Letters to the Editor: Classroom violence solution won’t solve problem
Letter of the week
Classroom violence
Paul Henry, the new Act candidate, is to be applauded for trying to address the issue of violence in classrooms. Disruptive behaviour in classrooms is a growing concern in New Zealand and a major reason why teachers are leaving the profession.
However, as PPTA president Chris Abercrombie states, “dragging a child out of a class” is not going to solve the problem. In any case, who is going to do the “dragging”? Will it be the teacher? Given that a good percentage of teachers are female then that puts them in a vulnerable position. Also, many male teachers may not have the physical capacity to do the dragging anyway.
Surely, teachers did not sign up to the profession just to find that part of the job description was to ensure they were able to physically restrain disruptive students. Maybe the answer to all this is for a school to employ a hit squad of people who will roam school corridors peeping into classrooms just to see if everything is okay.
Or maybe the answer is for parents to give their offspring a little lesson in respecting authority before they venture out on their way to school.
Bernard Walker, Mount Maunganui.
Changing shape of governments
The coalition leaders clearly cannot be sacked on any grounds so we are exhorted to vote at the ballot box by Christopher Luxon (who cannot do anything other than " bad talk" about the racist comments by Winston Peters) to “change the shape of governments”.
That may be his view but the voter’s influence on policy depends on lobby power, aka money. Are we being asked to not vote for the Nats and vote for Top or Act?
Bringing this country into disrepute is clearly out of the PM’s hands despite the foreign minister’s office clearly doubling down on Peters’ racist comments (agreed to be racist by the race relations commissioner and Luxon, who both probably have limited expectancies in their current roles).
One imagines this election will be driven by race-based immigration issues given the Prime Minister has invited it, not growth (as Kiwi businesses are whining like kids), education (harder to alter direction than a flood), crime (hardly worrying about unless you’re Indian or Asian), AI data centres (consuming electricity faster than gentailers invest) or the cost of living (which in the Minister of Finance Nicola Willis’ words are “out of her control” and in the hands of Trump in his latest warmongering variant).
Is one policy, “racism”, going to rule them all this election? As the pigs said in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Steve Russell, Hillcrest.
MMP call applauded
How great to have a Prime Minister who finally came out and suggested we could have a referendum on MMP.
The person who has most benefited from MMP is Winston Peters, who has spent several years taking every advantage to gain as many votes as he could.
It is plain to see that Christopher Luxon is probably the only Prime Minister that could have held together such a diverse group of parties, and especially Winston Peters.
I personally would welcome a referendum so that whoever is Prime Minister could run the country and carry out the policies he or she was elected on rather than worry whether the coalition would walk away from the party, forcing an election.
Robin Harrison, Takapuna.
Political party like it’s 1979
A photo of National Party’s caucus dated 1979 shows 50 white men, all dressed alike, with every single one wearing a white shirt, and one woman, Marilyn Waring. It seems this photo evokes pangs of longing for the past in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
MMP gave us a group of MPs who, for the first time, represented the entire population with all their different experiences of life. It’s understandable Luxon longs to turn the clock back to a simpler time when only his clones were at the table, all looking and thinking alike. What could be better?
Susan Grimsdell, Auckland Central.
Green confusion
I read with interest Thomas Coughlan’s article (July 30) regarding the Green Party’s proposed wealth tax.
I am a retired 80-year-old accountant, with some brain cells remaining intact, and I came away thinking what a crazy political environment we live in.
Whether it is the Stalinist-looking uniforms and demeanours of the Greens leaders or their policies aimed at redistributing our country’s wealth, I am not certain which is the stranger.
And I was forced to read the article twice to ensure that I was not missing something. It may well be interesting to some students of mathematics and statistics, but to me, a now humble bookkeeper, mumbo-jumbo comes to mind.
But, Thomas, thank you for your article, which may help others to conclude, as indeed I do, that confusion reigns in determining what exactly is the Greens’ purpose in our political system.
Steve Clerk, Meadowbank.