Yesterday NSW teachers held a stop-work meeting.
The media report “a big turnout” of teachers with over 2000 schools being affected.
The NSW Teachers’ Federation listed grievances including the government’s proposed policies failing to guarantee class sizes, salaries etc. and that too much control is passing into the hands of local school principals.
No doubt persuasive cases can be made for both sides of the argument . . . .
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A separate issue is whether teachers should ever strike.
I suggest that they should not.
This was called a “meeting”. But it was a strike.
They could have held their meeting at 6am and then, after deciding their policies etc., grabbed a quick bite of breakfast and turned up to teach at 9am.
The point needs repeating again and again that if you are a teacher, you are teaching all the time.
If you go on strike, you are still teaching . . . .
. . . teaching students that the way to get what you want in life is to inconvenience others – to do “whatever it takes” to get them to knuckle under.

This week, the New Zealand newspapers have reported how girls are now more violent at NZ schools than boys.

They quote percentages from various surveys.

Boys have always traditionally had rough-and-tumble, outgoing, assertive natures.

After all, it was their job to grow up to defend their family from outside threats, to be the breadwinner and to make leadership decisions.

To keep their forcefulness socially constructive, males have needed the help of their womenfolk — ensuring that their masculinity doesn’t lead into disrespect for women, and especially not into sexual promiscuity, but into fulfilling their family privileges and responsibilities.

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The feminist movement is the worst enemy of boys and men.

The worst enemy of society.

Modern primary schools have too few male teachers.

Mixed-gender secondary schools are, for many boys, hostile places where girls do better.

Many young men find themselves so ill-prepared for coping in the outside world that they “boomerang” back to living with mum and dad again.

Their days spent playing video games, drinking alcohol and occasionally — in sheer frustration — committing violent antisocial acts.

Ever wonder where your taxes go?

Much goes on suppressing the Catholic religion.

Listen.

Christians must seek to ensure that young people know about God and his laws. That’s why we have Catholic schools.

Christians must seek to participate in practical and loving care of the poor, sick, dying – hence Catholic hospitals and welfare agencies.

But . . . .

. . . the taxes paid by Catholics are increasingly devoted to abolishing exactly those activities.

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The day comes when any homosexual failing to land a job that he/she sought in a Catholic school, hospital etc., will be able drag the employer endlessly through equal-opportunity tribunals, kangaroo courts etc.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, in a recent submission to an Attorney-General’s inquiry, called for “removal of religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws on the basis of sexuality – particularly in relation to employment and the provision of health and community services . . . .”

AFAO and numerous like-minded bodies receive taxpayer funding – your money — via the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA).

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Jesus Christ taught that God’s will regarding “sexuality” is that “a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”

Will the Church have to “correct” his words?

Perhaps to “a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife and/or same-sex partner . . . .”

Blasphemous?

Stupid?

There’s a real war on in culturesville.

Wars have casualties.

Victorian schoolteachers are threatening industrial action if not granted the pay rises they want.

They’ve been offered 7.5 percent increase over the next 3 years. But they want 10 percent.

Failing that, says Australian Education Union representative, Mary Bluett, they will consider going on strike.

The teachers must feel encouraged by the fact that the government they are trying to pressurise only a matter of days ago caved in to similar threats from the nursing profession.

M. Bluett says, “It (going on strike) is not something we like to do. We don’t like to leave our students . . . .”

If they don’t like it, why do it?

They must like it a little bit.

* * *

If the teachers’ demands are just . . . .

(Are they? If granted, they would make Victoria’s teachers the highest paid in Australia . . . .)

Anyway, even if the demands were just, aren’t there other ways to influence the government?

Could they not try non-cooperation with paper-work of some kind — or refuse some forms of non-teaching duties normally undertaken outside classroom hours?

If you are a teacher, you are teaching all the time.

If you go on strike, you are still teaching . . . .

. . . teaching students that the way to get what you want is to inconvenience others however much it takes to get them to knuckle under.

An expert panel wants Australian governments to spend an extra $5 billion a year on schools to help students “achieve their best”.

The important issue, it says, “is not who provides the resources for schooling, but that they are actually provided.”

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“Achieve their best”.

Best what?

Is the best educated person he who earns the most money?

Or who is the most skilled in state-of-the-art technologies?

Or the one who loves other people unselfishly?

If we don’t know what we’re trying to produce, we’ll never agree how best to produce it.

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“Resources for schooling”

What resources actually educate?

A computer on every desk? Is that what we mean by resourcing education?

At least as important, perhaps, might be to have teachers whose good lives inspire children to be self-disciplined and God-fearing(?)

If the greatest needs of children are spiritual, the most important changes needed are ones costing ZERO dollars . . . .

. . . but which cost a lot of self-sacrificing by teachers, parents — and by the students themselves.

Church schools should be uniquely examples of getting these priorities right.

Yesterday Prime Minister Gillard launched the “National Year of Reading”.

She says over 4 million adult Australians have insufficient reading skills to cope with work or study.

Hard to believe.

More importantly, do those who can read actually read?

And those who do read – what do they read?

Aren’t many modern books just television-style rubbish in printed format — junkfood equivalents — Harry Potter, the writings of Andy Griffiths, the 1000-page “fantasy” epics . . . .

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It takes more effort to read Shakespeare, Dickens etc.

But some writers, while more recent and easier, still enthrall your brain, e.g. J R R Tolkien, John Wyndham, John Rowan Wilson, Vladimir Volkoff, George Orwell, Margaret Frazer, Ivan Southall, Michael O’Brien — and many others.

Give such books to the young people you know.

For ideas, you could visit: www.portico.com.au

I rang Portico once for advice and spoke to a courteous person who helped a lot. (phone number 02 9290 3556)

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Might I also modestly suggest that you read “The REAL Mary MacKillop”? Details on this site. (If you can’t get PayPal to work, or if you want to pay less, phone 03 5022 1366),