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Today families don’t appreciate teachers, Pope Francis told a parents’ organisation that supports education as both a scholastic and social effort. He said the relationship between education and the family is declining. “The educational pact is declining. The family no longer appreciates the work of teachers as they did at one time,” Francis says. “To Read more
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A Dunedin school principal is increasingly concerned by the social expectations imposed on schools – and says some parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s actions. During the recent King’s High School senior prizegiving, rector Dan Reddiex praised his present cohort of pupils for their outstanding achievements during the year but went on Read more
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Dear Katrina, After watching our friends’ two grown kids go off to college and stop going to Mass and the disappointment it’s caused their parents, I was wondering if you had some advice for me and my own son, who will be leaving for college in two years. He’s already grown disinterested in coming to Read more
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Fears religion will isolate their children at school is stopping parents from passing on their faith. A recent poll of 1,013 UK parents found a quarter of them are of this opinion. Furthermore, nearly one in five said it was not their role “as a parent to pass on my beliefs to my children”. The Read more
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Parenting is hard work. It calls on mothers and fathers to really forget themselves and put their kids first. So it’s no wonder that sometimes, we take shortcuts. We buy them a toy rather than spend more time with them; we lose our temper rather than practice patience; we put on the TV at dinnertime Read more
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At the time I had my first child I was a solicitor, a job for which I’d studied and trained and got qualifications. You’d think that those negotiating and persuasion skills I’d acquired on the job would have equipped me for parenting. Have you ever tried negotiating with a toddler? It becomes very clear who’s Read more
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The teenage years can be mystifying for parents. Sensible children turn scatter-brained or start having wild mood swings. Formerly level-headed adolescents ride in cars with dangerous drivers or take other foolish risks. A flood of new research offers explanations for some of these mysteries. Brain imaging adds another kind of data that can help test Read more
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The Bible is not a handbook on parenthood, or morality, or any number of other things for which handbooks are perfectly suitable. The Bible is a written testimony to the persistence of God’s grace throughout centuries as experienced by a particular people, in particular times and places. Scripture presents ancient families doing things that ancient Read more
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One Porirua school is turning the traditional parent interview on its head. Asking a parent to feel comfortable enough to ask hard questions of teachers, or understand all the information about their child, in just 10 minutes was not feasible any more, Holy Family School principal Chris Theobald said. That is why he is introducing a programme in which support worker Metua Tengaru Read more
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The Archbishop of Suva Peter Loy Chong said that in some places parishes rather than schools will have to teach religion to the young. He said the inclusion of religious education in schools continues to raise debates in certain quarters within the education system. Chong was speaking during his recent visit to a Napuka Secondary Read more
Mr Alex McNaughten