Why Teach?

I have always been a teacher, the only difference now is it is a bit more formal with a Masters degree and a professional qualification. I have often been asked why I do not blog more about my experiences. The reality is that I work in a really small school in a really small town and my students, like anyone else, are entitled to a little bit of privacy. I also believe that building rapport and respect with students requires a certain amount of trust, and to blog about that seems to violate that trust in my mind.

I will say this though. My current crop of students from Year 7 through to Year 11 are an excellent bunch. Hopefully, I will be able to impart some knowledge and hopefully I will be able to do that in such a way that is engaging and fun.And, just maybe, they might all learn a thing or two that they did not know previously.

In a more general sense, I am going to write about my own struggles and challenges. For example, working in a school that is Smart Board ready and having never been trained on how to use a Smart Board at university.

The school where I work is committed to professional learning and professional development. So, it is quite a relief to know that the professional support needed is just a few steps away with a knowledgeable executive team of many years experience.

Yet, on a personal level, professional learning and development aside, a real challenge in a small school is maintaining high levels of engagement in small classrooms of students with a variety of learning styles. If anyone is looking to find a location where there is little or no pressure on keeping class sizes small, then head to a small rural or remote school. I have classes ranging from 3 students through to 12 students.

The reason I chose to teach was a simple one, and for me it was a real "no-brainer", if you want to make a difference and influence the future, then you teach. I always get a chuckle from the saying "those who can, do; those who can't, teach!" Because any teacher out there worth their salt knows that teaching is a much more difficult skill than just fronting up each day and going through the motions. Quite simply for value to the community teachers are exploited and under-valued in the extreme.

Teachers teach for many reasons, but one thing that I have found common to all that I have met is a belief that it is a noble profession that can facilitate positive changes in the lives of those that we encounter in the classroom. That facilitation might not simply be teaching a young person to do calculus or something about English or history, it might be providing them with the self-belief and confidence in their own ability that they can make a positive contribution to their community or the world.

I am back teaching high school now. However, it is with a great deal of pride that I look back and remember a few past students who have gone on to make very significant and positive contributions to their communities.

I am looking forward to the challenges that will present themselves irrespective of whether they be creating programs of study that are engaging and fun for students who might not have ventured far from where they were born or showing them that there is a whole world beyond Collarenebri that is awaiting their arrival. The good fortune for me is that these students are already recognised and accomplished (having attended the Arias and all -- I have not attended the Arias!). So, the challenges will be for me and not my students.

Teaching is not an easy gig, but it is a worthwhile one, and one that is destined to be rewarding.

Porn Access to be Denied -- Indonesia...

Being one of your country's worst performing cabinet ministers in a cabinet that has supposedly been selected based on its professionalism and professional experience in the real world must be a kick in the teeth for a proud man. This is especially so when you get a fairly public rebuke from the president and his advisers. So, how does one turn it around in the world's most populous Muslim nation, play the porn card.

In a country that is in the grips of celebrity sex tape euphoria that is keeping the presses and gossip show running hot, it is little surprise that the Minister for Communication and Information, Tifatul Sembiring, has decided to publicly announce that Indonesia will be in essence porn site free within two months. Yes, purveyors and lovers of porn, your producing and viewing days are numbered now that the Minister has set the date.

The plan is to use a filter that blocks all international porn sites at the ISP level. In essence, there is a blacklist that ISPs are to maintain and use in order to filter out objectionable content. It is not entirely clear that Indonesia or the ISPs themselves have the technology in place to effectively enforce the ban, but time will tell. The plan for local porn content is to shut it down permanently.

A major concern is what constitutes pornography and how do sites end up on the blacklist, particularly the subjective nature of the listers could ensure that there might not be any, or sufficient, consideration given to whether the sites have educational value or otherwise. The decision will simply be based on whether the rude bits are showing or being spoken of, if they are then you are on the list.

The reality is that internet users are quite often as savvy, if not more savvy, than those tasked with enforcing the ban. For example, many sites will just migrate to different sites or use revolving addresses that make it difficult to consistently block them. Then, I am no expert, but there will surely be proxy servers and other mechanisms in place that allow for the filters to be bypassed.

I am not advocating pornography or access to it. However, to each their own. I am for putting in place mechanisms and technology that allows us to protect our children as much as possible. In most places these already exist in the form of parental controls and locks on computer systems. Yet, I am tech savvy enough to realise that when the time comes my son will probably be much more tech savvy than I, and consequently will be able to circumvent any controls his mum or I might try and put into place. Yet, we will still try.

The point I am trying to make here is that it is not a perfect world and laws to ban pornography across the board do not and will not work. The idea of banning all pornographic websites is also likely to be ineffective in the long term.

Truth be told, Tifatul Sembiring is a poorly performing Minister and he is seeking to deflect attention from his numerous and consistent failures by playing the porn card. I would say this is a high risk play on his part because he is unlikely to be the man who convinces Indonesians that porn is bad, porn is evil, and porn is against the law. He is likely to perform poorly on this one as well.

Prita Mulyasari -- Defamation -- The Retrial...

The Prita Mulyasari defamation case, or perhaps "saga" is a better word, continues with the retrial commencing in the Tangerang District Court yesterday.

This case really does not contain enough legal issues of consequence for the prosecution to be pursuing this as some sort of test case for the provisions on defamation in the Information and Electronic Transactions Law or for that matter the overlap of those provisions with the ones contained in the Indonesian Criminal Code.

The saga is probably worth a PhD thesis, maybe it could be mine.

Brett over at Spruiked is always a man on a mission, and the Prita case is one he is quite vocal about.

If anything the case highlights the severe need for ongoing or continuing legal education in order to ensure that all legal practitioners are up-to-date with current legal developments and practice. Simply, this was not the case to run as a test case. Even more interesting is that in the retrial the prosecution has decided to lead with expert testimony from a linguist who admits on the stand that he has no real conceptual understanding of what defamation is in the legal sense.

The expert testimony of the linguist was simplistic at best; the contents of the email could be considered defamatory because there was a sentence that questioned the professionalism and politeness of the hospital staff. Ah, OK. But tell me you have more!

The idea that doctors can be unprofessional and hospital staff can be rude and impolite is hardly a revelation. There are probably more people floating round in the world who have a bad story to tell about the way they were treated in a hospital than those that have a good story to tell.

A visit to a few Australian websites and a good read of some of the news there would highlight that it is not uncommon for hospitals to be criticized for their poor service and professionalism. There have been a spate of recent cases over the last few years of women miscarrying in hospital toilets as they were made to wait for treatment.

The idea that Prita was treated unprofessionally and impolitely is not some kind of out of the ordinary shocking development. In any event, and as I have always maintained, even if by some magical alignment of the stars her email was defamatory, then the best course of action to defend the charge would be that the statements contained in the email are the truth.

The reality here is that Prita was diagnosed with dengue fever at Omni and after becoming fed up with the treatment she was receiving at Omni, checked herself out and into another hospital where she was diagnosed with mumps, treated and subsequently got well. At least, this is how I understand it. I am sure that if that is an incorrect understanding someone will inform me of that. And, then I will make a note here (as a postscript).

The fact of the matter is when you are sick and you go to the doctor you are expecting that the doctor will get the diagnosis right and treat you. A misdiagnosis can sometimes happen but all the same a misdiagnosis is a misdiagnosis and in that sense it is not unreasonable to question the professionalism of the doctor involved.