The NZ numeracy programme under attack - the good , the bad and the indifferent and some real alternatives.

Rose Patterson

Recently the 'right wing' New Zealand Initiative ( a  'think tank' that replaced the earlier Roundtable) published a report on the New Zealand Numeracy Programme by researcher Rose Patterson.

 You can read the whole report for yourself if you wish.

The forward written by a banker states:

'With this report, the New Zealand Initiative is raising a timely discussion on this important subject. It argues that the move away from rote learning in our primary schools over the past 15 years has meant that schoolkids no longer get the solid grounding in the basics of maths that they need'.

'Finding the right balance in our schools to inspire and engage children in maths from an early age is critical for their success, and for New Zealand’s'.

I agree with the second comment but worry about this suggestion to move back to rote learning.

Vince Wright's quote from the report below indicates the problem with imposed 'best practices' - they easily revert to 'fixed practices' and sideline 'next practices'.

'The freedom and flexibility of the smaller projects was lost in the interest of national coordination. You put some tools in place and they become a hegemony – a practice – and that restricts your ability to say, can we do this any better'? — Vince Wright, ex-Ministry of Education, personal interview (16 December 2014)

A good idea lost in translation?

The report was countered by a NZ Principals Federation  statement:

Maths Report doesn't Add Up

‘The latest research on the state of mathematics teaching and learning released by the business group NZ Initiative, may have reached quite different conclusions had it sought critical input from education’s academic and professional sector,’ said Denise Torrey, President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF).

Denise Torrey

The author of the report, Rose Patterson, who is qualified in marketing and psychology, used international student achievement league tables, Trends in International Maths and Sciences (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as measures by which she concluded that New Zealand children were slipping in maths performance, that the Ministry’s numeracy project had failed and we needed to return to teaching basics. She further concluded that teachers lacked the capacity to teach mathematics and recommended that a teachers’ certificate in mathematical competence be developed by the new education council, EDUCANZ.

‘It’s a huge leap to conclude that there is a causal link between an international league table ranking and the failure of a numeracy project, decline in the standards of mathematical teaching competence and decline in children’s knowledge of basics,’ said Torrey, ‘It’s an even greater stretch of credibility to suggest that New Zealand’s TIMSS and PISA rankings can be lifted by introducing a certificate of mathematical competence for teachers,’ she said.

‘NZPF would welcome a robust study conducted by qualified professionals and academics in mathematics, to identify the benefits of on-going professional learning development opportunities for mathematics teachers,’ said Torrey.

‘It is much more likely that the removal of specialist expert maths advisors has impacted on students’ maths results, not the removal of learning basics by rote,’ she said.

And what about the effect of the Numeracy National Standards - one of the current Government's 'flagship'  educational policies?

It is  also interesting to note that the recent emphasis on the Numeracy National Standards has done little improve achievement or, more  importantly, attitudes towards maths , it has just distorted maths thinking in schools

I am also aware of a number of schools who  have opted out of the Numeracy Programme because they had their doubts of its value.

Kekvin Smythe wrote about the numeracy programme  in his Networkonnect site March 2015

'A number of us have screamed till we were blue in the face that the numeracy programme was wrong, wrong, wrong … we said leaving out geometry and shape was wrong; we said giving children five different ways to add was wrong (the only children who gained something from it were brighter children, less able children were befuddled, and even for brighter children the time could have been better spent); we said the huge number of objectives, learning outcomes and the like were fragmenting learning, confusing many, slowing it down for all; we said the complex, wandering groups for mathematics was wrong; we said not having numeracy and mathematics combined was wrong; we said the absence of problem-solving, real problem-solving was wrong'.

Well - that's pretty clear!

What hasn't been mentioned is the demeaning use of ability grouping  developing poor attitudes for those streamed into the lower groups.

All too often maths has been reduced to formulaic teaching rather than encouraging students to work as mathematicians working on relevant contextual studies  being integrated into class or group content inquiries as required.

Kelvin Smythe's latest posting adds more to the debate

'Mathematics: here is the answer

Posted on June 10, 2015by Kelvin Smythe

Kelvin's reasons why he thinks numeracy is on the slide:

• The common practice of cross-grouping cutting maths off from the rest of the class programme
• The resentment by children of the cross-grouping
• The heavy emphasis on grouping in the first place
• The way children in the top group receive a better deal than children in the other groups, thus making ability grouping a self-fulfilling placement of children
• The way grouping and cross-grouping impede relating maths to real life applications
• The teaching becoming routine because of a lack of attention to problem solving
• A sense of teachers not being sufficiently on top of things to be able to provide cohesion – not being able to go backward (to concepts taken) and forward (to concepts to be taken) in mathematical references
• Strategies being used in heavy-handed manner
• The lack of integration of numeracy with curriculum maths
• A severe drop in lively discussion – time pressures, you see
• The use of unmediated, downloaded teaching units
• The need for more ancillary aide help (the recent  review office criticism of the use of teacher aides can be interpreted as providing support for the government policy of cutting back on funding for them)
• National standards'
• ( my highlighting in bold/ Bruce)

Couldn't express it better myself

A well respected ex maths adviser, and now principal, provided me with his thoughts which are well worth reading - a school that has given away destructive ability grouping making it an exception I would think? 

Below are his thoughts:

Introduction to our maths approach 

I had a conversation with the academic from Melbourne, Prof. Doug Clarke, who identified that there are 7 stages children pass through in their mathematics development. This is in the same way that infants pass through developmental stages as pre-schoolers with smiling, rolling, crawling, walking, talking etc.

Just as we don’t run programmes to teach each stage and test to see if a child has passed before they move onto the next stage of smiling, crawling etc, nor did Doug ever intend that a maths programme be set up to put children through the stages in linear order. Learning is never as neat and tidy as that. Some children don’t crawl, they move straight to walking.

Doug said it was useful for teachers to be aware of these stages in a child’s mathematical development so that they can assist their learning. So the Numeracy Project is an abuse of his research! He never intended for it to end up like that.

Background to the Numeracy programme.

The Numeracy Project was initially intended as a Teacher Development Programme. For that purpose it is excellent. It makes teachers aware of the various stages and strategies that children use and develop. If it stopped there it would be fine - in my opinion!

As with many other mathematics initiatives in New Zealand, they begin well but there is always a group of people who capture it and turn it into a structured step-by-step, stage-by -stage, fragmented programme! That is where it fails. Mathematics easily lends itself to being broken into fragmented steps of learning, thereby making it easy to measure! This suits the scientific management types who like to measure every step of progress and graph it. It also makes placing children into ability groups very easy.

The problem with this approach is exactly the same as the problem with the old Multi Level Maths programmes that I opposed back in the 90’s.

Learning is fragmented. Teachers plan lots of minute behavioural objectives (now called ‘Learning Intentions’ thanks to Hattie and his ilk). Children have to master each step to progress. The slow group (the donkeys) are always way behind in the programme and by the time they leave primary school they have missed half of the mathematics curriculum. They have been labelled slow because they don’t fit the model of children parroting repetitious recall of maths equations. In fact, they are usually very capable, they have been incorrectly judged and put on the scrapheap forever.

This approach is what I describe as the ‘jigsaw’ approach. The children never get to see the big picture. They never make connections of mathematical ideas. For example, the link between fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, division etc are never made, because each bit is taught in isolation (1/2 = 0.5 = 50% etc). This is made worse by Learning Intentions because learning is confined to the identified objective, which the child has parroted at the start of the lesson. The opportunity to go beyond that is missed by the child and worse - by the teacher!

At  Our School

Teachers hated planning the meaningless lessons that were prescribed in a linear fashion in the numeracy booklets. It was a chore, not an exciting learning opportunity, to teach this stuff.

Our maths results were going down and parents, teachers, and Board of Trustees were becoming concerned.

This was contrary to the exciting, creative learning we were attempting in other areas of the curriculum. Why keep doing this?

Well we didn’t!

We moved into a problem solving approach with contextual mathematics lessons. This is being further developed right now with resources from the Maths Task Centre in Melbourne, where children are taught to work like a mathematician.

Mathematics is in context, it solves real problems and children

learn the skills as part of the problem solving process..

Ability grouping is abolished.

The teachers are being made aware of:

•  fixed mindset psychology - Carol Dweck

•     recent brain science that shows problem solving lights up the brain as opposed to doing pages of repetitive tasks where the brain does not light up!

•      what real mathematics academicsare saying - but being largely ignored

I believe there has never been a better time in the last 20 years than right now to challenge the nonsense approach to teaching maths and to make it come alive for children.

The Ministry of Education officials who imposed the Numeracy nonsense on schools should be tied up at the stake and publicly flogged instead of blaming teachers  who had it imposed on them!

Prof Jo Boaler

Mind you, I do think it is time teachers began to approach education in a more principled way and make some decisions about curriculum, learning and teaching for themselves. As Kelvin Smythe says in his last Magazine... ‘no one knows, there is nobody out there who knows...’

Foolishly we give these people the power and we shouldn’t!

If you want to read more from this 'respected' principal visit this link : Respected principal speaks out about his school's approach to learning and teaching

The school makes use of the ideas of  mathematician and educationalist Professor J Boaler I recommend Professor Jo Boaler's book and also the work of Australian maths educationalist Charles Lovett  (whose work is also used by the above school).

 Facing up to the elephant in the classroom - the mind changing ideas of Jo Boaler

This book, by mathematics Professor of Mathematics Jo Boaler, will transform your attitude to mathematics teaching.

The school above ,led by an ex maths adviser, makes use of her ideas and a school near me has bought multiple copies which has transformed the teachers attitudes towards maths.

The expression ‘there is an elephant in the room’ is the belief that ‘success in maths is a sign of general intelligence and that some people can do maths and others can’t.’

This link to an article by Charles Lovett ( maths educationalist) is well worth the read - better reading than Rose Patterson's misleading report.

So after all that make up your own mind.

Technology in education/ Sir Ken Robinson ( again), and Dean Fink says 'be wary of "weasel" words such as "research says", " best practice" and "data driven"

A blog to encourage out of the box thinking

Educational Readings
By Allan Alach

I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz

This week’s homework!

Why Technology Will Never Fix Education

This article is about higher education but the points made are transferable.

Good teaching matters more than good technology

“So what is to be done? Unfortunately, there is no technological fix, and that is perhaps the hardest lesson of amplification. More technology only magnifies socioeconomic disparities, and the only way to avoid that is nontechnological: Either resolve the underlying inequities first, or create policies that favor the less advantaged.”

And:

“The question becomes when will we get to the point where EVERYONE is ready to realize that good teaching matters WAY more than good technology?”

http://bit.ly/1SSpACx

Excellence is not the only point of education

An 'excellent' definition

“The meaning of words like excellence can quickly become culturally ingrained common sense. Yet we often fail to question how such taken-for-granted meaning is symptomatic of our changing education system. Rather than embracing it, children, teachers, students and academics should revolt against the current construction of excellence.”

http://bit.ly/1GlaXT6

Here's What We Have to Stop Pretending.

Thoughtful post by Bill Ferriter, in response to Scott McLeod’s Scott McLeod's We Have to Stop Pretending project

“If we are going to make schools different, we have to stop pretending that "engaging learners" and "empowering learners" are the same thing.”

http://bit.ly/1cP5UOZ

Q&A With Sir Ken Robinson: Education Has to Be a ‘Human Business’

Thanks to Australian reader Bruce Jones for this link. He comments: A little gem from Sir Ken, up to his very best.  The audio with the article is great listening and I think his book would be worth the purchase price.

“I think the key to this is that education has to be recognized as a human business. It’s a personal

Education is a human business

process. We’re dealing with living human beings in the middle of all of this. They’re not statistics or data points. They’re not data sets from a test schedule. These are living people with feelings and aspirations and hopes and ambitions and fears and talents, like you and me and everybody else. As soon as you recognize that education is not a processing plant, it’s about people, then the whole equation starts to shift around. My argument, really, is that we should be personalizing education, not standardizing it.”

http://bit.ly/1HYCd8X

Gifted and Talented

I recommend you all read this article by Nicholas Meier .

“My problems with the gifted education label are several fold. One is that it assumes a “fixed” belief in intelligence. These students are, by this term “gifted” in the sense that they are born superior intellectually in some ways—these gifts and talents are in some way innate. I find this

problematic from both a scientific standpoint and from a moral standpoint.”

And:

“I believe virtually all students can be gifted and talented if given the opportunity, and more importantly, there is no way to sort ahead of time those who can be and those who cannot.”

http://bit.ly/1PZUjJw

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but discovery has another mother

Are you surprised that schools destroy a child’s innate curiosity?

“The research in my lab shows that far from nurturing curiosity, schools seem to repress it.  The pressures to deliver information, hone skills, stick to the plan, and avoid the unknown work against a child’s natural curiosity. However, it needn’t be so. Classrooms could be greenhouses for curiosity. Questions could be encouraged and guided, exploration could be at the center of the curriculum, and rather than being pushed to the side, children’s specific interests could be fostered. Given how central curiosity is to learning and to human progress, why not cultivate it?”

http://bit.ly/1FIVQnH

Standardized Tests: Symptoms, Not Causes

Interesting article by ‘Jersey Jazzman’ that unpicks the use of bell curves as a measure of success.

“Maybe we'd allow children to become themselves and realize their full potentials, free of the fear

that their "failure" will inevitably banish them to a life of toil and misery. Maybe we'd start to see schooling not as preparation for a life of stepping on our fellow citizens, and instead as a process by which we become a people who balance our own self-interest with caring for our fellow citizens. And then maybe we wouldn't feel the need to make these bell curves at all.”

http://bit.ly/1FNHu3K

Meet Learner 2.0

Another Steve Wheeler article:

“Teachers have long been advised to become 'guides on the side' so that learners can take responsibility. From Socrates through to Dewey, far sighted and progressive philosophers and theorists have consistently argued that students learn better when they lead their own discovery. But very few educators ever took up this challenge, preferring instead to remain 'in control' of the process of education, the expert sage taking centre stage. The advent of digital technology challenges this traditional model of education.”

http://bit.ly/1IZ7LOU

This week’s contributions from Bruce Hammonds:

Business 'guru' Peter Drucker wrote, 'the first country to develop a 21st century education system will win the future'.. Could be New Zealand if only…

Bruce’s latest article:

“I guess what is missing is the courage to take the lead. Principals seem to prefer focus on their own school ( compiling the best achievement data they can -' shonky' at best) and no one seems to have the courage to take the lead to  encourage schools to  to work together towards realizing a creative education. And of course  many think that is what they already do, or that all is well. To me it all shows the power of the status quo  at best or self deception at worst. But surely there are principal groups who see that what they are currently doing is not the full answer?”

http://bit.ly/1MnCjsn

Why Do We Separate the Teacher From the Tech?

Excellent article by US educator Tom Whitby:

“We are often bombarded with many posts and articles about the successes and failures of technology in education. Too often these assessments are based upon the technology as if it were the

only factor having any effect on the students in the classroom. Of course this overlooks somethingthat has been pounded into educators’ heads for years: The greatest influence on students in the classroom is the teacher. That holds true with or without technology in the classroom.”

http://bit.ly/1Ijrau4

How to Transform Teaching with Tablets

A lengthy and very worthwhile article:

“Tablet computers alone won't shift our thinking about teaching and learning, but technology adoptions can be powerful opportunities for school communities to engage in answering important questions. We're hopeful that educators will take advantage of this chance to reboot and use new technology adoptions, not as a chance to hand out devices, but as an opportunity to rethink the purposes of schooling in the 21st century.”

http://bit.ly/1IjrQ2y

Unexpected Tools That are Influencing the Future of Education

“While some schools are finding ways to let students take up the reins of their education too many are  beholden to a system that includes lots of standardized teaching/ testing  and intrusive accountability demands. Schools need to consider ideas that can transform teaching and learning before it is too late.”

http://bit.ly/1M6xL8R

Probing Question: Is art an essential school subject?

Bruce’s comment: For creative teachers stating the obvious – the arts are an essential part of education. From STEM to Steam.

"Eliminating the arts from the curriculum is short-sighted on a number of levels," she says. "Seeing art as expendable indicates a deep misunderstanding of the role it plays at the center of learning. The visual arts are a powerful language for communicating concepts and theories in any field, both during the process of being developed and once they are finished 'products' to be shared with others.”

http://bit.ly/1RL4ZP2

From Bruce’s “goldie oldie” file:

Be wary of 'research says', 'best practice' and 'data driven' 'buzz words' writes Dean Fink

Dean Fink

“'Let me outline', writes Canadian Dean Fink ( well known to many in New Zealand), 'three words or phrases that agitate my crap detector – “the research says”, “best practice” and “data driven” instruction, leadership or whatever.Whether you agree or disagree with my analysis, I would like to hear from you about any words or phrases that have hidden meanings or at least attempt to distort the real meaning.”

http://bit.ly/1EY6Y9y

Aesthetics: Where Thinking Originates

Wise words from Art Costa.

“Developing aesthetics through sensory experiences is vital to all learning and the basis of developing all sorts of language and creative expression. Children who do not experience such rich sensory experience will come to learning with restricted language acquisition facilities.”

http://bit.ly/1AP1a6Z

The World Is Flat!!!!

What might education look like in a new ‘flat world’?

Ooops the world is flat!!

“In his book, 'The World is Flat' , Thomas Friedman shares how the convergence and explosion of new communication technologies and globalisation has 'flattened' the world allowing anybody, anywhere, to be connected anytime, with growing efficiency and speed. Others have called this convergence the beginning of the 'Second Renaissance' while others call it the 'Age Of Creativity or Talent’.”

http://bit.ly/1FvthER

Business 'guru' Peter Drucker wrote, 'the first country to develop a 21st century education system will win the future'.. Could be New Zealand if only...

 Just imagine!

We could develop the most creative education system, that is, if we listened to Sir Ken Robinson, David Hood,  and Kelvin Smythe and tapped into the wisdom of creative teachers past and present.


Reading Sir Ken Robinson's latest book 'Creative Schools - Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up' has  really impressed me.

I hope it might  even be a' tipping point' to encourage school leaders to challenge current assumptions and start on the journey towards transforming schools into modern learning environments.

 A similar message has also been outlined by New Zealand educator David Hood in his new book 'The Rhetoric and the Reality'. For secondary teachers Bali Haque's book is worth a read.

Maybe I am being over optimistic.

Talking to  current principals  about the possibility of such creative ideas  is , often met by reasons why it is too difficult in the present climate. Both Robinson and Hood are well aware of the current political situation  but both see this as no  reason not to begin the journey to transforming schools. And nor do I.

The recent posting by New Zealand educator Kelvin Smythe  adds another voice to the debate - and his summary of holistic education is worth the read. Essentially the same message as Sir Ken.

Instead, schools busy themselves trying to solve the problem of developing 'sensible'  teacher objective judgments ( TOJs) to sort students into spurious, politically inspired, National Standards in  literacy and numeracy - the very antithesis of creativity.

Are schools risk averse?

I guess what is missing is the courage to take the lead. Principals seem to prefer focus on their own school ( compiling the best achievement data they can -' shonky' at best) and no one seems to have the courage to take the lead to  encourage schools to  to work together towards realizing a creative education. And of course  many think that is what they already do, or that all is well.

Time to break out

To me it all shows the power of the status quo  at best or self deception at worst. But surely there are principal groups who see that what they are currently doing is not the full answer?

Surely , if not principals , then there must be creative teachers who see the need to breakout of the current straight jacket of standardized teaching and imposed, so called, 'best practices' - particularly the demeaning effect of the current emphasis in judging student success based on narrow literacy and numeracy data?

The biggest block to creative teaching is the unquestioned use of ability grouping in primary schools and fragmented subject teaching in secondary schools - both with their genesis in the  industrial aged sorting and grading schools of the past century.

The simple way to judge if a primary school is moving towards developing creative education ( moving away from standardized teaching towards personalized learning)  is whether or not they use ability grouping ( or worse still cross class grouping) in literacy and numeracy- or isolated teaching of subjects at the secondary level.

That would exclude the vast majority of schools being creative as defined by Sir Ken.

Sir Ken, and Kelvin Smythe, write strongly against such practices. Finland gets buy, as do many Asian countries, without the use of this sorting and tracking of students. And there is excellent research both from the UK and NZ  to show the demeaning effect of such practices.

In contrast to these limiting archaic practices imagine a school system dedicated to developing the gifts and talents of all students - whose programmes were based on providing personalised learning

It's all too hard!

opportunities for all students . This would be the basis for transforming education as we know it. This is the thesis of Sir Ken's book. Schools, I believe, do not have an ''achievement gap' rather more an 'opportunity' one.

Sir Ken advises teachers to observe the educational opportunities offered by the best of early education  centres, sadly now increasingly at risk from being standardized, to gain insight.  He asks why does  the early intense curiosity of the early years diminish as students progress through school? Why is that far too many students act as if creativity is to be limited to the few talented individuals when everyone is capable of creative thinking?  Why is it that students, deemed to be successful at school, often fail to shine in later life and conversely why is it, so called, school failures often do well in real life?

Standardized teaching

The trouble may be is that primary students happily accept of whatever programmes are provided and that the trouble ( disengagement) only really starts when the  reach the more critical teenage years.

Maybe students don't fail school , maybe schools fail students? Consider the number of students who leave, as  educationalist Karen Olsen has written, 'wounded' by school?

 Le'ts get back to imagining  schools dedicated to developing the talents and gifts of all students.

Carol Dweck

There are plenty of inspirational ideas to make use of, once schools have re-framed their focus, to achieve such an enlightened scenario. Sir Ken's book includes plenty of examples and their are numerous excellent books to refer to from such educationalists as  Guy Claxton, Howard Gardner, David Perkins  Carol Dweck to name a few.

I am always curious to see what books are available to teachers on their staff bookshelves - or to ask teachers of educationalists that inspire them. It would seem schools are full of unquestioned habits, procedures and practices.

Sir Ken asks what if teachers were to re-invent schooling- what would it look like? What if schools were to focus on the competencies , attributes or dispositions their students will need to thrive in problematic and challenging future?

For those interested the ideas in New Zealand pioneer teacher Elwyn Richardson are worth a visit - ideas developed in an even more traditional era - the 1950s

And there is also the inspiration from Sylvia Ashton Warner from the same era.

Time for thinking out of the box!

And in the 60s and 70 the most innovative groups of teachers were junior teachers who introduced developmental programmes providing their students with opportunities for real choices. Ironically today all the so called, 'best practices' are provided by contracted consultants and Ministry  staff who have long lost a sense of classroom reality - that is if they were ever there in the first place.

Dr Beeby

The wisdom of teachers, particularly creative teachers has been lost in the current top-down surveillance audit culture.

Imagine if the 1940s vision' of an 'education of the kind they are best suited for and to the fullest extent of their powers' of Peter Fraser and Dr Beeby were to be fully realized.

 Imagine if the, all but sidelined, New Zealand Curriculum which asks schools to ensure all students leave confident lifelong learners able to ' seek, use and create their own knowledge',were to be made central.

Imagine a school premised on making student inquiry and talent development central to all learning.

Imagine a school that has re-framed literacy and numeracy to provide the skills to enable students to dig deeply and critically into the areas chosen for study.

Imagine such investigations being open ended, integrating  learning areas as required - investigation that provide opportunities for students to make use of , hone, or discover, their own unique portfolio of talents.

Imagine what this would mean for teachers - it would be impossible to  plans for pre- determined outcomes but rather be prepared to follow  their students leads and questions and to ensure students are given every opportunity to develop  all the appropriate competencies and  skills.

Imagine teachers who really valued students curiosity, questions and prior ideas and then did their best to challenge their students to defend and, if necessary, change their ideas. Teachers who believed that 'teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation' ( Jerome Bruner).

Schools to develop talent

Imagine classrooms  environments that reflected student in depth thinking around their chosen studies and covering the various learning areas - appreciating that such quality thinking is the result of doing fewer things well.

Imagine teachers integrating ICT to assist students in their inquiries - rather than providing ready made answers as is too often the case

And imagine that true accountability is judged by the quality of what students can do, through demonstrations, performances, exhibitions ( such as science, technology and art fair exhibits)-and   seen  by all interested in their electronic personal portfolios.


And all this is entirely possible  - all  that it would require is for principals and teachers to have the wit and intelligence to change

their own minds first.

Teaching , in this scenario, would be the most creative task of all.

It would be a real change from teachers being seen technicians delivering imposed curriculum and

bowing down to reactionary national standards in literacy and numeracy; a shift from compliance and conformity to creativity, diversity and innovation; from the 19th to the 21st century; from standardization to personalization.

Such a transformation would realize the sub title in Sir Ken's book of 'revolutionizing education from the ground up'.

And most of all it would make teaching fun again - sort of like doing the 60s all over again again but this time doing it properly. 

Now I am showing my age.

Some great leadership quotes to inspire action

Now there is a good idea!!!!!