Can Education be Saved, Part I

Changes Necessary But Not Sufficient

The patient is terminal. The Athenian state education system in New Zealand is dying. All care now can only be palliative.

This may be hyperbole. We say “may be” because a weighty case can be made that the State education system is “all over, Rover.” It is only a matter of time—say another generation or so.

On the other hand, in diagnosing the diseases of the modern education system there are issues which are definitely treatable and able to be fixed. But there are others which are more deeply rooted, invasive, and are unlikely ever to be corrected.

This post will deal with the superficial problems which are treatable, and, if treated, will make a salutary difference for a time.

The serious, but treatable diseases include:

1. The disenfranchisement of parents from the education of their children. The current state model of education within Athens proceeds on the basis of parental incompetence, irresponsibility, and ignorance. It presents itself as a “we are the professionals, we know best.” The corollary, of course is, “you (parents) are the amateurs; you are incompetent in the matter of education.”

This leads to a circumstance of widespread apathy on the part of parents, a disdain of their duties and responsibilities, and a general disenfranchising of parents so that they disengage from the duty and responsibility to ensure that their children are well educated.

Consequently parents, as the consumers of the service of education are not sufficiently demanding of schools--nor does the system encourage them to be demanding.

The underlying debate here is the same as the argument over tax cuts versus government spending. Those who argue for tax cuts justify them on a fundamental principle of the income earner being more competent to spend their own money in a manner that is appropriate to their needs, than a government can be spending their income upon their behalf.

The current education system asserts that the state is more competent than parents to educate the latter's children. The state knows how to spend money on their children's education more effectively than the parents could spend it.

There is a simple solution to hand: provide parents with an annual voucher for the education of their children, to be redeemed at the school of their choice. This would result in a radical and salutary empowerment of parents in the education system.

2. The smothering power and influence of teacher unions. The centralised state model leads to more and more centralised control. The profession remains one of the most union controlled in the entire country. This has led to the situation where the education system is fundamentally designed and controlled to preserve and serve the interests of the union members, rather than the children.

Hence, the teachers unions vociferously oppose bulk funding, a modern remuneration structure based on performance, objective national testing of educational achievements, removing all protective barriers to entry of the profession, and so forth.

Once again the solutions are relatively simple: empower school managements to hire and fire as they see fit; re-establish bulk funding; and authorise school managements to override or ignore the teacher registration boards if they wish in hiring suitable staff. In other words, make schools accountable and responsible for educational outcomes and achievements, thereby disestablishing teacher unions as the arbiters and definers of professionalism and educational standards.

3. The over-preponderance of females within schools. The teaching profession labours under a growing gender gap. Men are no longer equally represented in the nation's classrooms. This encourages the disengagement of young men from the education process.

A simple solution is to require gender balance within a school's classroom staff within a certain time frame. Re-establishing bulk funding will significantly empower schools to enable them to achieve a standard of gender balance within a defined time frame. Schools will be free to go out and recruit male teachers--even paying them more, if need be, for a time to recruit them to the profession.

4. The ever growing list of social ills being placed at the doorsteps of schools. Schools are rightfully complaining that their burdens and responsibilities grow every year. Now they are responsible to ensure children's diets are up to scratch. Before that it was a responsibility to reduce teenage drink driving statistics. "Sex education" is required at earlier and earlier ages. The ever increasing responsibilities upon schools to achieve social engineering goals has led to the increasing diversity of subjects and activities, which in turn crowds out those core subjects which are crucial to learning all other subjects and disciplines.

Coupled with this is the rapidly increasing bureaucratic intrusion into schools. Social engineering idolatry has teamed up with nanny-state ideology to "ensure" that schools are safe environments (however "safe" may be defined.) To ensure this, schools and teachers spend an increasing amount of time filling in forms and satisfying the insatiable demands of the state for more and more reporting and information.

A commonly heard complaint amongst teachers is, "I have not got enough time to teach the really important subjects."

The solution is to identify not more than five core subjects, which every student must be taught for the first ten years of formal schooling. These subjects need to be mandatory; all other subjects and activities must be ancillary and voluntary.

Secondly, under a universal voucher system, the proof of the school being a safe environment needs to be provided to parents, not central educational bureaucrats. This will remove from schools a significant overhead of bureaucratic form filling. If parents like what they see they will redeem educational vouchers at the school. If they don't, they won't. Large numbers of educational bureaucrats and supervisors would be made redundant; funds would be released for front-line teaching.

5. A lack of objective testing and standards. This in concept is easily fixed, although we suspect in actuality it may prove quite difficult. Setting national achievement standards in core subjects will not be satisfactorily done while the current crop of educational ideologues remains in place to set the standards.

In order to make this work, the solution would be to adopt international standards for annual testing of literacy and numeracy. This would have a major effect upon the current school system.

These are all serious, but treatable problems . It is conceivable that the current state education system, with sufficient political determination, could make all these changes within five years. They would make a great deal of difference, for a time. Palliative care is important--and we believe that these changes should be made, and should be made with courage and strong resolve.

But, we believe, in the end the modern Athenian system, as an education system, will still die.

Part II will explain why this will be the case.