Shocking pupil violence report in government schools

As night follows day, weak discipline leads to misbehaviour

More than 65,000 Queensland state school students have been suspended for disruptive and violent behaviour over the past five years. The startling figure includes 13,838 students in Years 1 to 12 caught with "objects", including weapons, on school grounds. A total of 801 primary and secondary students have been expelled for bad behaviour and "physical misconduct involving objects". Of the state's 10 school regions, a total of 51,734 students were suspended in the five-year period for physical misconduct alone.

The figures come amid a series of violent school-related incidents and police concerns that assaults involving students are becoming more severe. The figures, from September 2002 to June 2007, were released under freedom of information laws to The Sunday Mail. The data is from the department's School Disciplinary Absence database, which was established in June 2002 and records disciplinary action that falls under the categories "physical misconduct" and "physical misconduct involving an object". The database does not contain the words "assault" or "weapon", and Education Queensland would not define "object".

A spokeswoman said physical misconduct, which "can include" poking, pushing and hitting students and staff, represented 30 per cent of all incidents and had remained stable over the past few years. She said the increase in the suspensions for physical misconduct showed schools were taking the issue seriously. There were 14,000 disciplinary absences out of about 480,000 students statewide....

Police, students and teachers told The Sunday Mail that while violence had not escalated, it was a continuing problem. Several police officers said students were using the internet and texting on their mobiles to arrange fights after-hours, or to upload footage of school violence. Two students from a south Brisbane high school said group bashings were becoming more popular.

Stationing police officers at schools had had an impact on reducing violence, officers said. "School-based officers have a better advantage to head off trouble before it starts and be better prepared. Because they are on the ground he can be hearing things," an officer said.

Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford said there was a level of offending behaviour in every school but he did not believe violence had increased significantly in state schools. The Queensland Teachers Union said that while violence was an ongoing issue, really serious incidents were isolated. "Schools are a reflection of society so I think as we see increasing evidence of it in society, we can expect to see the same thing in schools," union president Steve Ryan said. He added the union's concern was that the department supported schools when they took disciplinary action.

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Trees trump people

One balmy Sunday evening last month, when the Queen Victoria and QE2 cruise ships came to Sydney Harbour, Neutral Bay mother Phionna Tomaszewski gathered with friends in a park at Cremorne Point to watch. Her six-year-old daughter was climbing trees and swinging off branches with other children when an "irate, elderly woman" berated her for "damaging" a coral tree and threatened to call council rangers.

Tomaszewski found her daughter "bawling her eyes out ... My daughter (all 20-odd kilograms of her) ... was reduced to tears by a stranger when all she was doing was playing in a tree" she wrote in a letter last week to The Mosman Daily, where a lively feud has continued ever since. But in another letter to the paper, Margaret Watson, a friend of the elderly woman, defended her interference by saying the children had been "swinging on the branches, breaking one off ... After another branch broke, my friend approached and requested that they cease".

Tomaszewski, who said on Friday she would prefer not to comment further, denies branches were broken. She let fly with two letters to the paper: "Last week's storms would have done more damage to the gorgeous foliage of Cremorne Point than an entire army of kids playing in and around the tree. Climbing trees and having adventures outside is a key element of childhood physical and mental development."

Well, they used to be. But these days, it seems, trees are more important than people. To reprimand a six-year-old girl for swinging on the branch of a tree reflects more than simple intolerance towards children. It represents a new world view in which flora and fauna are more important than humans. In this era of climate alarmism, humans are seen as the source of all evil. Without humans, goes the addled thinking, there would be no carbon dioxide, and hence no global warming. Thus, when the Medical Journal Of Australia published a satirical letter from Perth obstetrician Barry Walters in its December issue proposing a carbon tax on babies, and carbon credits for sterilisation, it was reported as a serious news story. Such outlandish sentiments have become so acceptable that few people got the joke.

Environmentalists and animal rights activists openly spruik genuine anti-human philosophy, without fear of criticism. Briton Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and director of the world's largest animal rights group PETA, has been quoted as saying "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth" and that human life has no special meaning. "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals." Similarly, American environmentalist, and founder of Earth First! Dave Foreman, who equates economic growth with environmental vandalism, has been quoted saying: "Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."

The mainstreaming of this extremist view probably began with Australia's own philosopher Peter Singer, now Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, feted by The New York Times as the "greatest living philosopher" for his thesis that humans are no more precious than animals. To uphold the sanctity of human life, he says, on his website, is "speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse". He holds that abortion to nine months can be morally justified, as can the killing of a "defective infant" for up to 28 days after birth and euthanasia for the elderly and mentally disabled. He has suggested the animal kingdom be divided into "non-human persons", such as apes and dogs, and "human non-persons", such as old and infirm people.

Singer's ideas have taken root in subtle ways, only noticeable if you look for them over time. When North Sydney Mayor Genia McCaffery joined former prime minister Paul Keating in blasting the recent Superboat Grand Prix for disturbing the harbour, she said, "I wonder how many marine animals were either injured or killed during the event". Maybe none - but a man was.

When it comes to certain human desires, such as water views, footpaths without cracks, or children's Saturday sport, foliage has been taking precedence for some time in many Sydney councils. But now human health is being put at risk by councils with a sacred mission to return suburbia to the jungle. Killara Park, for instance, has become infested with disease-causing ticks since the council stopped mowing an "environmentally significant bushcare site". Locals are now refusing to walk their dogs there for fear of tick attack, The North Shore Times reported last week.

These are small stories along the same continuum. Over time they eat away at the idea of human exceptionalism and, ultimately, the sanctity of human life. This idea provides the moral underpinning for western civilisation, which is why it is under threat. The surprise is that defending it has virtually become a fringe activity, left to people labelled religious fundamentalists - or angry mothers.

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Leftist teachers block military cadet training in government school

An elite girls' school has been accused of sexual discrimination by its own students after banning its army cadet program. Angry MacRobertson Girls' School students who participated in the cadet program say they were aware several teachers were openly hostile to their involvement, with one student alleging the 30 cadets were compared to "Hitler Youth". MacRobertson Girls' High School principal Jane Garvey informed the cadets that the program would cease at the end of the year after a school council decision in November.

The girls allege that the ban is sexual discrimination as it prevents them from continuing in the cadet program with brother school, Melbourne High School. The girls, dressed in military attire, would participate in drills at Melbourne High and attend skills camps.

Year 12 student and cadet under officer Bridget Pianta said some teachers objected to girls taking part in any military activity. "You would think that with a school's ethos that girls can do anything that boys can that they would be encouraging it, especially something that encourages leadership in girls," she said. The highest ranked officer in the cadets, the regimental sergeant major, is a girl from the select-entry, single-sex government school. "It seems to me that it was politically sensitive and by closing the program they hoped it would go away," Ms Pianta said.

Ms Pianta, who helped initiate the program in 2005, said it was widely known that two teachers were overheard calling the cadets "Hitler's Youth". The Sunday Age has independently verified the comment from the student who heard the teachers speaking. After the student made a complaint, it was alleged that the male teacher "had not meant it". "Many of the teachers there are way left of Marxism and I am fine with that if they are honest. But don't try and come across all PC and say you accept others if you don't," the former student said.

In a letter, Ms Garvey told the girls that the program would not continue because it was disruptive and had been subject to administration problems. It was also difficult to find a teacher to supervise the program. A teacher has subsequently been found to run it for the rest of the year.

Melbourne High School principal Jeremy Ludowyke confirmed that his school's council had written to MacRob asking it to allow the year 10 to 12 girls already enrolled to complete their training. He said male and female students benefited enormously from the program, which has been running at Melbourne High for more than 100 years.

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Paddy's day



Australia has more residents of Irish extraction than any other country per capita - about 42 per cent of us have Irish ancestry, which explains our talent for beer drinking. So in the case of the death of St Patrick, to be marked this coming Monday, its strictly unAustralian to not down tools in favour of a room-temperature pint of stout.

If you celebrated the Year of The Rat in January, if you've ever suffered through Vince Sorrenti or knocked back too many cannolis on Norton St in April, or helped the Germans polish off some of their Krombacher in The Rocks during Ocktoberfest, surely you can find your way to an Irish pub on Monday.

Back in March of 1840, The Australian newspaper reported one of Sydney's first St Patrick's Day gatherings was held in the new Sydney court house. Around 400 of Sydney's elite Irish partied until just before dawn. From that point, Sydney's Irish population swelled, in no small part to that other great Irish talent, breeding.

A national peak of 228,000 immigrants at the turn of the century bred a whole new generation of Paddys who bred more little Keirans and Ryans and by 1979 when the Irish got their act together to create an organised St Patrick's Day parade, more than 50,000 Sydneysiders turned up for the craic and a green beer or 10.

This Sunday, while organisers mix Irish coffees and Guinness stalls amid Korean noodle and kebab stands in Hyde Park where the parade ends, it will be the same immense Irish pride being served to the people of Sydney as back in 1840. And believe me, they want you to join in. Its a grog-a-thon of mass proportions - a good solid binge - it's not much of a challenge really.

And the whole city is invited. You don't need an Irish passport or a Claddaugh ring to neck a breakfast beer before work on Monday and while you might not get a seat at the bar, youll get a warm Cead Maile Failte - a hundred thousand welcomes - in any Irish pub. Because everyone's Irish on St Patrick's Day. So work up a thirst and dig out your daggy greens or risk being pinched by a leprechaun. Just leave the bloody Paddy jokes at the door.

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