Teaching for uncertain futures - Neville Freeman Agency

30four scenario worldsThe family are obviously all platinum hospitalmembers so I don’t have to worry about the qualityof service although I hate to think how we’d cope ifI ever lost my job and we all ended up not covered byinsurance.If I have a worry, I guess it’s the fact that the schoolseems a bit relaxed. They don’t take students untilthey’re four-years-old and the day only starts at7.30am. And then – just wait for this – they wastepart of the day teaching prehistoric subjects likeancient history and music. Believe me, these subjectsare of absolutely no use these days. My kids arealmost ten and twelve. They should be learningcontract law, financial management and teambuilding skills. I emailed the teacher about this onlylast month and brought it up with the principal atour last home visit but so far they haven’t done adamn thing. Customer focused? Yeah right. Still, I’llhave the last laugh. If my kids don’t get top marksthis year I’m suing the school for breach of contract.I’ll have a word with my development directorabout withdrawing sponsorship for the new studentwellness centre too.That’s the great thing about the new system. Thirtyyears ago I would have had to endure tediousmeetings with the parent-teacher association.Even then, there was no guarantee that anythingwould get changed. These days, because all theschools are privatised and profit driven, I just phoneup the parent complaints line. And if that doesn’twork, I have legal redress based on the initiallearning contract.We’ve also got a Microsoft computer lab, a GoogleEnglish centre and one of the latest Woolworthsstudent mini-malls.In fact the only other thing that slightly keeps meawake at night is the influence of the people my kidsmeet online. In the old days parents used to knowexactly where their kids were and what they weredoing. These days we’ve got no idea where theyare online or what they’re doing. The old stuff likeSecond Life and Cyworld were acceptable but thenew stuff is really dangerous. We’ve obviously got allthe parental controls installed at home and these filterout undesirable people and ideas but sometimes oneof the kids gets hold of a debugged computer and thenthey can hang out with all sorts of punks.Talking of sleep, we’ve got all sorts of solutions thesedays. Being in the wellness business, I have access tothe very latest deep sleep pills. These offer preciselytwo hours of REM sleep any time of day or night.The kids of course do the opposite – pills to keepthem awake all hours. Actually, banging my owndrum a bit, one thing that I’m immensely proud ofis the sleep memory pills we’ve just brought out. Popa pill and, hey presto, one hour of sleep followed bya perfect memory for up to a week. They’ll be a realhit with students but they’ll also keep people like meahead of the curve. Like they say, if you snoozeyou lose.Overall I shouldn’t complain though. The Nikesports centre is the best in the state and the BillGranger canteen is so good it’s now open in theevening for parents to grab a bite if they’re runninglate from work and can’t pick their kids up until ten.