Hothouse must tackle big issue

I ATTENDED the public forum of the Hothouse on Thursday night and I commend all 12 ideas posted by the contributors. I note there are very few full-time teachers among the contributing minds, which is a sticking point for me because the social capital and trends of our children have changed so drastically and continue to change in the years since most of the contributors either sat in or fronted a classroom.

I find it hard to go any further in accepting the advice about my profession by those outside of it until they address the elephant in the room with Tasmanian schooling. The majority of kids I have faced in a range of state schools from lower socio-economic suburbs simply do not want to be told what to do by anyone.

They lack respect for me, for the learning process and for their own futures. They find school a chore, see little value in the continuity of their attendance and sadly are into possibly a third generation of this attitude. They mock the very concept of learning and have mastered aggression — passive and aggressive — towards anyone in faux authority.

The 12 ideas brought out by the Hothouse are wonderful but are not new. Teachers have dreamt all this stuff up over the past three decades while we let the social standards of our kids slide, with any effective deterrents to poor behaviour slowly eroded from our repertoire.

Oddly, this was not a topic on offer in the Hothouse yet remains the issue which nobody seems to want to address. I know too many former colleagues from the state system who have been affected quite traumatically by altercations with students in the past five years to remain silent. Their stories remain hidden from view. Fix this and we can do anything in schools. That’s the one common thread I have found in my career. Peter Wilson Fentonbury