At 5:15pm today it is finally over!  Fifteen years of school finally comes to an end.  I will always regret putting my children anywhere near what I now consider to be one of the most damaging institutions in our society.  But at least it is finally over.

In those fifteen years we have had the “benefit” of seeing both sides of the fence: public and private.  At one time I was fiercely prejudiced against private schools until, by a bizarre set of circumstances, we found ourselves in the system.  I can now say that they both work equally well at what they are designed to do.  The public system successfully churns out students for the “factory floor” and the private schools successfully churn out the “managers” and “industry leaders”, depending on which stratosphere of private you originate from.  (I use all the terms loosely and symbolically.)  For the most part they are highly successful with all but a minority failing to get the message and complying with their assigned social function.

I am no longer fiercely anti-private school.  I am now fiercely ANTI- SCHOOL!  Why?  Because I have come to realise both systems are equally successful at one very important thing: soul-damage.  They both excel at producing the appropriate level of numbness necessary for individuals to “successfully” operate in and comply with the demands of our society.  The soul-damage is so pervasive and so complete we don’t even recognise it.

On the whole children enter Prep with enthusiasm and an insatiable drive to learn.   In those early years they’ll eagerly tell you they love school.  Somewhere around Grade 2 that starts to wane – although they can’t articulate it yet– the children begin to realise school is failing to satisfy their curiosity, insisting instead they learn what “experts” have deemed the appropriate curriculum. Enthusiasm is largely replaced by compliant (or reluctant) learners and remains so for the rest of their school lives.

In grade Two, while driving past the school one day, my son, Karl captured the sentiment perfectly when he exclaimed, “Mum, there’s the cage for kids!”  To date I have yet to hear a more appropriate or accurate description, “a cage for kids”. He was only seven years old but he realised on some rudimentary level that this was a place where kids are held captive against their will and powerless to even direct their own learning.  I realised then I had a thinker on my hands and I should have got him and his sister the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Instead I dutifully ignored my instincts and did the “right” thing.  And we, like many families paid the price.  I feel I have been robbed of fifteen years of family life.  Fifteen years of potential enjoyment was replaced in large by obligation.  It was not enough that their days were filled up with school but they brought it home with them.  Instead of us enjoying family life in the way we chose our time was high jacked by that most evil of inventions:  homework.    Every bloody evening was taken up with endless hours of helping, coaxing, nagging, tears and tantrums.  What purpose could it have served in forcing tired children to face endless assignments about things that didn’t interest them and would have no relevance to the rest of their lives? It effectively killed the joy of learning.  It’s no wonder both children and adults retreat to comforting numbness of TV, video games and Internet in avoidance. There is nothing more torturous to a child’s soul, or family life, than homework.

Periodically I would be the one having tantrums.  Ranting about a failing system so obviously incompetent that it couldn’t even teach the children what it deemed necessary within its allotted hours.   Ranting at the injustice of robbing children of their childhood, whilst claiming it is for their own good. 

There is also a crucial point in Year 9, when the children are that difficult age of transitioning from childhood to the cusp of adult reasoning, that we briefly concede and give them a token choice in their learning.  I suspect not so much out of benevolence but to placate the “problem” they pose at this age.  As children leave childhood, soul makes a one last desperate attempt to be heard as kids instinctively rebel against its decimation.  Rather than listen we throw them a bone and appease the beast with a “learning journey” or an “outward bound” adventure, before we reel them back into the serious business of structured learning in Year Ten.

The loss of joy in the early years and rebelliousness in Year Nine are both unheeded calls to address soul damage.  And it’s evident again as young adults leave school.  A recent study showed over ninety percent of students leave with no idea of what they want to do with their future.  This is such stark contrast to Steiner educated and home-schooled children with parents reporting that from a very early age their children have a clear sense of who they are and where they fit in the world.   Nothing could be more indicting than a system that successfully disconnects ninety-odd percent of individuals from their true selves.  Sadly most of us spend the rest of our lives scrambling to reconnect with what we have lost.

Fifteen years have passed and I realise that I have to a large degree failed to impart what I feel is important for my children to know.  I haven’t taught them how to recognise their quiet instinctual voices.  I haven’t taught them anything about soul and all that entails.  I haven’t taught them how to survive in a soulless world.   In the most part I failed to do so because we were so busy, and when we weren’t busy we were “busy” recovering from the onslaught of the system, too exhausted to do anything else.   I want those fifteen years back.  But it’s too late.  What is done is done.

The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Now it’s so easy to recognise the education system, despite its high-fluting rhetoric, fails abysmally to bring out the best in our children and nurture their individuality.  Just as importantly it fails to acknowledge the frail qualities that make us good and decent human beings.  Instead it encourages competition and “achievement.”  Praising and celebrating those that attain the highest of meaningless scores that then we falsely interpret as being indicative of their intelligence.  That’s what it all boils down to:  thirteen years of schooling reduced to a few exams and an ATAR score.  There was a discussion on a radio show recently about the stress children and their families endure during VCE.  One caller rang in and simply asked, “Why do we do this to our kids?”  Why indeed?  It is a criminal loss and abuse of human potential.

Somehow, by some miracle, a tiny minority of free thinkers and rebels manage to survive the education system.  Sometimes whole, more often damaged or broken.   My son managed to slip through the cracks and held tenaciously to his soul, stubbornly refusing to accept his position amongst the numb.  It came at a high personal cost.  One day I hope he’ll recover and thrive.  My daughter has taken a slightly different route.  She’ll no doubt be considered one of the successes.  But thankfully her scepticism of the system and its institutions is alive and healthy.  She’ll always choose to humour them with quiet contempt.  It could have been a more enjoyable journey and the outcome could have been better and somehow I’ll make peace with it.  At least I can take comfort in the pride I feel for both my children who weathered the experience with enough strength and wisdom to not be worn down into believing in the system.  Hopefully they can go on to make better choices for their own children.

It will be a quiet moment at 5:15pm this afternoon as Tara and I drive out the school gates for the last time.  I expect it will be an anticlimax of sorts after all the angst and stress of the past fifteen years.  Just a quiet drive when it deserves a fanfare and celebration.   Sports stars get crowds and parades but it should be our children who march down Burke Street as heroes to brass bands and ticker tape for the simple and brave act of surviving their schooling.  And a lone bugler should pay tribute to those who didn’t and those took their own lives in the process.  I’ll be thinking of all these children, past and future as I drive out the gates today.

Lesley Smyth, 21 November 2011

 We can watch the mother on the news grieve for her son with nothing more than the barest flicker of discomfort and casually turn the page when we encounter a picture of starving Africans in the newspaper.  The constant bombardment of injustice, suffering and death in our in entertainment and news media appears to have forced us, in desperate self-preservation, to keep our empathy under lock and key for fear it might tear us apart.

If our empathy were truly healthy and active the things we see and read each day would pierce our hearts with physical pain and render us sobbing in distress.  They don’t.  We just limp on half human, not even aware of what we have lost.

Occasionally it breaks through, unexpectedly, like it did today when I saw this:

“A black beast was standing in an Indonesian abattoir, wide-eyed and trembling having witnessed the cattle in front of him being brutally and painfully slaughtered, clearly knowing the awful fate he was to suffer.”

I haven’t been able to shake the horror of this scene from my consciousness.  

And this:

The suffering of that frail little child and thousands like him in the face of rampant greed is inconceivably callous, and heartbreaking.

I understand why most of us retreat to apathy, because the alternative is too bloody painful.

Somehow we need to find the courage to face the awfulness of these feelings and refuse to be complicit in this anymore.  We need to cling to the sentiment of Edmund Burke, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

God help you if you suffer from anxiety, are running late, have a flying phobia, or happen to belong to the Smyth family with our history of airport dramatics. The irony of course is psychopaths …do not have the same physiological reaction as normal people under generally perceived stressful situations. They can pass lie detector tests. They’ll pass this too. So the bomber will be waved on through while granny having an asthma attack will be manhandled off for interrogation.

Yet another of the War on Terror’s jokes.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/241583/homeland_security_develops_a_precrime_detecting_machine.html

His final words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow!”

It reminds me of the incredible privilege it is to share those moments with someone who is dying, as they begin to slip in and out of consciousness and catch a glimpse the journey that lies ahead.

“Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow.” So full of incredulity, wonder and promise…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html

Activists have fought so hard to retain access to homebirth, while the AMA pushes harder to have access limited. Unfortunately the medical lobby’s voice is the more powerful of the two and they have swayed our health minister in their favour. I find it quite ironic that it was a female Health minister who finally conceded and gave them what they’d lobbied for decades. Well done Nicola Roxon. Sadly I don’t get any sense that she even begins to understand how she has betrayed women.

Once again we find ourselves free to choose what has been chosen for us. Ah democracy in action. Don’t you just love it? At this stage I’m ready to go live in some fascist state somewhere. At least they are overt about the control of the population and don’t pretty it up with pat phrases about “improved access” and “increase in options” while they are systemically removing them.

Maitland women choosing to give birth at home will be forced to deliver their babies under a cloud of secrecy if government legislation is not changed.

It became illegal in July 2010 for a registered midwife to attend a home birth after a Senate committee recommended that all home birth midwives be insured.

Since then the number of private midwives attending births has dwindled from 200 in 2009 to just 90 in 2011.

Homebirth Australia is now calling on the federal government to ensure Australian women can continue to access the care of a registered midwife at home and not be abandoned by the government for their choice of maternity care.

Ashtonfield woman Lucy Smith, 27, gave birth to son Xavier at home in February 2010 under the care of the Belmont Birthing Centre.

She was adamant she did not want to give birth in hospital.

“I always knew I wanted to have a home birth and I really didn’t want to do it any other way,” Ms Smith said.

“The government really has no right in taking this choice away from women because this is our decision to make.

“If I had to choose between giving birth in hospital and delivering at home without a midwife then I would do it alone.”

Homebirth Australia spokesperson Michelle Meares said reforms to the maternity care system have meant many women will no longer have access to midwives.

“But many will still choose to birth at home,” Ms Meares said.“In the last two years, the impact of the maternity reforms has lead to a deterioration in options for women, greater risk for women and babies and a move from quality primary care to expensive secondary care.

“Australian women who make the safe legitimate choice to birth at home are asking – will I have to hide to give birth.”

This latest campaign coincides with Homebirth Awareness Week. Figures show home birth has increased by 14.9 per cent in Australia.

http://www.maitlandmercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/home-births-under-threat/2338603.aspx

South Australia has proposed controversial new legislation, in an unprecedented move to legalize forced medicine, civil libertarians say. Under the guise of public health, the South Australian Health Minister John Hill has introduced the South Australian Public Health Bill 2009 into state Parliament. It is feared the Bill will authorize a massively expanded new public health department — in addition to the already existing one — which will wield authoritarian powers that threaten to radically change current medical practice and leave wide spread human and civil rights violations in its wake.

The state has extensive public health statutes already in place allowing the health department wide powers in case of public health risks such as epidemics, but the new Bill harmonizes with the World Health Organizations’ International Health Regulations to which Australia is a signatory. The Bill introduces the new disease category of ‘controlled infectious diseases’, which allows authorities unprecedented powers over persons even suspected of having an infectious disease. The Bill’s explanatory paper states; [The Bill] Provides for a clear scheme for the management and control of persons with controlled infectious disease … [it] provides for a compulsory scheme of clinical examination, counseling, direction, treatment orders and detention or isolation orders.

This means health department authorities can forcibly test, examine, counsel, treat, detain, or isolate anyone suffering of any disease or anyone suspected of having a disease.

Incredibly, the Bill also claims powers over those with chronic non-infectious diseases. Clause 57 allows the health minister to declare non-infectious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, and vascular problems — a public health risk. Clause 58 allows the health department to set down a ‘code of practice’ which impose standardized medical treatment protocols for each condition, requiring doctors to prescribe only the official drugs and treatments approved by the government. The code of practice includes government control of health information given to the public. Those in the allied health industry fear the law could restrict or end independent sources of health information, complementary medicines, health product network marketing and a choice in doctors. Consumer groups fear the Bill has the power to end health choices while reducing doctors to prescribing standardized treatments. One watchdog group spokesman said he believed the Bill gave drug companies an open door to persuade health departments to mandate their products while stifling independent information.

Libertarian groups have expressed concern about the coercive nature of the Bill. Clause 59 deals with notifiable conditions. Currently, any person seeking treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, or a childhood disease such as measles or mumps, or a simple case of the flu must be reported to the health department. Clause 60 of the Public Health Bill, imposes $10,000 fines on doctors, pathologists and labs for failing to report a case of flu or any other notifiable disease within 3 days of even ‘forming a suspicion’ that a person has the disease. Under the new law, the health department has the power to request any confidential information about patients, which doctors must supply on threat of a hefty fine. A special clause protects doctors from any breach of patient confidentiality or ethical breaches in case patients complain about their medical information being passed on to various government departments. The new Bill ensures the public will not be able to access public health department information through the Freedom of Information Act 1991. Critics say this makes the health department entirely non-transparent and non-accountable to the public. The clause also expands the list of notifiable diseases to ‘notifiable micro-organisms’, meaning the minister can declare any disease-causing micro-organism a notifiable disease, including future, as yet unidentified new germs. Once the minister declares a micro-organism to be notifiable, Clause 64 allows the health department to seize vehicles or other belongings and impose quarantine on persons or entire regions.

 While many would regard these powers reasonable and necessary to contain serious plagues, critics claim that Clause 65 widens these powers into all other non-infectious conditions. The Bill’s explanatory paper states that under Clause 65: A disease or medical condition can be declared to be a controlled notifiable disease or medical condition by regulation. In the interests of public health in urgent circumstances, the Minister can declare a disease or medical condition a controlled notifiable disease…

 This means health department officials can force persons with conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, or cancer to undergo a medical examination and testing followed by forced treatments, and detention. Clause 70 gives the government power to force ‘counseling’ and ‘education’ or; other activities that help a person understand the implications of a controlled notifiable disease if a person has failed to participate in a relevant counseling activity despite being given a reasonable opportunity to do so’. Clause 71 gives the health department power to force persons, among other things to; reside at a certain place, to not visit specified places, to not associate with specified persons or classes of persons, to attend specified meetings and provide reasonably required information, to be under the supervision of a person nominated by the Chief Public Health Officer.

With already wide ranging control over all diseases and conditions, the Bill gives the health department additional power to automatically override all parental consent. At the same time, large populations can be controlled through Clauses 4-6 setting out requirements for ‘population monitoring’ and other ‘systemic measures’ requiring local councils to regularly report to the health department about persons alleged or even suspected of causing health risks. Once enacted, no one will be able to avoid the legislation – even when dead. Clause 78 permits the government to carry out any procedure or tests on dead people, despite any objections from the relatives.

The Bill has extra clout with its substantial fines ranging from $60,000 to $1 million and 10 years’ jail for those who do not comply with the tough new health measures.

Some have hailed the Bill as a welcome reform to public health. The South Australian health minister, John Hill writes in the Bill’s explanatory paper, ‘This Bill, if passed, will provide South Australia with forward looking legislation for public health that meets international standards. It will provide for systematic approaches to prevention and health promotion and stronger, more robust powers for protecting public health and for dealing with public health emergencies. It also enables South Australia to meet and respond to the public health challenges that will confront us in the 21st Century.’ Meanwhile, Australian Medical Association State President, Dr Andrew Lavender said he approved of the changes, claiming they were important to protect the public.

The only politician opposing the Bill so far has been opposition health spokesman Duncan McFetridge. ‘It’s bordering on nanny-state legislation,’ he said. ‘It’s understandable, but how far do we go?’

Since the Bill was introduced into the SA state Parliament, it has caused a furor among health care advocates who fear it could spell the end of health choices, undermine the public’s trust in doctors, and usher in the end of democracy in the State of South Australia.

Reference:

 http://www.health.sa.gov.au/pehs/publications/billexplainatorpaper-peh-sahealth-2009.pdf

Government wants right to detain sick people

Jill Pengelley, The Advertiser, November 20, 2009 12:01am

HEALTH authorities want the power to detain people for up to three months if they refuse testing or treatment for infectious diseases.

Under draft legislation proposed by the State Government, someone with swine flu, measles or meningococcal disease could be forcibly held, examined and treated.

It is one of several wide-ranging powers sought to protect the public.

The Public Health Bill also would, for the first time, give authorities the power to override parents who refused treatment for their children with infectious conditions.

Other diseases that could be controlled include AIDS, polio, rabies, salmonella and cholera.

The tougher enforcement powers would come with a substantial increase in fines – up from $60,000 to $1 million and 10 years’ jail – and relate to any serious risk caused to public health. SA Health public health director Kevin Buckett said the new legislation would give authorities wider powers to act more quickly.

“There’s nowhere on Earth that is more than 36 hours from anywhere else and where people go, bugs can go,” he said yesterday.

“We have to have legislation that can respond in that sort of time.

“The idea would be that we get them out of circulation, where they can’t infect other people.” Dr Buckett said there were many reasons people refused treatment, including mental health issues, language barriers and even malicious behaviour.

Non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, could also be declared, allowing the Government to introduce codes of practice for certain industries or the community. Opposition health spokesman Duncan McFetridge said he supported powers to protect the public from infectious diseases but feared parts of the Bill – to be debated next year – would allow the Government to control people with chronic conditions.

“It’s bordering on nanny-state legislation,” he said. “It’s understandable but how far do we go?”

Australian Medical Association state president Andrew Lavender said he welcomed most of the changes. as important to protect the public.

This is an assault on so many human rights fronts it leaves me reeling.  If you are similarly outraged you may want to visit Truth Movement Australia who have provided sample letters you can forward to parliamentarians.

(The image is from the front cover of a book called The Tyranny of Good Intentions:  How prosecutors and bureaucrats are trampling the Constitution in the name of justice by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton.  It’s American in content but is obviously just as relevant here in Australia.  More information.)

Police to have power to strip-search at random

Tom Reilly, The Sunday Age, November 29, 2009

 POLICE will soon have sweeping powers to search people at random, including strip-search, even if there is no reasonable suspicion those targeted have done anything wrong.

The ”stop and search” tactic is part of a law and order crackdown set to be passed by State Parliament, despite the Government conceding that the legislation breaches the Victorian Human Rights Charter.

Legal experts have labelled the proposed laws, which will enable officers to strip-search children and the disabled, as draconian and a knee-jerk reaction to the problem of drunken violence.

Under the legislation, police will also be given the right to move people on if they believe they may be going to cause a breach of the peace.

Police Minister Bob Cameron says the wide-ranging legislation was necessary to maintain social standards, and the search powers were aimed at preventing an explosion in knife-related violence. ”Police are detecting more young people with knives and when you look at the Western world, when you see an upsurge in knife culture, it can turn sharply and quickly,” Mr Cameron said.

”We’ve seen that happen in some cities in the United States and especially in London. In London, it just turned and there was an explosion of knife-related crime a few years ago.

”We are putting the laws in place and taking a pre-emptive strike; we just won’t tolerate a knife culture in Victoria.”

But Mr Cameron’s claims have been rejected by senior lawyers who believe the ”stop and search” powers will be misused and are likely to target minorities such as the homeless, Aborigines, the mentally ill and the young.

Melbourne barrister Michael Pearce, SC, president of Liberty Victoria, said the bill was undemocratic. ”It will clearly involve significant intrusions on ordinary civil liberties and human rights, such as the right to walk the streets and mind your own business,” he said.

Mr Cameron, who acknowledges areas of his legislation fall outside the Charter of Human Rights, said: ”People have a right to privacy, but they also have a right not to be stabbed … if random searches can bring about the prevention of stabbing, then it is totally correct for police to be able to do this.”

James Farrell, the principal lawyer at the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic, said Mr Cameron’s reasoning was spurious. ”Talking about London and America is just vague political posturing that leads to people feeling unsafe, when statistics show there’s no reason they should.”

The Government’s focus on knife attacks comes after a 9 per cent rise in robberies involving blades last year, though police figures show assaults using a knife fell 2 per cent from 2007-2008 levels. In London, despite Mr Cameron’s claims, police statistics show knife-related crime has fallen year on year since 2004.

The increased police powers are being introduced under the Summary Offences and Control of Weapons Acts Amendment Bill, which was passed in Victoria’s lower house last week and has the support of Labor, the Liberals and Nationals, almost guaranteeing it will become law before Christmas.

Under the bill anyone can be searched if they are in a designated area and any area can be designated if violence occurred there in the previous 12 months or police receive intelligence that it may become a trouble scene.

Big events such as the grand final or New Year’s Eve celebrations can also be targeted.

The Sunday Age believes police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland pushed for the new powers after he took up his post earlier this year. Mr Overland refused to be interviewed about the legislation while it remained before Parliament.

Proposed new powers

■ Police can search anybody in a ”designated area” even if officers do not have any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by that person.

■ Any area where there has been an incident of violence involving a weapon in the past year can be deemed a designated area; as can any place where police suspect there may be trouble; or any major event precinct.

■ There are no limits on the size of a designated area, although it can only last 12 hours.

■ A new offence of disorderly conduct has been created.

■ Police will get power to fine people for the offences of drunk and disorderly, disorderly conduct and for being drunk.

■ Officers can demand somebody ”move on” if they believe they may be going to commit a breach of the peace.