They start young these days.   A teacher was on yard duty during recess at Swallowcliffe Primary School at Davoren Park on Wednesday when two students threw a brick at her, hitting her in the back of the head. As she lay on the ground semi-conscious, the two students stole her office keys and stole more than $400 from her purse.

Charming!

As one parent said:

"It’s very scary, I mean, these are only 12-year-olds.”

I wonder what the parents of those kids think of it.  Probably couldn’t care less unfortunately.  Davoren Park is a disadvantaged area, and according to a Primary Principals Association spokesman:

"In areas like Davoren Park, unfortunately a lot of parents of students there haven’t been successful at school and don’t see a lot of value in school. There’s not that positive reinforcement about schools as places to go to where you can be successful,"

while a representative of the teachers’ union said this:

"In the recent arbitration case, for example, we’ve been pointing to that that staff are dealing with social problems, not just educational issues. Poverty. Violence. Neglect. All of these things are just part and parcel of a teacher’s daily work,"

I know this has been going on for years but is there anyone who doesn’t think its wrong that teachers spend so much effort trying to deal with social and family problems rather than concentrating on providing the best education for children.  It shouldn’t be their role.

But the problem of the behaviour at this particular school has been dealt with.  According to the Deputy Chief Executive of the Education Department:

"We’ve had a school assembly and spoken to the students again. The whole approach of the school, the students and the school community needs to be focused on appropriate behaviour."

So the kids have been told that chucking bricks at teachers and stealing from them is wrong.  It beggars belief that any kid more than about 3 years old doesn’t intrinsically know this (and I’m probably being harsh on most 3 year olds in this assessment).  What were their parents doing for the 7-12 years that the primary school kids had been their responsibility?  Oh hang on, all you need to be a parent is the capacity to have sex and conceive – no requirement to have even some basic life skills, parenting skills, the economic capacity to provide for them or anything like that.   (and the scary thought is that those poorly equipped to parent children tend to have more of them than people who do have the personal, financial and other resources to do it … so if we continue down the current path things will get worse over time).