Martin Hanson: The Education Debate*

Few areas of human concern are more riven with contention than education. Yet despite this there is one thing upon which everyone agrees — children must be given as much opportunity as possible to achieve their full intellectual potential. This is not only important to parents — directly or indirectly, educational under-achievement affects everyone, having a pernicious effect on all indices of social well being, such as unemployment, crime, and domestic violence. Even those who are wealthy enough to feel insulated against these social effects must surely concede that at the very least, unused ability has an adverse effect on the balance of payments.

Elizabeth Rata: The Curriculum, intelligence, and democracy

The intelligence of the New Zealand population increased during the 20th century. Nutrition played its part but so too did education. Young people were taught the abstract knowledge of academic subjects and in the process developed secondary intelligence. Since the 1990s, the emptying out of prescribed academic knowledge from the national curriculum is likely to reverse the trend. It’s a sobering thought that the population in the 21st century may be less intelligent than our 20th century predecessors.