I am sitting at home - irritated and cranky so maybe I shouldn't be reading the press but I have come across this report in the UK.  It is an article about increasing the areas of accountability for schools for 18 new targets. 

Here is the opening para, "Schools will be made to keep records of teenage pregnancy rates, pupils' drug problems, criminal records and obesity levels under government plans to give parents a true picture of children's lives."  In addition schools have to manage issues like bullying and neglect - well that makes sense in terms of the duty of care that schools have for students.  The report suggests that schools become "broadly responsible for children's safety, enjoyment and happiness".

The paper it is a discussion document compiled by the Dept of Children a basis to discuss a strategic plan for 2009.  While it argues that it is about the interests of the child - it feels more like a strategy for blame shifting from our community generally to teachers.

I have heard similar complaints locally - teachers get the blame for all of the problems of children and families but we don't look at the way that communities operate and how that might impact on "our" children (I don't mean our children within our families but the children in our communities).

I can't see any real evidence in this report or in similar complaints of education systems that we want to recognise that any influences other than school plays a part in the development of kids.

What about the crazy working hours that adults are working in the world - Aust is the second longest working hours in the first world.  The impact of consumerism, the lack of facilities for adolescents to spend time - other than streets, the disconnect within communities, and the pressure to do well be a success and to have it all.

If you had three chances to make fundamental changes to your own community so that children could grow up safely, happy and with a fair chance at a decent quality of life, what would they be? 

Hi UM, sadly I don't think making changes in my local community would do any good at all.

The fundamental problems need to be dealt with on a much broader level because, in my humble opinion, what you are seeing in that article is just another demonstration of the blame game - our young people are going to hell in a handcart and all we ever get is constant stream of buck-passing.

So, if I has the power what would I do?

I would re-introduce discipline into schools and yes I mean corporal punishment if necessary but only in extreme cases. However, in any event if the youngsters do wrong they need to be made aware that they have to take the consequences and if they don't, then their parents must. And there must be no opportunity to sue the school for daring to tell off poor little Johnny for swearing at his teacher. Kids talk about 'respect' but they have no idea what it means - so they need to be taught it.

I also think that the root cause of a lot of the problems is the breakdown of the family unit, assuming there was one to start with. I'm saddened by the amount of young girls, scarcely out of school (sometimes still in school) that I see pushing babies around my area most of whom are unmarried. Worse still is when I see them with their own mothers as well exhibiting all the classic dysfunctional behaviour their stereotype would suggest. So, what we have are mothers having children but with little or no idea how to raise them and within just 14  or 16 years, those children are repeating the exercise with even less knowledge - it's a downward slope to disaster.

Unfortunately you cannot legislate to stop girls having children or to force couples to live together in a stable environment so all that can be done is to deal with fallout and that needs harsh, strict measures which will no doubt upset all of the woolly liberals - but it's partly their fault that society is in the state it's in anyway so they can all take a running jump for me.

No doubt my rant will have upset someone, but hey you can't please all the people all the time and we're all entitled to our opinion - and that was mine.