Australian Politics
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Suicide of 10-year-old Aboriginal boy in the care of Aboriginal relatives described as 'unimaginable'
The "stolen generation" myth put about by Leftist historians means that social workers trying to help a neglected Aboriginal child are obliged to rehouse the child with other Aborigines, who are often as feckless as the neglectful families.
If the old custom of fostering the endangered child into a white family had been followed, the boy would almost certainly still be alive. Attention-seeking Leftist lies can kill
A suicide prevention advocate says a 10-year-old Indigenous boy who took his own life in Western Australia is the youngest child to have died by suicide in child protection on record.
The boy, who cannot be named, died on Saturday night while living with a relative while under the care of WA's Department of Communities.
Veteran advocate Gerry Georgatos said there were "high categorical risks" of suicide in child protection.
"One so young it should be unimaginable, particularly in care under the state," Mr Georgatos said. "He's the youngest recorded suicide in child protection custody in any form of out-of-home care."
The boy was found by his carer in the back room of the home.
The 10-year-old's parents had not seen him for eight months and had been working towards being reunited with him.
Mr Georgatos has been offering support to the boy's family in the wake of the tragedy. He said the family was "distressed" and "devastated". "The father described to me that he just collapsed in front of the police, the mother was distraught. They couldn't believe it," he said.
The boy has been in child protection custody for several years, according to Mr Georgatos.
"There are laws that prohibit a family from speaking out. And that is actually a tragedy in itself. Because the families want to speak, they want to say his name," Ms Krakouer said.
"He's this beautiful little boy, 10 years old." She said the "angelic-faced boy" was taken into state care in 2020.
"The father and the mother, they couldn't pay their rent. It is a poverty narrative across the country," Ms Krakouer said.
Ms Krakouer urged the Department of Child Protection to give custody of the parents' remaining children back to them.
"In terms of the mum and dad, they're beautiful, strong, solid people. They're kind," she said. "There is no reason for them not to have their children returned."
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Aussies ‘locked out’ of national parks to protect cultural heritage
A growing number of Australia’s most beautiful natural environments are being closed off to the public for opaque cultural heritage reasons, with one commentator labelling it a “crazy” trend that’s creating “bad vibes” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
In NSW, the four-year closure of Mount Warning in the Northern Rivers region’s Wollumbin National Park has been a long-simmering controversy.
The breathtaking mountain, which once attracted more than 100,000 people a year, was initially closed to the public amid Covid restrictions in 2020 and in 2021, the local Aboriginal owners requested the track be closed permanently.
The Wollumbin Aboriginal Place Management plan stated that the mountain was considered a “men’s site” and that the “sanctity” of Wollumbin Aboriginal Place “may also manifest physically”, making people sick or putting women in “physical danger”.
“For example, if women access areas that are restricted to men, women are in physical danger and likewise for men,” the plan stated.
The closure sparked protests as some people defied the ban to climb the peak. It was revealed earlier this year that the private security guards had been hired to the tune of $7000 per week to keep people away from the mountain.
NSW parliament is now preparing to debate whether Mount Warning should be reopened after a petition, sponsored by Libertarian MP John Ruddick, gained more than 10,000 signatures.
“The petitioners of New South Wales state that Mt Warning, which has been walked by visitors young and old for generations, has been closed to all but select Indigenous males by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, in violation of liberal democratic principles,” the petition said.
“The petitioners request that the House call upon the Minister for the Environment to reopen Mt Warning’s summit track so it can be enjoyed by all, regardless of race or gender.”
Mr Ruddick told 2GB’s Ben Fordham earlier this week that it was about time the issue was properly debated.
“Mount Warning is one of the biggest reasons people come to NSW,” he said. “Mount Warning is the most beautiful national park NSW has. Mount Warning is a warning to all of our other national parks. We’ve got to draw a line in the sand here.”
NSW Environment and Heritage Minister Penny Sharpe has indicated she no plans to reopen the mountain, however.
Speaking on his Friday program, Fordham said “if you think this is an isolated case, think again”, as he outlined several similar examples.
In 2019, climbing was banned on Uluru, ending a decades-old tradition for visitors to the Red Centre, in recognition of the rock’s cultural significance to the Anangu people.
Fordham argued that the while “most Australians accepted it” at the time, “it was just the thin edge of the wedge”.
“Then it was the Grampians in Victoria, many iconic rock climbing routes were closed to the public in 2020,” he said.
“The shutdown was allegedly to protect rock art, including some art that is invisible to the naked eye — let that sink in. Then they came after the Glass House Mountains in Queensland. Restrictions have been proposed on three summits in that area, including Mount Beerwah.”
And in South Australia’s Flinders Rangers, St Mary Peak, the highest point which “people have been climbing for decades” was also now closed.
“Now there are signs requesting visitors stay away from the summit,” Fordham said.
“But wait, there’s more. In Alice Springs, Mount Gillen has been shut, walking tracks have been closed. Are you starting to see what’s happening here? Australians are being locked out of more parts of their own country, and in many cases Indigenous people can’t agree on the reasons why.”
He added: “Make no mistake, we are damaging tourism with this, we’re punishing people who’ve done nothing wrong, and we’re essentially creating bad vibes between Indigenous communities and other communities. I reckon future generations will think we’re crazy.”
Last year, a section of rock at Mount Beerwah, considered a sacred Indigenous site to the Jinibara people, was defaced with a message reading “Jesus saves just ask him”.
Jinibara elder Kenny Murphy told The Guardian at the time that he believed the vandalism was “clearly payback” for efforts by traditional owners to stop people climbing the mountain.
“The mountain is very important, it’s like our St John’s Cathedral, it’s a special mountain to us,” he said.
“Why can’t we have that respected? It’s just bulls**t what they’ve done, this is a birthing site, it has a special meaning to us, but Jesus is clearly the only spiritual thing this person understands.”
He added, “They want to show that there isn’t anything significant to the mountain, they would’ve cried if it was their cathedral. They can’t just leave us alone, they’ve killed our way of life, killed all the animals, poisoned our waters, and now this. It’s a big insult to us.”
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Schools have been ordered to use this teaching method. Will staff comply?
This should be a non-issue. A good teacher will do both things: Get the kids thinking first then tell them what they need to know
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training.
On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching.
For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear.
Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students.
While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching.
Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students.
In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”.
“Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school.
Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables.
“It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their [multiplication] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said.
“There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising [times tables] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”
Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks.
While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately.
Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving.
In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority.
Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions.
The teaching style behind the state’s top-performing schools
“These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning.
NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the Herald that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive.
“It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said.
“Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.”
But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson.
“As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said.
“However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching.
“I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.”
The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities.
NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory.
“Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.”
The Herald asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
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Appalling official censorship
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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