Like all reports, you can look at stats in any number of ways.
For example, if you want to feel good about yourself have a look at the Australian results. They're not good.
So for a bit of Trans-Tasman rivalry, their numbers will give you no end of good vibes.
The socio-economic gap the Government talked up seems real, so that’s indisputably good.
But I have two major worries:
We look good because essentially, we went nowhere, and we went nowhere against an OECD that went backwards. Standing knee-deep while others drown doesn’t seem to me to be a thing.
I mean you'll take it. But I would've thought that comparing yourself to the ordinary is not quite as fulfilling as actually moving forward.
But the really big one is the OECD going backwards, and the 'why'.
I surmise the 'why' is the death of critical thinking. Kids no longer think for themselves and it's only going to get worse.
The reports raise issues around disruptive classrooms, the old screen-time issue, and of course the fact that kids don’t read.
This is global. We have multiple generations of non-readers and reading is the key to everything.
Mix the lack of reading with AI, which will answer whatever you want, and basically, we are headed for intellectual oblivion.
Like the calculator before it, technological advance is efficient and gets you the answer. But the link to critical thinking is "do you know the answer is right"?
Of course you don’t and you don’t care either.
No one asks questions No one is inquiring. The rise of gormlessness is frightening.
It's there in the PISA reports – our kids are going backwards. Not reading, not adding and not firing up the ol' brains.
In the intellectual swamp that is global education, we aren't too bad. So instead of worrying about that, we decide to pretend it’s a good news story.
But being okay, or average, in a world of the hopeless isn't what I call achieving.
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.
The socio-economic gap the Government talked up seems real, so that’s indisputably good.
But I have two major worries:
We look good because essentially, we went nowhere, and we went nowhere against an OECD that went backwards. Standing knee-deep while others drown doesn’t seem to me to be a thing.
I mean you'll take it. But I would've thought that comparing yourself to the ordinary is not quite as fulfilling as actually moving forward.
But the really big one is the OECD going backwards, and the 'why'.
I surmise the 'why' is the death of critical thinking. Kids no longer think for themselves and it's only going to get worse.
The reports raise issues around disruptive classrooms, the old screen-time issue, and of course the fact that kids don’t read.
This is global. We have multiple generations of non-readers and reading is the key to everything.
Mix the lack of reading with AI, which will answer whatever you want, and basically, we are headed for intellectual oblivion.
Like the calculator before it, technological advance is efficient and gets you the answer. But the link to critical thinking is "do you know the answer is right"?
Of course you don’t and you don’t care either.
No one asks questions No one is inquiring. The rise of gormlessness is frightening.
It's there in the PISA reports – our kids are going backwards. Not reading, not adding and not firing up the ol' brains.
In the intellectual swamp that is global education, we aren't too bad. So instead of worrying about that, we decide to pretend it’s a good news story.
But being okay, or average, in a world of the hopeless isn't what I call achieving.
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.
1 comment:
Thank you Mike for writing about this .
I have been involved in the 'Reading Wars' for decades and seen the misery of both illiteracy and innumeracy . It is a life time handicap and results in high prisoner numbers , welfare dependence, poor mental health and low paying jobs . I have heard of parents who cry themselves to sleep because of their children failing to learn . Bright futures shattered.
The enormous tragedy of this is that we used to have in NZ ,last century the highest educational standards . There was no shameful long tail of underachievement either.
So what happened ? Well from my decades of perspective and research it was academics who are responsible .
They trashed traditional Scottish academic rigour , content , methods and discipline and replaced it with what I call 'slop' aka Progressive Education -child -centered , playway., ineffective methods, permissive discipline and morality, no work ethic. Until the cause is truly investigated we will continue to have the gaping inequity and the poor academic standards. In the past Traditional Education gave us , in NZ, the most egalitarian society and highest academic standards. Progressive Education gives us neither. It can't and never will be able to . . Gaynor
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