Christchurch School Closures – Children Do Not Have Adult Judgement. Settle Down.

My further letter to the editor (Press) on this topic:

To Alison Hennig’s (Oct 4) reply to my own letter. Critical thinking in children is fine, but remember they have no adult judgement: it is the role of parents to exercise adult judgement on their behalf. Children will react to a school closure in the manner that it is pitched to them by their parents: positive or negative. Just as when a child changes a school in the ordinary run of events. If you don’t believe me about the risk of following a child’s judgement, read William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. School closures in Christchurch need to be thought about, rather than emoted on. The valid point that parents do have is the MOE’s unsound data: decisions should not be made on that either – mind you, that’s also the argument to keep the state out of your child’s education.

… and incidentally, to the anonymous snail mail poster from my first letter, if you’d had the gumption to put your name and contact details to your correspondence, then we could have entered into a rational discussion. Although, again, you didn’t send me a letter, so much as a badly packaged, badly spelled, agglomeration of your emotions. Take a chill pill and have a lie down; next you’ll be inciting the children to violence.