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Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Mike's Minute: Stop dumbing down our education system


There's a bit of pushback coming from some sectors in the education business towards the reading, writing, and maths tests.

These are the tests we are failing. Those who are failing mostly come from poor backgrounds.

I'm not sure equating monetary status and academic success should be a thing.

But a bunch of principals from the "poorest communities" have got together to lobby the Government to stop the tests because they say it will lead to more kids leaving school with no qualifications.

After two rounds of these tests more than half failed reading and writing and 75% failed numeracy.

You can't get university entrance if you don’t get these grades.

Now, there is no doubt that failure affects attitude and there is equally no doubt that for some the “give it up” scenario must be tempting if the hurdle is too high.

But then there's also no doubt that allowing kids to leave school having failed is a failure in and of itself.

Any country that has any level of success globally is not a country that goes soft on education.

The principals’ answer is the answer that has failed us for years, which is also the Chris Hipkins Covid answer - give them something for nothing.

An alternative to an exam is the extra 20 credits scenario that is due to expire at the end of 2027. They want that made permanent and instead of 20 credits they want it made into 60 credits. So, like Hipkins and Covid, extra credits for not actually doing anything. Just extra credits for life being a bit crap right now.

No one gains when we do this. It is excuse making. It is an acceptance that we fail, and are failing, and failure is part of what we do.

You can either read and write or you can't. You can either add up or you can't. And if you can't, having people pretend you can, won't fix anything.

Part of why this country is where it is, is because we are apologists in areas like this and instead of being determined to fix it, we set about looking for ways to excuse it.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The dumbing down is already apparent Mike. I get emails from customers who are practically illiterate. Their emails are often in text language also. For example, instead of writing '"please" they will write " plz."
You invariably cannot understand their request from their email alone, so you have to call them. Quite often people do not know the suburb they are living in, when you try to update their contact information. Unfortunately, this is not new.

Anonymous said...

100% correct Mike. Seems to me this is just another case of parents not putting in the effort to help their children read at home or do homework. Lack of discipline that could prevent these same children from playing video games on iPads etc would be a good start. Today’s environment is about being friends with your children before being the disciplinarian.

Anonymous said...

Is it the kids or the teachers copping out here? If Katharine Birbalsingh and the Michaela schools can beat the odds in the UK what are our teachers doing or not doing? They seem to have more than enough time to complain about school lunches. Perhaps they need to put more effort into teaching? Low attendance stats show too many kids aren’t engaged or inspired. We already know teacher training via universities is more ideological than practical. Rather than griping and pushing for lower standards what are teachers doing to ensure their pupils achieve sufficiently well for at least basic success in life? Clue: more cultural indoctrination, climate angst and confusing gender “education” aren’t top of the list.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

Anonymous above really hits the nail on the head. The teachers who taught me at primary school in the early 60s had usually not completed high school themselves, spent a couple of years at TeaCol, and then the next 45 years teaching kids basics, and on the whole doing so well. Highly cost-effective system! Now we fill them with ideological crap and stick a little mortarboard on their heads and they think they're too good for the job........ should rather be activists for trendy causes and use their jobs to recruit child soldiers for them while the troops remain largely illiterate and innumerate. Makes them easier to manipulate.......

Gaynor said...

No Anon 6: 47 totally disagree . I have been a tutor of maths and reading at all levels of students in a decile 9 area where parental skills of nurturing are often light years ahead of the teaching and methods going on in our schools.

All these children, thousands of them. that came to our private school room had homes full of books, had had thousands of books read to them , had extra educational material bought for them, visited the library weekly, visited museums , had restricted screen time, controlled sleeping hours , healthy food as is typical of most professional and business class homes . Yet they still could not read nor do arithmetic or maths to the correct level for their age Some were up to five years behind. Only a small fraction were dyslexic.

What homework ? That was dropped decades ago , along with handwriting , spelling, grammar, rote learning tables, subject knowledge like geography , work ethic, discipline, completing work , marking work , and correcting work, memorizing any basic facts, revision and consolidation of essential facts . Completely ineffective methods of teaching reading and written work, and arithmetic along with hours wasted in now proven wrong project work, group work and school trips. There is overuse of screens to replace text books and writing in exercise books the latter is what much research now strongly advocates. Then there are the hellish open classrooms with high decibels. Added to this is the woeful incompetence of teachers in many/most primary schools in teaching arithmetic , such that upper primary arithmetic has not been taught at all in many NZ schools. This is true even in high decile areas. I omit the DEI , Sex ed, and gender mania and CRT and matauranga only because that is well covered on this site. Notice I don't mention secondary schools who , I believe are unable to teach their subject matter because of the ap[appallingly poor academic standards of students arriving from primary.
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I will agree many trendy and foolish parents have absorbed the Progressive Educational idea of child centered psychology which produces undisciplined , self-centered brats but the schools have this iniquitous ideology as their central tenet as do most preschools - the most formative years of a child's life.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps if primary schools had made their pupils spend more time in the classroom rather than abandoning them in thousands to attend a never-ending stream of political protests?
Isn't that what they wanted in the first place?
Little indoctrinated brain washed masses with no ability to hold an independent thought?
If you really want kids to learn and provide an education stick to the basics and stop blaming failure on "socio-economic differences".
Or perhaps it is the "welfare state" itself that is the failure of this country?