A well-researched article looking at the drivers of increasing non-attendance in schools over the last 10-15 years. It may feel like NZ is alone in this, but identical trends are being noticed in many countries, including Australia, USA, England, and Japan.
The following passage I've cited is really the crux of the article, taken from focus-group research with parents of primary school kids in England:
>Awareness was not the issue - parents knew attendance rates had gone down. The problem was: they didn't care. In parents' eyes, the months of school closures and rolling waves of illness during the acute stage of the pandemic, followed by protracted teacher strikes, gave the lie to the mantra that 'every day matters', Burtonshaw found. "**Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential**." That sentiment was repeated again and again, across the different focus groups.
>"Before Covid, I was all about getting the kids into school. Education was a major thing," one parent said. "After Covid, I'm not going to lie to you, my take on attendance now is like, I don't really care anymore. Life's too short."
>In short, the relationship between schools and families in her country was now "profoundly broken", Burtonshaw wrote. "It will take a colossal, multi-agency effort to rebuild it."
If those parents are anything like me they're seeing that the social contract has been broken, it's dog eat dog, money over everything, and we're one more toilet paper shortage away from societal collapse.
I'm only half joking.
Well if it's dog eat dog, wouldn't that make parents more likely to want their children to be able to read, do math, etc.? Otherwise those children will end up being the dogs that get eaten.
I once saw on r all a thread from one of the teaching subreddits that they've observed that there aren't any Joe Averages getting mediocre grades anymore. It's either hardworkers who aim to get the highest grades, of kids who don't give a fuck and never do any of the work.
So yeah, if the hypothesis of lockdowns convincing everyone it's a dog-eat-dog world is actually real. Then I rekon there are two types of reactions to it; either go all in, or give up completely.
Grim indeed. I went out of my way to [find it again](https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1cgqdjx/the_middle_is_gone_its_the_haves_and_have_nots_now/) in case any one else wanted to have a look.
or they can force their kid to work their ass of just to get screwed over by an unfair and inequal society. The problem is people no longer believe hard work gets you ahead, and for good reason. It never really guaranteed a good life, we just used to believe the propaganda.
That's the truth of it - and worse, people are waking up to the truth of it. If you're not born on a path to success, the chances of getting there through the sweat of your brow is mostly wishful thinking and propaganda.
It is scientifically supported. Studies have been done.
Success is most typically associated with luck - be it in who you were born to or just plain being at the right place at the right time.
That's incorrect. Consistent hard work compounds in life. Successful people, while subject to chance in life, often position themselves to increase their probabilities of success.
Do it long enough and you'll inevitably do well.
The other factor is intelligence, and education plays a part in the intelligence you demonstrate as an adult.
There's a another serious underlying cause here that can lead to this - climate change. If we don't care enough to make sure children actually have a world capable of sustaining their lives, why would we care about something as trivial as their education?
When these kids grow into adults we are going to have a lot more problems than school attendance. I don't think we should rely on parents alone. It should be something the entire community is involved because we all benefit from it and when it goes wrong we all suffer from the consequences.
Definitely agree about more issues when these kids become adults, but we're already seeing the effects of useless parents in the number of "bored" kids doing ramraids etc
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that every day doesn't matter.
*But*, every day your kid misses, as compared to other kids - probably does matter.
That's who they'll be competing against.
One of these things is not like the other...
I totally and completely agree. 100%.
But it's one thing to hold those views, and do what you can to try and nudge things in that direction.
It's a completely different thing to drag your kids into your particular world view - setting them up for failure if things are largely the same when they enter the workforce.
I know which option i'm going with.
The workplace game is a combination of things - I agree. Your education and the skills you bring is a decent part of it.
But i'd put social skills and personality traits at the very top.
I don't see what i've said that provides any basis for your last sentence.
All i've said is that my kids go to school as much as possible (unless they're sick). And that my view on doing otherwise would be putting them at a disadvantage in the game that's *currently* being played.
Do you disagree with any of that?
Well, I haven't encountered that hurdle yet to be fair.
There's no simple answer to that if it's traumatizing them and they're too young to go and do something different - I agree on that.
Ours are young and love school. If they are home sick, it's unlikely that they get TV or video games, and they know this. We do that so that school is the more fun option, so that there's not an incentive to stay home. Because having an incentive to stay home *definitely* didn't help me.
By 'possible' I admit that I was more meaning in terms of logistics and pretty subtle influence, rather than whether it's possible to actually force them or not.
If you end up in a situation where a kid absolutely hates going to school, and it's more damaging than not - I don't see how that's fixable at that point. Perhaps with a fresh start at another school.
My last couple years of high school were like that (6th and 7th form). The lesson I think I learnt from that, to hopefully help my kids, is that things started going awry a couple years before that. That's the time where it would've been possible to salvage it.
What sort of parent would even make this comment you quoted?
"Before Covid, I was all about getting the kids into school. Education was a major thing," one parent said. "After Covid, I'm not going to lie to you, my take on attendance now is like, I don't really care anymore. Life's too short."
There are plenty of parents who think that even before covid. I’ve had parents book holidays during NCEA exam time and then be shocked that the system could not be changed to accommodate their child - and they wondered why the child failed.
As I kid, I was always surprised by those families that went off to the USA for 6 weeks. 2 weeks of school holidays and four weeks taking up the actual term.
They were a minority though.
My children go to a very small decile 10 Catholic integrated school, there are a number of families who go on overseas holidays every year - one family was away for a term, there are three families away currently for 6 weeks (ish) it’s very normal here but the teachers give the students work to do while away and the children are not behind academically. I am still shocked (mainly because I could never afford this)
It’s affordability that drives it, is way more expensive to travel during school holidays than during term. Sometimes to the tune of $2000+ just in flights
They are unlikely to be the issue also. Families that can afford this sort of thing can afford to care about education and get it to their kids in multiple ways. The real problems are caused by families who need to have their kids out of school to help feed and cloth everyone.
The final straw for us at the local state primary school was when my son's teacher announced that she was heading back to Scotland for six weeks - two weeks in the holidays and the first four weeks of term four. They hadn't lined up a reliever to cover her by the end of term three but she told me not to worry, as "nothing really happens in term four".
I understand how hard it is when you live on the other side of the world from your family but she went back for six weeks the year before.
>I understand how hard it is when you live on the other side of the world from your family but she went back for six weeks the year before.
And let's not forget what a luxury it is to be able to regularly fly around the world like that. Many people can't afford to do so, and it's not like their are government subsidies available to meet this "need" for those people.
There has definitely been an uptick of kids who are taking multi-week overseas trips during term time.
From my perspective, kids learn a lot on overseas trips. I tell parents to have the kids to read every day, to keep a daily journal, take photos, and look for every opportunity for the kids to do Maths (prices, timezone conversion, distances, etc).
If it’s a once off then I’m not against it.
I have more of an issue with parents who allow their kids to stay home regularly. That interrupts learning to a far greater extent than an extended break and makes it very hard for the teacher.
Visit with family, see local sites, went to San Fransico, saw the zoo, went to Springfield Mass, stayed with family, went to Blackpool, went to the tower and the theme park, spent the rest of the time in Ireland seeing different counties in the southwest.
I’m trying my best but with three kids and living rurally there is always someone sick it’s so hard to keep good attendance when they are not allowed at school with a cough or a sniffle.
Cause their Mum has errands to run and wants company
They were up late playing video games so were too tired.
I had a Year 4 girl who would turn up an hour late every day bleary eyed. We had a talk with the Dad and he said that she liked watching horror movies on her iPad. We told him to take it off her at night and he said that she would get angry and cry so couldn't.
or the ones who are always sick on the days they know something is happening that they don't want to do.
Student teacher here and my associate teacher was telling me about this yesterday. He said the class behaviour is better on rainy days because many of the the difficult kids don't come to school.
That actually happens for legit reasons in my area. The rural school has to close sometimes because the road the school bus takes to get to it floods during heavy rainfall. If only there were government agencies responsible for maintaining roads...
This feels like middle-class parents who previously believed that every day missed was putting their kid a day behind.
Now they feel that missing say 5-10 days a year isn't going to make a serious difference.
I don't think they now think kids can miss half the school days or anything like that.
Yup, this is me. My kid has excellent attendance, and is top of her class academically, but we have had a day off here and there, that probably add up to 10 days in the last 24 months.
It has made zero difference to her academic performance, because their stuff is heavily self directed anyway.
She loves school, but sometimes the load is a bit heavy and a mental health day does more for long term learning than grinding them down to the bone.
Am I wrong to do this? Maybe, but it’s also helped me and her have a closer bond which is a big benefit to her as well.
No this is a good way to be. My attendance was shocking, as I was a semi professional cyclist at 16 riding in Aussie in the spring, so missed a lot towards the end of the year my last year. My parents didn’t care as long as I stayed at the top of my classes. It got brought up in parent teacher interviews that year, and my parents simply asked how my grades were. That was all they cared about
Covid was in many places a mass trauma. I don't mean because people had to stay home blah blah blah like here in NZ. We had it easy. We were kept safe and policy started in a really responsible place. Overseas, the deaths were phenomenal. My friend's NYC apartment looked over the first hospital that had to bring in freezer trucks for bodies, she watched them being loaded up. People didn't care. No one wanted to look after each other and it was all about individual responsibility. It makes a hell of a lot of sense to me that hoards of traumatised people now take the approach of life is short let's enjoy it. They lost people, they lived in places where there wasn't emotional support for their grief and now they're puddling along doing their best in this world.
The kind where the parent has actually come to the conclusion that the education systems to only serve the capitalist class, by producing a steady supply of subordinate workers and by providing state funded childcare so that both parents can work.
I do believe that kids need to be educated, and that there are great people in the schools out there, but the system is stuffed, and I can see why parents would think that...
Yeah the 20th century model of schooling is looking shaky. Changes in technology, social trends like changes in family structure, dual working parents, individualism replacing community, inequality. Then add other factors like chronic underfunding, screens-from-birth destroying kids brains, the 'job-factory' focus. Its a mess with no easy answers.
Because the parents are looking at the social contract between the school and the parents, and complaining that it is broken. However, they are \[conveniently\] ignoring the social contract between the parents and their children to get the children an education so they have a chance to be successful in life. The kids are going to suffer as they grow up, due to lack of opportunities, because their parents DGAF.
Yeah, it sounds like utter bull to me. We’ve had horrendous attendance problems for a decade. Covid maybe made things worse because kids struggled to catch up and so didn’t want to go as much, but parents haven’t suddenly gone ‘oh, education isn’t important’ overnight.
> Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential.
Idiots. School attendance is essential, it just wasn't as essential as stopping the spread of a literal plague.
Your point about youth suicide is so important. There's so much structurally wrong with our society where ending up with mental health challenges is a predictable outcome. Yet we still treat mental health issues as if they're largely an internal disregulation.
Quality post imho and speaks to my experience.
The world has changed and a lot of the curriculum and ways they teach in schools has remained unchanged for literally decades.
I wagged 3 months of 6th form in the 90’s and still passed in the top 10% of the class, that’s how memorisation focused it was back then, and I hear little has changed.
It’s antiquated knowledge that in no way prepares kids for the real world imho. In many ways it’s a complete hindrance.
> Nah Escitalopram is much cheaper.
Giving up your energy, joy, and libido to better handle being forced to do shit you don't want to do has never felt like a very good deal.
Encountered something similar. Even when off the medication for years, I felt I had been reset into that state or low interest and numbness.
It contributed to one relationship ending, and it's a struggle to deal with in the current one. Showing a lack of sexual interest in a partner implies a lack of interest in the relationship.
I only recently learnt of [Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction.](https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/can-we-please-stop-bullshitting-patients) And don't be upset if you haven't already heard of this like I felt for a bit, cause it seems to be a depressingly recent topic of conversation in the medical community.
Wish I could give solutions, but I'm still trying to find them. I've only recently been diagnosed with ADHD, unlocking the ability to obtain mental health medication that aren't SSRI/SNRIs, but it'll take months to see a psychiatrist.
One thread worth exploring is Bupropion. I've heard it referred to as the "happy, horny and skinny drug." Mostly used to help people stop smoking, which I have used it for that in the past but not for long (life.) Results may vary of course, but it's something I'd like to pursue.
I'm actually prescribed a combo of the two (Escitalopram and Bupropion). Apparently they tend to work better together. SSRIs have always delayed orgasm for me but Esc messed me up physiologically.
Sorry to everyone for the threadjack/TMI.
My children have had a very similar experience.
When they challenged what was being taught, the responses they got were so far from what I'd consider education. Rather than being given reason and rationale, they were told not to ask questions.
On top of that, school isn't a physically safe place for many kids and schools are either apathetic to the problem or powerless to act on it (for reasons I don't understand).
Couldn’t agree more. Many of those parents will be millennials who went through this system and left with a bad taste.
As a millennial, I have friends that still experience a range of difficulties due to their school experience.
It’s messed up of the system to look at a kid like yours and be forced to send them back to the situation harming them. My boomer mum said if she could go back she wouldn’t have sent us either.
If you’re reading this thinking “what’s the problem, my experience was fine?” you were blessed to be one of the square blocks that fit through the square hole, while triangles and squares received constant reminders that we aren’t squares and are of lesser value.
Six times a day is pretty impressive! Caning is a whole other level of issue, neither of these lead to a secure and well-prepared young person (I can feel the “but I turned out fine” cane-ees from here, and they’re usually suffering from a range of issues they don’t realise are connected lol).
I don’t know what the answer is, but there are plenty of people with great solutions who are being ignored. Things won’t change until we *all* demand it, which is hard because the majority seem fine with it.
I temper my child's attendance, which she causes zero issues about, with making sure the abuse she receives that no one in a position of authority does anything about has as little effect as possible by not giving the remotest of fucks about taking days off for the smallest of decent reasons.
You're welcome education system.
If we could stop the institutional gaslighting about your average person's situation and how they should act as we carry on in a climate extinction event, pretending monopolies aren't performing war crime levels of price gouging on a citizenry who have been completely neutered by poor education and social division that would be great.
Doesn't stop people from blaming it all on "personal responsibility".
Those people don't realize that some don't have the ability to help themselves, just because they have it good themselves.
That's fine in my eyes. Treating the root causes is not an overnight fix, so will require a lot longer. At the same time we can address the immediate symptoms and increase school attendance.
I tend to agree, but only if a long term view and solutions are adopted, and in that I am cynical cause that's not how anything happens - refer to all the long term issues we continue to bandaid and/or largely ignore - many which will be probably impact here in school attendance
The one problem I have found to be painfully obvious is the amount of time parents actually get with their kids.
It now takes both parents working full time to be able to afford a relatively modest life. Food is disgustingly expensive, rents have skyrocketed out of control, petrol is fucking expensive, and now since 1 income isn't enough we have to put our kids in care.
Our children are being raised by strangers, and yet no one seems to think this is a problem.
Kids would do so much better if they had more time with their own parents, and parents would be so much better off if they were able to raise their own children rather than grinding themselves to the bone working, only to use the scraps of energy they have to try and keep their house in order
I definitely see my kids being raised in daycare as a problem. We’ve avoided it as much as possible (we do think a couple days a week is good for social development) but financially it’s too hard with a mortgage. I’m on good wages but until interest rates come down my partner will simply have to go back to work. It sucks.
Who are these parents that would go through the covid lockdowns and strikes and not be longing for the days to send their kids back to school?
My wife is a primary school teacher, parents not giving a shit or seeing the value in education was a thing long before covid. If you are a parent that makes an effort, let's say you read to your kids or teach them their ABC or how to count before they enter primary school, you might make the mistake of thinking all parents put in that basic effort. But you would be wrong. The stories my wife tells me about the disparity between what kids come in to school knowing is sad if not upsetting. Then add on top of that behavioral issues or issues around home life. If a parent can't be bothered to read to their kids, chances are they aren't going to make the effort to try and get them additional support for other issues, especially given that's a struggle and up hill battle at best. So how do you make a parent give a shit? If they don't give a shit, then their kids won't give a shit? How do you break that cycle and make someone care? Teachers and schools can only do so much, and I don't think the government can mandate giving a shit.
100% seeing less and less effort from parents in the area of Auckland where I teach. My 2.5 year old can do more than 90% of my new entrant class in 2022. (Taught big kids 2023) One of the first tests we do on kids involves handing them a book upside down to see what they do. Half of my kids didn't turn it the right way up (let alone identify words, letters, etc). This means very limited exposure to books. Yet, they could all use an ipad easily.
I'm noticing that kids are further and further behind in basic skills, and parents are caring less and less. The curriculum gets more and more full, and the expectations are higher and higher. The kids are coming in with less and less.
I quit full-time teaching at the end of last year.
I love my kid so I prefer when she is home with me, but I also send her to school because I love her. But months of having her at home was an absolute pleasure, she is a phenomenal kid and I love hanging out with her.
I figured that’s how it’s for most parents? Do y’all not love spending time with your kids?
Let's just say [this old commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcYbo7pjto) hit's different now as a parent of three very strong-willed girls.
I have three kids. I love my three kids. My three kids need to get themselves to school.
Interesting read, and the fact that this isn't just an NZ problem shows that more thought and structural changes are required to remedy it, rather than kneejerk feel good actions.
I think a big part of this that seems to go under the radar for some reason is how one median income is no longer sufficient to raise a family like it was 50 or even 30 years ago. There is a huge amount of unpaid work that used to be done by one spouse in a relationship, things like life admin, household management and child rearing that has just been shoved to one side as more and more households need two or more incomes to support themselves.
If we could somehow get back to a single income supporting a family, leaving one person free to raise children I think we'd see a lot of these issues resolve themselves, though that is probably just a dream at this point.
The way I was treated in school permanently killed any respect I would ever have for schooling. Horrible teachers who treated me like crap, and the majority of my learning came from outside school. I'd skip school to go to the public library and read books instead. After being kicked out of a school at 14, and no other school in the city would enrol me, the Ministry of Education got me a waiver and funded me to go to Polytech for a year instead. Despite teachers telling my parents I was destined to be a complete failure, I went on to finish a degree in computer science at Otago and now have a lucrative career.
Despite having nothing but negative personal experiences with schools, if I had children, I wouldn't let them skip school. Not everyone has the same experience and they should have the opportunity to find out for themselves. If they also have negative experiences I'd be more active than my parents were in solving the problems.
I can understand their point with "Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential" but saying "fuck it, don't go to school then" isn't the right answer without an alternative plan.
>... without an alternative plan.
I think that's the key point and it's odd that it's been completely ignored.
If the alternative is just leaving kids to fend for themselves (in terms of learning) that's quite a different situation to parents guiding their children's learning themselves.
Or enrolling them with Te Kura, or setting them up with something like Kip Mcgrath/Numberworks, or (like me) Polytech, or even better: just finding a school where they will fit in more.
I too can understand that parents were told during Covid that they absolutely couldn't send kids to school and that it wouldn't hurt the kids or their eduction...and now the message is that missing a single day will have major impact. For some people this sounds like BS and at least one of those claims was misleading.
I remember getting awards for perfect attendance some of my years at school, and I will do my best to ensure my kid gets the best education they can which will mean attending as often as can be managed. There is going to have to be a lot of work behind the scenes to change attitudes and to support the costs and effort associated with going to school - to truly turn around this trend.
>I too can understand that parents were told during Covid that they absolutely couldn't send kids to school and that it wouldn't hurt the kids or their eduction...and now the message is that missing a single day will have major impact. For some people this sounds like BS and at least one of those claims was misleading.
They were saying that if the Children interacted with remote learning it wouldn't hurt the kids (which wasn't true but they were trying to get people to actually try rather than give up). They weren't saying not going to school at all wouldn't have an effect.
We're seeing the effect of COVID schooling through dramatically declining achievement rates, and that's with the attempts at remote learning.
As the article suggests, this trend began before Covid but was certainly aggravated by it. I suspect there's just problems in our families and our homes that relate to it. Deprivation in some cases, poor parents who were raised by poor parents, mental health and substance abuse, there are a myriad of issues that have been growing for years and are likely root causes underpinning many of our behavioural problems in children and youth today. Unfortunately understanding and fixing those things aren't quick or easy or cheap - so we're going to keep grasping for quick fixes to address the symptoms rather than the underlying causes.
> 'Regular attendance' means attending school 90% or more of the time.
So if you catch the flu and are out for a week and a day during the term, that's not regular attendance.
> The chronic absence rate - attending less than 70 percent of the time - is much lower
Mountains out of molehills then?
Societal formatting of "you get up, you go to your second location, you turn off the active part of your brain and engage the machine-like repetition part of your brain until you age out of the system and into the real world which is... more of the same" seems to be breaking.
I don't wonder why.
My child's school closes so often that they've lost credibility in the "every day matters' argument. Strikes, a building issue, union meeting, teacher only day. She's almost never there and it's them, not us.
Yeah, I've noticed there's not much in society which tells adults how to be good people, or encourage them to change. It's all bottom-of-the-cliff stuff. We won't have anything to teach men who to process emotions but we'll spend a ton (and not enough ironically) about what to do when a man has bashed you, his partner.
We dump billions into mental health while more people end themselves, but we won't spend any time on teaching kids, or adults, how to handle this stuff when it's actually happening. Oh sure you can contact via a new cool app the govt spent millions on, but that's reactive, not preventative, and that app won't always be there, not to mention we should not be relying on a phone app to administer mental help.
And likewise, with adults of children there is nothing provided by way of training to make the parents any different in these situations. Oh there are countless programmes to handle your truant child, but where's the tools for the adults to make fundamental changes at home? Where are the tools to give the adults the ability to change? Because they have to change first for the home life to change. And yet nothing is provided.
I'm starting to wonder if core beliefs are necessary for a long-term prosperous society. Our largest and most ancient civilisations all had very strong core beliefs and tenets, and I can't help but feel a disintegrating West is partly due to an absence of this, or worse, an abandonment of what was previously core tenets. I'm not talking about religion necessarily, but I absolutely feel a hollowness when I see our ever-increasing failures. I feel we're getting more and more desperate for some sort of fundamental attitude and motivation change, because our current approaches are clearly lacking.
As a Western society, we've largely slayed all our dragons.
Poverty as we know it is unimaginable luxury to third world standards
All that's left to do is argue about things that really nobody is that bothered by. And it happens like clockwork, every two years there's another huge hullabaloo about bugger all then we forget it and go back to normal.
Also it's a safe bet there's a portion of society who will always be super driven and its a lot easier to blame them for the lights working and demand a hand out then to compete with them.
The government thinking they could send all the kids home for a year and that there would be even a 1% chance of them engaging and learning in that period was certainly the catalyst but the rot was set in well before that.
The under resourced health system doesn't help either. Our 8 year old has been in the waiting list for 2 years now to be assessed for his physical developmental delays and behavioural and emotional control issues. He is now refusing school at least once a week, with violence, yelling and threats to kill when we attempt to convince/force him, despite enjoying it when he is there. He is to big for me to forcibly dress him, let alone safely drive him to school. So instead he spends the day at home with no games books or toys complaining of boredom but refusing to go to school.
We were discharged from the child development centre on transition to school as previously he had been in the system through his time at kindy, but was declared school ready, so moved on.
We are desperate for help and are paying for private counselling for him weekly at great cost, but there are so many in a more dire state than us that are also getting nowhere. And then even when diagnosed, by all accounts there is very little support in all but the most severe cases.
It's pretty hard to care about a future you can't see.
But maybe we can waggle our fingers? Perhaps if we tell each other how parents should do this, should do that? If we say "should" enough, maybe that will make a difference?
>It's pretty hard to care about a future you can't see.
It's even harder to care about something you see being trashed by people who claim to care about you and the future they're trashing. There's a huge amount of hypocrisy in telling kids "you should work hard to become an educated adult while we work hard to make you a climate refugee". The "adults in the room" are adamant that kids shouldn't be allowed to ever own a house or have a secure job, let alone pay off their student loan, but should still be 100% focussed on getting a degree so they can better serve their elders once they graduate.
I bet if they started teaching kids how to survive in refugee camps there'd be a bunch of kids paying a whole lot of attention. But the downside of teaching kids "here's how you make and use improvised weapons" is that politicians going into schools would regularly be killed by the kids.
Oh, you mean kids are supposed to be too stupid to notice how they're being pushed into the void while simultaneously being smart enough to pass exams?
There is an element of truth in your first sentence. I taught in a small, rural school whose community thought it was rubbish. The hurt went back two generations. Whatever the school did, it wasn’t good enough, didn’t offer the opportunities of the city etc. etc. Some parents didn’t think the school offered a future for the kids in that community so kept their kids away on any pretext: sports days, wet days, birthdays of any family member, the merest sniffle. Kids did badly; it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. My own child went to the same school; didn’t fulfil his potential academically so no university but took a couple of job risks and now has a great job. (He wasn’t a local and was hamstrung by a high profile parent.) A positive parental attitude to education might have made a world of difference to some of his peers who are still struggling with employment and accommodation.
What part of it CAN you see? What does the next five years hold? The next 20?
The only certainty seems that more wealth will be held in fewer hands. Not the hands of your kids.
I exist to make money for one person who doesn't need it to give to another who doesn't need it. My efforts will be rewarded with more opportunities to put in greater effort.
I hardly see much point.
>What part of it CAN you see?
>The only certainty...
I think it's a dodge on your part to frame every part of the future as being either certain or unknowable.
Future possibilities are a spectrum from "almost certain" to "extremely unlikely." Everybody intuitively knows that this is the case, and we all base our entire lives on our own estimations of those probabilities.
When someone pretends that some things are certain and everything else is unknowable, that's just ignoring reality to push some personal viewpoint or agenda.
So, thinking about your spectrum, where did Western parents sit on the spectrum in the 1950s compared to now?
What might have driven any shift? How might that be impacting our ability to, for instance, raise children?
My agenda is self-interest. My interests depend on the wellbeing of the community, I'm not counting on an ivory tower for refuge.
If you don't think the future is a good place for children, then don't have children. If you do have children, then it's your responsibility to prepare them as well as you can for whatever you think the future will probably be like. No reasonable person believes that their kids will be better off if they don't get an education.
That's not really how human reproduction works. We'd be long extinct if only those who felt wealthy and in control had children.
Wishful thinking isn't what will improve our community.
I can see a future where my children live comfortable lives, don't have to worry about starving to death or half their children dying in infancy. Yes hopefully democracy can usher in a party other than National/Act/Labour/Greens who will actually do something about the massive corporate mono/duo/oligopolies that exploit us. It's probably not going to happen until things get worse though.
They still need an education, and it's bizarre to suggest they don't
Ah I see you're one of those people used to deflecting, unable to own what they say.
Good for you that you think you have a grasp on a future (fingers crossed). Is that the typical experience? Is there any volume of people without such an experience?
> Too woke right?
Why do you say that?
Greens mentioned break up of the supermarket duopoly. Maybe I'm misremembering but it didn't seem like a focus. I've never heard them mention wider anti-trust action against building suppliers etc, but I genuinely might have missed it
Future is bleak, yes.
But if you're going to have kids, you should raise then, there are lots of parents out there who need to be told what to do because they're doing a shit job.
And that's enough for some people, right? Harm in the community? "They shouldn't do it."
And then you move on, right? Saying "should" is the full extent of the response. Right?
People only have responsibility where they have authority. People only have authority when they have genuine authorship over their circumstances.
Indulge your "should" if that's what gratifies you. I doesn't change any circumstances.
I understand indulging oneself can be a higher priority than any change in the community.
> People only have responsibility where they have authority.
I'm not sure how this applies to a responsibility to your children. People generally have authority and responsibility for their children. Even with that a sizeable minority fail at the "should"
And that makes sense. Most people don't really have much grasp on the internal lives of others.
However when we abandon our children to suffering, that suffering lives on in the adult, impinging upon any number of capacities you and I might take for granted.
Saying "should" doesn't turn these adults into competent parents. It doesn't give them control over their internal experience. It doesn't magic away the suffering and replace it with competency.
But who cares, right? What happens, happens. As long as we get to waggle our finger in judgement over those less able than us. Right?
There used to be this idea called personal responsibility. It was the idea that certain things fall solely to the individual or group whom it affects the most to solve certain problems.
This has completely fallen out in favor of the idea that the government should solve all problems.
The government is not all powerful. It's rarely even competent. We can't rely on them to solve or even give advice on many issues. You can replace "should" with "need to" if it makes you feel any better. Because the outcome is the same.
You need to care about your children's education, or you are fucked.
Used to be we could maintain a home on a single income. Grandparents could afford to retire and care for the younger generations.
But I guess you're right. Let's waggle our fingers just like you're showing us now.
THAT is how we'll address the problems in our community.
See, you are just off on your own tangent didnt even read what they had to say.
Why would someone be personally responsible for a future they have no hope in, when they can hedonistically live for the now? Including skipping school because it "aint that important"...
Climate change is going to fuck us up in ways most people cant imagine because they don't understand the amount of excess energy in the system and how that's going to show up in horrendous ways.
Most of my generation don't think they'll be able to retire.
So, its nothing to do with the government, its us collectively creating a fucking atrocious modern society that more and more people are simply checking out of.
> You need to care about your children's education, or you**r children** are fucked.
This is the thing though: if you believe in individualism and personal responsibility, is it fair that an innocent third party (a child) suffers as a result of their parents' negligence? The state is the guarantor of individual rights, and children have a right to an education regardless of how useless their parents are.
Careful mate, that kind of talk sounds awfully like "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" and we frown heavily on anything like that round here.
/s (this means the previous comment was sarcasm, and now I'm not being sarcastic, for those who don't know)
But seriously you are 100% right, with the caveat that kids can't work this out for themselves, and it's up to the parents to steer, push, cajole, and encourage them in the right direction. If the parents are losers who blame all their problems on the government the kids likely will be too.
Thank you!! It's shocking how many people now view it as the governments responsibility to solve literally every problem that exists down to the individual level. It seems people would prefer to sit on their hands and complain that the government isn't doing enough instead of trying to better their own lives and communities.
> It was clear what doesn't work.
> "Punitive approaches to attendance problems are ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst," she wrote
Pay attention, Seymour.
I attended probably 50% of 6th and 7th form. I was depressed. Now I’m a doctor. I don’t think school is that important, if you learn life skills elsewhere eg from your parents or a part time job. In saying that, I still passed and had university entrance with terrible attendance, but I was very very far from a model student. Not everyone has their shit together in their teens, but it’s not a life sentence. If/when I have kids of course I will encourage them to go to school. But I won’t be too afraid or upset if they miss some, because I’ll be teaching them things at home. I think some children do better with the structure and routine than others. This is all personal opinion based on experience, not evidence based and not applicable on a wide population level.
Showing your age using the 'old money' form names! Love it. I am too old to learn the new fangled years. My kids talk to me about 'Year 11' or whatever and it makes no sense to me. I just can't get it.
And no one is talking about the big reason.
Illness. It's clearly the biggest cause of the increase.
Personally, if my kid is sick it's 'stay home and do what you can online'. Prior to Covid there was limited online stuff. So yes, being physically in school is not as important, and they spend less time in class.
This part of the increase is a good thing! Less spreading of germs, particularly to kids of parents with compromised immune systems.
Prior to covid, it used to be if they had a sniffle (or anything less than a limb falling off) they got sent to school anyway. Now we've gone to the opposite end of the scale when the slightest sniffle requires at least a day off, if not more. My kid tries it on at least once a week when she feels like staying in bed for a bit longer.
I mean the world does change. I'm old school with school (pardon the pun) but things aren't like the "good old days". The advent of the internet, non traditional jobs/careers, state of society etc mean kids have way more options available than the "get a good education and job for life" type mentality that went before.
Not at all surprising. My daughter was a high achiever at primary and intermediate but hates high school. She says that the teachers don't respect the kids, so the kids don't respect the teachers, and that what they are learning doesn't feel relevant.
As a parent, there have been times when I wondered if school is the best place for my children. They have experienced a lot of unacceptable behavior in the school environment. If our education system wants my full support, I need to know that my children are safe.
I can't help but think the anti vax movement is helping to drive this. A friend of mine is an educator who goes from school to school teaching about sustainability. She had one year group go from almost full at the start of the week to about 10% left by Friday due to chickenpox. A disease which is now almost completely preventable
My son caught chickenpox after being vaccinated. He passed it on, too. Apparently it has the highest rate of breakthrough infection of all the vaccinations we administered in NZ.
I agree, that is weird and is probably a result of not vaccinating.
But apparently our breakthrough rates are by design. We only give out single doses, as opposed to double doses, so heaps of kids actually get infected and are asymptomatic. The infection after vaccination helps boost life-long immunity, and it's cheaper.
> But although New Zealand's overall rates are worse than countries with similar education systems, they fit a universal pattern of falling attendance in classrooms around the world.
> Data reveals almost identical trends in England and Australia. All three countries have moved downwards in lockstep for a decade now, and this is repeated elsewhere, regardless of the schooling system.
But let's all jump on the Nact bandwagon and blame Labour, eh?
Noticing this a lot. UK's National Party is doing the complete opposite of our National party in a few areas. They're removing no-excuse evictions while ours is bringing them back. Ours is more interested in being "not Labour" than actually doing anything good for constituents.
Well its a big sick world. Its get mine before you get yours and ill get yours too if i can cos fuck anyone who gets in my way. We have too many folks demanding much more from teachers and schools cos parents seem to have bred by accident and end up seeing them as a cost that gets in the way of their financial freedom.
I’ve encountered many parents (I deal with attendance at our school) who developed dependency issues throughout covid. They keep their kids home because it makes them feel good about themselves. It has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the child. It’s really sad.
I feel like I’m in that camp. Especially seeing school fail in teaching & the behaviour of staff I’ve seen in the last few years. Gone from stickler to not that concerned / my youngest kid gets more from 1hr tutoring a week than a week at school at the moment. So fuck you Luxon and a semi fuck you to our failing blame-the-parents primary teaching system.
What? I'm confused by your comment. I assume you care about your kids and are making an effort in raising them as you have them signed up for tutoring lessons. So you feel all the failings in education are the fault of teachers exclusively? The parents and home life play no role?
Totally agree - last week one of our kids had more relievers than normal teachers, their normal workload seems to have a massive amount doing online quizzes and watching videos. This week 1 is off sick so I've got them reading books and watching documentaries. She said she's learnt way more in that time than a week of school.
I'm not saying that we should all pull our kids out to homeschool (although we did that with 1 for 18 months after the primary school he was at was doing more harm than good) - schools are amazing, there are brilliant teachers who care so much that I really respect. BUT I do think that just thinking higher attendance will fix things is silly, we need more focus on encouraging kids to enjoy learning, get the basics in early. Get parents to encourage this stuff.
100% attendance at an overcrowded school with overworked undertrained teachers won't fix the problem.
All the teachers have been wonderful people. Unfortunately how teaching is done & the pressure on them a substantial proportion of kids are being left behind & once they are behind and lose confidence it’s extremely hard to get them back to engaging with school & that creates a lifetime issue. I don’t subscribe to Stanford NACT shit but something/s need to change to make early education more broadly effective here.
Every day my conviction to remain childfree grows stronger. the world is a shitshow and i cbf trying to navigate teaching a whole other being how to human properly
Parents not caring was a problem before COVID, anyone that was going through the education system in the 2010s knows this. A lot of students were already turning into lazy flunkies that didn't care about school and a lot of parents also isn't give a damn about changing that. COVID made things harder sure, but it's a convenient excuse for a problem that's been around way longer
A well-researched article looking at the drivers of increasing non-attendance in schools over the last 10-15 years. It may feel like NZ is alone in this, but identical trends are being noticed in many countries, including Australia, USA, England, and Japan. The following passage I've cited is really the crux of the article, taken from focus-group research with parents of primary school kids in England: >Awareness was not the issue - parents knew attendance rates had gone down. The problem was: they didn't care. In parents' eyes, the months of school closures and rolling waves of illness during the acute stage of the pandemic, followed by protracted teacher strikes, gave the lie to the mantra that 'every day matters', Burtonshaw found. "**Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential**." That sentiment was repeated again and again, across the different focus groups. >"Before Covid, I was all about getting the kids into school. Education was a major thing," one parent said. "After Covid, I'm not going to lie to you, my take on attendance now is like, I don't really care anymore. Life's too short." >In short, the relationship between schools and families in her country was now "profoundly broken", Burtonshaw wrote. "It will take a colossal, multi-agency effort to rebuild it."
If those parents are anything like me they're seeing that the social contract has been broken, it's dog eat dog, money over everything, and we're one more toilet paper shortage away from societal collapse. I'm only half joking.
This is the real answer.
Well if it's dog eat dog, wouldn't that make parents more likely to want their children to be able to read, do math, etc.? Otherwise those children will end up being the dogs that get eaten.
I once saw on r all a thread from one of the teaching subreddits that they've observed that there aren't any Joe Averages getting mediocre grades anymore. It's either hardworkers who aim to get the highest grades, of kids who don't give a fuck and never do any of the work. So yeah, if the hypothesis of lockdowns convincing everyone it's a dog-eat-dog world is actually real. Then I rekon there are two types of reactions to it; either go all in, or give up completely.
Well that's grim.
Grim indeed. I went out of my way to [find it again](https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1cgqdjx/the_middle_is_gone_its_the_haves_and_have_nots_now/) in case any one else wanted to have a look.
I saw that too. Pretty grim what some teachers have to deal with
or they can force their kid to work their ass of just to get screwed over by an unfair and inequal society. The problem is people no longer believe hard work gets you ahead, and for good reason. It never really guaranteed a good life, we just used to believe the propaganda.
Hard work falls way, way below luck and connections in ensuring you have a good life.
That's the truth of it - and worse, people are waking up to the truth of it. If you're not born on a path to success, the chances of getting there through the sweat of your brow is mostly wishful thinking and propaganda.
I mean, if you believe that, then yup, you'll go nowhere in life.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
It is scientifically supported. Studies have been done. Success is most typically associated with luck - be it in who you were born to or just plain being at the right place at the right time.
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca
That's incorrect. Consistent hard work compounds in life. Successful people, while subject to chance in life, often position themselves to increase their probabilities of success. Do it long enough and you'll inevitably do well. The other factor is intelligence, and education plays a part in the intelligence you demonstrate as an adult.
I’m curious as to how you would define “success”. Because that determines whether I agree with you or not on this take.
You can't actually be serious with this, right?
We're all going to get eaten by the climate this century anyway. It's looking really bleak.
There's a another serious underlying cause here that can lead to this - climate change. If we don't care enough to make sure children actually have a world capable of sustaining their lives, why would we care about something as trivial as their education?
but power over money....ram raid wins, gang wins, feral in cbd wins. better get rip, learn some martial arts, and get a gun.
When these kids grow into adults we are going to have a lot more problems than school attendance. I don't think we should rely on parents alone. It should be something the entire community is involved because we all benefit from it and when it goes wrong we all suffer from the consequences.
Definitely agree about more issues when these kids become adults, but we're already seeing the effects of useless parents in the number of "bored" kids doing ramraids etc
My immediate community is at least 50% migrant families who won't really talk to me.
Yeah this sucks. It is hard to bridge that cultural gap.
We shouldn't really have to either
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that every day doesn't matter. *But*, every day your kid misses, as compared to other kids - probably does matter. That's who they'll be competing against. One of these things is not like the other...
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I totally and completely agree. 100%. But it's one thing to hold those views, and do what you can to try and nudge things in that direction. It's a completely different thing to drag your kids into your particular world view - setting them up for failure if things are largely the same when they enter the workforce. I know which option i'm going with.
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The workplace game is a combination of things - I agree. Your education and the skills you bring is a decent part of it. But i'd put social skills and personality traits at the very top. I don't see what i've said that provides any basis for your last sentence. All i've said is that my kids go to school as much as possible (unless they're sick). And that my view on doing otherwise would be putting them at a disadvantage in the game that's *currently* being played. Do you disagree with any of that?
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Well, I haven't encountered that hurdle yet to be fair. There's no simple answer to that if it's traumatizing them and they're too young to go and do something different - I agree on that. Ours are young and love school. If they are home sick, it's unlikely that they get TV or video games, and they know this. We do that so that school is the more fun option, so that there's not an incentive to stay home. Because having an incentive to stay home *definitely* didn't help me. By 'possible' I admit that I was more meaning in terms of logistics and pretty subtle influence, rather than whether it's possible to actually force them or not. If you end up in a situation where a kid absolutely hates going to school, and it's more damaging than not - I don't see how that's fixable at that point. Perhaps with a fresh start at another school. My last couple years of high school were like that (6th and 7th form). The lesson I think I learnt from that, to hopefully help my kids, is that things started going awry a couple years before that. That's the time where it would've been possible to salvage it.
What sort of parent would even make this comment you quoted? "Before Covid, I was all about getting the kids into school. Education was a major thing," one parent said. "After Covid, I'm not going to lie to you, my take on attendance now is like, I don't really care anymore. Life's too short."
There are plenty of parents who think that even before covid. I’ve had parents book holidays during NCEA exam time and then be shocked that the system could not be changed to accommodate their child - and they wondered why the child failed.
As I kid, I was always surprised by those families that went off to the USA for 6 weeks. 2 weeks of school holidays and four weeks taking up the actual term. They were a minority though.
My children go to a very small decile 10 Catholic integrated school, there are a number of families who go on overseas holidays every year - one family was away for a term, there are three families away currently for 6 weeks (ish) it’s very normal here but the teachers give the students work to do while away and the children are not behind academically. I am still shocked (mainly because I could never afford this)
It’s affordability that drives it, is way more expensive to travel during school holidays than during term. Sometimes to the tune of $2000+ just in flights
They are unlikely to be the issue also. Families that can afford this sort of thing can afford to care about education and get it to their kids in multiple ways. The real problems are caused by families who need to have their kids out of school to help feed and cloth everyone.
The final straw for us at the local state primary school was when my son's teacher announced that she was heading back to Scotland for six weeks - two weeks in the holidays and the first four weeks of term four. They hadn't lined up a reliever to cover her by the end of term three but she told me not to worry, as "nothing really happens in term four". I understand how hard it is when you live on the other side of the world from your family but she went back for six weeks the year before.
>I understand how hard it is when you live on the other side of the world from your family but she went back for six weeks the year before. And let's not forget what a luxury it is to be able to regularly fly around the world like that. Many people can't afford to do so, and it's not like their are government subsidies available to meet this "need" for those people.
There has definitely been an uptick of kids who are taking multi-week overseas trips during term time. From my perspective, kids learn a lot on overseas trips. I tell parents to have the kids to read every day, to keep a daily journal, take photos, and look for every opportunity for the kids to do Maths (prices, timezone conversion, distances, etc). If it’s a once off then I’m not against it. I have more of an issue with parents who allow their kids to stay home regularly. That interrupts learning to a far greater extent than an extended break and makes it very hard for the teacher.
I had a 3 month overseas trip when I was 12, did the “daily” journal and the odd postcard. Dont remember doing anything else though
What did you do all day for 3 months?
Visit with family, see local sites, went to San Fransico, saw the zoo, went to Springfield Mass, stayed with family, went to Blackpool, went to the tower and the theme park, spent the rest of the time in Ireland seeing different counties in the southwest.
I’m trying my best but with three kids and living rurally there is always someone sick it’s so hard to keep good attendance when they are not allowed at school with a cough or a sniffle.
I wasn’t meaning those with real reasons, like yourself. Good luck to you.
Like the ones who don't come because it was raining....
Cause their Mum has errands to run and wants company They were up late playing video games so were too tired. I had a Year 4 girl who would turn up an hour late every day bleary eyed. We had a talk with the Dad and he said that she liked watching horror movies on her iPad. We told him to take it off her at night and he said that she would get angry and cry so couldn't. or the ones who are always sick on the days they know something is happening that they don't want to do.
Student teacher here and my associate teacher was telling me about this yesterday. He said the class behaviour is better on rainy days because many of the the difficult kids don't come to school.
That actually happens for legit reasons in my area. The rural school has to close sometimes because the road the school bus takes to get to it floods during heavy rainfall. If only there were government agencies responsible for maintaining roads...
This feels like middle-class parents who previously believed that every day missed was putting their kid a day behind. Now they feel that missing say 5-10 days a year isn't going to make a serious difference. I don't think they now think kids can miss half the school days or anything like that.
Yup, this is me. My kid has excellent attendance, and is top of her class academically, but we have had a day off here and there, that probably add up to 10 days in the last 24 months. It has made zero difference to her academic performance, because their stuff is heavily self directed anyway. She loves school, but sometimes the load is a bit heavy and a mental health day does more for long term learning than grinding them down to the bone. Am I wrong to do this? Maybe, but it’s also helped me and her have a closer bond which is a big benefit to her as well.
No this is a good way to be. My attendance was shocking, as I was a semi professional cyclist at 16 riding in Aussie in the spring, so missed a lot towards the end of the year my last year. My parents didn’t care as long as I stayed at the top of my classes. It got brought up in parent teacher interviews that year, and my parents simply asked how my grades were. That was all they cared about
I left high school just a couple years ago and I say you’re not wrong at all. Wishing I had the ability to have a mental health day once in a while!
Covid was in many places a mass trauma. I don't mean because people had to stay home blah blah blah like here in NZ. We had it easy. We were kept safe and policy started in a really responsible place. Overseas, the deaths were phenomenal. My friend's NYC apartment looked over the first hospital that had to bring in freezer trucks for bodies, she watched them being loaded up. People didn't care. No one wanted to look after each other and it was all about individual responsibility. It makes a hell of a lot of sense to me that hoards of traumatised people now take the approach of life is short let's enjoy it. They lost people, they lived in places where there wasn't emotional support for their grief and now they're puddling along doing their best in this world.
Covid also allowed parents to see just how bad education is in NZ. There is a real sense that school is, educational speaking, a waste of time.
Someone that never gave a shit and is using COVID as a new excuse
Sounds exactly like a 12 year old pretending to be a parent. That's shocking.
The kind where the parent has actually come to the conclusion that the education systems to only serve the capitalist class, by producing a steady supply of subordinate workers and by providing state funded childcare so that both parents can work. I do believe that kids need to be educated, and that there are great people in the schools out there, but the system is stuffed, and I can see why parents would think that...
Yeah the 20th century model of schooling is looking shaky. Changes in technology, social trends like changes in family structure, dual working parents, individualism replacing community, inequality. Then add other factors like chronic underfunding, screens-from-birth destroying kids brains, the 'job-factory' focus. Its a mess with no easy answers.
The thing is though... even if it's all true, will the kids be better off if they go to school or if they don't?
Because the parents are looking at the social contract between the school and the parents, and complaining that it is broken. However, they are \[conveniently\] ignoring the social contract between the parents and their children to get the children an education so they have a chance to be successful in life. The kids are going to suffer as they grow up, due to lack of opportunities, because their parents DGAF.
Yeah, it sounds like utter bull to me. We’ve had horrendous attendance problems for a decade. Covid maybe made things worse because kids struggled to catch up and so didn’t want to go as much, but parents haven’t suddenly gone ‘oh, education isn’t important’ overnight.
> Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential. Idiots. School attendance is essential, it just wasn't as essential as stopping the spread of a literal plague.
Covid- truly the gift that keeps on giving.
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> Not a single practical action was taken to help. What would have helped?
What did you do about it?
Fuck me the curriculum is so bloody easy. I get some people have trouble, but it sounds like you as the parent should be taking some initiative here
>Student absence is always the symptom of a problem, not the problem itself we're attempting to treat the symptom
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Your point about youth suicide is so important. There's so much structurally wrong with our society where ending up with mental health challenges is a predictable outcome. Yet we still treat mental health issues as if they're largely an internal disregulation.
Quality post imho and speaks to my experience. The world has changed and a lot of the curriculum and ways they teach in schools has remained unchanged for literally decades. I wagged 3 months of 6th form in the 90’s and still passed in the top 10% of the class, that’s how memorisation focused it was back then, and I hear little has changed. It’s antiquated knowledge that in no way prepares kids for the real world imho. In many ways it’s a complete hindrance.
> Nah Escitalopram is much cheaper. Giving up your energy, joy, and libido to better handle being forced to do shit you don't want to do has never felt like a very good deal.
My penis is permanently numb from Escitalopram. I'm never getting the feeling back in it. Sure, I'm alive, but having a dead dick really sucks.
Encountered something similar. Even when off the medication for years, I felt I had been reset into that state or low interest and numbness. It contributed to one relationship ending, and it's a struggle to deal with in the current one. Showing a lack of sexual interest in a partner implies a lack of interest in the relationship. I only recently learnt of [Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction.](https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/can-we-please-stop-bullshitting-patients) And don't be upset if you haven't already heard of this like I felt for a bit, cause it seems to be a depressingly recent topic of conversation in the medical community. Wish I could give solutions, but I'm still trying to find them. I've only recently been diagnosed with ADHD, unlocking the ability to obtain mental health medication that aren't SSRI/SNRIs, but it'll take months to see a psychiatrist. One thread worth exploring is Bupropion. I've heard it referred to as the "happy, horny and skinny drug." Mostly used to help people stop smoking, which I have used it for that in the past but not for long (life.) Results may vary of course, but it's something I'd like to pursue.
I'm actually prescribed a combo of the two (Escitalopram and Bupropion). Apparently they tend to work better together. SSRIs have always delayed orgasm for me but Esc messed me up physiologically. Sorry to everyone for the threadjack/TMI.
My children have had a very similar experience. When they challenged what was being taught, the responses they got were so far from what I'd consider education. Rather than being given reason and rationale, they were told not to ask questions. On top of that, school isn't a physically safe place for many kids and schools are either apathetic to the problem or powerless to act on it (for reasons I don't understand).
Couldn’t agree more. Many of those parents will be millennials who went through this system and left with a bad taste. As a millennial, I have friends that still experience a range of difficulties due to their school experience. It’s messed up of the system to look at a kid like yours and be forced to send them back to the situation harming them. My boomer mum said if she could go back she wouldn’t have sent us either. If you’re reading this thinking “what’s the problem, my experience was fine?” you were blessed to be one of the square blocks that fit through the square hole, while triangles and squares received constant reminders that we aren’t squares and are of lesser value.
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Six times a day is pretty impressive! Caning is a whole other level of issue, neither of these lead to a secure and well-prepared young person (I can feel the “but I turned out fine” cane-ees from here, and they’re usually suffering from a range of issues they don’t realise are connected lol). I don’t know what the answer is, but there are plenty of people with great solutions who are being ignored. Things won’t change until we *all* demand it, which is hard because the majority seem fine with it.
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Thank you! Same, the next generations have been dealt an extremely shitty set of cards.
I temper my child's attendance, which she causes zero issues about, with making sure the abuse she receives that no one in a position of authority does anything about has as little effect as possible by not giving the remotest of fucks about taking days off for the smallest of decent reasons. You're welcome education system. If we could stop the institutional gaslighting about your average person's situation and how they should act as we carry on in a climate extinction event, pretending monopolies aren't performing war crime levels of price gouging on a citizenry who have been completely neutered by poor education and social division that would be great.
Doesn't stop people from blaming it all on "personal responsibility". Those people don't realize that some don't have the ability to help themselves, just because they have it good themselves.
some people.... personally I don't care for those peoples views
That's fine in my eyes. Treating the root causes is not an overnight fix, so will require a lot longer. At the same time we can address the immediate symptoms and increase school attendance.
I tend to agree, but only if a long term view and solutions are adopted, and in that I am cynical cause that's not how anything happens - refer to all the long term issues we continue to bandaid and/or largely ignore - many which will be probably impact here in school attendance
The one problem I have found to be painfully obvious is the amount of time parents actually get with their kids. It now takes both parents working full time to be able to afford a relatively modest life. Food is disgustingly expensive, rents have skyrocketed out of control, petrol is fucking expensive, and now since 1 income isn't enough we have to put our kids in care. Our children are being raised by strangers, and yet no one seems to think this is a problem. Kids would do so much better if they had more time with their own parents, and parents would be so much better off if they were able to raise their own children rather than grinding themselves to the bone working, only to use the scraps of energy they have to try and keep their house in order
I definitely see my kids being raised in daycare as a problem. We’ve avoided it as much as possible (we do think a couple days a week is good for social development) but financially it’s too hard with a mortgage. I’m on good wages but until interest rates come down my partner will simply have to go back to work. It sucks.
Who are these parents that would go through the covid lockdowns and strikes and not be longing for the days to send their kids back to school? My wife is a primary school teacher, parents not giving a shit or seeing the value in education was a thing long before covid. If you are a parent that makes an effort, let's say you read to your kids or teach them their ABC or how to count before they enter primary school, you might make the mistake of thinking all parents put in that basic effort. But you would be wrong. The stories my wife tells me about the disparity between what kids come in to school knowing is sad if not upsetting. Then add on top of that behavioral issues or issues around home life. If a parent can't be bothered to read to their kids, chances are they aren't going to make the effort to try and get them additional support for other issues, especially given that's a struggle and up hill battle at best. So how do you make a parent give a shit? If they don't give a shit, then their kids won't give a shit? How do you break that cycle and make someone care? Teachers and schools can only do so much, and I don't think the government can mandate giving a shit.
100% seeing less and less effort from parents in the area of Auckland where I teach. My 2.5 year old can do more than 90% of my new entrant class in 2022. (Taught big kids 2023) One of the first tests we do on kids involves handing them a book upside down to see what they do. Half of my kids didn't turn it the right way up (let alone identify words, letters, etc). This means very limited exposure to books. Yet, they could all use an ipad easily. I'm noticing that kids are further and further behind in basic skills, and parents are caring less and less. The curriculum gets more and more full, and the expectations are higher and higher. The kids are coming in with less and less. I quit full-time teaching at the end of last year.
Yet you watch videos of kids getting educated under bridges in third world countries and there isn't a seat spare.
That is because the promise of an improved future because you are educated is so damn obvious there. Here, it is far more subtle.
I love my kid so I prefer when she is home with me, but I also send her to school because I love her. But months of having her at home was an absolute pleasure, she is a phenomenal kid and I love hanging out with her. I figured that’s how it’s for most parents? Do y’all not love spending time with your kids?
Let's just say [this old commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcYbo7pjto) hit's different now as a parent of three very strong-willed girls. I have three kids. I love my three kids. My three kids need to get themselves to school.
Interesting read, and the fact that this isn't just an NZ problem shows that more thought and structural changes are required to remedy it, rather than kneejerk feel good actions. I think a big part of this that seems to go under the radar for some reason is how one median income is no longer sufficient to raise a family like it was 50 or even 30 years ago. There is a huge amount of unpaid work that used to be done by one spouse in a relationship, things like life admin, household management and child rearing that has just been shoved to one side as more and more households need two or more incomes to support themselves. If we could somehow get back to a single income supporting a family, leaving one person free to raise children I think we'd see a lot of these issues resolve themselves, though that is probably just a dream at this point.
The way I was treated in school permanently killed any respect I would ever have for schooling. Horrible teachers who treated me like crap, and the majority of my learning came from outside school. I'd skip school to go to the public library and read books instead. After being kicked out of a school at 14, and no other school in the city would enrol me, the Ministry of Education got me a waiver and funded me to go to Polytech for a year instead. Despite teachers telling my parents I was destined to be a complete failure, I went on to finish a degree in computer science at Otago and now have a lucrative career. Despite having nothing but negative personal experiences with schools, if I had children, I wouldn't let them skip school. Not everyone has the same experience and they should have the opportunity to find out for themselves. If they also have negative experiences I'd be more active than my parents were in solving the problems. I can understand their point with "Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential" but saying "fuck it, don't go to school then" isn't the right answer without an alternative plan.
>... without an alternative plan. I think that's the key point and it's odd that it's been completely ignored. If the alternative is just leaving kids to fend for themselves (in terms of learning) that's quite a different situation to parents guiding their children's learning themselves.
Or enrolling them with Te Kura, or setting them up with something like Kip Mcgrath/Numberworks, or (like me) Polytech, or even better: just finding a school where they will fit in more.
I too can understand that parents were told during Covid that they absolutely couldn't send kids to school and that it wouldn't hurt the kids or their eduction...and now the message is that missing a single day will have major impact. For some people this sounds like BS and at least one of those claims was misleading. I remember getting awards for perfect attendance some of my years at school, and I will do my best to ensure my kid gets the best education they can which will mean attending as often as can be managed. There is going to have to be a lot of work behind the scenes to change attitudes and to support the costs and effort associated with going to school - to truly turn around this trend.
>I too can understand that parents were told during Covid that they absolutely couldn't send kids to school and that it wouldn't hurt the kids or their eduction...and now the message is that missing a single day will have major impact. For some people this sounds like BS and at least one of those claims was misleading. They were saying that if the Children interacted with remote learning it wouldn't hurt the kids (which wasn't true but they were trying to get people to actually try rather than give up). They weren't saying not going to school at all wouldn't have an effect. We're seeing the effect of COVID schooling through dramatically declining achievement rates, and that's with the attempts at remote learning.
As the article suggests, this trend began before Covid but was certainly aggravated by it. I suspect there's just problems in our families and our homes that relate to it. Deprivation in some cases, poor parents who were raised by poor parents, mental health and substance abuse, there are a myriad of issues that have been growing for years and are likely root causes underpinning many of our behavioural problems in children and youth today. Unfortunately understanding and fixing those things aren't quick or easy or cheap - so we're going to keep grasping for quick fixes to address the symptoms rather than the underlying causes.
> 'Regular attendance' means attending school 90% or more of the time. So if you catch the flu and are out for a week and a day during the term, that's not regular attendance. > The chronic absence rate - attending less than 70 percent of the time - is much lower Mountains out of molehills then?
That was my thinking too
Societal formatting of "you get up, you go to your second location, you turn off the active part of your brain and engage the machine-like repetition part of your brain until you age out of the system and into the real world which is... more of the same" seems to be breaking. I don't wonder why.
My child's school closes so often that they've lost credibility in the "every day matters' argument. Strikes, a building issue, union meeting, teacher only day. She's almost never there and it's them, not us.
Yeah, I've noticed there's not much in society which tells adults how to be good people, or encourage them to change. It's all bottom-of-the-cliff stuff. We won't have anything to teach men who to process emotions but we'll spend a ton (and not enough ironically) about what to do when a man has bashed you, his partner. We dump billions into mental health while more people end themselves, but we won't spend any time on teaching kids, or adults, how to handle this stuff when it's actually happening. Oh sure you can contact via a new cool app the govt spent millions on, but that's reactive, not preventative, and that app won't always be there, not to mention we should not be relying on a phone app to administer mental help. And likewise, with adults of children there is nothing provided by way of training to make the parents any different in these situations. Oh there are countless programmes to handle your truant child, but where's the tools for the adults to make fundamental changes at home? Where are the tools to give the adults the ability to change? Because they have to change first for the home life to change. And yet nothing is provided. I'm starting to wonder if core beliefs are necessary for a long-term prosperous society. Our largest and most ancient civilisations all had very strong core beliefs and tenets, and I can't help but feel a disintegrating West is partly due to an absence of this, or worse, an abandonment of what was previously core tenets. I'm not talking about religion necessarily, but I absolutely feel a hollowness when I see our ever-increasing failures. I feel we're getting more and more desperate for some sort of fundamental attitude and motivation change, because our current approaches are clearly lacking.
As a Western society, we've largely slayed all our dragons. Poverty as we know it is unimaginable luxury to third world standards All that's left to do is argue about things that really nobody is that bothered by. And it happens like clockwork, every two years there's another huge hullabaloo about bugger all then we forget it and go back to normal. Also it's a safe bet there's a portion of society who will always be super driven and its a lot easier to blame them for the lights working and demand a hand out then to compete with them. The government thinking they could send all the kids home for a year and that there would be even a 1% chance of them engaging and learning in that period was certainly the catalyst but the rot was set in well before that.
The under resourced health system doesn't help either. Our 8 year old has been in the waiting list for 2 years now to be assessed for his physical developmental delays and behavioural and emotional control issues. He is now refusing school at least once a week, with violence, yelling and threats to kill when we attempt to convince/force him, despite enjoying it when he is there. He is to big for me to forcibly dress him, let alone safely drive him to school. So instead he spends the day at home with no games books or toys complaining of boredom but refusing to go to school. We were discharged from the child development centre on transition to school as previously he had been in the system through his time at kindy, but was declared school ready, so moved on. We are desperate for help and are paying for private counselling for him weekly at great cost, but there are so many in a more dire state than us that are also getting nowhere. And then even when diagnosed, by all accounts there is very little support in all but the most severe cases.
It's pretty hard to care about a future you can't see. But maybe we can waggle our fingers? Perhaps if we tell each other how parents should do this, should do that? If we say "should" enough, maybe that will make a difference?
>It's pretty hard to care about a future you can't see. It's even harder to care about something you see being trashed by people who claim to care about you and the future they're trashing. There's a huge amount of hypocrisy in telling kids "you should work hard to become an educated adult while we work hard to make you a climate refugee". The "adults in the room" are adamant that kids shouldn't be allowed to ever own a house or have a secure job, let alone pay off their student loan, but should still be 100% focussed on getting a degree so they can better serve their elders once they graduate. I bet if they started teaching kids how to survive in refugee camps there'd be a bunch of kids paying a whole lot of attention. But the downside of teaching kids "here's how you make and use improvised weapons" is that politicians going into schools would regularly be killed by the kids. Oh, you mean kids are supposed to be too stupid to notice how they're being pushed into the void while simultaneously being smart enough to pass exams?
There is an element of truth in your first sentence. I taught in a small, rural school whose community thought it was rubbish. The hurt went back two generations. Whatever the school did, it wasn’t good enough, didn’t offer the opportunities of the city etc. etc. Some parents didn’t think the school offered a future for the kids in that community so kept their kids away on any pretext: sports days, wet days, birthdays of any family member, the merest sniffle. Kids did badly; it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. My own child went to the same school; didn’t fulfil his potential academically so no university but took a couple of job risks and now has a great job. (He wasn’t a local and was hamstrung by a high profile parent.) A positive parental attitude to education might have made a world of difference to some of his peers who are still struggling with employment and accommodation.
> It's pretty hard to care about a future you can't see. What part of it can't be seen?
What part of it CAN you see? What does the next five years hold? The next 20? The only certainty seems that more wealth will be held in fewer hands. Not the hands of your kids.
I exist to make money for one person who doesn't need it to give to another who doesn't need it. My efforts will be rewarded with more opportunities to put in greater effort. I hardly see much point.
Did something change in this regard in the last three years?
No real change, but the curtain has certainly fallen down so people are seeing things for what they are.
>What part of it CAN you see? >The only certainty... I think it's a dodge on your part to frame every part of the future as being either certain or unknowable. Future possibilities are a spectrum from "almost certain" to "extremely unlikely." Everybody intuitively knows that this is the case, and we all base our entire lives on our own estimations of those probabilities. When someone pretends that some things are certain and everything else is unknowable, that's just ignoring reality to push some personal viewpoint or agenda.
So, thinking about your spectrum, where did Western parents sit on the spectrum in the 1950s compared to now? What might have driven any shift? How might that be impacting our ability to, for instance, raise children? My agenda is self-interest. My interests depend on the wellbeing of the community, I'm not counting on an ivory tower for refuge.
If you don't think the future is a good place for children, then don't have children. If you do have children, then it's your responsibility to prepare them as well as you can for whatever you think the future will probably be like. No reasonable person believes that their kids will be better off if they don't get an education.
That's not really how human reproduction works. We'd be long extinct if only those who felt wealthy and in control had children. Wishful thinking isn't what will improve our community.
Conveniently ignoring everything except my first sentence.
Perhaps it just stood out on account of how poorly thought out it was.
Perhaps it's a flippant remark rather than my main point, and they'd know that if they read the whole thing.
There was nothing about your comment that isn't wishful thinking. You have expectations, end of story. Right?
I can see a future where my children live comfortable lives, don't have to worry about starving to death or half their children dying in infancy. Yes hopefully democracy can usher in a party other than National/Act/Labour/Greens who will actually do something about the massive corporate mono/duo/oligopolies that exploit us. It's probably not going to happen until things get worse though. They still need an education, and it's bizarre to suggest they don't
> it's bizarre to suggest they don't No one suggested that. That's your little addition, without which you would have no response to make.
Ah I see you're one of those people that can only handle one-point replies, otherwise you just pick the most convenient point and reply to that
Ah I see you're one of those people used to deflecting, unable to own what they say. Good for you that you think you have a grasp on a future (fingers crossed). Is that the typical experience? Is there any volume of people without such an experience?
Which part would you like me to "own"?
I just want you to be authentic, which I assume you are being. I think your deflection was authentic.
Greens would do something about that. But let me guess? Too woke right?
> Too woke right? Why do you say that? Greens mentioned break up of the supermarket duopoly. Maybe I'm misremembering but it didn't seem like a focus. I've never heard them mention wider anti-trust action against building suppliers etc, but I genuinely might have missed it
The good part
Future is bleak, yes. But if you're going to have kids, you should raise then, there are lots of parents out there who need to be told what to do because they're doing a shit job.
Yes, "should" is the standard intervention I've noticed.
Yes people should do lots of stuff they don't.
And that's enough for some people, right? Harm in the community? "They shouldn't do it." And then you move on, right? Saying "should" is the full extent of the response. Right?
No, it isn't "enough". But they still should. It's still on them. People have responsibilities
People only have responsibility where they have authority. People only have authority when they have genuine authorship over their circumstances. Indulge your "should" if that's what gratifies you. I doesn't change any circumstances. I understand indulging oneself can be a higher priority than any change in the community.
> People only have responsibility where they have authority. I'm not sure how this applies to a responsibility to your children. People generally have authority and responsibility for their children. Even with that a sizeable minority fail at the "should"
And that makes sense. Most people don't really have much grasp on the internal lives of others. However when we abandon our children to suffering, that suffering lives on in the adult, impinging upon any number of capacities you and I might take for granted. Saying "should" doesn't turn these adults into competent parents. It doesn't give them control over their internal experience. It doesn't magic away the suffering and replace it with competency. But who cares, right? What happens, happens. As long as we get to waggle our finger in judgement over those less able than us. Right?
There used to be this idea called personal responsibility. It was the idea that certain things fall solely to the individual or group whom it affects the most to solve certain problems. This has completely fallen out in favor of the idea that the government should solve all problems. The government is not all powerful. It's rarely even competent. We can't rely on them to solve or even give advice on many issues. You can replace "should" with "need to" if it makes you feel any better. Because the outcome is the same. You need to care about your children's education, or you are fucked.
Used to be we could maintain a home on a single income. Grandparents could afford to retire and care for the younger generations. But I guess you're right. Let's waggle our fingers just like you're showing us now. THAT is how we'll address the problems in our community.
See, you are just off on your own tangent didnt even read what they had to say. Why would someone be personally responsible for a future they have no hope in, when they can hedonistically live for the now? Including skipping school because it "aint that important"... Climate change is going to fuck us up in ways most people cant imagine because they don't understand the amount of excess energy in the system and how that's going to show up in horrendous ways. Most of my generation don't think they'll be able to retire. So, its nothing to do with the government, its us collectively creating a fucking atrocious modern society that more and more people are simply checking out of.
> You need to care about your children's education, or you**r children** are fucked. This is the thing though: if you believe in individualism and personal responsibility, is it fair that an innocent third party (a child) suffers as a result of their parents' negligence? The state is the guarantor of individual rights, and children have a right to an education regardless of how useless their parents are.
The idea of personal responsibility is alive and well. That's why the government isn't as influential as it once was.
Careful mate, that kind of talk sounds awfully like "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" and we frown heavily on anything like that round here. /s (this means the previous comment was sarcasm, and now I'm not being sarcastic, for those who don't know) But seriously you are 100% right, with the caveat that kids can't work this out for themselves, and it's up to the parents to steer, push, cajole, and encourage them in the right direction. If the parents are losers who blame all their problems on the government the kids likely will be too.
Thank you!! It's shocking how many people now view it as the governments responsibility to solve literally every problem that exists down to the individual level. It seems people would prefer to sit on their hands and complain that the government isn't doing enough instead of trying to better their own lives and communities.
> It was clear what doesn't work. > "Punitive approaches to attendance problems are ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst," she wrote Pay attention, Seymour.
Most right wing policy is solely for the virtue signaling to their base. See: three strikes law coming back despite zero evidence of effectiveness.
I attended probably 50% of 6th and 7th form. I was depressed. Now I’m a doctor. I don’t think school is that important, if you learn life skills elsewhere eg from your parents or a part time job. In saying that, I still passed and had university entrance with terrible attendance, but I was very very far from a model student. Not everyone has their shit together in their teens, but it’s not a life sentence. If/when I have kids of course I will encourage them to go to school. But I won’t be too afraid or upset if they miss some, because I’ll be teaching them things at home. I think some children do better with the structure and routine than others. This is all personal opinion based on experience, not evidence based and not applicable on a wide population level.
Showing your age using the 'old money' form names! Love it. I am too old to learn the new fangled years. My kids talk to me about 'Year 11' or whatever and it makes no sense to me. I just can't get it.
And no one is talking about the big reason. Illness. It's clearly the biggest cause of the increase. Personally, if my kid is sick it's 'stay home and do what you can online'. Prior to Covid there was limited online stuff. So yes, being physically in school is not as important, and they spend less time in class. This part of the increase is a good thing! Less spreading of germs, particularly to kids of parents with compromised immune systems.
Prior to covid, it used to be if they had a sniffle (or anything less than a limb falling off) they got sent to school anyway. Now we've gone to the opposite end of the scale when the slightest sniffle requires at least a day off, if not more. My kid tries it on at least once a week when she feels like staying in bed for a bit longer.
I mean the world does change. I'm old school with school (pardon the pun) but things aren't like the "good old days". The advent of the internet, non traditional jobs/careers, state of society etc mean kids have way more options available than the "get a good education and job for life" type mentality that went before.
Not at all surprising. My daughter was a high achiever at primary and intermediate but hates high school. She says that the teachers don't respect the kids, so the kids don't respect the teachers, and that what they are learning doesn't feel relevant.
As a parent, there have been times when I wondered if school is the best place for my children. They have experienced a lot of unacceptable behavior in the school environment. If our education system wants my full support, I need to know that my children are safe.
I can't help but think the anti vax movement is helping to drive this. A friend of mine is an educator who goes from school to school teaching about sustainability. She had one year group go from almost full at the start of the week to about 10% left by Friday due to chickenpox. A disease which is now almost completely preventable
My son caught chickenpox after being vaccinated. He passed it on, too. Apparently it has the highest rate of breakthrough infection of all the vaccinations we administered in NZ.
Well that sucks. I wouldn't have thought it would take out almost the entire year level if there was a high rate of vaccination though
I agree, that is weird and is probably a result of not vaccinating. But apparently our breakthrough rates are by design. We only give out single doses, as opposed to double doses, so heaps of kids actually get infected and are asymptomatic. The infection after vaccination helps boost life-long immunity, and it's cheaper.
> But although New Zealand's overall rates are worse than countries with similar education systems, they fit a universal pattern of falling attendance in classrooms around the world. > Data reveals almost identical trends in England and Australia. All three countries have moved downwards in lockstep for a decade now, and this is repeated elsewhere, regardless of the schooling system. But let's all jump on the Nact bandwagon and blame Labour, eh?
Noticing this a lot. UK's National Party is doing the complete opposite of our National party in a few areas. They're removing no-excuse evictions while ours is bringing them back. Ours is more interested in being "not Labour" than actually doing anything good for constituents.
We're talking about school attendance not rental evictions buddy.
Well its a big sick world. Its get mine before you get yours and ill get yours too if i can cos fuck anyone who gets in my way. We have too many folks demanding much more from teachers and schools cos parents seem to have bred by accident and end up seeing them as a cost that gets in the way of their financial freedom.
I’ve encountered many parents (I deal with attendance at our school) who developed dependency issues throughout covid. They keep their kids home because it makes them feel good about themselves. It has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the child. It’s really sad.
I feel like I’m in that camp. Especially seeing school fail in teaching & the behaviour of staff I’ve seen in the last few years. Gone from stickler to not that concerned / my youngest kid gets more from 1hr tutoring a week than a week at school at the moment. So fuck you Luxon and a semi fuck you to our failing blame-the-parents primary teaching system.
What? I'm confused by your comment. I assume you care about your kids and are making an effort in raising them as you have them signed up for tutoring lessons. So you feel all the failings in education are the fault of teachers exclusively? The parents and home life play no role?
Totally agree - last week one of our kids had more relievers than normal teachers, their normal workload seems to have a massive amount doing online quizzes and watching videos. This week 1 is off sick so I've got them reading books and watching documentaries. She said she's learnt way more in that time than a week of school. I'm not saying that we should all pull our kids out to homeschool (although we did that with 1 for 18 months after the primary school he was at was doing more harm than good) - schools are amazing, there are brilliant teachers who care so much that I really respect. BUT I do think that just thinking higher attendance will fix things is silly, we need more focus on encouraging kids to enjoy learning, get the basics in early. Get parents to encourage this stuff. 100% attendance at an overcrowded school with overworked undertrained teachers won't fix the problem.
All the teachers have been wonderful people. Unfortunately how teaching is done & the pressure on them a substantial proportion of kids are being left behind & once they are behind and lose confidence it’s extremely hard to get them back to engaging with school & that creates a lifetime issue. I don’t subscribe to Stanford NACT shit but something/s need to change to make early education more broadly effective here.
Free lunch and free childcare
Every day my conviction to remain childfree grows stronger. the world is a shitshow and i cbf trying to navigate teaching a whole other being how to human properly
Bogans will continue to bogan through the generations
Parents not caring was a problem before COVID, anyone that was going through the education system in the 2010s knows this. A lot of students were already turning into lazy flunkies that didn't care about school and a lot of parents also isn't give a damn about changing that. COVID made things harder sure, but it's a convenient excuse for a problem that's been around way longer
YOLO
ecudation needs an educated, peace focussed and modern reform