Hey, what about mandatory attendance at a Make Stuff Better Through the Power Of Positive Thinking course?
(Pardon me while I puke up a small puddle of undigested sunshine.)
Go read the rest.Melissa Fisher believed her jobseeker payments would be cut off if she didn’t complete a resilience training course.
So the South Australian-based artist, who has a disability and has been on income support for several years, signed up. She found herself being asked to rate her friends and family, whether God played an important role in her life and if she felt grateful she had enough to eat.
At one point in the four-day course, she was shown pictures of Brad Pitt in a chicken suit to illustrate how people can go from “nothing to something”.
“I found all of it so condescending,” Fisher says of the resilience training run by WISE employment in South Australia.
“They said that who we have in our life is important and surrounding ourselves with successful people will make us successful. If we surround ourselves with unsuccessful people we will be unsuccessful.”
Fisher says she believed the course was part of her mutual obligations which jobseekers are required to undertake otherwise their payments can be suspended. Fisher says she was never told she could choose not to do the course – and other jobseekers across Australia say they also thought the same.
WISE says the course was designed by Esher House, which claims it uses “behavioural science” to help jobseekers find work. WISE has defended the course, saying it is helpful for many jobseekers, is not compulsory and is not a mutual obligation.
But welfare advocates say such courses are “social eugenics” which “promote isolating people in poverty from their families”, and don’t help them find suitable work.
Each morning of the course, Fisher was told to complete a survey. She was asked a range of questions, including how much awe, wonder, guilt, fear, hate, distrust or happiness she had experienced in the past 24 hours.
“They also made us do a resilience survey, the questions on that were … ‘I’m grateful for the simple things, family, having enough to eat’,” and “spirituality or a belief in God plays an important role in my life.”
“I stated that when you’re disabled and not able to afford food, it’s hard being positive,” she says.
On the first day, participants were asked to introduce themselves and what they did on the weekend. The participants described watching movies at home, doing housework – “basically [stayed] at home because we don’t have money”.
“And the teacher turned around and said ‘I went out to the Adelaide Hills, we tried a new restaurant. And it was so much fun.’ Well, that’s OK if you can afford it. And the second day she was like ‘I am grateful because last night I went to the dentist.’ I was like you’re kidding? No one here can afford the dentist.
“They don’t get how different our lives are.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... t-payments