It’s really terrible how some teachers in Australia are failing to respect the cultural imperatives of their New Australian students.
Teachers at a primary school in Sydney, Australia have been threatened with beheading and other violence from young Islamic students, prompting one of them to quit her job. Students as young as those in Year 5, according to the Daily Telegraph, are making the violent threats and pressuring others to read the Koran at Punchbowl Public School in Sydney.
Documents given to the newspaper allege that three staff members have taken a leave of absence owing to stress, received counselling and been awarded compensation after bullying from Islamic students.
One female teacher reportedly quit her job after it got too much for her. She claims she quit after receiving death threats to her family from her year 5 and 6 students, with some saying they would behead her. The teacher also said she made numerous complaints back in 2014 about the extraordinary behavior in the class. For example, she said, she was abused by students after she stopped them from hanging a Syrian flag in the classroom.
In another example, she claimed she was pushed into a corner by students who began marching around her chanting the Koran.
Frankly, if the woman hadn’t quit, she should have been fired. What right does she have to tell these New Australians, who are every bit as Australian as those descended from British convicts and shipped off to colonial Australia, that they should not be hanging Syrian flags, threatening her family, and promising to behead her.
After all, those are just New Australian customs, every bit as Australian as kangaroos, koalas, and gay pride parades, and they should be respected accordingly.