I received this survey from Hillsdale College this week, and felt it was highly relevant in light of recent evidence of persistent radicalization of our education system.
Our Education Minister's recent comments in defence of the wording of the Education Training and Amendment Bill give additional cause for concern.
National Survey on the Department of Education
America’s education system is at a pivotal moment. Since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education, federal involvement in schools has expanded—but has it led to better academic outcomes?
At Hillsdale College, we believe in the importance of local and parental control over education. That’s why we are conducting this National Survey on the Department of Education—to gather the perspectives of patriotic Americans like you on key issues facing our schools today.
Your answers will help us better understand the challenges in education and fight for the principles of liberty in American classrooms.
1. Do you believe the U.S. Department of Education has harmed the quality of American education since its creation?
( )Yes
( )No
( )Unsure
2. Should control over education policy be returned to state and local governments instead of the federal government?
3. Do you believe federal involvement in education has led to declining academic standards?
4. Should the Department of Education be eliminated?
5. Do you believe public schools today promote political and ideological agendas that undermine traditional American morals?
6. Would you support redirecting federal education funding to states so they can decide how best to use the resources?
7. Do you think the quality of American public education has declined compared to previous generations?
8. Should parents have the ultimate authority over their children’s education, including the right to opt them out of politically motivated or controversial instruction in public schools?
9. Do you support the cause of liberty, and are you willing to partner in Hillsdale’s efforts to restore limited constitutional government through education in our nation?*
10. Do you confirm that the answers on this NATIONAL SURVEY ON THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION are your own?*
With obvious modifications, we could equally ask New Zealand parents these same questions, and receive, I would imagine, similar responses. And, of course, we do not have a state/federal system here, and so face special challenges in this regard.
We have become accustomed, partly by dint of smallness of scale, an indifferent media, and the absence of a second house, to a centralization of power that means potentially controversial changes can be made almost without detection. These changes are frequently embedded with undue haste, often without proper consultation and/or consideration, and with an unwarranted susceptibility to special interest groups (and ideologies).
Thus these changes are often implemented in the absence of the resistance (or counter-balancing) present in larger and more complex jurisdictions.
In light of growing concerns about our own education system, not to mention numerous other agencies of state, and clear election promises by our current coalition government to do something about these concerns, the determination of bureaucrats (and pseudo-academics) in our Department of Education to continue their programme of radicalization, proceeds unabated.
In spite of irrefutable evidence of the damage they have already caused.
Even if the current government was to live up its election promises, and take some action, the tendency of the Ministry in the past has simply been to put their most radical plans on hold, wait for the return of a more sympathetic government, or apathy on the part of the public, dust these plans off, and take them to the next stage.
And just consider for a moment how infrequently we ever see a bad idea being wound back?
Many New Zealanders are becoming increasingly convinced that, no matter their views, no matter the assurances of politicians, things continue along a path entirely antithetical to the views, and intuitions, of the majority of New Zealanders.
Education is only one example of this.
In New Zealand, and the wider West, it seems increasingly that the ballot box has been displaced as a mechanism of accountability and self-correction, by a most unholy of trinities.
Increasingly, our political, bureaucratic, and academic/media elites seem to call the shots, with a contemptible, and barely concealed, deafness to the collective wisdom of those who will ultimately carry the can.
While the deeply embedded inner workings of the Ministry must inevitably bring us to the question of whether it, or our institutions at large, are even capable of being reformed, we face the bigger question of what happens when the population at large no longer believes that politicians will do what they say, that bureaucrats will advise their political masters wisely, or implement policy with a modicum of neutrality, that academics will learn to stay in their lane, or media report the whole picture, if at all.
Interestingly, a new sub-discipline is emerging in the West weighing the factors that lead to genuine unrest and societal breakdown.
Ignoring the people who put you in office, and bankroll the system, seems to be one of these.
Confusing populism with democracy simply adds salt to the wound.
Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.
( )No
( )Unsure
2. Should control over education policy be returned to state and local governments instead of the federal government?
3. Do you believe federal involvement in education has led to declining academic standards?
4. Should the Department of Education be eliminated?
5. Do you believe public schools today promote political and ideological agendas that undermine traditional American morals?
6. Would you support redirecting federal education funding to states so they can decide how best to use the resources?
7. Do you think the quality of American public education has declined compared to previous generations?
8. Should parents have the ultimate authority over their children’s education, including the right to opt them out of politically motivated or controversial instruction in public schools?
9. Do you support the cause of liberty, and are you willing to partner in Hillsdale’s efforts to restore limited constitutional government through education in our nation?*
10. Do you confirm that the answers on this NATIONAL SURVEY ON THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION are your own?*
With obvious modifications, we could equally ask New Zealand parents these same questions, and receive, I would imagine, similar responses. And, of course, we do not have a state/federal system here, and so face special challenges in this regard.
We have become accustomed, partly by dint of smallness of scale, an indifferent media, and the absence of a second house, to a centralization of power that means potentially controversial changes can be made almost without detection. These changes are frequently embedded with undue haste, often without proper consultation and/or consideration, and with an unwarranted susceptibility to special interest groups (and ideologies).
Thus these changes are often implemented in the absence of the resistance (or counter-balancing) present in larger and more complex jurisdictions.
In light of growing concerns about our own education system, not to mention numerous other agencies of state, and clear election promises by our current coalition government to do something about these concerns, the determination of bureaucrats (and pseudo-academics) in our Department of Education to continue their programme of radicalization, proceeds unabated.
In spite of irrefutable evidence of the damage they have already caused.
Even if the current government was to live up its election promises, and take some action, the tendency of the Ministry in the past has simply been to put their most radical plans on hold, wait for the return of a more sympathetic government, or apathy on the part of the public, dust these plans off, and take them to the next stage.
And just consider for a moment how infrequently we ever see a bad idea being wound back?
Many New Zealanders are becoming increasingly convinced that, no matter their views, no matter the assurances of politicians, things continue along a path entirely antithetical to the views, and intuitions, of the majority of New Zealanders.
Education is only one example of this.
In New Zealand, and the wider West, it seems increasingly that the ballot box has been displaced as a mechanism of accountability and self-correction, by a most unholy of trinities.
Increasingly, our political, bureaucratic, and academic/media elites seem to call the shots, with a contemptible, and barely concealed, deafness to the collective wisdom of those who will ultimately carry the can.
While the deeply embedded inner workings of the Ministry must inevitably bring us to the question of whether it, or our institutions at large, are even capable of being reformed, we face the bigger question of what happens when the population at large no longer believes that politicians will do what they say, that bureaucrats will advise their political masters wisely, or implement policy with a modicum of neutrality, that academics will learn to stay in their lane, or media report the whole picture, if at all.
Interestingly, a new sub-discipline is emerging in the West weighing the factors that lead to genuine unrest and societal breakdown.
Ignoring the people who put you in office, and bankroll the system, seems to be one of these.
Confusing populism with democracy simply adds salt to the wound.
Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.
2 comments:
Despite efforts by David Seymour to highlight the continuation of special rights according to ethnicity and offering a solution (whether it be 100% foolproof or not) Luxon and National keep bowing down to the biased Waitangi Tribunal and judiciary. And now the Environment Court acknowledging Ngati Whatua has a connection to Westhaven Marina is just another step forward on the slippery slope of dominance and a potential money making scheme.
"Confusing populism with democracy". That is what is happening alright. In the US, Donald Trump is doing what he was elected to do by the people. Deporting illegal immigrants(there are millions of them,. Somewhere I read 20 million). Imagine if we had even 50,000 illegal immigrants in New Zealand. That would be extremely difficult to monitor. Re-shaping education to achieve excellence not equity. Trimming a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy. Getting rid of DEI. Addressing the drug problem. I don't think any of these things would affect him personally. He is not doing this to be popular. He is doing it because that is what his voters wanted.
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