WE MUST FIND THE GOODES IN ALL OF US
Sadly, we are suffering an epic drought across our great nation and it has nothing to do with the weather ...
PARENTS, we have a problem.
And that problem is that we don’t seem to realise we have become the problem.
I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but we are suffering through a severe decency drought. And what we desperately need is a climate change.
From the school room to the sports arena, our behaviour is becoming bereft of even the base level of respect we should show each other as fellow human beings.
Let’s start with the classroom. Gold Coast students are missing nearly 15,500 days of school every six months as principals try to curb the increasing violence against teachers.
If teachers are scared of student bullies, just imagine how bad the other kids must have it. It takes an almost sociopathic level of disrespect to turn the tirade of abuse towards the teacher, and I’m guessing these kids get a lot of practice by abusing their classmates.
But of course, they’re learning by example.
Last August, the Bulletin reported thug parents were pulling knives on Gold Coast principals and in one instance threatening to ram their “head into concrete”.
Principals and teachers said the abuse was occurring nearly every day and taking place in front of students as raging parents tried to defend their child’s bad behaviour.
“I was told that I’d have my head driven into the concrete,” a Gold Coast secondary school principal said. “That was said to me in my office, in front of the person’s child.”
An Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey by the Australian Catholic University released last year showed four in 10 principals were threatened with violence, while one in three had been physically attacked. Numbers in Queensland skyrocketed more than 20 per cent since 2011.
Why has rage become not just our go-to emotion but action?
Anyone who has watched or played sports has a story. Whether it’s parents brawling on the sidelines or hurling abuse at child players, the aggression is real.
Even at elite levels, the language used by some adult fans accompanied by minors is unbelievable. Subtract the foul words and it’s still obscene – it’s all about anger.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the case of Sydney Swans legend and former Australian of the Year Adam Goodes. As detailed in The Final Quarter documentary, the booing and abuse that Goodes faced over the last three seasons of his career eventually drove him into an early retirement.
How many parents joined that chorus of boos that forced a champion out of his game? How many children followed that racist lead?
And for those who still want to argue that the booing wasn’t racist, well, it seems a pretty strange coincidence that the jeering started 15 years into Goodes’ career, and yet immediately after he began to call out racist incidents. It’s the same reason he was the only indigenous player to be picked on – he was the only player publicly calling out racism.
As for those booing just because they never liked him, well, once it made national headlines that this was being viewed as a racial incident … why would you still want to be part of that chorus?
Anyone with a shred of decency would stop, no matter their personal feelings towards an individual player.
As parents, it’s our job to counsel kindness, to teach our children to think of others before themselves, to demonstrate the decent thing.
Any failure on my children’s behalf is a failure of mine.
Even at a simple sporting match.
Let’s go back to Goodes’ comments back in 2015 after he called out a 13-year-old girl for racist jeers during the
Swans match against Collingwood.
“I heard a 13-year-old girl call me an ape. It was shattering, when I saw it was a young girl I just thought really? How could that happen?” Goodes said.
“Racism has a face and last night it was a 13-year-old girl, but it’s not her fault. She’s 13, she’s still so innocent, I don’t put any blame on her. The person who needs the most support right now is the little girl.
“Unfortunately, it’s what she hears, it’s the environment she’s grown up in that’s made her think it’s OK to call people names.
“It was just a name calling that she was doing, but unfortunately it just cut me deep. It felt like I was in high school again being bullied.”
And that’s exactly the point. Bullies learn to bully by example, whether at home, in school or on the sports field.
The Final Quarter holds up a mirror to our behaviour as adults – and what we see is ugly. But we have to look. We have to see the problem our behaviour has created if we are going to change.
And, because I still believe in the decency of people, I believe we do want to change.
If only for our children’s sake.