'School Phobia' is an unfortunate complaint suffered by around 98.6% of children and is traditionally cured by a parental clip round the ear. Judge Ward has sent out a clear message to parents: ie just get a loon psychologist to diagnose your child as school phobic and let them play in the garden; as well as to Councils: ie don't bother trying to prosecute the parents of persistent truants despite successive governments urging you to do so.
Every time I decide that our country just can't get any crazier, I am instantly proved wrong.
7 comments:
Surely this is an excellent move - and entirely in keeping with the future social model for the UK. Think highly paid employment for a few and sod all for the rest. Within this model it makes a lot of sense to keep the hopeless away from education - there is no point anyway - they know it and so do we - so stop wasting money.
Such a policy might in fact improve motivation in schools - a decent education being the only route out of poverty. As for the social model for the UK in 20 years - take a look at Mumbai or Lagos today.
The world's benefits are being spread out more evenly - but only the clever will get any of them.
In the artice it says:
"He claimed staff made sarcastic remarks when he tried to attend classes, with one saying 'on a chair' when he asked where he should sit."
I thought that was what all teachers said when asked that question.
How is that discrimination then?
Considering there is no legal obligation in this country to send a child to a state school (only that the child be educated) I'd like to know how the case got as far as the courts.
I must take issue with your statement about 98.6% of kids being school phobic.
My teenager and his mates love going to school - he's loves the social aspects of hanging with his mates all day and gas-bagging until the cows come home.
The learning aspects are a completely different matter though... I'd agree that 98.6% are averse to sitting still with their mouth shut and having some knowledge injected into their brains.
I hope my daughters never see that report. Only the threat of mum going to prison (and taking my laundry and cooking skills with me) can get mine out of bed some days.
I wasn't any better at their age - but mum and dad still made me go.
Wonder if I could get myself certified as "work-phobic" and settle back for a life of ease?
Then you get the opposite like the parent who sent their kid to school with a broken arm in the first school I taught at. But then they're tougher opp north.
The bit that caught my eye in the newspaper report there was the phrase "The boy's father who is a school governor..."
It didn't say whether the school of which he was a governor was the one his son attended (or rather, failed to attend) but the cynic in me feels compelled to wonder if perhaps he might have been - shall we say "better informed" - than your average parent taken to court on similar charges?
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