Aug 29, 2018, Herald: School stand-downs for fighting and assault hit 11-year peak https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12114501 More students are being stood down or kicked out of schools for fighting and assault, as schools struggle to cope with children of P-addicted parents and social problems like fetal alcohol syndrome. An expert also warns that half of all students being expelled or excluded from school are on the autism spectrum, and noisy multi-teacher classrooms might be partly to blame. After falling for a decade up to 2015, the rates of stand-downs, suspensions and exclusions from schools have all risen again in each of the past two years. The main cause is physical assaults on other students, which have jumped from 4.9 stand-downs for every 1000 students in 2015 to 7.2 per 1000 last year, the highest rate since 2006. Post Primary Teachers Association president Jack Boyle said violence and fighting which might once have been hidden, such as a brawl last week at Papakura's Rosehill College, were now being posted on social media where school principals could not ignore them. … Principals' Federation president Whetu Cormick said principals were being forced to stand down or excluded students because they were not getting the funds they needed to employ extra teacher aides, psychologists and other specialists…. Whetu Cormick says principals can't cope with challenging students because they are not getting enough funding for teacher aides and specialist support. File photo Secondary Principals Association vice-president Deidre Shea said schools were seeing the consequences of insecure housing and health….
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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