Author: HEF Admin

  • The Changing Ways of Schooling

    Today Tonight on Channel 10 (This will only be up for a short time)

    http://au.todaytonight.yahoo.com then click on The Changing Ways of Schooling – video on the right hand side of the page.

    The basic gist of it being a comparison between 1968 and 2008. In 1968 a child caught shoplifting would be smacked and taken to the store to apologise and pay restitution, and would go on to become a productive member of society. In 2008 a child caught shoplifting would be smacked and taken to the store to apologise and pay restitution, and his parents
    would be arrested, the child placed in welfare, and would go on to become involved in crime.

  • Blog-Contra Celsum-Lies, Damned Lies and Bureaucrats

    http://jtcontracelsum.blogspot.com/2008/03/lies-damned-lies-and-bureaucrats.htmlLies, Damned Lies and Bureaucrats

    Cindy Kiro’s World of Half Truths and False Gods

    “Violence breeds violence”, has become Cindy Kiro’s new mantra as she seeks to defend the recent law banning smacking. She has at her fingertips, no doubt, countless examples and case studies of families where children were thrashed and abused when young. Then, in adulthood, those children subsequently went on to acts of violence, lawlessness, and degenerate behaviour, including violent abuse of their own children.

    Kiro is right. We didn’t need the sociological evidence or case studies to know that children grow up to walk in the footsteps of their parents. Parents who inflict uncontrolled, enraged violence on their children will produce children who are, either smashed in spirit and will as adults, or are equally lawless and violent as adults in their turn. But ironically this is also why Kiro is also completely wrong—or more to the point, naïve and simplistic.

    She is only doing what all bureaucrats are forced into when they administer laws and regulations that are unjust and immoral: focus on superficial externalities that can be controlled and measured and administered. Since governments cannot change hearts and minds they are reduced to play acting with mere externalities. But they do so at at our peril—since the long and ignoble history of such hubris is that the problems only become worse, much worse.

    As a result of Kiro’s half truths, now institutionalised into the New Zealand legal fabric where smacking a child for the purpose of training and correction has become a crime, expect a torrent of societal violence to pour down in the next thirty years. Of course by that time Kiro will be long forgotten, as will Helen Clark and Sue Bradford, except perhaps for their respective parts in a government to which historians are likely to attach the sobriquet of being the most corrupt and corruptible in New Zealand’s history.

    But they will have been replaced with other, equally deluded, Athenian idolaters. Socialists all. Humanists all. Destroyers all.

    Why am I so confident of this outcome—painful though it is to contemplate? Because Kiro is both right and wrong. She is right about the intergenerational connection with respect to violence (and the intergenerational connection of just about everything else—which is, of course, the way the Living God has made the world of men to operate and so it is and always will be the norm.) However, she is completely simplistic as to her definition of violence. Violence incorporates force of whatever kind—whether physical, verbal, emotional, or psychological.

    There are two kinds of family violence—and they are worlds apart. Kiro has failed to discern this, or has deliberately decided to ignore it. The first is where forcible correction is administered to children by parents who are training and correcting their children, for the children’s sake, so as to change their hearts, minds, and wills. The second is where parents are disciplining their children for their own (the parents’) sake, out of anger, frustration, and selfishness. As stated above, these two are worlds apart. The outward actions may appear the same, but they are as different as water to hydrochloric acid.

    In the case of the former—where discipline is for the sake of training the children—the rules and regulations of the home are clearly thought through and articulated to the children. Breaking the rules brings consistent juridical consequences, until the child is trained out of that behaviour. Discipline is never done in anger, annoyance, frustration, impatience, or temper. The voice is never raised. Regardless of the emotional stresses upon the parents, they too regard themselves as under discipline, and so control themselves to administer correction faithfully, fairly, and always for the sake of the child’s wellbeing. In this context discipline is never retributive. It is always and only corrective. When the behaviour changes, the discipline ceases—or moves on to other issues.

    In this case, violence does most certainly not breed violence. It breeds the very opposite. It produces peace, self-control, respect, and ultimately a productive member of the community.

    In the case of the latter, discipline is erratic, mercurial, tempestuous, filled with anger and frustration. One day the parent/adult might ignore a child’s actions because they are in a good mood. The next they explode and vent their wrath upon the little one for the self-same actions—because the child has done something to annoy them and they are in a bad, angry mood. In this context the violence is always retributive—it is a lawless act of retribution upon the child for the parent’s perception of hurt and damage to them by the child.

    People who are particularly uncontrolled and narcissistically self-absorbed will not stop from pouring our physical violence upon their children, regardless of what the law says. Moreover because blood is thicker than water, family groups will always move cover it up. The new law will have the unintended effect of driving the violence underground—so that its very existence in a family will have already placed that family into the orbit of the criminal underworld.

    In the case of the less physically violent, emasculated metrosexuals, family violence amongst self-absorbed parents is more likely to take the equally destructive form of parental temper tantrums, screaming, biting and caustic words, sarcasm, ridicule, and bitterness poured out upon the children. While the bruises may not be physical, the home environment will be likely toxic in the extreme, leading to the destruction of the child’s spirit. The consequence for the children will be growing up into one of two probable types: either the child will grow up mimicking the parents’ lawless, uncontrolled outbursts of selfish petulance returning evil for evil upon the heads of their parents and anyone else who crosses them. Or, beaten and cowed, they will grow up broken and brooding—damaged beyond repair.

    Either way, within two generations their line will have assumed a criminal mindset.

    Read more of this post here:

    http://jtcontracelsum.blogspot.com/2008/03/lies-damned-lies-and-bureaucrats.html

  • Scathing attacks on Family First

    http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz/Vol_66_Issue_No_3.html

    Scathing attacks on Family First
    by John McNeil

    Family First is bewildered by scathing attacks which have been mounted against it in the past week by two newspapers. The Press in Christchurch printed a vitriolic cartoon which portrayed the organisers of a petition against the anti-smacking legislation as really wanting the wording to read: “Should beating your horse with whips, pipes and timber studded with nails be legal in New Zealand?”

    A Sunday Star Times editorial claimed the referendum was a heavy club by “the religious extremists of Family First” to beat the government with. “It is as though the Brethren had found a cause that appealed to the mainstream. The political and social effects are likely to be large and wholly malign.” Family First’s national director, Bob McCoskrie, said he has no idea why the newspapers launched these attacks, although it appeared to have been inspired by full-page advertisements run by the organisation in the papers, pointing out the effects of the anti-smacking legislation.

    “You’d think when you have such a strong public reaction to a petition, they would say ‘the people have a concern here, and it sounds legitimate’. But they’re trying to paint the huge majority of Kiwis as ‘religious extremists’ and ‘motley fanatics’. “They’re saying – and Sue Bradford has said the same – that Family First is out of step with reality. I think it might be the opposite, considering that 275,000 people have now signed the petition. It seems they have an agenda that they don’t want the law revisited.”

    Mr McCoskrie said the Sunday Star Times editorial was factually incorrect on several counts. It claimed that Family First had an influence on the last election, when the organisation did not even exist then. The petitions have been launched by two individual people, Larry Baldock and Sheryl Savill, not Family First.

    “Family First can’t initiate any referendum. We’re just one of many organisations that got behind them,” he said. Mr McCoskrie said far from being right-wing extremists, Family First has had Labour Party stalwarts tell it they totally oppose the anti-smacking legislation. “In fact, they tried within the Labour Party to get it changed, but to no avail. There was a very strong drive in the Labour Party, particularly from the Pacific sector, for change. I think the drop in Labour support in the polls reflects that, and I think both parties desperately want the issue to go away.”

    MP Sue Bradford has suggested the full-page advertisements be monitored to see whether they contravene the new Electoral Finance Act. However, Mr McCoskrie said the advertisements did not come within the Act’s scope as they were simply an attack on bad legislation and the effect it is having, not promoting or denigrating any particular party.

  • Public school nurse sacked after son reports her for smacking his brother-UK

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/22/nsmack122.xml
    By Nick Britten

    Last Updated: 1:30am GMT 24/03/2008

     

     

     

     

     

    A senior nurse at a leading public school has been sacked after smacking her 10-year-old son at home.

     


    Susan Pope, 45, was investigated by the police who decided she had done nothing wrong after she hit the boy on his bottom.

    But the £25,000-a-year boarding school said that because social services remained involved in the case, it could damage the school’s reputation. It fired her for alleged gross misconduct.

    Mrs Pope, who has three children, is taking the school to an industrial tribunal claiming unfair dismissal.

    The row is likely to reopen the debate about smacking children.

    Mrs Pope said she hit her son on the bottom after he was abusive and repeatedly swore at her. Her elder son, who was 15, called the police. Mrs Pope and her husband, Folker, a chartered surveyor, were arrested and held in a cell for 32 hours.

    They were released without charge and officers contacted them to say no action would be taken. However, Worcestershire social services, called when the couple were arrested, placed the 10-year-old and his younger sister, who was eight at the time, on the child protection register.

    Malvern St James, one of the country’s leading girls’ boarding schools, said it could not risk damage to its reputation if word got out that the senior nurse’s children were on the register. Mrs Pope said: “I feel I have done absolutely nothing wrong and yet have seen my reputation, career and life shattered by this.

    “We are a typical middle-class family who earn well and used to enjoy three or four holidays a year. Now that has gone. Smacking is not against the law in this country and I am a firm believer of physical chastisement within reason. Children need boundaries.

    “My son was behaving badly. I warned him that if he swore at me again I would smack him. He did so I smacked him, over his trousers, on the bottom. My 15-year-old, who was going through a rebellious stage, telephoned the police, something he now regrets and he has since retracted his allegation. The police have decided I did nothing wrong, there is no risk to my children, but the school feel its reputation is more important.

    “I have been a practising nurse for 25 years with an unblemished career, a career which is now over. I have no idea why my children are still on the register. As far as I’m concerned social services jumped in too soon.”

    The incident happened in May last year. Mrs Pope was sacked in January. She has appealed against the decision and is awaiting the outcome. Social services have reviewed the case and decided that the children should stay on the register. A Worcestershire County Council spokesman said it could not comment. However, sources within the department indicated the Popes had not yet satisfied them that they had met the welfare criteria laid out when the children were placed on the register.

       

    “There are issues that still need to be sorted, it’s not simply about a child being smacked,” the source said.

    Malvern St James said it was “inappropriate” to comment on staff. In its letter to Mrs Pope dismissing her, it said that the role of senior nurse involved unsupervised contact with children when they are “particularly vulnerable” and the fact that her children are on the register “gives the school grounds to question whether you are suitable to hold the post”.

    It adds: “The school’s reputation could be severely damaged in the event that any parents or potential parents became aware that the children of the school’s senior nurse were on the child protection register.”

    Mrs Pope’s lawyer, Nick Turner, said he would be suing the police for alleged wrongful arrest and false imprisonment.

  • Rising youth crime in Kapiti Coast

    http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1649925

    Rising youth crime in Kapiti Coast

    Mar 20, 2008 11:24 AM

    Concerns about rising youth violence in families on the Kapiti Coast have prompted officials to start a new initiative to deal with the issue.

    Kapiti police have been called to a number of recent incidents involving young people, including one in which a 16-year-old punched a hole in the wall because he objected to his mother’s rules.

    Youth worker Kerry McGoldrick says she is noticing an increase in both verbal and physical abuse by teenagers towards family members. She says it is particularly distressing for parents and she is urging them to seek help.

    McGoldrick is working to develop a programme in local schools to help teens with anger issues.

  • Fielding Fieldays and Wellington Dragon Boat Races

    Hi everyone,

    Barbara and I will be at the fieldays tomorrow and Friday & Saturday. We will be joined by Stephen Jenkinsen on Saturday from Hawkes Bay. Depending on where we have the largest team, we might then head down to Wellington to help Gordon and Anne Copeland with collecting signatures at the Dragon Boat races.

    On Thursday evening we will be showing the Movie Amazing Grace at the Foxton Gospel Chapel in the Main Street starting at 5.45pm. $6 admission. We will have a shared meal after the movie and I will speak about where to with the petition from here and why The Kiwi Party needs to succeed, followed by a Q&A session.

    If you can help at Fieldays it would be appreciated, give me a call or email,

    Warm regards,

    Larry

    021864833

  • 19 March 2008 Blenheim Workshop

     

    19 March 2008 Blenheim Workshop with Craig and Barbara Smith
    Times and Venues:

    11:00-2:30pm Sports Stadium, Kinross St, Blenheim
    7:00-9:00pm Riversdale Community House, 131 Budge St, Blenheim
    Programme:
    11:00-12.30
    “Avoiding Burnout – Keeping Going When the Going Gets Tough”
    12:30-1:00pm lunch – bring your own cut lunch and drinks
    1.00-2:30pm
    “Choosing or Developing Your Own Curriculum”
    “Training Our Children’s minds”, “The Tools of Learning” and “Motivation”
    “The Vital Nature of Reading Aloud”

    7-9pm two sessions
    1. “Educating through Secondary and Preparing for Tertiary Education and the Workforce” with Craig Smith
    2. “Getting Started in Home Education” with Barbara Smith

    With plenty of time for questions during each session.

    Cost: $5.00 per person per session

    Contact: Reena (03 570 5143)

    email: tatts dot family at slingshot dot co dot nzhttp://www.hef.org.nz