My friends and I have started breeding. Breeding, in earnest.
My husband and I recently hosted a BBQ at our place and for the first time the little people in attendance didn’t come with a novelty factor. While our mates’ kids are obviously wonderful (every child is special and all that), having a pram or a toddler in tow is the new norm for our circle of friends. The human babies outnumber the fur babies, so it’s officially official. As one of my girlfriends remarked the next morning, “there’s no pretending anymore – we’re grown-ups”.
In fact, we’re more than grown-ups, we’re parents.
Responsibility is no longer something that is merely expected of us, it’s required. And importantly, it’s not a responsibility that any of us resent (except when we’re nursing a particularly bruising hangover). It’s a responsibility we relish. There is so much hope and love and anxiety and expectation wrapped up in these tiny people who we’ve brought into the world. We want them to feel safe and secure. We want them to be happy and healthy. We want them to be challenged and cherished.
Like all parents, we want them to live as well, if not better, than we did.
And it’s that desire – to ensure my little boy enjoys the same advantages that I did – which made me sit up and take notice of the TV news last night. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was speaking at a press conference about Labor’s education plan and he committed to return Australia to its previous position as a top 5 country in reading, maths and science.
What It Means To Give Birth On Country
The Delivery Room
Top Comments
"Second in the world" according to what test?
There's way more to education than literacy and numeracy.
Teachers can't do it all either - statistically if children are coming from a home with educated parents who value education, those children will do better academically at school. Therefore if children AREN'T coming from university educated parents it is a big ask for teachers to get them to the same level as those who are.
There's more to life than grades.....
It's not about money! Why is it that Asian countries continue to do well when they have less funding and more students in each class???? Could it be that they concentrate on the things that are important? We need to look at these models. More funding and lower class sizes is not the answer.
Education is considered much more important by Asian parents, so the kids behave themselves in class and unlike here society values and respects teachers. So do parents
"It's not about money!"
Cool. Then private schools don't need our tax dollars. Or to charge such high fees.
And you don't need the taxes from the people who send their kids to private schools either.
Like the health system, if private emptied out into the public system, the public system couldn't cope with the increased costs.
So if Kings, Xavier, Scotch lost their taxpayer funding, all the parents would send their kids to the local public school? Yeah. Riiiight.
Anyway, that wasn't my point. I was trying to say that money *is* important, and that when people claim it isn't, their actions often say otherwise.