Shocked Australian families have told of their disgust after children were handed explicit novelty chocolates at a school Mother’s Day function.
The chocolates were shaped like penises, breasts and buttocks – as well as others depicting couples having sex. They were passed out in see-through bags at a P&C function held at Woodberry Public School in the Hunter Valley last Friday.
Cassandra Lacey, who has two sons at the school, said she was horrified to be handed a bag of the treats as she walked through the door.
“As soon as I opened mine, my son said, ‘Ah, Mum’ and I had to do a double-take,” Ms Lacey said. “Every single chocolate was to do with sex. This was in the school hall, on the school grounds and in school time.”
Another woman who attended Friday’s function said she watched on, “absolutely disgusted”, as children were given the chocolates.
“My nine-year-old grandson gave this zip-lock bag to me, put it in my lap and said to me, ‘You’ve got a willy in there Nanny’,” she said.
“Then I had a three-year-old sit down next to me and she said, ‘Hey, what’s this?’ She had this brown chocolate shaped like a penis and was about to eat the top off it. I told her she had better go and talk to her mother.”
It is believed the chocolates were left over from last year’s P&C Mother’s Day fundraiser, held as an adults-only girls’ night at a local venue.
P&C spokeswoman and school council president Jenny Gray said she was not at Friday’s function but intended to meet principal Josie Bailey to discuss the issue.
“All I can tell you is that it has come to my attention and yes, I have spoken to the principal and we’ll be having a meeting on Monday,” Ms Gray said.
She insisted the issue would not be “swept under the carpet”.
A German Catholic boys’ school is fighting for the right to give its pupils suppositories, in the face of a city council report on the use of rectally-administered medication.
The Collegium Josephinum (CoJoBo) in Bonn, a private school for around 1,200 boys, is struggling to maintain its reputation for excellence.
One of the teachers, who was also a priest, was recently suspended pending an investigation into allegations that he sexually abused two of its pupils. The investigation threw a spotlight on the school’s medical service.
For decades, the school followed the practice, common in Germany, of giving children painkiller suppositories for a variety of non-specific ailments – migraines, stomach aches, sprained joints.
“They were only ever administered in acute cases, only in the medical office, and only in the presence of a third party,” school director Peter Billig said. He said there was little alternative.
“Injections can only be given by doctors, and tablets take significantly longer to take effect,” he said.
But that did not stop Bonn city council from commissioning a report into when suppositories can or should be given to children or young people. Its result was somewhat embarrassing for the CoJoBo school.
“An emergency administration of a suppository for children older than toddler age is, from a medical point-of-view, a contradiction in terms,” criticised Dominique Singer, of the Hamburg-Eppendorf University hospital, who helped write the report.
“Either it is a real… emergency, in which case suppositories are not effective enough, or the suppositories have a certain effect alleviating symptoms, in which case it is not an emergency.”
Singer went on to say that administering suppositories was highly unusual after a certain age. She also criticised in-school medical services generally, because they offer a false sense of security and could delay the proper diagnosis of serious illnesses.
But another independent report, conducted by Cologne educational sociologist Michaela Schumacher, said that the CoJoBo school had always made “responsible use of this unusual medication,” and that there had been no “sexual association” in its administration.
Jürgen L., the priest responsible for medical care at the school, said that rectal medication had only been administered once since 2010, and that was with parental consent. He underlined that it was only ever used in emergency situations.
The city council is now calling for another independent inquiry into the concrete allegations against the school, and an investigation into its medical care facilities.
An investigation is underway after reports emerged that several young students were forced to act like cats and crawl across a hot track.
The alleged incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Junction in the northwest of San Antonio.
Several students still have visible scrapes and blisters on their knees and palms.
Parents say some of the fifth graders were being rowdy in the halls and started making cat noises at teachers.
As punishment, the entire class was taken to the track and told to get on their hands and knees.
“It was painful because the track was hot and it was rough and it was tearing our skin and it was burning,” said student Madison Phillips.
Four teachers were involved in the incident on the track.
The superintendent’s office says the district will get to the bottom of what happened, but it’s unclear at this point if there will be any sort of punishment.
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Two New York families have said that their young children were pulled from separate charter schools after being placed on “psychiatric suspensions.”
The families have now retained the services of an attorney.
Attorney Nelson Mar said that Brianna Pena, 5, was placed on one of the “psychiatric suspensions” on the first day of her transfer to Harriet Tubman Charter School when officials deemed her to be too troubled for the facility.
“Nobody cares about me,” the girl was reported to have repeatedly shouted during class. She also allegedly threw chairs during the incident.
School officials have now required her to receive “psychological clearance” before returning to the school.
Relatives said the girl was likely anxious about it being her first day at a new school where she didn’t have any friends.
In another case, Mar said that Christian Charriez, 6, was removed from South Bronx Classical Charter School in a separate incident after being suspended four times.
The attorney said that the family was told the final time that he would not be allowed back into the school until he received a psychiatric analysis and diagnosis.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the Charriez case, Mar said.
Frederiksberg Council in Denmark is set to introduce a new ‘wake up’ programme in order to combat truancy.
The move comes after the success of Nyborg Council’s wake-up system, which was implemented last year and has resulted in a significant decrease in absenteeism.
Similar to Nyborg, Frederiksberg will hire an employee whose job will be to ensure that school children attend school regularly and on time.
“We feel just like several other schools where kids are failing to turn up,” Margit Ørsted, the chairman of Frederiksberg’s teaching committee, said.
“A council ‘waker’ will function as an authority and show up at the child’s address and make both the parents and the child aware that they should attend school.”
Ørsted added that the employee would be available to assist parents and students with problems in the home, but stressed that it is the responsibility of the parents, and not the council, to wake children up in the morning.
Merete Riisager, the children and education spokesman for Liberal Alliance, said that it is “catastrophic” that the government wants to take over the role of parents.
“It’s disheartening that we have reached the point where public employees are entering the home of youths to wake them up,” Riisager said. “It creates an expectation among young people and their parents that if they do not bother, then the public will step in. It is not the task of the government to wake up teenagers. Excessive spoon feeding of this kind often disconnects the child from the harsh realities of the global labour market.”
Dorte Gammelholm, who wakes up 16 children – and some of their parents – daily in Nyborg, said that it is usually high school boys who have problems with getting up early in the morning.
“More than half of the families are socially vulnerable, but the rest are functioning families where the parents go to work every morning before the kids go to school,” Gammelholm said. “Sometimes it’s because the children are up playing computer games and watching television until late at night or it may be that kids are just weary of school.”
For smooth functioning families who have had no contact with the council before, it can be tough to involve the strangers in family matters,” Gammelhom added. “So I do not harass the parents about it, but I tell them that it’s probably a good idea if they can switch off the internet at half past eleven in the night.”
The principal of Sawgrass Elementary School in Florida was not smiling when she saw what a photography studio did to obscure the face of a child who wasn’t supposed to participate in picture day with the rest of his second grade class.
Sherry Rose was shocked to find, sitting in the front row, a student whose head had been replaced with a brown, cartoon smiley face.
“It was totally inappropriate,” said School District spokeswoman Marsy Smith, conveying the principal’s reaction. “She was very, very upset and immediately took action to reschedule a picture-taking session.” Parents who ordered the first photo will get the replacement at no cost, she said.
It’s not unusual for students to decline to participate in school pictures, Smith said. Parents do not have to give a reason. The website of photo studio, Broward School Pictures in Davie, promises “we will insure the personal touch … Try us and see the difference. You’ll be amazed.”
