From the Daily Blog
How true are National Party claims that our public education system is failing students?
It is a worry to me that schools are focusing so seriously on assessing and grading students on literacy and numeracy tests to the exclusion of important dispositions and attitudes that will be vitally important in the future and, in the process, are not placing the emphasis on developing the talents and gifts of all students.
This Aryan obsession with efficient testing and measuring to sort out the successful people has had a sad history to say the least. National Standards are just the beginning.
And it is a worry that school 'leadership' goes along with such a biased approach to learning.
Maybe a listen to video of Sir Ken Robinson is required? Sir Ken says that 'creativity is as important as literacy and numeracy. Another well known educator Guy Claxton has written that 'learnacy is as important as literacy and numeracy' Why do school 'leaders' ignore the writings of well known future orientated educators to combat this testing regime with it associated narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the tests?
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| The true role of education |
I know there are good things happening in our schools but it is what is considered important that get measured.
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| Time for some moral leadership. |
4 comments:
Time for educators to stick their necks out and become political - which political party supports a creative education? Being professional is no excuse - speak out or suffer the consequences.
I once was a supporter of creative schools but now I am disspointed by the lack of action of school principals - I hesitate to say leadership.Supporting creative teachers is our only hope.
I am about ready to leave the profession for my own wellbeing- I never, ever thought I would - I thought I would stay and fight for what I believe and what I love- I was so excited about the new NZ curriculum- ERO said the work we'd done developing the school curriculum was innovative and excellent - we played a low key approach to NS - now we have new leadership - all previous curriculum work shelved- NS and "interrogating data" taking preference over key competencies and full, creative curriculum- I'm tired - I've watched people I thought knew better bend the knee and brownnose. I have become "a problem" because of my questioning. I have friends and relatives in similar situations. Where are these principals coming from? How do they get appointed?
Thanks anon
What you are expressing is being widely felt, if not expressed, by many teachers.
And you are right, the NZC seemed at the time to be an exciting development altering the technocratic direction schools were being made to comply with.
And I believe a 'low key approach to National Standards' was ( and still is) the way to go allowing the schools to value skills and talents in other important areas.
This 'new' leadership is nonsense -all this Aryan'interrogating of data' replacing the 'full curriculum' you mention.
Unfortunately this has forced too many teachers to do the wrong things too well ( 'brownnosing'.
I only wish others who share similar thoughts acted on their concerns - one thing they could do is support political parties who offer alternatives or bring such concerns up at NZEI meetings
I have no idea where such principals come from - certainly not from an educational background.
My advice is, 'if it is not worth doing do it badly, keep your head down, and get on with the important stuff.'
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