As you will have heard, we are short of teachers. We aren’t training as many teachers as we used to, so increasingly, we’ll need to bring more of them into the country.
The Minister suggested—optimistically, I think—that it's about more than just pay. It's about resources and support, which I’m sure is true. But the question remain, does it solve anything?
Does anything solve anything?
Is teaching simply a profession —like so many others— that is no longer what it once was? And if that's the case, why would anyone choose to be a teacher today?
Kids can be difficult. And if they’re not, schools are riddled with social issues that no teacher should have to deal with – yet they do.
Teachers are more like social workers than educators now. Even with all the holidays, the numbers don’t lie: people aren’t enrolling in teaching like they used to.
The trouble is, while teacher numbers are dropping, the number of kids isn’t. In fact, student numbers are expected to peak next year. So the gap widens.
Bringing in teachers presents a twofold issue.
You have to find teachers in a world where everyone is looking for them. They have to want to teach here. Is New Zealand really a magnet?
I could try to reassure you by talking about the teachers I had – but we’re going back 50 years. They were, virtually all of them, ordinary. Even with age and some maturity, as I look back at the ones I remember, not a single one was exceptional or brilliant or even really, really good. They were average. In an average school. That turned out a lot of average kids.
Is it possible the great teachers are, and have always been, the exception? The ones with the calling, the drive? The rest have merely been okay.
Which, of course, doesn’t solve the problem.
We have a lot to do with it. Society is a mess these days: held back, held down by anxieties, concerns, divisions, anger, frustration. A sense of loss, bewilderment, and upheaval that occupies pretty much everywhere, globally.
And so we send our offspring —if we send them at all— to be shaped by a miracle worker. One we pay average money to. In what might be a leaky building. With minimal resources.
We are setting it all up for failure. It’s complex. But if the Minister is right, and she can turn it around, she deserves a medal. If not beatification.
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.
Is teaching simply a profession —like so many others— that is no longer what it once was? And if that's the case, why would anyone choose to be a teacher today?
Kids can be difficult. And if they’re not, schools are riddled with social issues that no teacher should have to deal with – yet they do.
Teachers are more like social workers than educators now. Even with all the holidays, the numbers don’t lie: people aren’t enrolling in teaching like they used to.
The trouble is, while teacher numbers are dropping, the number of kids isn’t. In fact, student numbers are expected to peak next year. So the gap widens.
Bringing in teachers presents a twofold issue.
You have to find teachers in a world where everyone is looking for them. They have to want to teach here. Is New Zealand really a magnet?
I could try to reassure you by talking about the teachers I had – but we’re going back 50 years. They were, virtually all of them, ordinary. Even with age and some maturity, as I look back at the ones I remember, not a single one was exceptional or brilliant or even really, really good. They were average. In an average school. That turned out a lot of average kids.
Is it possible the great teachers are, and have always been, the exception? The ones with the calling, the drive? The rest have merely been okay.
Which, of course, doesn’t solve the problem.
We have a lot to do with it. Society is a mess these days: held back, held down by anxieties, concerns, divisions, anger, frustration. A sense of loss, bewilderment, and upheaval that occupies pretty much everywhere, globally.
And so we send our offspring —if we send them at all— to be shaped by a miracle worker. One we pay average money to. In what might be a leaky building. With minimal resources.
We are setting it all up for failure. It’s complex. But if the Minister is right, and she can turn it around, she deserves a medal. If not beatification.
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.
8 comments:
As one of the few really secure employments it is surprising teaching is not more popular. I suspect many blokes pass it up because of the tyranny of near all women company and the endless torrent of words, and of being manipulated. Then the risk of losing your cool or otherwise infringing all the pedantic rules and so incurring demerit points if not dismissal. And the need to forever pander to maori and to learn and tolerate loads of te reo and suffer tedious speeches and performances. Then the training apparently does not teach how to teach, but a lot of academic theory. Teachers may always have been predominantly mediocre but many things were in their favour. There was discipline, effectively enforceable. A clear cut syllabus, covered by the books. And going right back to when teachers were especially effective, pupils were failed to their level. This meant far more uniform classes so more or less one level only was required to be taught in each class. The open mixed classroom unheard of. A device for poor teachers, often chosen on race, to ride on the back of the able.
It staggers me that it takes years of university to supposedly learn to teach primary level.
I am glad you have written this article Mike , because our education system is a fiasco . As I mention ad nauseum we have appalling international results in the basics , the longest tail of academic underachievement, worst class behaviour problems including bullying , poor attendance and more including poorly trained primary teachers particularly in maths.
My grandfather was a prominent educationalist early last century and predicted along with colleagues exactly what we have now . because of the introduction of a the new ideology in education in 1950. Gradually everything that was effective in education resulting in us having excellence was cancelled and for no good reason. Introduced crazy academic theories were responsible for this decline.
There are now attempts by some to claw back what we used to have traditionally but the iniquitous ideology still prevails. As long as there is no acknowlegement of the fundamental problem of this we are rearranging deck chairs.
One of the tenets of this present evil ideology is that anything from the past is wrong and foolish hence to be ignored. Only new trendy ideas are ever to be permitted to be inflicted on our precious children , as if they were lab. rats.
I cannot think of anything about the current Progressive ideology , we have in NZ that is either constructive or promotes progress. Both children and teachers are abandoning going into schools. They are neither places of leaning nor safe culturally or physically.
The standard qualifications for a secondary school teacher are a Bachelor's degree with a teaching subject major and a 1-year diploma which includes on-site training at 2-4 schools. Teaching has to compete with other careers for quality graduates, which is a problem in some areas e.g. a good physics graduate has viable options other than teaching but a biology graduate may not. As a general statement, science teachers work harder because they have labs to prepare (unless there is a competent lab assistant to do all that, which there often isn't). BAs in social studies are 19 to the dozen but BSc holders especially in physical sciences are much rarer and have options. The temptation is to pay qualified science teachers more than teachers of other subjects but that is not a politically feasible course of action. From my observations in a number of countries, I am of the opinion that providing full-time competent lab assistance to science teachers makes the job more attractive and reduces attrition rates - and results in a better science education for the learners.
The problem of skilled shortages in all employment vacancies
is solvable by doing what we have done in the past and it mostly hinges on changing the entry criteria facing immigrants seeking permanent residency.
It also depends to a lesser degree on the fine print of employment contracts for those graduating from government funded universities.
When my parents graduated from teachers training college, they became bonded to mainly remote schools that traditionally struggled to fill vacancies. The bonding only lasted for a few years, after which they could choose where they wanted to live and work.
That system successfully solved the rural vacancy shortages without resorting to bonding of new immigrants .
However today, in almost all sectors where shortages occur, the problem would require a combination of bonding both new graduates and immigrants seeking permanent residency .
Forget the teacher shortages for the moment - the vacancies in health care delivery throughout the country but especially to the more rural communities in some areas could easily be solved by requiring immigrants seeking permanent residency to agree to be bonded for a relatively short period that would appear as a blip on the radar to most wanting to live here permanently .
As far as the doctor shortages go - l would also require immigrants to commit to a 40 hour working week as part of the residency application.
How many people living in Gisborne have difficulty gaining an appointment to see their doctor in anything under 3 weeks which is ironic because here on the Coast, l can see a doctor or a nurse practitioner within 2 days or sometimes the same day if the problem is urgent enough.
Go figure.
With the collapse of social life, churchs, dances etc and nobody in private board, country service today would far more lonely and tedious than in the 50s and 60s. Unless fit in at local marae or with all the Phiipino dairy workers at the catholic church. Individual immigarnts from populated countries would find it especailly bleak.Many immigrant are just using NZ as a stepping stone. With a future here of bleak racial unrest who can blame then for heading somewhere the stone age and its customs has been left behind.
Bring back dedicated teacher training Colleges where a buding teacher is taught fully what is needed to be a TEACHER. Current training in a University environment is hopeless; they are treated as a University student first and a teacher second
I don't believe it is a teacher's job to be "great" or "inspirational". That's Hollywood hype and nonsense.
Half the job of a teacher is to control the classroom otherwise it just degenerates into a bar room brawl.
The best teachers I had spelt that out quickly. If you want to do nothing that's fine you had the option to sit there and be quiet or get out / leave.
The responsibility is with the individual and they were not being paid to baby sit idiot teenagers.
You grow up now and take responsibility or continue life at best in mediocrity or failure into becoming an adult.
That was my high school teachers anyway...they had a lifetime of experience and merely shared their observations.
In the mid 1950’s all my teachers were male, until such time as I attended an all girls school in the 60’s. Discipline has declined, as have male teachers-could there be a link?
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