Truth and Safety
Thursday, 16 July 2009
On Tuesday morning two parcels arrived with the girls’ names on them. Inside were some of the items that had been left at the school. Because we were very busy we didn’t look carefully at them till later, when our eldest daughter told me about the note. The note said:
Here are the last few items of your work/belongings that were still at school and Kindergarten, now safely delivered to you.
“now safely delivered to you”....there is something really creepy about this. It sounds so....self-congratulatory, so smug, so... caring. Somebody’s convinced themselves that they’ve been really nice. No apology for having taken so long to get these things back when we have repeatedly asked for them? No apology for having allowed Our Eldest Daughter to be bullied for months without following the guidelines to stop it? Or for throwing her out, or Our Middle Child, or Our Youngest (who is 2).
Our Eldest Daughter’s comment on the note was:- “That’s not true, my mug’s still there and my box of crayons that was taken hasn’t been given back”. Oh yes, that is true, stuff disappeared out of her desk and Susanne Cole hasn’t replied to her emails about that or in fact communicated with her at all since before Our Eldest Daughter was expelled. We were under the impression that in Steiner Education, the relationship between teacher and pupil was of the utmost importance...
A friend’s comment on the note was “yuck, it’s really creepy. It insinuates that “we’re really nice people aren’t we, no matter what mummy and daddy might say””.
I agree, they are trying, in spite of all the evidence, to sound loving in a way that suggests that something good and desirable has been done for our kids.
I guess they think the kids should be grateful, because, guess what, they’ve just spent parents’ fee money on sending the stuff via a courier service just so no-one actually has to see us, or our kids who they ‘care’ about so much. (It does make one wonder how much more of your money they might want to spend on defending the indefensible. I guess we can all find out together.)
We’ve established that communication isn’t Titirangi Steiner School’s strong point, or following their own procedures; doing what they’ve asked themselves to do, never mind what anyone else asks them to do.
Here are some things we’ve asked the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School to do:
Stop bullying in school
Stop bullying us
Give us a reason why not to segregate bullyers who continue to hurt others
Give us a reason why the bullied children should leave
Give us a reason why our other children should leave.
Give all Our Eldest Daughter's belongings back
Tell us why some of her belongings are absent and others damaged
Answer to the charge of encouraging slander against us on school grounds
Remove trespass orders
Let the children back to school
Provide all documentation about our children within 20 days
Come and interview about any of these matters
Hold a public debate
They don’t think they need to do any of that. In some exalted place they rationalise institutional bullying, probably by the need to ‘protect’ the inner sanctum of The Dynasty. Because what the world really needs is more inward-looking dynasties.
Tomorrow we’re putting up another video. It features someone else, someone who wants to comment on the school and the issues involved in illegally kicking our kids out, but needs to remain anonymous. Given what we keep hearing about there being a lot of support but people don’t want to speak out, that’s not surprising, and we’ve taken the necessary steps to safeguard this person’s identity. We hope it will en-courage others who are similarly compromised.
This film has taken a long time because we are moving. When we decided to commit to the school, we bought a house, and we informed the school of it in this letter in April, just three months ago. This was the same letter in which Angel volunteered to participate in some sort of Community Meeting about the issues, asking for help from the school to organise it because of being so new. Clearly, being so visible was not a prospect she relished, but you have to take responsibility (!), so she was prepared to do it.
So now we are committed to the house but the school has dumped our kids. (The nightmare scenario other parents angrily told us they didn’t want to be in - so we should shut up.) Is this a responsible way for a Government funded institution to behave? There is a difference between actually being loving and just needing other people to think you are.
Why did they pretend to be committed to working with us, and then quite suddenly turn round and expel all our kids? If they had no intention of ever segregating bullyers, no matter what they do, why didn't they just say so? (That’s not zero tolerance, its just not tolerating kids getting hurt by bullies! There is a difference there too.)
Here’s a letter they could have written in reply to my letter of 090402
'Of course we’re not going to organise a meeting to talk about this stuff, or help you to do it. Don't buy a house, you won't like it here because we have no intention of actually protecting your daughter from getting bullied and harassed, punched, kicked, threatened etc., by the huge number of boys nearly two years older. Firstly we can’t because the teacher can’t control them, plus we believe that if these boys have free reign now, they'll grow up into fabulous moral beings. Our Eldest Daughter will be all right, anyway she’s probably addicted to being a victim. otherwise they couldn’t attack her (which they haven’t anyway - she must have made it all up). It must be her karma, perhaps you should take her to a doctor.
Even though it does say to tell in the handbook, she tells way too much and it bothers the teacher, and none of the other kids tell and they all think she’s a nark. We don’t mean that kids should tell all the time, I mean really! We just wrote that in the policy to look like we are doing something.
Anyway technically you're not even enrolled, because we haven’t followed our own procedures on that either, plus your obvious inflexibility and lack of tolerance about your daughter being used as a punch-bag is beginning to wind us up, and your emails listing all the stuff that happens are irritating so we may soon 'ask' you to leave.’
Sounds crap but has the benefit of being truthful.
Whereas the creepy note they did just send our kids isn’t truthful at all and the creepy ‘grooming’ feeling is the opposite of safe, and our kids know that. They’re not stupid.
The only thing that has actually been ‘safely’ delivered is a massive kick in the teeth to three innocent children. A whopping, unnecessary, abusive and illegal kick which, unless the injustices can be put right, will be safely delivered, back from whence it came.
RE-INSTATE THE TITIRANGI THREE