Teaching in New Zealand is a highly regulated profession. You need a four-year degree and then at least two years on the job with a mentor before you can become registered. This does seem excessive. Adult humans have been teaching their children since before we were humans. Teaching, and learning, is hard-wired into humanity.
If those six years were not enough, a prospective teacher must be assessed by the Teaching Council as being of good character and demonstrate that they adhere to six standards. You will not be surprised to learn that the first standard is to “Demonstrate commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Tangata Whenuatanga is an imprecise term that the Teaching Council describes as “Affirming Māori learners as Māori. Providing contexts for learning where the language, identity and culture of Māori learners and their whānau is affirmed.”
This is fine, I guess, but it is the second part of the standard that is tricky. Does the Treaty create a partnership? This is a political question for which decent and honourable people can and do disagree. Like many who have waded into this area of enquiry, I do not believe that a partnership was created in 1840.
I might be wrong, of course, many people smarter than me think otherwise. It is the nature of politics in a free society that we can hold different views, debate the issue, and go back to work. Our right to hold such perspectives is written into clause 13 of the Bill of Rights; “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”
Everyone except teachers, obviously.
Why, you may wonder, is it necessary for someone who wishes to teach maths to teenagers to hold a politically correct interpretation of a document signed in 1840? The ideological capture of the profession is not limited to this most important of the six principles.
In a study conducted by the NZ Initiative, a Wellington based free-market think tank of which I am a member, a review was made of the content that prospective teachers are subjected to during their four years of study.
Their analysis shows a heavy focus on social justice and related fields, and only a small emphasis on the science of teaching, and on science itself. The report notes that only 15% of year 8 teachers specialised in mathematics. You cannot teach what you cannot know.
One of the authors, registered teacher and researcher Stephanie Martin, wrote of her own experience during her studies when she was forced to confront her white guilt: “My privileges felt like marks against me, for which I had to repent and apologise. I articulated this guilt in my assignment. I poured my heart into it. I was self-effacing and remorseful. Yet the feedback I received indicated that my markers were not sufficiently pleased with my efforts. I had not been self-effacing enough.”
The analysis makes it clear: our teachers are not taught how to teach but what to teach. The only consolation is that, thanks to the lack of focus on the science of education, they are not very good at it.
We have experienced a steady decline in education outcomes, especially by students from disadvantaged backgrounds, partly as a consequence of forcing teachers to invest time studying topics in the social justice curriculum rather than perfecting core teaching competence.
The Initiative report, authored by Stephanie Martin and Dr Michael Johnston, proposes to deal with the challenges facing our teaching training regime by creating a competitive registration regime, where alternatives to the Teaching Council could emerge.
This, Johnston and Martin believe, would create competitive tension in the sector, improve standards and choice for those seeking to become teachers as well as schools who employ them. I hope that the incoming education minister takes their proposal on board.
While the new minister is reviewing the topic, they may also want to revisit the statutory requirement that schools employ registered teachers. Seymour’s charter schools enjoyed the freedom to employ who they believed was competent to teach their pupils and as far as I can see there isn’t any evidence that these unregistered pedagogues were any better or worse than their registered peers.
If there is real value and skills being acquired in the protracted process of obtaining an education qualification, then those with these skills will command a premium in the marketplace for teachers.
Giving principals the freedom to choose the best person to teach in their schools would appear to be in the best interests of our ensuring our children get an excellent education.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
Tangata Whenuatanga is an imprecise term that the Teaching Council describes as “Affirming Māori learners as Māori. Providing contexts for learning where the language, identity and culture of Māori learners and their whānau is affirmed.”
This is fine, I guess, but it is the second part of the standard that is tricky. Does the Treaty create a partnership? This is a political question for which decent and honourable people can and do disagree. Like many who have waded into this area of enquiry, I do not believe that a partnership was created in 1840.
I might be wrong, of course, many people smarter than me think otherwise. It is the nature of politics in a free society that we can hold different views, debate the issue, and go back to work. Our right to hold such perspectives is written into clause 13 of the Bill of Rights; “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”
Everyone except teachers, obviously.
Why, you may wonder, is it necessary for someone who wishes to teach maths to teenagers to hold a politically correct interpretation of a document signed in 1840? The ideological capture of the profession is not limited to this most important of the six principles.
In a study conducted by the NZ Initiative, a Wellington based free-market think tank of which I am a member, a review was made of the content that prospective teachers are subjected to during their four years of study.
Their analysis shows a heavy focus on social justice and related fields, and only a small emphasis on the science of teaching, and on science itself. The report notes that only 15% of year 8 teachers specialised in mathematics. You cannot teach what you cannot know.
One of the authors, registered teacher and researcher Stephanie Martin, wrote of her own experience during her studies when she was forced to confront her white guilt: “My privileges felt like marks against me, for which I had to repent and apologise. I articulated this guilt in my assignment. I poured my heart into it. I was self-effacing and remorseful. Yet the feedback I received indicated that my markers were not sufficiently pleased with my efforts. I had not been self-effacing enough.”
The analysis makes it clear: our teachers are not taught how to teach but what to teach. The only consolation is that, thanks to the lack of focus on the science of education, they are not very good at it.
We have experienced a steady decline in education outcomes, especially by students from disadvantaged backgrounds, partly as a consequence of forcing teachers to invest time studying topics in the social justice curriculum rather than perfecting core teaching competence.
The Initiative report, authored by Stephanie Martin and Dr Michael Johnston, proposes to deal with the challenges facing our teaching training regime by creating a competitive registration regime, where alternatives to the Teaching Council could emerge.
This, Johnston and Martin believe, would create competitive tension in the sector, improve standards and choice for those seeking to become teachers as well as schools who employ them. I hope that the incoming education minister takes their proposal on board.
While the new minister is reviewing the topic, they may also want to revisit the statutory requirement that schools employ registered teachers. Seymour’s charter schools enjoyed the freedom to employ who they believed was competent to teach their pupils and as far as I can see there isn’t any evidence that these unregistered pedagogues were any better or worse than their registered peers.
If there is real value and skills being acquired in the protracted process of obtaining an education qualification, then those with these skills will command a premium in the marketplace for teachers.
Giving principals the freedom to choose the best person to teach in their schools would appear to be in the best interests of our ensuring our children get an excellent education.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
11 comments:
Removing politics and ideology from teaching would be the first and best place to start.
Teachers should be taught how to teach children to read, write, maths, science and history along with the other subjet choice free of any personal or political influence.
Children deserve no less.
Hopefully the next government will remove such absurdities and allow teachers to treat each child as the individuals with individual needs as they should.
The Teaching Council newsletters are all obsessed with advancing pro maori material.
Primary school texts are full of characters with maori and pacific names. It perhaps provides them with the self confidence and self importance to become ram raids but it is a turn off for others. I recall 70 years ago the school journal was full of stories about idyllic maori children leading idyllic lives on idyllic country properties run by idyllic doting energetic, gentle granparents/aunts/uncles etc. It bored me then as such fictional emphasis presumably bores many today.
Stuff not allowing comments in this article on their site. Quelle surprise.
Does it take 6 years to teach people how to teach? Absolutely NOT. Nothing like it.
But it must take 6 years to brainwash someone into believing the foundations of neo-marxist progressive socialism, to the point where they are unable to think and reason for themselves and then proceed to brainwash all those in their charge.
Mind you, when you look at the collective intelligence, competence, knowledge and ability of those promoting this, it gives us all hope that it will fall apart.
This article echoes an article of mine of a few years ago in which I drew a parallel between NZ and North Korea. That teachers' human rights are being trampled underfoot is beyond dispute when teachers are ordered to be COMMITTED to a political paradigm and I'm buggered if I can see the difference between NZTC and their equivalent in Pyongyang in this respect.
Demonstration of commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand is everywhere - a veritable tsunami of it in education, health, response to climate change, the constitutions of our universities etc. All of us should aim for equity and justice, but education is not the place for social engineering, especially at a time when our national performance has been in long-term decline.
What about the 25% of our total population that is non-Maori/non-European? How often is Te Tiriti invoked to address their needs? Where do Pacific, Asian and Islamic world views appear in our refreshed national curricula?
David Lillis
Same thing happened in germany in thr 1930s. They massively indoctrinated the kids and encoraged them to dob in their parents to authorities if they opposed the doctrine. A friend of mine who travels overseas a lot for work and who happens to be a 5th generation white nzer, says he feels foreign everytime he comes back to nz and wants to leave for good.
There are many parallels between the transition of Weimar Germany to Nazi Germany.
Did Hitler have a published manifesto before his rise to power that was approved and voted for by the people ?
Did Ardern go to the polls with the He Puapua document hidden behind her back ?
and many more ................
There was an old facetious saying "those that can - do, those that can't - teach". It brings no satisfaction that the proof is now readily apparent by the appalling outcomes evident.
Thomas Sowell once said "There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young."
Our MoE deserves that mantle, for clearly the Ministry is full of unethical, deceitful, corrupt ideologues, or they are just fools. Either way they need to be gone and the sooner the likes of ACT gets the opportunity to round their sights on these despicable individuals, the better. They deserve our contempt, for they are stealing the future of our most vulnerable.
HAZEL MODISETT Please tell me where your daughter is receiving this education from so that others may enjoy this education also.
I will repeat again what I have stated on other sites.
Traditional social justice was achieved by dedicated teachers slogging away with often reluctant, stubborn , noncompliant children and having them achieve well in the basics. This was the NZ's fantastic heritage. There was little glamour or reward for this just the knowledge this was the best thing you could do for a child regardless of their home environment.
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