Hanson - a new low!

The real problem here is bigoted one-sided reporting – again.
My wife works in the ACT school system in a socially-disadvantaged part of Canberra where there is a disproportionate number of ‘special needs kids’.. Typical daily feedback of her working day details to me how she quite often has to spend spend the majority of the classtime supporting the few while the remainder of the class sits idle and waits for things to get back to the normal teaching process.
Pauline is not stating to exile them onto a ‘leper colony island’ just to group them and apply dedicated resources to them to assist them in ways that they need. There is enough socialisation to be had in the playgrounds, it is not necessary in the classroom also….

Garfield said :

Lucy Baker said :

Garfield said :

You mention Muslims again and how Pauline claims they’re going to overrun us. I’ve never heard it reported about when she thinks this is going to happen, but I doubt she’s saying its going to happen tomorrow. A few decades ago the Muslim presence in Australia was minuscule, but its now up to something like 2.6%. The growth rate of Muslims in Australia has been exponentially many times higher than that of other groups.

Did you read the information that was released? Hinduism is growing much faster than Islam in Australia. And the other large migration group, the Chinese, are almost all of religions/belief systems other than Islam.

I hadn’t had time, but thanks for that as it is interesting. Hinduism grew from 0.7% in 2006 to 1.9% in 2016 while Islam grew from 1.7% to 2.6%. Buddhism actually dropped in the last 5 years. Back in 1996 Islam was 1.1% and Hinduism 0.4% and I found an old encyclopaedia that had 1981 stats with Islam at 0.5% and Hinduism must have been less than Buddhism which was 0.2%.

I didn’t see it at first glance but yes Hinduism is growing fastest.

They already segregate high-performing kids into special programs, whether or not they have autism spectrum disorders, presumably based on the fact that pure maths will be lost on roughly 98 per cent of the school population but there will be a handful that can engage with it. It’s not just the very top students that are segregated, you usually have levels below double major/4 unit maths (and presumably other subjects) e.g. advanced/extended (which was 1.5 subjects) and then single unit maths, right down to ones that were not even accredited for university entrance scores (half a unit, as I recall).

Perhaps the compromise solution would be to segregate the classes, but not the actual schools, so that all students (both the gifted and the challenged) have the opportunity to socialise with their peers during everything that’s not actual classes.

Lucy Baker said :

Garfield said :

You mention Muslims again and how Pauline claims they’re going to overrun us. I’ve never heard it reported about when she thinks this is going to happen, but I doubt she’s saying its going to happen tomorrow. A few decades ago the Muslim presence in Australia was minuscule, but its now up to something like 2.6%. The growth rate of Muslims in Australia has been exponentially many times higher than that of other groups.

Did you read the information that was released? Hinduism is growing much faster than Islam in Australia. And the other large migration group, the Chinese, are almost all of religions/belief systems other than Islam.

I hadn’t had time, but thanks for that as it is interesting. Hinduism grew from 0.7% in 2006 to 1.9% in 2016 while Islam grew from 1.7% to 2.6%. Buddhism actually dropped in the last 5 years. Back in 1996 Islam was 1.1% and Hinduism 0.4% and I found an old encyclopaedia that had 1981 stats with Islam at 0.5% and Hinduism must have been less than Buddhism which was 0.2%.

Garfield said :

You mention Muslims again and how Pauline claims they’re going to overrun us. I’ve never heard it reported about when she thinks this is going to happen, but I doubt she’s saying its going to happen tomorrow. A few decades ago the Muslim presence in Australia was minuscule, but its now up to something like 2.6%. The growth rate of Muslims in Australia has been exponentially many times higher than that of other groups.

Did you read the information that was released? Hinduism is growing much faster than Islam in Australia. And the other large migration group, the Chinese, are almost all of religions/belief systems other than Islam.

How quickly we forget the Tuggeranong school that, with the agreement of the parents, constructed a supervised, safe, quiet room as a retreat for an autistic pupil.

When the hand wringers found out it became “THE CAGE” and the media beat up ensued costing the principal her position and the shutters of political correctness came down.

I know ex-teachers who have had to try and balance the needs of autistic and non-autistic children in the same environment because some parents simply dump their child at a school expecting someone else to deal with the “problem” – after all, that’s what they pay the fees for isn’t it?

This scenario was portrayed in the New Zealand satire “7 Periods With Mr Gormsby” which was on ABC several years ago. Every teacher I know who has seen this series agrees that it exactly like the real thing even though it is presented as a satire.

CanberraStreets said :

The problem with our democracy is the people who are allowed to vote.

To my mind, Ms Hanson is scary less because of her personal beliefs and more because she has garnered sufficient votes formerly to get elected to the House of Representatives and now to the Senate. Her party represents the 4th largest political party in the Senate and the party that obtained the greatest positive swing in the 2016 Election.

I find her world view and politics repugnant, but almost 600,000 Australians find her to be the leader of the party they most want to represent them. Worse, the signs point to this number increasing.

Railing at the stupidity of duly elected representatives is a great sport; it makes us feel both intellectually muscular and ethically superior. When increasing numbers of the Australian voters are turning to these divisive and extreme views, we might be better served to try to understand what is going on and why the major parties are increasingly not winning the hearts and minds of the average punter.

Part of the problem with Ms Hanson’s last burst is that there is an element of truth in her position. Here in Canberra, we have Cranleigh and Malkara School, Woden School and Black Mountain School – all specialist schools that specifically include support for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. These schools do amazing work and are highly regarded.

I am unaware of any current or former ACT Ministers of either Disability or Education making a stand against this segregationist arrangement. So I am a little bemused at the vehementness of the Author’s distaste for an approach that he presumably supported while a Minister.

When I was a mere MLA I opposed the idea that with kids with a mild disability such as Asperger’s or the like would be segregated just because educators thought the main game was education first and social development second. For these kids I thought it the other way round and that if this was done and addressed a re-integration was the go. The real issue here is that Hanson is singling out a cohort for discrimination. Not on.

It’s a difficult issue which deserves to be debated. I have Aspergers Syndrome (a mild form of autism) and I had trouble dealing with other people at school. At high school I joined the lifting club and the common bond between us made social interaction easier. I don’t think I would have been able to cope with being segregated in a specialist school, my grades were average but would have been worse being segregated. It is a difficult issue to deal with, the nature of autism is that it isn’t black and white, there is a spectrum involved and compartmentalisation is impossible.

The positive thing about Hanson’s comments is that they have started a conversation about autism and resulted in many people researching the issue and becoming more educated about it. That can only benefit everybody in the long run.

chewy14 said :

The problem here seems to be an almost wilful inability to hear what Hanson actually has said rather than some caricature of what she says because you don’t support her politics or are predisposed to write off anything she says instantly.

She was simply suggesting that where children are disruptive or take a disproportionate amount of limited teaching resources, other students may suffer poorer performance and thus more resources were needed and specifically more resources for those with special needs.

Did she say it eloquently? No. Is she correct? Yes.

I’m no expert in the education needs of our children, but I think you make a very good point. There was some particularly biased anti-Hanson coverage on Radio National the other morning.

The thing is, like Trump, we don’t need the media to so overtly pounce on the words of pollies like Hanson in a feverish bid to bring them down. With patience and enough rope Hanson will do it herself.

We knew that would be your view before you wrote it John.
And most of us would also reckon having disabled kids in mainstream classes benefits both sets of kids.
But what do YOU say about how we handle disruptive kids, disabled or otherwise?
Surely you realise that going full GetUp! on a forum like this will drive more voters to PHON.
And in Australia we decide our politicians at the voting booth, not Abbott chucking them in gaol because you don’t like their views. The best disinfectant is sunlight.