Christchurch Needs to Grow Up - School Closures

This morning NBR posted a piece on how the Advertising Standards Authority have found earthquake advertisements – showing what to do in the event of one - by Civil Defence were not insensitive to the children of Christchurch, after a complaint was made to that effect. I simply paste below my reply to that thread:

This is silly. As someone still with a house in Christchurch, but not living there any longer, my opinion is that some probably small, but vocal, section of the city is reverting to cry-babyhood. On the issue of school closures, for example, teachers and parents instead of teaching their (primary school) children in an adult fashion about the inevitable nature of change - that can be embraced for its positives - are feeding them inappropriate emotions on how to make a childish tantrum pay off politically via protest. On Campbell Live I saw one poor kid in my old primary school, Greenpark, worked up into tears: that was irresponsible.

Yes, there are lots of problems, and mainly in the way Government is squashing property rights within the CBD, and in how Government EQC interacts with insurers - we've given up having our house fixed for years - but regarding the school issue, the Cathedral issue, et al: some people in the city have to grow up, and teachers need to set a proper example to the children, of adult behaviour, rather than operating on the level of their students, John Minto or Sue Bradford. Plus if you want to keep your schools open, there is a solution: charter schools.

(Note it's the 'old issue' again: feeling on issues, rather than thinking them through. I will be posting the full piece on 'Feeling Our Way to the Police State, by not Thinking About It' soon.)

Update:

A nicely written op-ed on the Campbell Live reporting of this by John Roughan at Granny Herald.

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