David Hill: Heroes at work in classroom

Part of my living comes from writing for kids. So I sometimes get asked into schools to talk about books and the making of them.

I recently spent a week visiting schools in one of our bigger cities. They were all low-decile schools, poor, stressed and struggling. I came away from them feeling sober and moved.

Sober because of the problems they face every day. I don't mean just the problems that come where kids start with little English; where cultural backgrounds mean some parents won't let their children change into PE gear or even play with kids from certain other countries.

I mean the problems which have resulted in several of these schools providing food and clothes for small figures who arrive in the morning without breakfast or a warm jersey; the problems which led a couple of them to establish procedures for looking after 8-year-olds frightened to go home to violent parents.

There's the school which makes sure that certain kids have the chance to shower and get clean clothes; the one in strife with the Ministry of Education for using part of its administration budget to finance kids on the class camp they'd never otherwise experience. School fees? Hello!We're talking suburbs with 30 per cent unemployment here.

There's the school which has replaced the usual lunch-hour by two half-hour breaks, because: (a) a number of its pupils regularly stay up until midnight at home, watching violent DVDs, and arrive at school in no state to concentrate for any length of time; (b) the shorter breaks mean less chance of playground confrontations starting between rival, 12-year-old gang children.

And there's the school whose principal apologised for not having been there to meet me. He had an emergency involving a boy who was born in a carpark to a 16-year-old street kid; has been shuffled endlessly between relatives and Government agencies; who attacks other pupils at the school with chairs or sticks. He is, the principal said sadly, a monster. He's 6 years old.

Why am I reciting these tediously familiar scenarios? Because as I say, I found the week moving as well.

I worked with about 50 teachers, and I'd say that 47 of those 50 were firm, affectionate and hugely effective with their classes. The other three? They were tired out.

Teacher after teacher in these lowest-decile schools made sure their classes were polite and attentive. They encouraged their excitement; shared their eagerness. They liked their kids, and their kids liked them.

I mention this because teachers and schools are regularly and ignorantly attacked by talkback callers and writers of letters to editors. They're accused of being politically correct, trendy lefties, bleeding hearts.

So they are, but not in the way their silly accusers mean it.

Of course the teachers and schools I encountered during my week are politically correct. They use the political system to get everything they can that is correct, right, nurturing for their kids.

Yes, I suspect many of them are left-leaning in their attitudes. After all, the left believes that a state has a duty to help in the care and education of its children. It's the free-market, lean-and-mean philosophies of the right that have left many of their parents unemployed.

And yes, of course they're bleeding hearts. Anybody whose heart doesn't bleed for many of the kids they have to deal with is a pretty stunted human being.

So if any of those teachers and their schools read this, please accept my thanks and congratulations.

Keep up the PC, leftie, bleeding-heart fight. Each one of you is worth more than the nation's talkback complainers all rolled together.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.