Once again, she is taking an inexplicably stupid thing in schools, ditching it, and going back to common sense.
This is something close to my heart at the moment because I have to make a decision in the next six months or so about which school we send our son to.
But I’ve basically already made the decision, and it will be the one school in the area that has single classes instead of open plan, modern learning spaces.
It’s the school his best friend from kindy is now going to. It’s also the school another parent I know has just sent their child to.
All of us are doing it for the same reason: we want to avoid open plan learning spaces.
We know, like most parents know, that if you stick a hundred kids in a big room and tell them to pay attention to the teacher in front of them, they can’t.
They get distracted by the loud noises coming from the other kids over there.
Why the Ministry of Education forced this in schools will probably baffle me for the rest of my life, because there is no logic to it.
No one who has kids, or spends time with kids, can really believe kids can concentrate and learn with 100 voices chirping all the time.
Which idiot came up with this? I’d love to know.
I tell you what, the legacy of this Government could well be that it finally turns around our up-to-now decades long decline in education stats.
That, along with the ban on phones in schools, and the hour a day of reading writing and maths, and the expectation that kids must pass existing standards, actually gives our kids a chance to learn as well as kids in any other developed country, like we used to.
And if that is what happens, given how crucial education is to a country’s success, Erica Stanford will remain as I see her:
The MVP of this Government, if not of the decade.
Or, of this generation.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
25 comments:
Stanford was my MVP until her debacle with the ridiculous "clauses" in the education bill. Now she is the reason I will 100% switch my vote from National to one of the other coalition partners. She's obviously a nasty piece of work and ideologically blinded. Education is just too important and, legally, meant to be secular.
Hekia Parata implemented the open classroom schools. An idea that had already been deemed a failure in France at that point in time. To me the fault rests on her shoulders. We know MoE officials are leftist losers, and she took their advice.
Indeed, we must support Erica Stanford, who I believe is doing her best to get education back on track. I feel that she gets criticized unfairly by those who do not understand the challenges and obstacles that she faces - not least from the Ministry.
Having worked at NZQA and interacted with the Ministry of Education, I remain enormously disappointed. Many good people but too many of those who had little or no subject matter expertise going into management and, of course, the bullying was sickening. I have said all of this before, but it needs to be reiterated until something is done - unqualified people in management abusing excellent staff out of employment; framing good staff by making false public allegations of errors in reports etc; plagiarism and taking credit for the work of their staff. Calculated attempts to ruin the reputations and careers of others. I watched all of this going on in my own unit. Any attempt to stand up for yourself or complain was met with threats that you will lose your job. The same bullies who did this stuff were setting education policy and controlling assessment.
I saw this stuff and much else twelve and more years ago, and those unqualified "managers" are still there on fat salaries. Highly paid research managers and statistics managers who have never done any research in their lives, in some cases holding no tertiary qualifications of any kind, and who can barely find the average of three numbers. They then abuse Ph.D holders out of their jobs and, further, out of their professions.
It stands to reason that this obnoxious behavior was superintended by the top people who, of course, ultimately emerged with fat bank accounts, titles and honorary degrees. If I were in charge today I would have those “leaders” in court, restructure both organizations and get rid of the rot that has harmed our schoolkids for twenty years.
David Lillis
Erica Stanford has made a bigger mistake that she should fix . Remove ethnicity requirements from the curriculum completely . Then she can parade in your National woke MVP of the year
The Ministry should be cleared out....... huge dame done in many areas.
This week I bought an item costing $106 - then decided to take 3 packets. The sweet shop assistant needed a calculator to work out the $318 bill.
EXACTLY, Basil !!
Erica is a member of National’s left-leaning wing that is leading the party under Luxon. She is doing some excellent work on curriculum, especially with the 3R’s, but unfortunately she is also further embedding maorification. Te reo and matauranga will not help pupils or NZ to succeed. As a small trading nation at the bottom of the world we need to be outward facing. English is the international language of business. We are fortunate to speak it. Our scientific research budgets are small we must apply them wisely. Maori culture belongs in social studies, history or anthropology, not science. The treaty definitely belongs in history. It was never intended as some kind of “recipe for everything” in NZ daily life. Erica is not helping with any of these things. The Ministry of Education remains infested with activists. In all honesty despite the excellent curriculm progress, I couldn’t rate Erica’s overall performance at more than 50%. The cultural issues are a serious handbrake on our kids and our country's future. They must be addressed. We must look forward as a nation, not back.
So the thing that elevates an MP to MVP is getting rid of open classrooms.
Not cutting expenditure, cutting bloated public service, creating jobs, alleviating child poverty, stopping division. None of those, because they aren't going to happen.
Nope, we get to go all gaga over the phase out of open classrooms over an extended period. Yeah nah.
Touche !
HDPA's praise is ill deserved. The decision to persist with with ethnicity, as she has, and then "kick for touch " by handing the 'hot potato' to the dithering Goldsmith, is unforgivable in this voters view !
MVP for who. The corporation or we the people.
Excellent article, Heather.
I have never understood the rationale of crowding all these youngsters into a large room with multiple distractions, and expecting them to actually LEARN.
I recall the small, separate classrooms at Raumati Primary School and later Kapiti College. We were all same age roughly, and all had our own desks, facing the teacher and the blackboard in the front of the classroom. No distractions allowed.
So last century, but it WORKED 111
For Iwi and trace Maori.
Erica is looking after Erica's future.
Syrely Bazza would be great at home schooling
Stanford - MVP ?
Not with her refusal to remove this mandatory indoctrination in the curriculum, or the teaching staff.
Prove to us that she has the best interests of ALL our children in her intentions.
I was discussing this with my wife last night. She said after 40 years teaching this will be the 3rd time changing from one classroom size to the other. Like so much in education it all goes around in circles.
I'm definitely on Heather's side with regard to the issue but I do not agree on the MVP bit.
Not having open class rooms as you mentioned in article is an obvious fix
Not having racist clauses in the education bill is also and obvious fix
If your 1/2 I don’t think your MVP. Maybe you need to be benched fumbling such an obvious move…
I too won’t be voting for piss poor, weak National again.
Great comment-pretty much the way I see Stanford, too.
I honestly don’t know where Heather came up with VIP. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
Fully agree. She is a young product of the education system of recent decades, and has NO IDEA how the Ministry is infected... or what "wokery" is.. A rude awakening is on the way.
Education Ministry needs a serious CULL. They have no idea / care about teaching/education... just manipulating government backstage for their own ends.
In the 1920s solo teachers achieved remarkable standards with classes of 40. Pupils were failed to their level so the teacher had effectively just one class to cope with and no large number of dispirited out of depth misfits. (Also had the strap). Open classes an attempt to regain. the situation in disguise. One teacher taught to the vaguely specified level, the other or others administered to all those out of their depth, effectively forming a separate sub standard. The resultant distraction and din a huge handicap for all. It was effective training for open offices, but with so many working from home no longer justified. Open classes also propped teachers appointed for their pro maori enthusiasm whilst they learned real teaching from those with useful skills. They had nothing to contribute the other way except maori hocus. All we need now is a return to the honest failure mechanism, a foretaste of real life.
Indeed. They get a gold star for just turning up these days.
With Standford's introduction of Maori religion into the syllabus , she has gone from Most Valuable Player for me to Minimal Viable Product in a misguidedl political factory , called National. .
I was quite excited about her 'getting back to the basics ' but now depressed that she has countered all her good efforts in that area by implementing such appalling indoctrination into something few could say was ever going to be beneficial to a child. . Nor could even be described as educational at all.
Cancelling open classrooms' stupidity was just following a trend where converting these classrooms back to single cells again is a major carpentry industry in Australia.
As David Lillis explains, so well above the entire Min. of Education is rotton to the core along with most other NZ Educational institutions. I agree fully . By pass them altogether and buy work books like the Australian 'Excel ' or Scholastic ones for maths and literacy and organize morning homeschooling cooperatively with other parents.Join up with other homeschooling parents for other activities in the afternoon . Secondary School is more difficult but in this age of technology , surely lessons by expert teachers can become available , which leaves only practical work to do . But interactive Laboratory work is already being done .on line . Ah ! Freedom from the tyranny of an educational elite , who crave indoctrination of your child into some sort of dysfunctional social utopia they have dreamed up in their crazy minds.
Robert Arthur - It was much the same as you describe in the mid 1960’s with classes of over 40 at my local state primary. We were the tail end baby boomers. Standards were high with some very good teachers and a lovely maori headmaster. That east auckland school set me and many others up for success at secondary level. Quite a number of us progressed to tertiary study. I’m grateful to have completed my education pre-cancel culture. Free ranging tertiary discussion was encouraged, particularly in post grad courses. No one had heard of decolonisation. Te reo hadn’t been manufactured and nor had matauranga. Change is indeed the only constant, though sadly not always for the better. At least in some respects the pendulum is starting to swing back again.
so she wins votes of the left and National looses votes to ACT and NZF is the coalition further right or left I think right.
I agree - not with you Heather, but with Anon@6.48; David Lillis; and those with similar thinking through to and including Gaynor. The MoE reached its pinnacle of woke stupidity and under-performance under Iona Hosted, although her replacement, for the time being, has kept such a low profile it's difficult to tell whether things are any better or worse, and is that really appropriate given the salary band that that role commands? While Stanford has made progress with the curricula upgrades, her thinking on ethnicity teachings certainly removes her in my book from any chance of an MVP handle. And if you want some proof, just think of her endorsement of the ridiculous and unattainable objective of "...achieving equitable outcomes for Maori students;...". Think about what that really means; who sets what's equitable; who is to be the judge; if it's so great why doesn't it apply to all students; what's the cost of achieving it; and, what's the cost when it almost certainly fails? She's a worry, and she was from the moment she opened her mouth about "our Treaty Partners...". Clearly she hasn't read the Treaty, much less really understood it. As another columnist recently stated... "For years the leaders of the Young Maori Party preached up and down the country what both A. T. Ngata and Dr Maui Pomare believed that ‘the first subject in order of priority in the school curriculum was English, the second most important subject was English, the third most important subject was English and then arithmetic and other subjects." She would do well to reflect on that. But will she, I very much doubt it. She'll double-down, like so many who lack wisdom and make grave errors of judgement.
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