payments to raise her 14 children, who are all under the age of 10.
Speaking of sound decision-making, in a reversal of her 2009 decision to pass on porn, Suleman told reporters on Monday night’s “Showbiz Tonight” that these days she’ll do just about anything for the benefit of her brood: “You know if the opportunity comes up, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m gonna eat my words,” she said. “Because all that matters is that I can take care of my family.”
Reality television was supposed to allow the viewer to experience the life of another. This can be a very useful device. It can help the average viewer relate to another person by allowing them to experience life in their shoes. Instead, reality television is content in providing us with the very worst society has to offer.
As a parent with a lot to learn, I am sick and tired of being bombarded with ‘polluted parenting’ on the small screen. Where are the shows that explore helpful advice by experienced parents who have overcome adversity and addressed major challenges?
Surely there is a place for a bit of balance in television scheduling?
When teaching maths, I put a large emphasis in imparting the skills through game play. It is amazing what you can teach with a dice, some counters and a pencil and paper! Kids love games. They love the competitiveness of them and the opportunity to socialise while the game is going on.
That’s why I am not surprised that video games have become more popular as a teaching tool. Up until now, video games have been seen as a distraction. It seems as thoug educators have had a change of heart and decided that if you can’t beat them, then join them.
VIDEO games could replace blackboards as parents and teachers increasingly turn to gaming to teach kids.
Seven of 10 Aussie parents see games as an educational tool, a Digital Australia report says.
The number of parents playing games with their children has risen to more than 78 per cent.
Schools and teachers are embracing games in the classroom, as well.
At Fitzroy North primary, gaming has been built into its curriculum in the past four years, from teaching maths with apps on a tablet to learning about ethics and governance with simulator games such as SimCity 4 and Civilization.
Teacher Kynan Robinson, who heads the school’s computer program and admits his son became interested in reading through Club Penguin, says children even get a chance to develop their own games.
“Gaming is engaging and it’s relevant to what kids are into,” Mr Robinson said.
“It’s much more stimulating than a blackboard and chalk.”
In the next three years the value of Australia’s video games industry is expected to top $2 billion.
I commend Deborah Dunham for her courageous piece on the rising rates of ADD and ADHD diagnosis. Ms, Durham refuses to pull punches, raising a view I have been quite vocal about – the dubious role of teachers in the diagnosis process. Deborah suggests that teachers may be taking the lazy approach instead of the responsible one. She also raises strong arguments about the lack of research about the long-term ramifications of taking Ritalin, the contribution of diet to a child’s mental state and the lack of engagement and stimulation in school.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible for doctors, teachers and parents to diagnose kids with anything other than Attention Deficit Disorder? According to a new study, the rate that kids are diagnosed continues to increase by 5.5% each year, but are there really that many more kids with ADD and ADHD? It seems like this has become a convenient “out” for many lazy teachers, doctors and parents who don’t know what to do with kids who don’t fit the “mold”.
The rates of ADHD diagnosis in the developed world increased annually by an average of 3% from 1997 to 2006 and 5.5% from 2003 to 2007 in the U.S. But researchers wanted to know–as did we–how accurate these diagnoses really are.
Led by a team of researchers at the University of Basel’s Katrin Bruchmueller, 473 child and adolescent psychotherapists and psychiatrists across Germany were surveyed on how they diagnose people with ADD or ADHD. In three out of the four cases, the described symptoms and circumstances did not fulfill ADHD diagnostic criteria. In fact, many mental health practitioners were found to base their decisions on unclear standards.
For example, male patients were more readily diagnosed when they displayed symptoms such as impulsiveness, motoric restlessness and lack of concentration–all things that can be perfectly normal when growing up. Boys were more likely to be diagnosed than girls, and on the same note, male doctors tended to diagnose ADHD more frequently than their female counterparts.
In short, what the researchers found what that ADHD is over-diagnosed because doctors rely too much on their intuition and not on a defined set of criteria.
All of this is troubling because it means that kids are the ones who are suffering as a result. Instead of taking the time to accurately diagnose them (if there is even anything at all wrong besides just being a “kid”), they are put on brain-altering drugs which is risky for anyone, especially someone who is still young and developing.
More than three million kids in the U.S. take drugs for their supposed difficulty focusing. In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of these. And while medications like Ritalin may help increase concentration in the short term, not enough is known about the long-term health consequences–although some say drugs like this can stunt a child’s growth, other speculate that they can cause heart problems and even sudden death.
But is it really possible that three million kids in our country really suffer from ADD or ADHD, or has this just become a catch-all diagnosis by lazy doctors, parents and teachers?
We know that an unhealthy diet, sugar, processed foods, stress and a lack of sleep and exercise can all contribute to someone’s mental state. So, it’s entirely possible that our society has become so unhealthy that we are the ones creating these problems in our kids. And it’s not always synthetic drugs that are the answer.
The other issue that could be a major factor here is that kids are not engaged and stimulated in school enough. Taking millions of kids who all have different learning styles and trying to force them to comply and fit into one method of learning does not work. No one can possibly be expected to sit at a tiny, uncomfortable desk for eight hours a day in a classroom with florescent lights and the blinds drawn on the windows. Yet, when a child doesn’t conform, they are thought to have ADD.
Perhaps instead of jumping to conclusions and forcing our kids to swallow mind-altering drugs in order to fit our ideals of how they should behave, all of us–parents, teachers and doctors–should take more time to fully evaluate the unique learning style and personality that each child has and then alter how we interact with them accordingly. That’s not to say that everyone is lazy (because they aren’t) and there aren’t some legitimate cases of ADD (because there certainly are), but research like this points to the fact that we need to take more time and better understand how to consistently diagnose this disorder.
Many parents don’t realise just how difficult it is for children to adjust to a change of school. School cultures can vary radically and the look and feel of a new school (not to mention the rules) can be completely different to what the child has experienced before.
Jason Ladcock from healthguidance.org has compiled a list of helpful tips for assisting children in managing the transition to a new school:
• Before the first day of school, make an appointment to meet with the school principal. Introduce your child to the principal and his new teacher. By doing this, you are helping the child feel comfortable because they feel like they already know someone in their new school on their first day.
• When the child isn’t present, talk to the teacher, and discuss your child’s strengths and weaknesses. This will prevent the child from being placed in classes that are too difficult or easy for them. Trying to keep up in a class that is too hard for your child can add extra stress for them at a time when they don’t need it. Being placed in a class that is too easy has its own problems. Your child may become bored and act out or just not fit in with the other children. Talking with the teacher and ensuring proper placement will ease the transition into a new classroom.
• Be positive. The parent’s attitude has more affect on the child than all the other factors put together. If you have a negative attitude about the move or show nervousness, it will affect your child. Be positive and talk about what a good experience it is to have the “opportunity” to move to a new city and school. Explain that it offers all sort new experiences that they will enjoy.
• Acknowledge your child’s feelings and let him express them. Be sure to tell your child that he can talk to you at any time about problems he is having at school or feelings that he is having. Knowing that you’re there for him will take a lot of stress away.
• Make the first day at school as smooth as possible. Prepare everything the night before – clothes, lunches, school supplies, etc. Rushing on the first day at his new school will make the child nervous before he ever enters the school.
• Let your child know that he is welcome to invite new friends home from school.
• Host an activity at your home for your child’s classroom. This is a great way for your child to get to know the other kids.
• Help your child join extracurricular activities at school. When your child has a common interest with other kids, it is easier to get to know them.
I hope these tips prove helpful. I would love to get your feedback about what has worked for you.
Well done Alex! Good on you for bypassing a useless system that tacitly allows cyberbullies to wreak havoc and for standing up for yourself. Your school should have protected you, but instead, reportedly hid behind the old “it happened off campus” excuse. I am sick to death of this excuse. Kids are taking their own lives because of cyberbullying. It takes a heartless school not to intervene when clear cases of cyberbullying come to light.
When the police and her school failed to act, it was great to see that Alex and her parents found a more effective avenue. They slapped the bullies with a lawsuit:
When a Georgia middle school student reported to police and school officials that she had been bullied on Facebook, they told her there was not much they could do because the harassment occurred off campus.
So the 14-year-old girl, Alex Boston, is using a somewhat novel strategy to fight back: She’s slapping her two classmates with a libel lawsuit.
As states consider or pass cyberbullying laws in reaction to high-profile cases around the country, attorneys and experts say many of the laws aren’t strong enough, and lawsuits such as this one are bound to become more commonplace.
“A lot of prosecutors just don’t have the energy to prosecute 13-year-olds for being mean,” said Parry Aftab, an attorney and child advocate who runs stopcyberbullying.org. “Parents are all feeling very frustrated, and they just don’t know what to do.”
Almost every state has a law or other policy prohibiting cyberbullying, but very few cover intimidation outside of school property.
Alex, who agreed to be identified to raise awareness about cyberbullying, remembers the mean glances and harsh words from students when she arrived at her suburban Atlanta middle school. She didn’t know why she was being badgered until she discovered the phoney Facebook page. It was her name and information, though her profile picture was doctored to make her face appear bloated.
The page suggested Alex smoked marijuana and spoke a made-up language called “Retardish.” It was also set up to appear that Alex had left obscene comments on other friends’ pages, made frequent sexual references and posted a racist video. The creators also are accused of posting derogatory messages about Alex.
“I was upset that my friends would turn on me like that,” she told The Associated Press. “I was crying. It was hard to go to school the next day.”
Alex learned of the phoney page a year ago and told her parents, who soon contacted administrators at Palmer Middle School and filed a report with Cobb County Police.
“At the time this report was taken in May 2011, we were not aware of any cyberbullying law on the books that would take her specific situation and apply it to Georgia law,” said Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce.
Police encouraged the Boston family to report the fake account to Facebook. Alex’s family said despite requests to Facebook to take the page down, the company did not do so. The website was taken down around the time the lawsuit was filed a week ago.
We keep on hearing about Facebook’s determination to stop bullying, and that they are vigilant when concerns are raised over cyberbullying. To refuse to delete this page (as has been alleged) is disgraceful. Only when the lawsuit was filed did they respond. What message does that send?
I hope this story puts some major stakeholders on notice. First there are the bullies who hide behind their computer screens as they attempt to dismantle a classmate’s self-esteem. Then there are the police who could at least advocate on behalf of the victim that Facebook take down the offensive material.
My strongest admonition goes to schools. Enough with the excuses! If you are not willing to get involved in serious cases of bullying, regardless of where the bullying takes place, you don’t deserve the privellege of looking after our children. Smarten up!
I’ve maintained all along that teachers found to be verbally abusing their students should be made accountable for their actions, regardless of whether the offence was captured without their knowledge. Even though I am of this opinion, I completely object to the secret filming of teachers by students.
Teachers hurled insults like “bastard,” ”tard,” ”damn dumb” and “a hippo in a ballerina suit.” A bus driver threatened to slap one child, while a bus monitor told another, “Shut up, you little dog.”
They were all special needs students, and their parents all learned about the verbal abuse the same way — by planting audio recorders on them before sending them off to school.
In cases around the country, suspicious parents have been taking advantage of convenient, inexpensive technology to tell them what children, because of their disabilities, are not able to express on their own. It’s a practice that can help expose abuses, but it comes with some dangers.
This week, a father in Cherry Hill, N.J., posted on YouTube clips of secretly recorded audio that caught one adult calling his autistic 10-year-old son “a bastard.” In less than three days, video got 1.2 million views, raising the prominence of the small movement. There have been at least nine similar cases across the U.S. since 2003.
“If a parent has any reason at all to suggest a child is being abused or mistreated, I strongly recommend that they do the same thing,” said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association.
But George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers and director of special education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., says that while the documented mistreatment of children has been disturbing, secret recordings are a bad idea. They could, he said, violate the privacy rights of other children.
“We have to be careful that we’re not sending our children in wired without knowing the legal issues,” Giuliani said.
Stuart Chaifetz, the Cherry Hill father, said he began getting reports earlier in the school year that his 10-year-old son, Akian, was being violent.
Hitting teachers and throwing chairs were out of character for the boy, who is in a class with four other autistic children and speaks but has serious difficulty expressing himself. Chaifetz said he talked to school officials and had his son meet with a behaviorist. There was no explanation for the way Akian was acting.
“I just knew I had to find out what was happening there,” he said. “My only option was to put a recorder there. I needed to hear what a normal day was like in there.”
On the recording, he heard his son being insulted — and crying at one point.
He shared the audio with school district officials. The superintendent said in a statement that “the individuals who are heard on the recording raising their voices and inappropriately addressing children no longer work in the district.”
Since taking the story public, Chaifetz, who has run unsuccessfully for the school board in Cherry Hill and once went on a hunger strike to protest special-education funding cuts, said he has received thousands of emails.
At least a few dozen of those he has had a chance to read have been from parents asking for advice about investigating alleged mistreatment of their children.
Mr. Chaifetz is clearly a loving father with the very best of intentions. Whilst I don’t advocate his methods, I understand that it comes from the frustration and shock of having his son labelled as a violent child. But the difference between Mr. Chaifetz and future copycat parents is that he underwent a long protracted process before going down this road. I fear that parents will be wiring their children in the first instance. It is also important to note that autistic children don’t have the same capacity to stand up for themselves and communicate verbal offences to their parents.
Teachers shouldn’t wire themselves to prove abuse on the part of students and vice versa. What we should be doing is working together instead of creating an us vs them mentality.
There used to be a standard rule for parents about supervising their childrens’ internet surfing – make sure you take the computer out of their bedroom and into the living room. No longer does this rule work. With the introduction of 3G and 4G technology, lap tops, smartphones and mobile gaming consoles which all connect to the internet, our children can be online without even using a computer.
An Ofcom study last year found that 91 per cent of children live in a household with internet access, but that only half of parents of five to 15-year-olds supervised their children’s internet use. A further three million children aged eight to 15 have a smartphone, according to a YouGov survey published in January.
Increasingly, there are fears about the content children are accessing, whether deliberately or by mistake, when they are unsupervised online.
Last week, a cross-party group of MPs warned that it was too easy for children to view pornography. They called for legislation to force internet providers to block access automatically to pornographic websites.
The potential for teenagers to outwit their parents is frequently used as an argument for network-level filtering. Its supporters argue that too many parents lack the technical know-how to secure their computers properly and too few will opt in to a filtering system that is not compulsory.
Set against that are free speech concerns: is it right that an internet provider decides which content is acceptable to be viewed and which should be banned? How do they decide what constitutes “adult” content – and what happens if they get it wrong?
Further, as Nicholas Lansman, of the Internet Service Providers Association, argues, such technology can give parents a false sense of security, leading to less active monitoring of what children are up to online. Filters can fail or be circumvented, and left to their own devices, teenagers will find a way to get what they want.
Technology can help but it can only go so far. Parents must set boundaries and discuss the risks with their children.
Tony Neate, chief executive of Get Safe Online, says: “It is very important to talk to your child about being safe online, taking them through the risks and what they mean. This includes not just your home PC, but anywhere where internet access is involved – including mobile phones and game consoles.
“Don’t be afraid to ask your own questions to get a sense of what they are getting up to online.”
As a classroom teacher, I see new parents taking guided tours of our school all the time. Nowadays parents find it particularly important to sign up to a school while their child is still a newborn. This means that schools are becoming inundated with requests from new parents for guided tours.
During these tours parents openly show an appreciation for the Smartboards that adorn the classrooms.
“So there’s a Smartboard in every single classroom?” they ask in amazement.
As impressive as Smartboards look, in itself they haven’t revolutionised teaching. The challengef or us is to get the technology to compliment our teaching rather than become the focus. Similarly, it is also essential that this technology doesn’t become a mere piece of decoration that manages to impress parents without actually being used for any real educational benefit:
A disruptive technology is one that radically alters an existing market – the iPod displacing the Walkman, for example, or tablets eating into sales of PCs. In the same way, new technologies have the potential to disrupt the education system, bringing about major changes in the way pupils learn and challenging the way schools and colleges are run.
… everyone seems to agree that, as exciting as new technologies are, they should not be seen as a panacea for all ills, or a short cut to more effective teaching. “We’ve seen a lot of whiteboards go into schools, and that’s good because you can have more interactive things on the screen,” says Mills. “But it doesn’t necessarily shift the paradigm of a teacher talking to kids. If done badly, all that investment can just reinforce a model of teaching that isn’t putting the tools in the hands of children.”
Teachers will need more support and resources to embrace the digital classroom idea. “When people spend so much money on the hardware and software, the advice would be you need to spend at least the same amount of money on staff training and development,” says Doug Belshaw, a researcher at JISC infoNet, which provides resources promoting good practice and innovation within the education sector, and co-kickstarter of the Purpos/ed Community Interest Company. “Otherwise you’re never going to get any effectiveness from it.”
Of course, many teachers already know the obvious: that new technologies have the potential to be a disruptive force of the good kind, breaking down barriers between schools and the wider world, the timetable and more flexible forms of learning, pupil ability and the requirements of the curriculum. They can empower children and better prepare them for life in our fast-paced online world. But we are yet to make the leap from pockets of innovation to a mainstream embrace of the digital classroom within our schools.
Topical Teaching 