This an extract froma longer posting by Kelvin Smythe – and slightly adapted for this posting.
Since the
announcement of NZEI, NZPF, AIMS, and CPA joining together to oppose PaCT and
national standards we awaited the response from the anti-public school coalition of John Roughan of the Herald, Bernadette
Courtney of the Dominion, Treasury, the prime minister, and Hekia Parata. First one out of the blocks was Key,
followed by Courtney.
Biased editorial writer |
‘The time has come for teacher unions to accept that
national standards in reading, writing, and mathematics are here to stay,’ she
trumpeted. The first paragraph in an editorial in metropolitan newspaper and a whacking
great mistake.
I am not going to go through in detail the ‘arguments’ of
the Editor except to assure readers that the
editorial has dumb, pudding-like naivety which is the editorial’s main source
of momentum.
But in an early
misstep she says: ‘One of the strongest arguments teachers have advanced
against the standards is that there is a lack of consistency in the way
that they are applied and insufficient moderation at the national level.’
‘One of the strongest …’
There are others?
For an editor setting
out to play dumb, this was a dumb sentence – because it is accurate – a
slipup not to be repeated, however. While she is not quite as adroit as John
Roughan, editor of the Herald in total
she is far more trenchantly dumb.
Then she comes to the
nub of her editorial and the nub of this posting. She responds to claims that
PaCT will undermine teachers‘ professionalism and reduce quality teaching.’
‘The claims are
ridiculous,’ she declares. ‘Ensuring consistent assessment in reading, writing
and mathematics will have no impact on how individual teachers seek to inspire,
guide and educate their charges.’
No impact … the gall
is breathtaking.
Thousands upon
thousands of articles, many based on research have shown otherwise, and
hundreds of books, and she knows it, but she is playing dumb. This is
dumber than dumber.
One standard to rule them all!! |
So let me see:
reading, writing, and mathematics are going to be measured for standards, that
requires those subjects to be organised for measurement, that requires learning
in those areas to be divided into small learning bites, that requires learning
to be standardised into standards – learning to small, standardised, measurable
bites is an inefficient way to learn, it is a time-wasting way to learn, it is
a less interesting way to learn, it is a less challenging way to learn, and it
leads to an emphasis on ability grouping. All this is bad for children’s
learning. As an example, research in England has shown that the move to
enforced ability grouping in mathematics has been the largest contributor to
England’s plummeting maths achievement. In New Zealand, ability grouping in
maths is now widespread with similar results. The alternative of mathematics based on real-life problem solving has
virtually disappeared.
In reading, an emphasis on ability grouping
and comprehension-type activities has resulted in less independent reading and
love of books. And don’t get me going on the insincere waffle, adjective-
and adverb-laden writing that is being produced. Good work Billy: two metaphors
and look at all those adjectives. Plenty of rubric ticks there.
But it gets worse.
Because teachers, especially New Zealand teachers like to teach more
holistically, the kind of teaching they are forced to do is seen as the
teaching the bureaucrats want, as someone else’s teaching; it’s not
teachers’ preferred way, so creativity and initiative is reduced.
When curriculum areas
are chosen for measurement and national attention, a number of things happen:
the chosen curriculum areas are narrowed and pedagogically corrupted; the
remaining ones neglected. Yet those neglected curriculum areas are
important to the chosen ones and crucial sources of flexible and creative
thinking overall.
When you have an
education change involving high stakes’ measurement and standardisation of
learning, the repercussion throughout the system are profound. What has
been described above being just a
fragment of the fallout.
All students to sorted and graded |
Teachers know that
the drive by the right for national standards is not really about national
standards but about providing a platform for bureaucratic control and putting
schools down. We know what Editor is setting out to achieve with her
dumbness: Providing an excuse for
politicians and education bureaucrats to take more control over public schools
for the purpose of squeezing the life out of them to the advantage of private
schools. And the refrain she wants to induce: Look at those irresponsible, self-serving teachers rejecting what is good for
children’s education – we’ll have to give more power to bureaucrats and
politicians to force them to do what they ought to be doing.
The Dominion Editor
knows that that PaCT is intended to be used for all kinds of centralised
control. She knows this but plays dumb because this is what she wants.
To the Editor
national standards are about parents knowing ‘how their children are
progressing in the three most important building blocks …’
Don’t make me laugh.
Who needs diversity and creativity |
National standards
and testing are not about parents knowing how their children are progressing:
they are about making way for political and bureaucratic authoritarian control
over schools; they are about a rapid
growth of private schools for the children of the more privileged; they are
about international corporations using education as a source of investment and
profit; they are about using education
for the neoliberal propagandising of students; they are about achieving wider social and economic
neoliberal goals; and, cruelly they are about appearing to do something for
less privileged children when they are actually preparing them to be part of a disposable generation.
The Dominion Editor
knows this and is playing dumb to disguise the real purposes of national
standards and testing. Gates,
McKinsey, Pearson, Murdoch et al, are not
interested in parents knowing how children in classrooms are progressing – don’t make me laugh (again) – they are interested in how their profit is going and the spread of ideas to advance that profit. National standards and testing both here and overseas provide the foundation blocks for all those corporate and neoliberal purposes. They provide the flags to be planted for neo-colonisation and furthering the power of the corporate elite.
interested in parents knowing how children in classrooms are progressing – don’t make me laugh (again) – they are interested in how their profit is going and the spread of ideas to advance that profit. National standards and testing both here and overseas provide the foundation blocks for all those corporate and neoliberal purposes. They provide the flags to be planted for neo-colonisation and furthering the power of the corporate elite.
The Editor knows this
but blathers on about parents knowing how their children are progressing.
This is not about
parents knowing how their children are progressing but about parents being
hoodwinked. Youth unemployment will
be the major challenge of the future, but the education being advanced for many
children is an education for stupidity. A concentration on a narrow version
of the 3Rs is not an education for preparing children for the future, it is a
preparation for failure and becoming part of a disposable generation – the
disposable generation being an inevitable outcome of corporate
authoritarianism. Critical and flexible thinking is being suggested as something to
attend to when the 3Rs are accomplished. What nonsense – they should be
present in the education of all children, all the time. Anyway, nearly all
children accomplish the 3Rs, but where
is the learning for critical and flexible thinking? Way down as a priority.
National testing and standards, in the
light of this, can be seen as a fig leaf to cover the doing of nothing real for
children outside the elite class (who will be attending privileged private
schools).
Education ought liberate creativity |
The Dominion Editor
knows all this but does not care, she is on a very different trajectory, a
neoliberal trajectory, away from the common good encompassed in the social
contract, to a market-driven ideology that emphasises individual solutions to
economically and socially produced problems; to an ideology of carelessness and
cruelty based on fear, humiliation, and obedience. She is on a trajectory
where trust is viewed with suspicion because human motivation is seen as
grasping and predatory and where the
template for the organisation of society is corporate greed.
The Editor knows that
if teachers are given the autonomy to be creative, children will learn to think
flexibly and to be critical in their thinking. Children educated in a humane,
diverse, and democratic environment; children who develop their own voice –
will be more likely challenge corporate authoritarianism and not allow
themselves to become tools of an uncaring instrumental tool of repression.
STOP PRESS: IT GETS WORSE
STOP PRESS: IT GETS WORSE
.
2 comments:
Seems to me very few NZ principals are aware of the real agenda behind National Standards - this posting ought to be compulsory reading for them!
I fear you are right - too busy complying to notice the direction they are being taken in. Some, worse still, are in agreement.
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