It's a conundrum.
Education Minister Erica Stanford announced over the weekend that there'll be a ban on screen time in early childhood education centres, limited use in primary schools, and given the concerns around how devices and social media are contributing to declining abilities for kids to engage with complex texts and analyse data, I mean, surely this has got to be a good thing.
"We need to move on quickly to what the rest of the world are doing to help set our kids up with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in life, and we can't afford to sit down and have another cup of tea. That's what Labour always want to do. They'll do the same with the curriculum. Let's sit down and have a cup of tea and a break and create a group that they appoint members to to have another think about it for 10 years. I mean, 60,000 kids start school every year, we can't afford to wait. And the key thing is, Mike, in all of this, our reforms are working. Why would you want to put that all at risk so Labour can have a cup of tea?"
That was Education Minister Erica Stanford talking to Mike Hosking this morning. Yet when I was talking to Chris Hipkins in studio on Friday, he made it abundantly clear to me that National's initiatives would be rolled back should they form a government. He seemed to take absolute personal umbrage that I would suggest that from what I'd seen the reforms were working. Education seems to be as personal to him as it is to Erica Stanford.
CH: "The reality here is that any curriculum change does need to
KW: "For Ginny to put a halt on what's happening would be a disaster."
CH: "That's rubbish, absolute nonsense. Erica Stanford is trying to rewrite the school curriculum in her own image, basically trying to and making it much, much more political than it should be. We're saying that the curriculum should be decided based on evidence of what's going to work, based on what we want all kids to be learning."
KW: "It wasn't working."
CH: "No, there's no question, there was curriculum, there was a need for the school curriculum to change, there's a need for the NCEA to change, but doing it in the way that the current government are doing it where they're alienating so many people, they're shutting parents out of the process, they're shutting teachers out of the process, they've got school principals up and down the country saying this is going to be bad for kids' education, that is a time to take a pause and say, okay, let's try and get this back on track because there is a need for change."
KW: "I couldn't disagree with you more."
Clearly I'm passionate about education too, so that was Chris Hipkins talking to me in studio. But you can hear in his voice that he genuinely believes that everything Erica Stanford is doing is wrong, and yet I'm looking at what she's doing and looking at the overseas evidence and looking under my own roof and I can see that it is working.
Who's right?
I mean, I think the education of our children and the options that a well educated child will have no matter where they start in life, the future of the country depending on a world class education is way too important for politics and shifting ideologies.
I would gladly support Labour's curriculum if they could show they'd got it right, but their last session in office did not convince me of that in any way, shape or form. And it's not just me. You've got the Royal Society of Mathematicians saying that it was an absolute disaster what was being proposed. It's not just my reckon.
There were academics and there were teachers and there were people with experience of educating children and knowledge of core curriculum subjects who said that Labour's curriculum that had been drawn up, and when you look at the money they spent on the reviews and the reforms and the contracting out, was a disaster.
For all of that money and all of that time, disaster. There were probably some bits that were good, so keep those, but when it came to teaching the core subjects, they had got it completely wrong. Then you've got Erica Stanford coming in and the poor teachers are lurched in another direction again with the handwriting and the back to basics and the minimum amount of time spent on English and maths, and it seems to be working.
I am so sick of reviews and reports and commissions that we have reports, reviews and commissions up the yin yang. If they propose another one on the education, it'll be a complete and utter waste of time and money, just as it will be with the bloody supermarkets. How many commissions have we had on that?
But what Erica Stanford is proposing seems to make sense and it seems to be working and some educators agree with it and some do not, and then you argue that it's because some of the educators are influenced by the teachers' union. I don't necessarily buy that, but what works?
It seems looking at overseas data and anecdotal evidence what Erica Stanford is proposing works. So why is Labour so vehemently opposed to what seems to be the best for our kids?
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.
"We need to move on quickly to what the rest of the world are doing to help set our kids up with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in life, and we can't afford to sit down and have another cup of tea. That's what Labour always want to do. They'll do the same with the curriculum. Let's sit down and have a cup of tea and a break and create a group that they appoint members to to have another think about it for 10 years. I mean, 60,000 kids start school every year, we can't afford to wait. And the key thing is, Mike, in all of this, our reforms are working. Why would you want to put that all at risk so Labour can have a cup of tea?"
That was Education Minister Erica Stanford talking to Mike Hosking this morning. Yet when I was talking to Chris Hipkins in studio on Friday, he made it abundantly clear to me that National's initiatives would be rolled back should they form a government. He seemed to take absolute personal umbrage that I would suggest that from what I'd seen the reforms were working. Education seems to be as personal to him as it is to Erica Stanford.
CH: "The reality here is that any curriculum change does need to
KW: "For Ginny to put a halt on what's happening would be a disaster."
CH: "That's rubbish, absolute nonsense. Erica Stanford is trying to rewrite the school curriculum in her own image, basically trying to and making it much, much more political than it should be. We're saying that the curriculum should be decided based on evidence of what's going to work, based on what we want all kids to be learning."
KW: "It wasn't working."
CH: "No, there's no question, there was curriculum, there was a need for the school curriculum to change, there's a need for the NCEA to change, but doing it in the way that the current government are doing it where they're alienating so many people, they're shutting parents out of the process, they're shutting teachers out of the process, they've got school principals up and down the country saying this is going to be bad for kids' education, that is a time to take a pause and say, okay, let's try and get this back on track because there is a need for change."
KW: "I couldn't disagree with you more."
Clearly I'm passionate about education too, so that was Chris Hipkins talking to me in studio. But you can hear in his voice that he genuinely believes that everything Erica Stanford is doing is wrong, and yet I'm looking at what she's doing and looking at the overseas evidence and looking under my own roof and I can see that it is working.
Who's right?
I mean, I think the education of our children and the options that a well educated child will have no matter where they start in life, the future of the country depending on a world class education is way too important for politics and shifting ideologies.
I would gladly support Labour's curriculum if they could show they'd got it right, but their last session in office did not convince me of that in any way, shape or form. And it's not just me. You've got the Royal Society of Mathematicians saying that it was an absolute disaster what was being proposed. It's not just my reckon.
There were academics and there were teachers and there were people with experience of educating children and knowledge of core curriculum subjects who said that Labour's curriculum that had been drawn up, and when you look at the money they spent on the reviews and the reforms and the contracting out, was a disaster.
For all of that money and all of that time, disaster. There were probably some bits that were good, so keep those, but when it came to teaching the core subjects, they had got it completely wrong. Then you've got Erica Stanford coming in and the poor teachers are lurched in another direction again with the handwriting and the back to basics and the minimum amount of time spent on English and maths, and it seems to be working.
I am so sick of reviews and reports and commissions that we have reports, reviews and commissions up the yin yang. If they propose another one on the education, it'll be a complete and utter waste of time and money, just as it will be with the bloody supermarkets. How many commissions have we had on that?
But what Erica Stanford is proposing seems to make sense and it seems to be working and some educators agree with it and some do not, and then you argue that it's because some of the educators are influenced by the teachers' union. I don't necessarily buy that, but what works?
It seems looking at overseas data and anecdotal evidence what Erica Stanford is proposing works. So why is Labour so vehemently opposed to what seems to be the best for our kids?
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.
9 comments:
Hmmm? It’s easy, isn’t it?
If you’re activist-to-left, you want education to reflect your values. Victimhood and inequality become key points of your focus. Other people’s success looks to you like ill-gotten gains if their gains come from classical skills and training — ill gotten because mastering those skills and training compounds advantages, while the people who don’t learn them get left out and cut out. The left calls that ‘oppression’ so the left rejects the classical and tries to reinvent an education system which is not ‘oppressive’. The left sees different cultures as having equal claims to science and knowledge. And it see one group’s success as another’s failure.
If you’re centre-to-right, you see classical education as providing skills and training that are core to individual success and to informed participation in civil democratic society. You accept that an inability or unwillingness to master those skills will leave some people shut out but you see the ability to participate at a higher, shared level as a more important human good than anything gained from lower standards. You accept that inequality in outcomes is unavoidable if maturity, a work ethic, and ability to concentrate and take instruction cannot be assumed of all students. You see merit as a protection against systemic failure.
" trying to and making it much, much more political than it should be. ". That would be your mother Rosemary Hipkins that decide the education system needed decolonizing, and you trying to enact it as education minister.
So Hipkins admits the system needs fixing. Yet he was the minister of education in the previous government and did absolutely zero about it. Now we are expected to believe he will do something this time?
Hitler was similar to hipkins and labour, in that he wanted the kids brainwashed and dumbed down in school so that they wouldn't question the status quo. Propaganda works extrenely well on children. That is why Dripkins doesn't want anything changed
If Erica hadn't stepped in when she did I'd have started home schooling by now - or taken the kids back to Australia. i thought the system there was sub-par...but its got nothing on the (still) ongoing relentless indoctrination being imposed at the expense of reading writing and maths skills. (They're not even taught the Maori langauge...just indoctrinated in Manglish.)
Thank goodness the private schools exist. Just 1 term left of the endless karakia and pepeha's and onsie days and pyjama days and teacher release days.
I don't know what happened to the teachers of old, but they definitely didn't work as long hours as teachers today, got far better educational outcomes of kids, and were a lot better educated themselves.
An organisation email parentsalliance.nz, written about on yesterday 's BV blog by Rodney Hyde maybe another group to break up the strong hold by unions etc. have in education. as well as the vicissitudes of politicians. .
The Labour Party is always going to be more pro - Progressive and the changes that Standford has brought in are taking us back to more Traditional Education, which happen to be what more recent cognitive and neuro -science support .
Changes have happened too fast but other countries had started the changes earlier this century. Our international results had to inevitably deteriorate more to clearly show we were on the wrong path. Remember we were the home of constructivist ( children teach themselves) Marie Clay's Whole Language ( WL) Reading Recovery and a particular Auckland Univ. individual called Prof. Stuart McNaughton was ,Clay's best buddy . He was the Government's prime Science Advisor and still is, and resisted all changes to his darling Clay's now thoroughly discredited reading methods . McNaugton , in Clay's obituary declared she was comparable to Isaac Newton in her new reading method discovery !!!
Anyway to prevent more children having their futures trashed by Clay's method , drastic changes were made. The fall of WL , based on constructivist ideology, meant really, the condemnation of all constuctivist teaching in all other subjects. International Cognitive Scientists, ( centered on the nature of human memory) researchers and thousands of other educationalists had been warning about the fiasco constructivism was for many , many decades but nothing changed . .
That folks is what happens when an ideology takes hold. Excruciatingly difficult to get rid off and correct. The fact that constructivism was the main tenet of Progressive Education - a Labour party ideology means that party has fondness for it Gaynor
Those that can, do. Those that can’t join the Teachers Union.
When Hipkins was in charge of education, he asked mummy what to do, and she told him that a full blown Maori curriculum was necessary.
That's Mummy Rosemary Hipkins who
" has led or co-led include: exploring the implications of decolonising our research practice; adopting a "knowledge systems" approach to bringing mātauranga Māori and science learning together. "
Yeah, right the Hipkins knows how to stuff up NZ education better than anyone else.
A vote for Labour is like asking for your children and grandchildren to be dumbed down.
If you would like to understand where Hipkins in charge of education again would lead NZ schools, sorry, I mean kura, read this appalling bit of gobble gook:
https://openinquiry.nz/rose-hipkins-and-the-refreshed-science-curriculum/
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