NZ State Education Awarded a Borat

Education Bureaucrats to Stare at Navel—Again

The Dominion Post headline says it in a nutshell: “Kiwi kids behind Kazakhstan in science”. Borat needs to visit New Zealand to record one of his notorious real-life docu-dramas to dish out awards and compliments for our role in putting Kazakhstan in a good light.

We read: “Primary school children's science achievement has plummeted to its worst level in 14 years, sparking urgent action by the Education Ministry.” So, the educational bureaucrats are now getting off their backsides to go into the group-think tank, where all participants will sit around for the next six months, fixate their eyes upon their navels, and chant “ooooooom” in unison. Enlightenment will come. This, we predict, will be the Education Ministries version of “urgent action.”

The real causes for our education system falling behind the rest of the world will not be addressed. They will not be allowed to be addressed—for that would entail serious consideration of heresy against the prevailing Athenian orthodoxy.

There are three fundamental philosophical or religious problems with the state school system in New Zealand.
These problems are now inbred and institutionalised into the state educational system and are beyond incremental change or improvement. That which is rotten cannot heal itself.

Firstly, the state school system has no consensus of truth, knowledge, or a body of knowledge which must be imparted to pupils. Is knowledge of Maoritanga more or less important than mathematics? Is Shakespeare more important than Facebook? There is absolutely no consensus, let alone certainty or settled convictions within the state educational system on these matters. There are those who advocate that Maoritanga is far more important than mathematics, and Facebook far more important than Shakespeare—and these advocates are treated with great respect and due deference. Their madness is increasingly reflected in curricula, teacher training academies, and in schools.

Why is this an insoluble problem in Athens? Because the edifice of Athens is built upon a cosmogony, a deeply pervasive religious belief concerning origins and the nature of the universe, that all of reality is grounded upon a sea of chance. If that sounds like an oxymoron, it is. Athens itself is built upon an oxymoron—it clings both to the possibility of knowledge, on the one hand, yet asserts that chance and randomness is the ultimate reality in the universe. That stupid, ignorant, benighted position, festooned with academic honours, scholarship, and awards is gradually working its way through the state education system. Randomness is asserting itself and eating away at the curricula, and the concept of a body of knowledge is attenuating into “let's go with the flow.” Yes, indeed. In 2008 Maoritanga is more important than mathematics; tomorrow it might be the earth goddess or Wittgensteinian puzzles.

Secondly, the state school system is deeply imbued with a pagan view of the child. The child is viewed as innocent, without defect or sin. All evil is environmental and comes from the outside into the child. The only appropriate pedagogy is to withdraw outside influence from the child as much as possible, and seek to direct or influence the child in the least possible manner. So, teaching becomes facilitating. Instruction becomes enhancing a child's own self-directed experience. Enlightenment becomes guided discovery. The profession of teaching has been substantially altered under Athenian religious beliefs to be a profession no longer, but to a role of activity based facilitation. The art of facilitating discovery is now far more important than the child's inculcation into, instruction in, incorporation into, and discipline under, a body of knowledge.

In the state education system the latter approach of inculcating a body of knowledge in a disciplined fashion is seen as being destructive of the child's true self. It is a violation of the pure potentiality of the child.

So, state education is failing because firstly it has no authoritative corpus of knowledge to teach, and secondly regardless of what it wants to impart, the system has not authoritative method of inculcation and instruction. What the child “gets” at the end of the day is the child's business. This is pedagogical asininity of the highest order. But so goes the wisdom of the mighty, unbelievably stupid Athens.

The third reason why Kazakhstan is ahead of us in the education stakes is the universal acceptance of the fallacy of reductio ad educatum. For every social ill, or perceived problem Athens turns to education as the solution, the answer, the ultimate redeemer. The end result is a curriculum constructed around social needs. Now schools must “teach” (er, sorry, facilitate an understanding) of nutrition, global consciousness, safe sex, the religion of human rights, peace studies—to name just a few. And the list grows every year. (The NCEA system was constructed, in part, to accommodate such curriculum inflation, and supposedly provide meaningful qualifications in such irrelevancies.)

The primary teachers union has responded to the latest dreary results of our dismal achievements in science by year five. According to the Dominion Post article: “the primary teachers union said science had 'fallen victim to curriculum crowding' and classrooms were not equipped to teach specialist subjects.” Yup—that says it in a nutshell.

Curriculum crowding is the front line result of the reductio ad educatum where social redemption is laid at the feet of the education system. Athens has no real redeemer. It has to make one up. The education system is the fall guy. It is a load it cannot bear. It is destroying state education—and it deserves to be destroyed. As long as Athens stupidly clings to is childish, ignorant idolatries, the state education system will progressively become a monument to its folly. The Lord will smash the idols one by one.

But is not the final statement by the teachers union so illustrative: schools are not equipped to teach “specialist subjects”. As curriculum inflation takes place, core subjects become increasingly pushed out to the periphery, and come to be denoted “specialist”--aka, peripheral subjects. After all, there are only so many hours in the school year, and there are so many other important “subjects” to include—really relevant subjects that will change the world.

But, we have hope, do we not? In the Education Department think-tank, amidst the urgent chanting and frenetic navel gazing, there will be—wait for it—yes, you guessed it—there will be a Facilitator. So all will be well. Self-actualised discovery will come.