On parenting, teachers should not have to carry the responsibility

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Columnist Jenna Price sounds angry in her article on parental responsibility (“Teachers aren’t here to raise your kids. That’s your job”, 9/9). We can’t blame her. For a long time, teachers have been expected to do many things apart from teach the curriculum. We have all sorts of different medical conditions now that weren’t diagnosed in the past, including autism and ADHD. There has been demand on teachers for increased amounts of time for admin. As Price indicates though, many parents expect teachers to teach values and behaviours that parents themselves need to teach.
Parents are so much more involved with their children now than in decades gone by and children are protected sometimes from consequences of their bad behaviour. Baby Boomers were parented with benign neglect: “come home when the street lights go on”. From my experience with working with parents, many of them want to be the friend of their child. You cannot be. Your role, especially in the early years and up into the teens, is to set boundaries and help your child to stay within them. There can be negotiations, but there must be consequences. Your child will respect you and ultimately themselves. It takes some courage I guess, but the time for a different relationship with your children is when they are adult.
Jan Marshall, Brighton

What are the parents doing?
Jenna Price’s article is very timely. Whenever I read or hear about young teens, even preteens, committing home invasions, car stealing and joy riding in the early hours of the morning, I think where are their parents? I always knew where my young teens were at those times. Parent effectiveness training needs to be ramped up and even made compulsory for some parents.
Georgina Simmons, Mornington

The lessons begin in the home
Much has been written recently in relation to how schools and teachers need to tackle toxic masculinity, misogyny and the “manosphere”. As a secondary school teacher with more than 40 years’ experience, I can tell you that if you believe this, you are deluding yourself. From the moment a child leaves the womb, the strongest socialising agent in their lives, especially in those early formative years, will be their parents. Parents are responsible for instilling in their children traits such as respect, compassion, empathy, and resilience. Most parents are aware of this responsibility; however, a growing number believe they can abrogate it to others, usually schools and teachers.
Every time a teacher sets foot in a classroom, they are already modelling and reinforcing the character traits that youth require to navigate life beyond school; however, if parents have not adequately prepared them in those crucial early years, it is often too late, and if they have provided their children with smartphones and watches before age 15, they are doing them a huge disservice.
Gary Warren, Eltham

Perhaps, a licence is required
″⁣Teachers aren’t there to raise your kids. That’s your job″⁣ – the headline that I have been waiting to see. Well done Jenna Price. Before people decide to have children, all prospective parents should think long and hard about the lifelong commitment they are undertaking. A parenting licence would be more relevant than a marriage licence.
Jane Washington, Frankston South

Step up, and raise the children
Hear, hear, Jenna Price. Parents need to step up and actually raise the children they created. Feeding and clothing them is the least of it.
Helen Boér, Balwyn North

If it’s good enough for puppies . . .
Jenna Price aptly states that respectful relationships begin at home. Unfortunately, although there are courses to learn about almost everything, there don’t seem to be any when it comes to parenting. Nowadays to register your dog some councils require proof of puppy school attendance, which is really a course showing humans how to bring up respectful pooches. Dare it be suggested that a Parenting Certificate could be introduced?
Judith Hudson, Elwood

THE FORUM

Explain AI benefits
The Allan Labor government spoke of being ″⁣ruthless″⁣ in attracting data centre jobs and making Victoria ″⁣the data centre centre″⁣. Faced with unexpected outrage from affected communities, the Carroll Labor government is sounding a little less gung-ho. The recently appointed AI Minister, Anthony Carbines, wants data centre developers to ″⁣share the benefits″⁣ (″⁣Anger over $1.5b West Gate data centre as AI minister issues warning to sector″⁣, 10/9). It’s hard to know what benefits there are to be shared. I doubt the minister means that the energy-gorging, water-guzzling data centre behemoths themselves have any possible benefits to share. But if he means that the secret AI computing taking place inside the data centres offers us benefits, he should start ascertaining and explaining in detail what those benefits are, beyond the usual nebulous ″⁣cure for cancer″⁣.
Richard Barnes, Fairfield

Accusation irony
It’s ironic that Israel has been accused of ethnic cleansing, given that Jews lived for millennia in what had been called Judea and Samaria before they, themselves, were ethnically cleansed from the ″⁣West Bank” in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. If the government is to apply trade sanctions on Israel in the future, it would need to explain its hypocrisy in not having done likewise with China and Turkey, who have long illegally occupied Tibet and northern Cyprus, respectively. In 2005, Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in pursuit of peace, and this ultimately resulted in October 7. Israelis are understandably reluctant to repeat this approach with the West Bank. As past Israeli PM, Golda Meir put it, “Better a bad press than a good epitaph”.
Geoff Feren, St Kilda East

Embargo calls
All those in Australia and other countries making calls for an embargo on imports from Israeli settlements on the basis of alleged human rights abuses, will no doubt be following them up with demands that we cut off imports from perpetrators of massive and unambiguous human rights abuse, such as China.
Bill James, Frankston

Snobbery abounds
My great-great grandfather, Henry Russell, was born in Henry Street, East Collingwood, in 1857.
East Collingwood now goes by the name Abbotsford, so snobbery has existed in Melbourne for more than 160 years.
Rob Prowd, Box Hill South

No faith to begin with
Your correspondent (Letters, 9/9) talked of losing faith in the outcomes of privatisation. Anyone who ever analysed privatisation never had this faith to begin with. Economics writer Kenneth Davidson in the time of Jeff Kennett’s government wrote numerous articles in The Age demonstrating that the overall cost to the community of delivering services had to increase by virtue of the need for profit; the higher interest rates paid by private industry (hence support from the banking sector) and the costs of contract preparation and supervision.
For a politician there was the joy of creating deniability and the appearance of action.
For the community there now is the vastly increased cost, the complete inability to sheet home responsibility for failure, the confusion of how to seek redress for failure, and the lower standard of service. What’s not to love?
Laurie Comerford, Chelsea

More bad habits
Promises by Premier Ben Carroll for greater transparency in government are now looking a bit shaky. There are at least two areas of concern.
IBAC reforms containing provisions for enhanced powers will not apply to issues previously covered by IBAC. In essence, it would prevent revisiting allegations associated with recent major scandals, including matters relating to the Big Build infrastructure program.
The other area is Labor’s action to block an attempt to establish a parliamentary committee into the proposed secret tax on public transport users, described as a ″⁣rail improvement″⁣ levy, through increased rail, tram and bus fares estimated to raise $8 billion to fund transport projects including the SRL.
Both moves are seen as attempts to protect former premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan. Seems the bad habits of yesteryear are reasserting themselves.
Martin Newington, Aspendale

Factors in voting
Your correspondent (Letters, 10/9) states she will be voting for One Nation because its Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, has a similar history to her son, who is an outstanding citizen in his older life. I make no comment on Pickering’s background nor ability, however, I would want to consider how the few policies that leader Pauline Hanson postulates could possibly be ones that voters would see as an indication that her party was capable of guiding our country through very challenging times. Surely in casting her vote a little more consideration than a likeness of her outstanding son to a candidate is warranted.
Bill Pimm, Mentone

No insight
In relation to One Nation, some of their major candidates claim they’re not politicians; past behaviour, however damning, is irrelevant; they’re not concerned with scientifically proven principles of climate change, although pestilence, fire and hurricanes surround them; they have simple black and white solutions to complex problems; they seem to espouse the “kick the superannuation can down the road” approach without a thought for future needs; instant gratification isn’t quick enough for them and finally, their overriding raison d’être is one finger pointing at the major parties without the awareness that three fingers are pointing right back at themselves.
Peter Russo, Brunswick West

Medicare madness
I was referred by my rheumatologist to have MRIs on my shoulders and arms due to extreme pain. He wrote me the necessary referrals and when I rang the imaging group to make the appointments, I was told that Medicare would only pay for one limb per scan per day but they had a vacancy the next day and I could come back and have the other limb scanned and that would be OK with Medicare. What sort of madness is this? Where’s the logic? Can someone please explain this to me? I am 91 years old and I certainly don’t find it easy to travel back and forth twice. Apart from the inconvenience, the double paperwork involved is nonsensical.
Norma Zandle, Brighton East

The 9/11 ripples
It is difficult to overstate the impact of the September 11 attacks on the world we live in today. The invasion of Afghanistan which followed was initially conducted for justified reasons, but ultimately failed to remove the Taliban. The fraudulent war in Iraq destabilised that country and paved the way for the rise of ISIS, which helped to exacerbate the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Despite its many crimes, Saddam Hussein’s regime helped to check Iranian power, and its removal left Iran free to dominate its neighbours, creating a recipe for permanent regional conflict. Subsequent Western military interventions in the region led to the gradual erosion of civil liberties at home, and to waves of mass migration to the West, creating significant unresolved problems with cultural integration and social cohesion, and contributing to the rise of political extremism globally. As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we must mourn the 2977 innocent people murdered by al-Qaeda on that fateful day, and reflect on the mistakes made by our political leaders since.
Nikhil Dhanabal, Clyde North

How the land lies
One of your correspondents wonders why politicians can’t be forced to take polygraph tests (Letters, 8/9), while another (9/9) says polygraph machines are unreliable junk science.
The irony is, in Australia we have no legislation against lies in political advertising. Further, if a government changes its mind – due to public clamouring or sheer logic – it is branded a ″⁣liar″⁣. I’m thinking of Anthony Albanese’s sensible retreat on the stage 3 tax cuts that only benefited the wealthy in his first term, and cutting benefits to future residential property investors in this year’s budget.
On gambling advertising, Albanese has yet to prove himself – given he is standing out against the measures recommended in Peta Murphy’s report, and which have the support of MPs in both main parties and the backbench, as well as most Australians.
Caroline Leslie, Hawthorn

American idolatry
It’s now obvious that there is no limit to Australians’ indiscriminate worshipping of all things American. How else can you explain, in the home of the world’s finest version of football, the crowds rushing to the MCG to watch American gridiron – a ridiculous distortion of rugby, and easily the world’s worst form of football.
Geoff Dalton, East Malvern

What cost SRL?
It is true that the SRL will benefit some if it is ever built, but at what cost? This hastily conceived project that lacks a business case and transparency will cost more than $50 billion for the first leg. The other cost will be to the hospitals, schools, health services, police, roads, infrastructure, plus the debt. Maybe a good idea but we can’t afford it.
Vince Vozzo, Elwood

O, Canada
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is to be admired for standing up to the bullying of Donald Trump. It may well inspire other countries to do the same, which would represent an own goal by Trump.
John Walsh, Watsonia

AND ANOTHER THING

Society
If I get off my train at Southern Cross and connect to the 48 North Balwyn tram in Collins Street, do I end up in Balwyn or Balwyn North? Oh Melbourne, are you confused or just pretentious?
Gryff Jamieson-Ballard, Castlemaine

Jenna Price (Comment, 9/9), thank you. Parents, (and I’m one) stop undermining teachers (and I was one). Work with teachers. We all want what is best for our children/students, don’t we?
Louise Madden, Geelong West

I was so enthralled by a television news story on the NFL game, I forgot about the earlier story on the shocking condition of our country roads.
David Cayzer, Clifton Hill

Politics
It’s not so much that Victorian One Nation leader Warren Pickering admitted to myriad misdemeanours in his younger days but the fact that he’s a conspiracy theorist in a one-trick party.
Dorothy Galloway, Mentone

Fancy making crime and corruption illegal (″⁣Hanson gives her support: Who has not tried drugs?″⁣, 10/9). Now that’s a masterstroke.
John Guy, Elsternwick

Furthermore
King Canute couldn’t hold back the tide, and if the RBA increases interest rates to roll back inflation that’s largely caused by wars, it will also fail.
Malcolm McDonald, Burwood

I am sure Donald Trump has his 9/11 story wrong. He would have carried two firefighters, one on each shoulder to safety, instead of modestly claiming they saved him.
Ian Anderson, Ascot Vale

Commentators have said UK’s banning of West Bank imports is only symbolic. There are times when symbolism beats inaction.
Dan Drummond, Leongatha

Finally
Myra Fisher (Letters, 10/9), your sense of humour often gets me laughing, especially in the morning. Sets me up well for the day.
Tris Raouf, Hadfield

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