by Catherine Delahunty
It wasn’t much fun waking up this morning to the news that the Ministry of Education will no longer be providing advice to primary schools on arts, science, technology, or physical education – nothing in fact, except the “three Rs”: reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. This latest assault on the public education system by the National Government is just plain stupid.
It also heralds the undoing of a robust curriculum. There is no educational justification for such a narrow focus, when all the evidence points to the importance of a holistic educational experience at primary school level.
The limitation of Ministry of Education support to literacy and numeracy is clearly to assist with the implementation of the new National Standards (which are due to be announced tomorrow, according to Education Minister Anne Tolley.
Presumably, the Minister thinks literacy and numeracy are not developed in parallel with the core subjects by subjects like art, science, and technology. Perhaps she hasn’t been visiting schools and seeing the interconnections between subjects in action like I have. She certainly hasn’t been listening to her counterpart in the British Tories, Conservative Education Spokesperson Michael Gove, who says
“a broad and demanding curriculum – far from undermining reading, writing and arithmetic – reinforces attainment in these core skills.”
You can drive a truck through her logic but I get the feeling that the Minister’s ideological advisers don’t care. They have a plan which involves selling the idea that the “three Rs” are somehow learned in little boxes taught separately from other topics, and that all children learn in exactly the same way.
As for the National Standards implementation, it is an imposed initiative with undertones of the failed USA programme “No Child Left behind” and the British experiment with “teaching to test”, which Cambridge University research has found to be a dismal failure.
Through this same cut, we have now lost all the Sustainability Advisors who survived, just, the cuts to the Enviroschools Budget earlier this year.
Under this Government, it seems that “three Rs” are now Reducing the curriculum, Regimenting the assessment processes, and Ruining opportunities for our children.
Hat-tip to Gordon Campbell who wrote a good post on this issue this morning, for the Gove quote.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Catherine Delahunty on Thu, October 22nd, 2009
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Does she agree with the British Conservative Party’s Education Spokesperson that ‘a broad and demanding curriculum – far from undermining reading, writing, and arithmetic – reinforces attainment in these core skills’; or is it the case that under her watch the ‘three Rs’ really stand for reduce, regiment, and ruin the curriculum?
Bill English answered on Anne Tolley’s behalf and skirted the issue; I’ll post the transcript when it’s available.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Who, in their right mind, could give a ‘thumbs-down’ to Frog’s post (above)?
The tunnel-vision Tolley’s experiencing in her approach to the Education portfolio is jaw-dropping to read and hear about.
I look foward to reading the transcript and the comment on it from the person who down-thumbed Frog. If they dare.
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Oh, it was Bro!
What a clot!
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Funding training in the basics of the Arts is NOT wasted – The relationship between Mathematics and Music in the developing brain is well documented.
BJ
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Of course everyone would avoid the public schools like the plague, so they’d close (and sell their buildings on the open market, to the expanding private schools)
Ta daa, a privatised school system without having to explicitly privatise anything. Easy.
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enough of my years have been spent following education policy and provision to now feel very depressed, as your scenario is completely possible if Bill English continues to hold the reins on Education policy development.
B*gger!
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Katie – yes, Bill is behind this attack on our education system. He just hasn’t given up, through all of these years. Next, they’ll be calling for the removal of diagrams from the Maths text books, as they are too ‘arty’. It’s numbers, pure and simple, from here on in!
By the left, quick march!
Two two’s are four
three two’s are six
four two’s are eight
five two’s are ten
six two’s are twelve
seven two’s are fourteen
eight two’s are sixteen
nine two’s are eighteen
ten two’s are twenty
Again from the top.. (thanks Bill!)
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It sounds like policy thought up by someone who knows absolutely nothing about education.
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From the capitalist point of view it makes sense to downgrade the public school system.
Public schools will churn out the great proleteriate, sir, the fodder for the next generation of wage slaves.
They don’t want employees to think too hard and question the system, never mind that Da Vinci’s drawings of human anatomy overturned Ptolomy’s view that the body was never to be cut open, a practice that held up healing for over two thousand years.
But they (National) will definately wan’t to teach them, the great unwashed, sir arithmatic!!! Goodness gracious this could result in workers being able to count their wages, calculate their taxes and overtime rates.
Are National sure that they wan’t to go down this path?
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samiuela – Helen Clark was a sincere patron of the Arts. Science in the broader community got a serious whack as soon as National took power.
Bizzare is the correct description for what is happening.
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I always thought that the 3 R’s were: “Roger, Rodney, and Regurgitation.”
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I suspect English thinks the 3 R’s are “Rote learning, Religion and Rugby”.
Here is a link to a speech by Sir Ken Robinson some might appreciate:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.htm l
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@greenfly 6:21 PM:
I always liked the rap/txt version best though:
4 4rzr4t8. Shut da g8 on yr 4tymz taybl
Is txt among the Tolleychopper’s “standards”?
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Now that Arithmatic and Grammar dominate the learning menu at National’s schools, students will be able to use the Queen’s Good English to ask for their favourite pie at the school tuck shop and check that they get the correct change!
Please Bill, can we have fagging and the good old waddy back?
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Here’s Bill’s answer in the House. As you can see, he said pretty much nothing:
Hon BILL ENGLISH: The answer to that is no. Of course New Zealand does maintain a broad and demanding curriculum, and the tens of thousands of teachers who are out there teaching it will continue to do so.
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Bill was looking a bit pale in the House yesterday – did he get the Strap for closing the Noble Leader’s Old School down?
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Nah! He’s spent so much time in Dipton lately, he’s lost his tan.
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“Now that Arithmatic and Grammar dominate the learning menu at National’s schools,”
this is so going to undermine the accounting profession and the legal profession
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The proposed changes may simply be part of the measures designed to cut back public spending, to enable the government to pay in the interest on the national debt burden, which is spiralling out of control.
Also, let’s not forget that public education wasn’t introduced to enlighten the masses, but to produce people suited for labouring in factories and other professions, and to serve as cannon fodder in wars. Hence the educational system’s general emphasis on uniformity, conformity and mindless obedience, at the expense of creativity and independent thinking. The fluoride rat poison dumped into our drinking water and the neurotoxic vaccines pumped into our children are also part of this agenda to keep us dumbed down and living way below our true potential. People whose mental functions have been impaired by these poisons are so much easier to dupe into falling for scams and swindles like “global warming,” “swine flu,” Tamiflu and “swine flu” vaccination.
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Green needs to take care it doesn’t promote repressive regimes. My view is that people who care about freedom MUST emphasise teaching primarily of the three Rs. Give students TOOLS to find things out for themselves; not pre-formed opinions. Let them form their own opinions.
Every torture dictatorship teaches “social studies” or “culture” or “history”. This is usually dangerous and pushy. Teachers can too easily become dominating, lazy and self-indulgent.
Pupils can already read and write and calculate/analyse at a high level? Not high enough. There is always more work in understanding and analysing the written word. An advanced, “fully literate and numerate” class? Try John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty”: it will stump them totally. Teach more logic and analysis of data: this is New Zealand’s scientific, engineering and academic future.
I regret to say some current teachers are fairly illiterate and innumerate themselves, and avoiding the three Rs is their way of avoiding being shown up. Some school decisions are egotistical and self-indulgent. (Can it be true that some school spent its funds on a film editing machine? I would love to go in to that school and test reading and comprehension attainments.)
Let’s give our young people advanced skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. Then, rest of their lives, they can grow in their own free direction in a rich environment of the written word.
We don’t need some agenda-heavy bureaucrat/rabble-rouser/liquor advertising firm/political ogre controlling their thinking.
Current Generation Y horror stories:
1. Shop assistant picks up a calculator to figure total cost of three newspapers at $1.20 each…
2. “Your truck is spilling waste”… “It’s not MY truck!” (can’t use “you” as a plural)…
3. Hotel receptionist enters business company name into computer, but reads the word “Analysis” as “Australia”, so it is quite wrong.
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Landa – your comments are an enlightenment. I take from what you say, that there are those, yourself included, who see pure learning of numbers and words as the only safe, ideology-free way to educate children.
You must fly into a real panic then, whenever you enter a school library, wih all its books containing the thoughts and opinions of authors who haven’t been vetted by good souls like yourself. Your suggestion that we pare back to the basics in the classroom is going to leave the school library in the area you live, with practically empty shelves. Perhaps the students will learn to pour over and marvel at the Nautical Almanac, who knows, but they’ll surely find the smoke from the burning book pile distracting.
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greenfly,
You appear to be missing Landa’s point, which largely concerns the state control of education and how it has historically been used to indoctrinate children.
Again, one of the advantages of a voucher system and private schools is that you don’t have the state dictating a curriculum. This alone is more than enough to justify it.
Of course, it is only seen as a benefit by those who don’t themselves have an agenda they wish to impose on impressionable young minds…
“Perhaps the students will learn to pour over and marvel at the Nautical Almanac…”
I think you’re making Landa’s point here about teaching standards…
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Quite right wat – pore me!
The state, in public schools, doesn’t dictate the curriculum either. If you have had access to the most recent Curriculum document, you’ll know how broad its ‘dictates’ are – it provides room for any school, any syndicate, any teacher to tailor the material and delivery to suit each student in any particular class.
You assertion that ‘this alone is enouh to justify’ the voucher system and private schools is negated somewhat by this, I’m certain you’ll agree.
Though you are not Landa, you’ve stuck up for him, so I’ll direct this point to you..
Landa says:
Let’s give our young people advanced skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. Then, rest of their lives, they can grow in their own free direction in a rich environment of the written word.
We don’t need some agenda-heavy bureaucrat/rabble-rouser/liquor advertising firm/political ogre controlling their thinking.
but he seems confused (and overly idealistic). If you enable a child to read, surely you must take some responsibility for the indoctrination he/she will suffer because of this ability? Advertisers must find print effective, or they’d not use it.
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OK
The First thing is a question. Where the heck is the plural that is the problem in number 2 and how is it a problem? “Your” in that sentence is possessive and singular.
Can’t use YOU as a plural? Really? If this is actually the case it is quite certain that it is a pedantic obscurity.
If these are your examples of horror stories I find it unconvincing. If the calculator is handy I’d develop a habit of using it myself. More to the point, the business owner might well have a RULE requiring its use. Not because I can’t do simple things in my head (or the shop assistant can’t) but because I know that if I do I will eventually make an error, particularly if I had a tough night the night before.
Misreading things in haste is not unusual. The notion that the person “can’t read” is what is being suggested. Not having my glasses would be an equally likely explanation, particularly for someone who has landed a job that includes reading and writing.
Not saying it happened that way, but I don’t take these “horror stories” as evidence of anything but a deep and abiding prejudice against the young folks. Since my Daughter is 10 and is progressing nicely through these “awful” schools and I am satisfied that they are doing a good job I am wondering what is going to be the result for my Son who is apparently to be deprived of an education in Science, even though at 5 he has declared his intention to be a scientist.
Which begs the question, what is eliminating the SCIENCE curriculum going to achieve?
What is eliminating the Music going to do to the Mathematics wizards we HOPE to develop?
http://www.musicandthebrain.org/research_papers.htm
Nothing good.
Overall this is stupid, short-sighted and stultifying. It is unfortunately not strange, as those characteristics of the current government’s approach to everything are altogether uniform.
One imagines that they might think somehow that this is actually a good idea, but the elimination of an actual education in the sciences, in economics and in other “peripheral” studies actually was part of the decline of schooling that I watched in the USA, as conservatives compassionately wiped out the effective schooling of my youth, and created the situation which prevails today, where teaching the science around evolution is regularly assailed and every half-baked whacko theory is judged equally acceptable.
So it may not simply be an innocent error. For neo-con politics to succeed, the people have to be rendered ignorant and helpless to recognize the false logic, rotten science and repetition of bad history that it is all based on.
However, simple incompetence is probably just as good a theory for this bit of idiocy.
BJ
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greenfly,
I wrote that the issue is about “the state control of education and how it has historically been used to indoctrinate children.” Clearly, any answer consisting of just the assertion that, currently, the NZ government doesn’t seek to indoctrinate children, would wholly fail to address this argument.
Yet that’s what you did.
It’s not a matter of what the state is doing now: it’s a matter of what it could do in the future.
Imagine the Greens fail to get any MPs at the next election – a very real danger, especially given that the poles show more and more people are waking up to their warming scam. Suppose a new minor party in government managed to get a sceptical climate DVD sent to all schools as part of the curriculum. How would that be?
Or suppose, in Britain, the BNP gets into power (not out of the question, since most of the policies are indistinguishable from Labour’s and their increasing support comes largely from traditional Labour voters.) Without lifting a finger to introduce any legislation they would have control of what is taught in the schools.
Yet if schools are private, there is no government-mandated curriculum.
- “If you enable a child to read, surely you must take some responsibility for the indoctrination he/she will suffer because of this ability?”
Huh?
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Wat
If the people control the government through representative democracy, which happens to be pretty much the case here in NZ, the government will generally adhere to the wishes of the people of the country.
This government is intent on gutting broader education and that will be part of their indefensible record going into the next election, and with any sort of luck it will get the steel-toed-gumboot-to-the-backside it deserves as a result… because AFAIK removing science and music from the curricula was not part of the platform on which National was elected… and I doubt that the people of the country really want it to happen.
Your hypothetical is amusing, but not that relevant. The government is specifying that entire subject areas will not be covered… not that a specific thing is true or must be taught a certain way.
The issue you are describing is one of 2 or possibly 3 where science has established and very solid theories which some religion (the worship of mammon being the principal religion of the world today) finds anathema.
One does have to adhere to the separation of church and state
respectfully
BJ
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bjchip,
- “If the people control the government through representative democracy, which happens to be pretty much the case here in NZ, the government will generally adhere to the wishes of the people of the country.”
And if it’s the BNP which wins the popular vote and is defining the curriculum?
Also, whatever illusions you may have about the state, the mechanisms of government inevitably become captured by organised special-interest groups: businesses, professional organisations, labour cartels, enviro-extremists, socialists, fascists etc. The state responds only to their demands. The very last people to be considered are the general population because, foolishly, they are dispersed and getting on with their lives rather than mobilising for a political fight.
Hence, parents get very little say in what goes on in the schools, because the left-wing teachers’ unions control them. A voucher system would put that power back in the hands of parents.
- “This government is intent on gutting broader education…removing science and music from the curricula…”
Yet you continue to support centralised state control of the curriculum.
As I said before, if your intention is to inculcate children with your own “values” then independant schools are the very last thing you would consider. I strongly suspect this is a large part of the left’s opposition to such a scheme: whilst the left-wing unions have such strong control over the schools they are happy to let things continue unchanged.
- “The government is specifying that entire subject areas will not be covered… not that a specific thing is true or must be taught a certain way.”
Again, it’s not a matter of what the state is doing right now: it’s what a future government could do in the future if you grant them control of the curriculum.
You may have seen a recent controversy where the US Education Department suggested as an activity for children in state schools that they “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” How would it be if the NZ Education Department suggested that children write such a letter suggesting what they can do to help the PM?
Introduce a voucher system and take politics out of education.
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bj; Didn’t realize Bierce was present at Chickamauga
Corruption inevitable Wat? I believe not.
The scale of the Internet’s “Informatioin Age” has the ability to render Education as we know it, Obsolete.
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Never said I wouldn’t try a voucher system similar to Sweden’s, though I have pointed out that it is difficult for it to work well in a rural setting. I think I WAS guilty of disagreeing out of reflex.
Nor is my problem that the government is controlling the curriculum here… it is doing something more foolish.
Lets ask ourselves what the PURPOSE of the school is… the deep philosophical question. The purpose of the school is to teach kids as much as possible about the world they are going to live in. Reading, Writing and Mathematics are perfectly “safe” because they are pure studies.
However, the real world contains an awful lot more, and the kids who hit the more complex issues, the philosophically troubling questions of society and in this case, science and history and economics as well…. kids who hit those without ANY preparation are going to be in trouble. And a society which fails to prepare its children for those issues is going to be in trouble too.
Designating whole sections of the real world for kids to be ignorant of is not the same as “controlling the curriculum” I think, as I define that control as the more specific sort of thing you pointed at in your example. If the people are fools enough to elect fools however, then their society will suffer until they grow wiser. We certainly are.
However, I am not really arguing with you as much as agreeing, and calling this government foolish in the same breath. This is an area where you have some very valid points. Reflexive urge to disagree aside
Didn’t see the US DOE doing that, but I’d believe it. No need to post a link, I lived there for most of my life, and the original Twain quotation “First God made idiots…” was about school boards. It is a problem that goes back a long long way.
The problem for the USA is that SOME people will set up schools that teach and preach creationism. Actually a majority view in some areas. There may be no help for it. I regard teaching a child creationism as valid science to be a form of child abuse, as it harms the child’s ability to cope with evolution, disease mutation and biological science. The history of this issue in the USA is that vouchers are largely pushed by creationists.
Which causes a knee-jerk reaction that I have managed to overcome.
However, the vexed question of whether parents should be permitted to handicap their kids with anti-science remains. I don’t have a resolution to that question handy. When parents act irresponsibly at that level it makes the child’s life more difficult. It also prevents the child from developing talents or scientific curiousity that might be beneficial to them and the society as a whole, and it can lead to other problems.
The Madrasahs that appeal to the Islamic fundamentalists, the Creationist schools… all such things are anathema to the development of a tolerant secular society. They exist nontheless, and the public schools are set against them.
So….
To what extent should the vouchers be restricted? I’ve no objection to creationism being taught as a religious point of view outside the school, but it is not science. No objection to the teaching of comparative religions… but the tolerance of others is basic to OUR culture. We thus cannot tolerate the teaching of intolerance.
BJ
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There is another issue with a voucher system which people may not have considered.
Presumably every child at a particular school level in the same city would get an equal value voucher irrespective of which school they choose to go to. At present children going to private schools receive less state funding than those going to state schools. I will not argue if this is fair or not, but just examine what the consequences of this difference in state funding means for a voucher system. Under a voucher system, one of the following two things would have to happen:
1) Taxation would have to be raised to increase the funding for those children currently attending private schools to the same level as those children currently attending state schools.
2) Funding per student to those in state schools would have to decrease so that funding to those in private schools could be increased to the same level as those in state schools.
Under either option 1 or 2 parents of children in private schools will be significantly better off financially (because school fees will presumably drop). Under option 1 all taxpayers, including those on low incomes, are likely to face an increased tax bill (or some other services elsewhere will need to be cut). Under option 2, those attending state schools will probably receive a poorer education than they do now, because funding will be cut.
People on low incomes are unlikely to be able to afford to send their children to private schools at present or under the voucher system. This is because many (but no doubt not all) of the current private schools will still be likely to charge extra fees on top of the value of the voucher. Parents on low incomes who struggle to pay the rent, power and food will not be able to afford private education for their children, no matter how much cheaper it is under a voucher system. Therefore they will probably still send their children to state schools. Therefore, no matter whether option (1) (more taxation) or (2) (less funding to state school students) is taken, those most adversely affected will be parents on low incomes. On the other hand, parents on higher incomes who currently send their children to private schools will be much better off.
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samiuela,
I believe how it usually works is that any school receiving voucher funding is forbidden from charging any extra fees and is unable to discriminate between students based on anything but a first-come-first-served basis. Thus parents of poor children are not charged anything extra and the children get the benefit of being able to go to the same schools as the richer kids and thus merge with the social networks and education levels which inevitably are a big part of ones achievement.
Taxation would have to be raised but the increase in education standards resulting from competition should compensate for this to some degree. I would, though, make subjects and methods a minimum requirement for voucher funding.
I will have to read bak up this thread to see whats actually been said as I have only just noticed that it has drifted to the interesting. Damn exams, they get in the way of my reading.
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