This one started on Facebook. The NZ teacher’s union is trying to negotiate a pay increase. This ir resisted because the economy is in a poor way and “three is no new money” [Minister of Education} (Context for anyone international. There are only 4 million NZers. There are two national award for teachers — primary school and secondary school).
Lets be honest, a decent amount of replies on this page suggest the education systems been stuffed for a while.
Both my parents teach. My father returned to it after a career in insurance and farming. I chimed in…
Well, this used to work.
1. Remove all electronic devices from the classroom. Desks in rows.
2. Concentration on a few tasks until mastery. The tasks were called reading, writing, arithmetic.
3. Repetitive drilling. Encouragement of memoriz…ation.
4. External assessment — of teachers (by inspectors) and of students (by examination).
5. Higher class sizes once the basics are mastered, with clear rules and clear punishments. Classes of 40 after about year 5…
6. Forget self esteem. High self esteem predicts failure. We are educating you — teaching you things you need to know and cannot discover by yourself — so you can be a productive citizen.
This is what we used to do. It worked. I suggest we do it again.
Then someone said the truth… in parts.
Teachers would like to teach the basics but we are constantly getting the curriculum changed and added to.
Quite true. See notes below. However, the next bit is a classic example of ad hominem reasoning combined with a certain sense of self pity.
This whole discussion is insulting. I have worked my ass off for ten years teaching and really tried to do the best for my students. …I am so sick of society blaming us for all their ills. Go to school and put the effort in if you want to succeed – stop blaming the teachers – and i direct that at parents and students. As for the national standard debate – parents of my children always knew if they needed help in a particular area we did not need national standards to tell us this. My point about national standards is that they are based on white middle class standards and it is not equitable for maori or any “minority group”. With these standards children from low decile schools – children who work really hard are going to be labled. That i don’t like. Am i frustrated? Yes.
What the writer forgot is:
- “white middle class” is a shibboleth. It is meaningless. It means “I hate this and I don’t want it”.
- Education was seen as a way to improve. This involves reading outside one’s culture. Learning history, logic. Being prepared to look at sources, not myths about sources.
- Effort does not count. Results do. (and yes, this is unfair –as an example some struggle to be articulate, others are born with a full flown rhetorical stance. But all have to be able to speak. Logically).
And as Micheal Laws observed, the teachers, who used to teach logic (rhetoric) after reading and writing (grammar)… are no longer using any form of reason. They are just screaming. And hating. What they forget, is that after 30 adult years of watching this cycle, it becomes boring.
Note: every time that the government gets involved in something that they should not be doing, they cause people to be employed to deal with the government.
And there is a strong argument that the government should not be involved in teaching. This led the David Lange to dis-empower the ministry of education 30 years ago.
But this means that the people get some power and choice, Which was unacceptable to Helen (ironically from the same party as David). Hence a bloated number of forms.