I can give you chapter and verse of shouting, harassment of all kinds, extreme bullying; and all done with a smile and "she'll be right, mate".

These people saw themselves as the centre of the universe.

Then nearly six years ago, two academics - Sander Thomaes and Eddie Brummelman - foretold the future.

"When we think of narcissists, we typically think of adults, whose personalities are rather crystallised - perhaps a charming but manipulative ex-partner, or a self-absorbed and authoritarian boss.

"We do not typically think of children, whose personalities are still in flux."

Here's the killer from these two: "Narcissists do not just begin to love themselves at their 18th birthday; they typically develop narcissistic traits from childhood onward."

Now the kids are behaving badly.

They monster their primary teachers, they badger their high school teachers and, by the time they get to university, they argue the toss about every single grade, they whine about group work and they want extensions because they don't wish to be inconvenienced (although, let me say, there are also those who get extensions for real reasons).

I'll defend active parenting and standing up for your children when they can't stand up for themselves - but there are limits.

Here are mine.

Your child should not be abusing a parent who comes in to help with reading groups. Your child does not need your advocacy to get them into the top sports team at school.

And your child, kill me, does not need you to call their university tutor to argue a mark on an assignment.

It was a wonderful moment in my life when I was able to tell such a parent (I'm pretending here it was a single occasion; it wasn't) that I couldn't discuss her child's university progress with her for privacy reasons.

And, no, it made no difference (at least to me) that the mother was paying the university fees.

I used the same answer when explaining to another mother that she needed to talk to her own child about whether he had actually submitted all his work.

He hadn't, no matter what he told his doting ma.

As Brummelman and co-wrote in 2015 in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "We demonstrate that narcissism in children is cultivated by parental overvaluation."

They found narcissism levels are increasing among Western youth and contribute to aggression and violence. Yes, there is a direct line between the kind of parenting we do and the kind of children we rear.

A fill-in teacher has admitted his actions were "shameful" after he punched a student during an out-of-control brawl at a NSW school.

Let's be clear. We all want to stick up for our kids. We have our own ideas about what's right and what's wrong.

And I've certainly been to see the class teacher and even the principal when things went badly wrong. I've been to meetings where my own (ever so slightly imperfect) children's behaviour was called into question.

I am no angel, neither was their father and I guess it's genetic. But this constant indulging - even protectiveness - of entitled behaviour has to stop. Your child is not always right.

It's not just rudeness or a lack of cooperation or even respect.

It extends all the way to violence. We have record levels of assaults at schools and violence both within and outside school - and believe me, it is not only the behaviour of students with significant trauma in their lives for whom we must make both excuses and support mechanisms.

We know now that private schools have their own - significant - issues around assault and violence. Read more

• Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

On the list are those who work or volunteer in an organisation in the same campus or building as a school or early learning service. Churches and cafes are cited as examples.

Staff at churches sharing a building or campus with a school must be vaccinated if they will be there at the same time as students.

Church leaders who have so far refused the jabs - like Brian Tamaki and Peter Mortlock - could face being barred from their own church grounds during school hours.

They include City Impact Church's Pastor Peter Mortlock and Destiny Church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki - who is facing charges over recent protests against lockdowns and Covid jab requirements.

The vaccine mandate is intended to prevent or slow the spread of Covid within schools.

Vaccinated staff are much less likely to catch or get sick from Covid. They are therefore less likely to spread it to each other or to students.

Although children rarely become seriously ill from the virus, and those who suffer from respiratory illness are at higher risk.

Children can also spread the virus to unvaccinated or vulnerable family members.

Several thousand people within the education system are resisting the mandate, which insists:

Schools have a staff vaccine register by November 9
After November 15 people who have not had their first dose won't be allowed on site.

Churches have exactly the same mandate.

While most churches actively support vaccination, some prominent church leaders have come out against the mandates.

Brian Tamaki, the Destiny Church leader, has a private school within its church complex in Wiri.

Peter Mortlock's City Impact runs several childcare services at church sites. It also has a school on site at its Albany branch.

Mortlock says whether he is vaccinated or not is a private matter.

He says City Impact is "working through all these new and ever-shifting 'rules', just as everyone is".

There was a lot of detail yet to be released and questions to be answered for clarity, he says.

"We obviously want to work within the regulations and are working with all our staff and facilities to do so.

"As you know this is a very stressful time for a lot of people, students included, and we will be ensuring everyone's safety."

Tamaki posted to Facebook on August 18 saying he and his wife Hannah Tamaki had chosen not to be vaccinated "at this time".

Asked for a response to the mandate affecting church staff, Destiny Church spokeswoman Anne Williamson says the church has no comment at this stage.

Many churches have been actively encouraging their congregations to get vaccinated. Some have transported parishioners to vaccination centres and encouraged vaccinations from the pulpit.

A positive spin on community vaccination is the new traffic light system will give religious groups with vaccination certificates freedom to gather in larger numbers.

Source

• NZ Herald
• Image: The New York Times

And if it's not, it should be.

Last Friday, secondary school teachers and principals rejected the Government's second pay offer, and voted to strike in term one.

While the strike may still be averted, it's not looking good, with the Government offering three percent pay rises each year for three years.

The union is asking for an initial rise of 15 percent.

Union boss Jack Boyle says the Government's offer is so far off what teachers are asking for, "it's almost a failure of their moral responsibility".

Meanwhile, primary teachers and principals have rejected two offers, and have already gone on strike twice this year. NZEI members are currently voting on whether to accept the Government's third offer: if it's a no-go, more industrial action is likely to be in the pipeline.

The new year could see the Government facing a so-called "superstrike", with thousands of primary and secondary teachers and principals walking off the job arm in arm.

Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins and Tracey Martin have repeated their line until they're blue in the face: frustrations are noted, but not everything can be fixed in one budget.

PPTA vice president Melanie Webber acknowledged this on Friday, saying the issues facing education weren't Ardern's fault or her government's, but it's now it's their responsibility to fix it.

A solution nobody asked for?

The problem is the Labour-led coalition decided to spend $2.8b on its tertiary education fees-free policy.

That's a massive spend on a policy no-one was screaming for, with its implementation fast-tracked.

New figures show more than 50,000 students are expected to receive fees-free tertiary education this year, but the overall number of students has declined 0.4 percent, or by 1174, according to the Tertiary Education Commission.

Straw polls carried out by this reporter over recent months have found it's universally believed the fees-free policy should not have been first on the Government's education to-do list.

It's not that it's a bad idea for a Labour government to walk the talk on free, state-run education systems, but it needn't have been the priority while primary and secondary schools are in crisis.

PPTA boss Jack Boyle says it's up to the Government to set its priorities, but if something matters and you've got the will, you can make it happen. Continue reading

• Laura Walters is a senior political reporter for Newsroom. She is based in Wellington and covers justice, education and immigration.
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

Teachers complement parents in the formation of children as human beings and, because of this, the best teachers are always remembered.

Helen Keller maintained a friendship with her teacher Anne Sullivan for over 40 years and even was present at her death. The reason?

It was she who taught Keller how to read and write despite Helen's being deaf and blind.

Interestingly, Sullivan herself, although not completely blind, had vision problems. She was born in 1866 in a humble home in Massachusetts and, as a child, contracted a disease called trachoma, which over time, made her completely blind.

She enrolled in the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, and had several operations while she was there. Although, she didn't regain her sight completely, her vision improved greatly, and Sullivan graduated with honors, and was even hired as one of the school's teachers.

She learned the manual alphabet to help blind children educate themselves so they would not be so marginalized by society.

Then the Keller family arrived from Alabama, seeking help for their 7-year-old daughter Helen who had been blind and deaf since she contracted a fever at the age of two, which left her unable to communicate and subject to terrible tantrums.

The Perkins Institute's director assigned the case to the young Anne Sullivan (then about 20 years old), who went to Alabama with the Kellers.

Sullivan was dedicated to teaching Helen Keller to speak, read and write. She had her touch things with one hand, and in the other, she wrote with her own finger what it was.

For example, while Keller had one hand under running water, Sullivan helped her spell the word "water" with the other. Continue reading

Sources

• Aleteia article by Adriana Bello, editor-in-chief of a fashion and lifestyle magazine in Venezuela.
• Image: Intellectual Takeout

He said one of the effective ways to teach children today was to make use of visual media.

"That is the culture we are living today. The children of today are 'screen aged' so they learn faster when they see pictures on the screen," he said.

"It's a very powerful tool and children nowadays don't read much like we did in our young days.

"They want to see something on the screen and that's the culture of children today, so we definitely need to be creative and there's a lot of resources in the internet to use."

On a trip he made to Brisbane in Australia for a conference, Chong said a theologian revealed that he also taught children through movies.

"If you are talking to children and then you show them a screen with pictures or a movie about the lesson you are teaching, they will all turn their heads to the screen," Chong said.

Chong was speaking at a meeting with church members, including Catholic teachers in the North on Sunday night.

Source

• fijitimes.com
• Image: wired.com

The classes will be replaced with a weekly hour of "citizenship classes".

Critics worry that the new classes will promote abortion and homosexuality, the Catholic News Agency reported.

There are also fears that the changes could end up pushing teachers with a religious education or background out of the schools.

The decision was announced by the Belgian government in a July 7 decree.

This was despite the fact that 97 per cent of students had said they wanted the religion classes to be maintained.

Last month, amid debate over the measure, the Belgian bishops' conference released a statement emphasising the importance of religious study in schools.

"Indeed, removing the Catholic religion classes would mean relegating religious belief to the private sphere, which, for a democratic state, would be an impoverishment," they said.

The Belgian state curriculum includes religion classes, with students having the choice of Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Protestant or "a-confessional morality".

The classes normally consist of two weekly hours of teaching.

Last year, the government started a procedure to cut in half the weekly hours of religion in the curriculum.

The new citizenship classes - entitled "Education of philosophy and citizenship" (EPC) - will go into effect in October,2016, in primary schools and October, 2017, in secondary schools.

The government decision will apply only to the French-speaking schools in Belgium.

Each of the country's three main language communities - French, Flemish and German - has authority over their respective educational programmes.

One religion teacher, who requested anonymity, told CNA that "these citizenship classes are part of a real ideological indoctrination".

Segments of the Belgian press have also criticized the content of the new classes, labelling them cours de rien, or "classes of nothing".

The citizenship classes must be taught by "neutral" teachers.

These educators must not have any religious education in their background, including a degree from a Catholic university.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: PSCC Mobile Fellows

In a homily at a teachers' commissioning Mass at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart last month, Cardinal Dew said "prayer must be learned and discovered in families".

"I believe one of our major challenges today is to help families to pray together," the cardinal said.

"It will not just happen automatically."

Cardinal Dew linked this challenge with the concept of mercy.

Referring to the book, "The Name of God is Mercy", Cardinal Dew said Pope Francis states that God goes to extraordinary lengths to enter into our hearts.

"It is a powerful thought to know that you and I are able to provide opportunities for God to enter the heart of another: - the heart of your students; the heart of a fellow staff member; the heart of someone you find difficult to get on with; and - our own heart," Cardinal Dew said.

"Are our hearts open and ready to let God in?" he asked.

"Last week I was reading an article in the latest Tui Motu magazine entitled ‘Relentless Mercy'.

"I was quite disturbed to see this in print: ‘It is undeniable that the common perception in the West is that Christianity is the purveyor of judgement, exclusion, condemnation and punishment.'

"I had heard all of that said before but to see these words in print did actually shake me," the cardinal said.

"God does not enter our hearts through judgement, exclusion, condemnation and punishment. God enters our hearts, the hearts of your pupils, through mercy."

"When we truly believe God is kind and merciful, compassionate, generous, loving and forgiving, then we will be like that too, because we imitate the God we believe in," Cardinal Dew added.

"When we are like God then we have the amazing gift as people in Catholic education to enable others to open their hearts so that God may enter in," he concluded.

Source

• wel-com.org.nz
• Image: Wel-Com

Mark Spencer has promoted the use of Extreme Disruption Orders (EDOs) to prevent teachers disseminating the idea that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

EDOs are a new anti-hate-speech measure introduced in the UK.

They are designed to prevent the spreading of radical ideas by jihadists.

Another reason for the introduction of EDOs is the promotion of "British values", defined in the past as including democracy and tolerance.

Mr Spencer wrote in a letter to a constituent that Christian teachers were still entitled to teach their views on same-sex marriage, but only in certain situations.

Continue reading

Sr Gemma Simmonds, CJ, told the Tablet that Labour's Tristam Hunt had shown "breathtaking ignorance and bigotry".

His jibe came on the BBC's Question Time programme last month, when the topic under discussion was teacher qualifications.

Panellist Christina Odone praised the "real values" her teachers had instilled in her.

Mr Hunt interjected with the remark: "These were all nuns, weren't they?"

His intervention was greeted with outrage, with even some members of his own party among those who criticised what they saw as a sneering attitude towards religious life.

Mr Hunt took to Twitter to attempt to clarify his remarks, saying he had "obviously meant no offence to nuns".

Sr Gemma, who is a senior lecturer at Heythrop College in London, said many Catholic state schools in the United Kingdom are former convent schools.

These schools are consistently oversubscribed "because parents have confidence in the long tradition of highly-acclaimed, intellectually-broad and culturally-critical education that they provide".

Sr Gemma, a Labour voter since the age of 18, said her education by nuns was "challenging, broad and enormous fun".

"All my teachers were highly trained and totally dedicated."

Sr Gemma is a trained teacher herself and has a doctorate in systematic theology from Cambridge.

She is vice-president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.

The UK's Catholic Education Service pointed out that nuns were pioneers in the establishment of teacher training colleges.

Today they act as qualified teachers, school chaplains, governors and trustees throughout Catholic education.

In a subsequent interview, Mr Hunt refused six times to agree with a statement that nuns can be good teachers.

He kept avoiding a direct answer until eventually admitting: "I am sure there are brilliant teachers who are nuns who are doing a fantastic job."

The 2015 New Zealand Catholic Education Convention runs from June10-12 in Wellington.

Its title is "Horizons of Hope".

Sources

• The Tablet
• The Telegraph
• New Zealand Catholic Education Convention
• Heythrop College
• Image: BBC

The president of the association, Peseta Kasiano Ioane, said the cheque, presented earlier this month, is to help out with teachers' pay.

"We received a request from the school that they needed help with the teachers' salaries," he said.

St Joseph's deputy principal Br Bryan Stanaway acknowledged the support from the association.

It would enable the college to recognise its staff, he said, and enable them to catch up on pay rates for teachers in government schools.

"As you are aware, the teachers have a seven per cent pay rise across the nation," Br Bryan said.

"We just couldn't do that until the association came forward and said this is our help towards the staff salaries."

He said he wasn't sure the donation would quite cover the pay rise.

But he suggested that the difference could be made up and said the grant made it possible to continue for the rest of the year.

Br Bryan praised St Joseph's teaching staff for their professionalism, with the school having its best academic results in three years, in terms of students qualifying to attend the National University of Samoa.

The college has 22 full time teachers, plus a secretary and other workers who keep the college running.

Sources

• Samoa Observer
• Image: Samoa Observer

Sao Paulo state's education department requires the women to have a pap smear to show they are free of cancers or produce a doctor's statement that they have not been sexually active.

Critics say it is an invasion of privacy, but the education department says it is intended to prevent long term absences from work because of illness.

Other state and federal agencies in Brazil have similar requirements, it said.

Sao Paulo's public management department said other health tests are also required, like a mammography for women and prostate exams for men over 40.

But the gynaecological tests have been criticised as especially invasive.

Recently, a 27-year-old woman said she was ashamed to ask a doctor for a note declaring she was still a virgin to escape the other tests.

Catholics for the Right to Choose was one of the groups objecting, saying in a statement: "We are living in the Middle Ages!"

Continue reading

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church is an important book...reading it would improve your knowledge," he told the group on July 22.

The cardinal delivered an address at Loyola College in Negombo, Sri Lanka, in celebration of the Negombo Regional Catechists Day.

Source

CNA

Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa in California had intended to require all teachers and administrators — Catholic and non-Catholic — to "agree that it is my duty, to the best of my ability, to believe, teach/administer and live in accord with what the Catholic Church holds and professes".

This pledge — including the requirement to reject "modern errors" that "gravely offend human dignity," including contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage and euthanasia — had been written into new contracts for the 2013-14 school year.

The bishop said his policy was designed to ensure that teachers in Catholic schools provided models of Catholic living for their students.

After disquiet spread among parents, teachers, students and pastors, Bishop Vasa had a meeting with 10 school principals and announced he was postponing the policy.

In a letter to school staff and parents, he said he regretted not gathering input from pastors and administrators prior to issuing the requirement for teachers to sign the new contract.

Bishop Vasa acknowledged that his "most serious oversight ... was my failure to engage and consult the pastors of the diocese and especially those who are the local shepherds of our Catholic schools".

He said his "degree of vigilance" in assuring "the greatest hope of finding the truths of Jesus in our Catholic schools" for students could "look like a lack of trust".

The bishop also acknowledged "that I overlooked proper engagement of the principals" and "erroneously chose a path of informing rather than mutual discernment".

Bishop Vasa said he planned to implement the policy "in some form" in 2015.

Between then and now, he said, "in conjunction with other theological educators, I will work to prepare presentations on matters of faith and morals" with principals and teachers as the "primary audience", though "hopefully parents also will find a way to participate."

Sources:

Press Democrat

National Catholic Reporter

Image: Les Femmes

In a letter to parents the board said it asked that staff attend two separate meetings - in Wellington and in Lower Hutt - but the teachers instead chose to attend the same meeting at the Michael Fowler Centre.

Its letter says the board "absolutely recognises and respects the teachers' right to attend paid union meetings". At the same time, it had a responsibility to pupils and families to ensure the school continued to operate as normal.

The board said it had received advice from the School Trustees Association that it was not responsible for paying relief teachers.

The teachers say the decision not to pay for relief teachers led two board members to quit.

A staff member said teachers there had not been to a paid union meeting since 2007, and it was not too much to ask for eight teachers to attend.

The staff member said: "Staff just feel upset, angry and undervalued. Teachers work many hours outside what they're required to work.

"We just didn't feel like we were asking too much, then to have it thrown back in our faces that we were putting ourselves before parents and students . . . we're there because we care."

The staff member said "it all feels very political", particularly as the chairman of the board of trustees was National MP Nathan Guy's brother, Christopher.

NZEI national secretary Paul Goulter said asking teachers to pay for relievers was an "inappropriate" practice that he had never heard of before.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: NewstalkZB

"This is viewed as a positive gesture — one of community and communion, in which our catechists profess their faith in communion with Bishop Loverde, Pope Benedict, and the entire Church," diocesan communications director Michael Donohue said in a July 12 EWTN News interview.

While a small number of teachers say they cannot take the fidelity oath, Donohue said a "far greater number" have told the diocese they see the profession of faith as "a positive gesture."

Continue reading

Pope Benedict's general prayer intention for September is: "That all teachers may know how to communicate love of the truth and instill authentic moral and spiritual values."

His mission intention is: "That the Christian communities of Asia may proclaim the Gospel with fervor, witnessing to its beauty with the joy of faith."

Source

• EWTN