mariacostel wrote on Oct 7
th, 2015 at 4:36pm:
And it has EPIC FAIL written all over it. You don't learn good relationship skills in a classroom. You learn it by living in a household that demonstrates it. Once again, it is putting responsibility onto teachers something that the community should be teaching. It has zero chance of even making a difference, nevermind making a meaningful one.
Well there is good and bad in this I think.
Firstly I agree that the best option for young people is to learn their "standards" in the family home, but, as Maria has pointed out, not all family homes have the capacity to do this for a range of reasons (both good and bad).
So, we then need to rely on schools (unfortunately) a bit more to do the extra. Of course, we can't go giving any credit to teachers whilst we do this.
Now, there is already at least one external program going into schools that are run by a range of people relevant to the issues (Social workers, youth workers, Police, JIRT workers, nurses etc etc etc) in NSW schools at least. I think the "Love Bites" program actually might be a National program. Programs like this though have garbage funding so individual services have to scrimp in order to just provide a facilitator, perhaps the Government will more fully fund this.
The other side of the coin there is that a lot of the workers who present this program to young people at schools, also work with families. Joining the dots here, a lot of that work revolves around developing appropriate relationships within the family and sensible parenting practices.
Perhaps they are doomed to failure, of course, the alternative of not doing anything is certainly doomed to at the very best a deterioration (which arguably we are already living) of our communities.
The bottom line is, it is up to whole of Community to take responsibility for the community they want to have and go about achieving that. This involves family, school, church (if that is relevant to the community) and every other aspect of our shared community not only having some input, but owning some responsibility. Not just for themselves, but for where they live.
Stuff is happening.
It has already been pointed out, it takes time. Consider evolution, a very slow process. Perhaps we (as a species) can grow out of our adolescence soonish...