An OECD report has found that New Zealand's students are among the worst behaved kids in the world and that bad behaviour has worsened in the last two years. Shock me. A report released this morning by the Education Review Office has called for classroom behaviour to become a priority, and to nationalise the approach to dealing with bad behaviour.
At the moment, each school must set its own policy, around discipline, about rules, about consequences and they're not getting anywhere near the sort of support and professional help that they need nationwide to deal with bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids, kids with special needs, kids with special neurological needs, as well as the physical. There's a whole plethora of children, and their needs and their learning abilities would be diverse enough if you didn't take into account the bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids. I cannot even imagine what it is like in a modern classroom.
On the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, Ruth Shinoda, who's the Head of the Education Evaluation Center at the Education Review Office said she'd like to see three things happen.
On the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, Ruth Shinoda, who's the Head of the Education Evaluation Center at the Education Review Office said she'd like to see three things happen.
“The first is we're saying, look, let's have more of a national approach, which isn't still doing the same thing but is making sure that schools can access the same support and are really back to succeed. The second is we do need to support our kids, so let's have greater prevention. Let's make sure we're setting them up to succeed at school. And lastly, let's really help those teachers with the expert support and the skills they need. But yes, we do think things like taking cellphones out of classrooms will help.”
Yeah, and it probably will. We're going to have a chat to a bit later in the day about the states in America that are banning kids from under 14, from having TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts. There is so much, so much, that can be said about the reasons for poor behaviour.
Covid, of course, has been blamed, and countries around the world are seeing distressed kids, sad kids, anxious kids turning up at school. Children who don't know how to interact with one another. Who were terrified at the thought of ‘in real life’ because their teaching has been done online, their social interactions have been done online, and people in the flesh are quite a different thing.
So, it's happening all over the world, but an OECD report has found our students behaviour is the worst. You only have to look at the news reports of the poor behaviour among society in general to understand that the poor behaviour of the children springs directly from the poor behaviour of the parents or caregivers. They haven't come from nowhere. They haven't been born bad or sad or mad. Their home life shapes them, society helped shape them. What on Earth are the teachers supposed to do? By the time a child is five, a lot of the habits have been ingrained anyway.
There is nothing as any parent or caregiver knows like the joy of helping children learn and helping them develop their full potential. Each child is different and to be able to watch them grow is such a privilege. To be a part of that process, it is truly, truly wonderful. If teachers were actually able to teach, to do that, to work alongside parents to bring out the very best in each child, it would be the most wonderful job in the world. If parents were presenting to the school well rested, well fed, well-mannered kids, you would have queues of people lining up to be teachers. For those who have the privilege of being able to teach kids who can learn because they've had a good night's sleep and a warm, dry bed, because they've had dinner, it might not be flash, but it's enough to fill their stomachs, it's enough to allow their brains to calm down, settle down, and grow. To have children who have been supported from the time they are born to understand that learning is something precious. That learning will give them choices later in life. If you had kids like that, teachers who've had children like that in their classrooms know what a joy it is.
When you're spending an hour of your working day trying to impose discipline, there is no fun in that. And the majority of teachers say they leave the profession because they are sick and tired of trying to establish rules, and guidelines, and protocols simply so that they can do the job they were trained to do.
I think it's absolutely imperative that we have a nationwide code of conduct in our schools. At the moment, leaving it to schools to try and sort out an education policy ad hoc is not working. So, the schools need to have a national code and they need to be supported. It is not their job to take feral children and try and civilize them. That is where the health professionals come in. It's not their job to take a child who has incredibly diverse needs in terms of their brains, in terms of their physical needs, that is not their job. Leave that to the professionals and the experts.
In a way, the teachers are sort of like our police have become. Oh, the police will fix it, the police can deal with that, the police can do that. And we say that about our schools. Every single time we talk about budgeting or about our inability to drive on the roads, or people's inability to be able to prepare a simple basic meal cheaply ... aah the schools.
How about parents step up and do the job they're meant to do, so the teachers can do the job they want to do?
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
This is what happens when you divorce society from Christianity. It has only taken two generations without Christian teaching in all schools and it is falling apart. Without accountability to an higher power the worst become monsters and the best let it happen.
End compulsory schooling: it doesn’t work for most students. Get mothers out of the workforce: it drives down wages and leaves a hostile state to raise the next dysfunctional generation. It is the duty of the family to shape the next generation: not paid public servants. Families are the primary unit of society and ours are failing en mass.
Maybe we should stop telling kids they are all going to die from climate change, that they are racist oppressors if they are white, that they are unachieving victims if they are not white, that they are in the wrong body if they feel a bit different, that there is no need to ever feel responsible for their actions, and on and on.
Maybe we should set them some boundaries and let them go have fun during their childhood.
Giving schooling meaning helps. In the case of teenagers this means aligning schooling with career outcomes. The envisaged outcomes when dealing with lower teens don't have to be specific, but it should be possible by age 14/15 to tell whether a youngster is headed for a higher degree and associated profession or a manual livelihood. The NCEA is incredibly flexible and US/AS line-ups can be tailored to individual needs. I am not talking about vocationalising schooling but I am talking about creating a closer relationship between the content of schooling and desired career destinations. A very successful strategy in some places including at least one Aus state is to allow dual enrolment at school and polytech.
I fully endorse the above first two comments.
The dominant ideology we have in our schools is Progrssivism which not only fails to teach the basics effectively but like Marxism ridicules traditional ( usually Christian ) values. What we have now is exactly what was predicted by wise educationalists in the 1940s when Progressive Education replaced Traditional Liberal education. A destroyed education system and society has resulted.
Progressive education absorbed ideas from radical revolutionary thinkers like J.J. Rousseau who believed children need to be freed from conventional restraints like parental and teacher authority. Children to him were naturally good and knew best what they should do. Our pre-schools, crucial years for behaviour development, have completely adopted this foolish ideology. Don't just blame parents who need to both work to pay the mortgage/rent.
No work ethic, permissive discipline with no correction, lack of morality and no insistence on being responsible for your own actions is the consequence of adopting a destructive ideology. Then there are all the underachievers who have developed severe psychological problems from their failure to succeed. This is recognized by much research. Dyslexics need traditionally taught phonics ( now called Structured Literacy) and the hyper actives need structured handwriting exercises and a quiet non distracting classroom as well.
My mother , Doris Ferry taught thousands of reading failure children and their aberrant behaviours vanished when they began to succeed. These children came from disciplined orderly homes .The school's failure to teach with traditional values and methods was mostly the problem. Similarly basic arithmetic needs to be taught in traditional ways.
We have as a society got what we deserve in allowing Marxist - Progressive academic educationalists dictate to our politicians and teachers how our children are to behave.
Did Rousseau encounter any maori indoctrinated with the imagine decolonisation mantra?
Rousseu had a fetish about the innocence and freedom of 'The Noble Savage' . He would probably have had his own children join a tribe to escape the evils of civilization. Of course colonisation/ civilisation would be the cause of Maori ills since for him they originally lived a pure, free and natural life. Romantic nonsense we seemed to have had foisted on us .
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