Tim Blair

nice to see nemesis has been keeping himself busy.

zing!

Any wonder responsible parents have their children going to private schools?
They have then some possibility of seeing that their children are "educated" not "indoctrinated" or "attitudinised" by lame brain cretins posing as teachers.
But who are the evil bastards who give these cretins their jobs? More of the same no doubt spawned from the likes of Phat Phil and Margot.

I remember my young cousin saying her teacher was telling the kids in her class how bad it was that illegal immigrants were being kept out of Oz. My cousin was the only one with the courage to disagree, saying why should her parents' taxes have to pay for these people who bludge off welfare, and the teacher abused her. So much for tolerance.

I'm sure if you collected a bunch of letters from any year 4/5 class, whether public or private school, picked out the ten worst and then published a few choice lines from each of these, they would be filled with similarly poor spelling, and similarly immature and clumsily expressed opinions. These kids are still in primary school, relax. And Bolt did point out that some of them were polite and showed a genuine concern.

In fact, if you take the bottom 10% of posts to blog sites, you'd probably again get comparable quality.

Bolt says:
"Never mind the facts, learn these opinions -- these right and angry opinions ...."

Quite funny to read Andrew Bolt, surely one of journalism's top purveyors of "right" and "angry" opinions write a line like this.

I don't approve at all of a teacher leading their students towards a certain political opinion, but I do like a teacher who encourages the students to take an interest in current affairs. Maybe a better idea would have been a class debate?

To the teacher's credit, I think it is an achievement of sorts to get a bunch of ten-year-olds to passionately write a letter to a politician. Must be hard to get kids that age interested in writing at all.

Steve

Why weren't the letters at least corrected and the children made to rewrite them before they were bundled up and sent to the Minister?

The teacher almost certainly did not edit the letters so as to make them appear to be genuinely spontaneous. I can picture several alternative plans for lessons meant to prepare and guide the children.For example, a word list could be compiled and then used as the basis for a look-it-up-in-the-dictionary vocabulary exercise. Couple this with some work on racism and kids in detention, link Vanstone as the villain and you've got some subtly brainwashed kiddies.

You think it's an achievement to get 10-year-olds to call someone a racist pig?

Isn't "Imbasil" one of the bad guys in Tolkien?

No, it's the lead character in Fawlty Towers: "I'm Basil."

Oops - severe career limiting move for the teacher and principal involved. And the school can kiss goodbye to any funding increase next year. This is not a State school - a State teacher would not be so foolish as to let this kind of appalling abuse out. Notice the Mr Bolt is coy about naming the school. My tip is this is a northern suburbs multi-cultural school, probably a private muslim school.

"To the teacher's credit, I think it is an achievement of sorts to get a bunch of ten-year-olds to passionately write a letter to a politician. Must be hard to get kids that age interested in writing at all."

Steve - No offense, but anyone who think it's ANY kind of achievement to teach kids that it's fine to fire off misspelled letters full of invective to public officials does not deserve to be a teacher.

If the kids are having trouble with spelling, make sure they can spell before letters go out. If it was a class assignment - and it appears that it was - there's no reason to preserve "spontaneity". The only lesson the teacher conveyed here was that it's not only fine to call a high official a racist pig, it's fine if you seem illiterate while doing so.

It's NEVER too early to teach kids to write well, and it's a teacher's job to do that. This teacher should be ashamed of herself.

Gramsci lives, kinda like Dracula.

Word.

Teechers are stupid.

Do schoolkiddies these days ever learn about things like logic and evidence? Or is the forming and expression of opinions enough?

Vanstone should sue the little bastards for defamation. It would be a practical lesson for them in the rules and responsibilities of civil society. Also being mean to 10 year olds is fun!

Don't these kids have Spellcheck? What are they doing on their computers all day - just playing games?

The little dears are not supposed to 'form' opinins, Willmott - they are supposed to receive wisdom from on high and to regurgitate it without question. To form opinions requires independent thought, anathema to all Leftists and generally punishable by gulag and then death. Only the controllers may think.

if schoolkiddies were going to contribute to say, blog comments pages, sure all they need to be skilled in formulising, and expressing opinions. there is absolutely no requirement for logic or evidence.

to the letters referred to above, like any class, there will be well constructed writing, and there will be semi-literate garbage. the boltster, unsurprisingly, edits the writing to underline his point. that's his role. he ain't here for the good news y'all!

steve's point is a valid one - to engage children in communications is a commendable effort. next, if my training still means anything, would be analysis and criticism of what the kidlets wrote, and perhaps some constructive assistance in forming opinions based on evidence.

continue the process until the person is an uninhibited free thinker.

education is not a complex process.

chers,

chico.

Actually I'm reminded of the "two minutes' hate" in 1984. The enemy of the moment is paraded before the class and the children are encouraged to express their "strongly-felt opinions". This week Vanstone, next week ...

Reminds me of when Salmon Middle School in Seattle organized an anti-war rally and conducted it during school. The kids had made posters and one young girl proudly held hers for the camera. The viewer could see that it had once read NO WOR corrected to NO WAR as the A was darkened but with a bottom line giving the look of the Greek letter theta.

Good thing, that rally, else young lady might never had learned how to spell WAR. For as with the Canadian removal of the word gun from spelling lists Seattlites certainly removed the word war from their spelling curriculum long ago.

I must confess to moulding such a young mind. This Port Power supporter took his young nephew a couple of years ago to see his first AFL match. Playing Essendon there was a big roll up and the young fella was so agog at all the excitement, he hardly watched the footy. With all those Port supporters about, what could uncle do but tell him nearly everyone barracks for Port and would he like one of those nice scarves everyone's wearing? A dedicated convert now, out of reach of those vile Crows fanatics. Herr Goebbels would proud.

It seems unreasonable to bar illegal entrants because they don't know English if the natives are unable to write in English either. I'm sure the detainees could learn to spell a few simple insults and draw pigs or alternate farmyard animals if pigs are inappropriate for religious reasons.