We hold the view that government education systems are failing in the West, including in New Zealand. Almost invariably when advocates of state education are confronted with system failures the Pavlovian response is to call for "more money." Taxes. Redistribution.
Now conventional wisdom says that when you are in a hole stop digging. But the conventional wisdom is not applied to state education: dig harder, faster, with more money is the inevitable solution. But what if the system itself is now so broken that it cannot be fixed? That thought is rejected outright as inadmissible.
We believe the forces now stacked up against state education systems in the West are so powerful that the system itself is devolving into a vicious cycle of ever increasing desuetude. What are these forces? Can we name them? Yes, we can!--to crib a presidential campaign slogan.
This piece will deal with one of the destructive forces. Subsequent articles will describe others.
The first reason why state education systems are failing in the West is the relentless politicization of the curriculum. By this we mean that politics and achieving political goals becomes the main objective of state schools and the curriculum. Learning is made subordinate to socialisation. This will simply not change any time soon.
Take the recent initiative in New Zealand to introduce national standards in reading, writing, and maths--and test students against those standards. Why is the state system determined to do this? Because the current government believes that these core competencies are essential if the nation is to increase its economic growth. The current Prime Minister has gone on record as saying this was his most important priority, and that national standards testing is an, if not the, essential component in achieving faster rates of economic growth.
This is what we mean by politicisation of the curriculum. Students in the state system must be socialised into being more effective and productive economic contributors. When a new administration inevitably and eventually takes over on the Treasury benches it will have different priorities, different socialisation commitments. Outcome: national standards in English and Maths will go the way of the dodo. Other "educational" priorities will emerge.
Let us be crystal clear: socialisation is not education. Making good citizens is institutionalised propaganda, not education. State schools are failing throughout the West because government wants a new socialised humanity, not an educated one.
To many this will sound an extremist charge. But it is far from it. It is just that most "good citizens" of our day have got used to it.
The dominant statist ideology, which now controls all Western countries, proclaims the omni-competence of the State to solve, in principle, all evils, lacks, faults and meet all social needs. In order to achieve this two things are required. The first is an increasing extension of state powers and controls over citizens. The second is the need to "build" new-model citizens who think, act, speak and contribute in the "right way" to the good of society as a whole. State schools become the primary socialisation agency.
Frank Furedi, contributor to a recent volume entitled The Corruption of the Curriculum summarizes why the state schools are failing so badly in his introductory chapter entitled, "Politics, politics, politics!" He writes:
Over the past two decades the school curriculum has become estranged from the challenge of educating children. Pedagogic problems still influence official deliberations on the national curriculum, but issues that are integral to education have become subordinate to the imperative of social engineering and political expediency.
Robert Whelan, ed. The Corruption of the Curriculum (London: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2007), p.1.
He goes on:
The school curriculum has become a battleground for zealous campaigners and entrepreneurs keen to promote their message. Public health officials constantly demand more compulsory classroom discussions on healthy eating and obesity. Professions obsessed with young people's sex lives insist that schools introduce yet more sex education initiatives. Others want schools to focus more on black history or gay history. . . .
The (then current Education Secretary) is a very busy man. Not only is he introducing global warming studies, he has also made the instruction of Britain's involvement in the slave trade a compulsory part of the history curriculum. . . . Johnson is indifferent to the slave trade as part of an academic discipline with its own integrity; rather he sees slave trade studies as a vehicle for promoting his version of a multicultural Britain. "This is about ensuring young people understand what it means to be British today", he said in defence of his reorganisation of the history curriculum."
Ibid, p.2.
Sound familiar? The ideology is exactly the same as that pronounced by our own Prime Minister, John Key in his push for national standards testing in English and maths. The only difference is that multiculturalism as the prime socialization goal has been replaced with the need for improving New Zealand's economic performance. But the wheel will inevitably turn.
Now, some will argue that at least if children are taught to read and write and compute competently and accurately at least they will have tools that will enable them to go on to learn other disciplines and acquire knowledge. We agree. But because national testing has been promulgated for political and socialization objectives--rather than as an essential element of knowledge in its own right, socialisation and political objectives notwithstanding--it will not survive the constant ebb, thrust, change, and whims of political and fashionable fads.
When schools become seen as vehicles for socialisation and achieving political goals, education in its own right flies out the window. In the end the last thing the State will want is an education system that so fills the minds of pupils with knowledge and learning abilities that graduates can think and reason for themselves. Such graduate are likely to be regarded as incorrigibles resisting the moulding of the New Model Man.
Finally, can this parlous situation in Western state education systems be redeemed? We do not believe so--not while the deeper principle of statism holds. As long as society agrees that the State is to all intents and purposes our redeemer and saviour, state education systems will subvert the curriculum for political ends.
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