Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Hi Margo. This is an exciting new time. Why Patron Power (pater = father in Latin)? Does Matron Power seem too matronly? Or is that too patronising? Maybe Puella Power. Or Patrina Power even better.

Margo: I didn't know patron was a male word? Can we metamorphose it to mean all of us who visist here?

I want to respond to Noelene in relation to her post to me on Examination Question 99 from Macquarie University and I dont know where to do it on here, so I just came here.

Noelene Konstandinitis at August 21, 2005 10:56 PM: "Jolanda Challita: 'Are you still banging on about your children not getting into a Selective School? Girl, you really need to let it go! Given how many places there are, I'm going to have to blunt with you. Your children just must not be that 'gifted.'"

Noelene, I found your post very disappointing and disturbing. You don’t seem to get it, its not just about identified intellectually gifted children not getting placement in Selective Schools. Because they wont accept the complaints and allegations and are covering up the allegations, the matter hasn’t been resolved and the problems haven’t stopped, my children continue to be neglected, bullied, treated unfairly, victimized and vilified and they do this so that the 'picture/tale' that the Department of Education has created, in order not to investigate the allegations, appears on the face of it to be true.

Why doesn’t anybody have to afford us our human right to be regarded as 'Innocent of lying until proven guilty'. Why is it that those that are accused of misconduct are always believed to be innocent to such an extent that they can even stop the matter from being investigated by anybody else. This process of dealing with complaints is at the expense of the victims. It isn’t fair.

My children have been identified very highly intellectually gifted by Psychologists, the Community and by the Department of Education themselves, everybody knows that they are very highly gifted. This isn’t about whether or not they are gifted, this is about a vendetta against my family because I complained and being ostrasized, we are being victimized, targeted, bullied and treated unfairly.

Our concerns are not only that our children’s identified educational needs are purposely being neglected but that my families and children’s reputation and their standing has been affected. My children and family have been discredited, vilified and humiliated in the Community and especially within the Education Department. Teachers now have a very negative attitude towards my children and we are the topic of conversations. It makes our life very miserable and it really affects my children as it affects how teachers treat them and mark them and how people see us. We have been branded trouble makers because we complained, we have been discredited and ostrasizsed and we are being victimized, and it is seriously affecting my children and families life. We just want the matter to be dealt with openly so as to clear our name and get on with our lives.

It is also a fact that the situation has not only affected my older two but last year affected my third child. My youngest daughter doesn’t have a school to attend, she is at home at the moment. The comprehensive system seriously struggles to meet her needs, the Department of Education IQ tested her themselves on the WISC and she achieved a score confirming her IQ - 145-150. The Primary school that she was at put her in a 4/5/6 composite last year in Year 4 to expose her to the higher level work. She was shown to be beyond stage outcomes on her school report and was said to be exemplary. She won the end of year award for Academic Excellence in literacy and numeracy. Just because she gets high marks doesn't mean that she is learning and is happy. The work is easy. The school didn’t know whether they would be in a position to meet her needs in Year 5, not enough funding. She is an extremely gifted child who just wants to learn, and the system didn’t place her in Opportunity Class, the schools that they designed to cater for this problem despite the fact that the comprehensive school believed that they wouldnt' be able to meet her “identified educational needs” as a highly gifted child. The neglect of her education and her treatment causes her emotional and psychological distress and they know this. She is a human being. Her application for OC was once again handled by those that I am alleging are doing this to my children and this is despite the fact that I formerly requested that they not be permitted to handle the matter. How many times are they going to be permitted to do this to my children before somebody says ENOUGH! I have 4 children. My younger two are at home at the moment they don’t have a school to attend, they are too worried and scared to go to school, they feel the negativity and hostility towards them, things keep happening and they are as a result convinced that the teachers and the system doesn’t like them. It affects them physically, they get sick, they are sensitive and emotionally intense. I am trying to get Distance Education for them until this issue is resolved as the way things are at the moment they find school so hostile towards them they suffer physical and psychological problems. The system is not making it easy for us. They don’t care, they just want to discredit us so that nobody will listen to us or believe us. They feel pretty confident that the public will also not care. They don’t care if my children are suffering, there is no duty of care. This issue needs to be resolved and the allegations aired and cleared for the sake of the children.

I thought you would understand that. This matter has affected how people treat us, how they see us and we don’t deserve it. If they had just targeted me, I wouldn’t bother. But they are targeting the children and they deserve better. It’s ongoing. My children are being systemically neglected and bullied by adults in the system and nobody will stand up in their defense. We just want to be treated fairly. It should be our basic human right to be treated fairly.