Let's All Have a Cup of Tea

Why The Nation Will Fail National Standards

As New Zealand approaches a national election we have the luxury this time around to be able to blissfully ignore the negative "hater and wrecker" proposals burping forth from parties on the Left (Labour, Greens, Mana) more obnoxiously and regularly than a Rotorua mudpool. 

We can ignore the Left this time around not because their policies will not eventually become government policy and the law of the land.  They will.
We can safely ignore them for the moment because the current government is centre-right and will be returned to the Treasury benches this election, such is their current popularity.  Unfortunately, the current government is also, in terms of political practice, a left-wing outfit.  Why?  Well, it inherited a country that had been driven radically left by the Labour Party who had enjoyed nine years of strong electoral support.  In that time, the Left's ideological agenda was radically advanced (and widely accepted).  The National Government which replaced Labour has largely sat on all the policy positions of the former Labour Government, whilst tinkering at the edges.

Eventually, though they will be voted out and replaced with a rejuvenated coalition of  left-wing statist parties.  The quick-march to the left--to government rules, regulations, taxation, propaganda, suppression of dissent, more anti-free speech, more media manipulation and controls, more doctrinaire left-wing schools, and ever expanding economic controls--will begin again in earnest.  The last Labour Government almost got to the point of controlling how much time we spent in the shower, and the temperature of the water therein.  The next left-wing coalition will regulate the depth of the national bath.  Then, National will eventually be re-elected allowing the nation to take a breather before the next forced march.  And on it goes. 

National is a failed political party in an ideological sense.  Its ideology is "me-too, but with a gentler face".  It reminds us of those Christians who rail against the immorality of the world, but who approbate skirt lengths  just a couple of centimetres longer than the current worldly fashion.  It's always miniskirt with a slight plus.

An excellent illustration of this ideological failure is evident in the realm of education.  When National was elected, it declared that education was its most important priority.  It was committed to introducing national standards in reading, writing, and maths--and testing against those standards, reporting the results to parents.  It's implementation of the policy has been naive and inept.  Labour has announced that they will scrap national standards as soon as they are elected--as they eventually will be. 

National completely underestimated the strength of teacher-union opposition.  This was because they do not view the world through an ideological lens. They have failed to understand that teacher unions are primarily--if not in many cases solely--committed to the interests of teachers not pupils and students.  The students become pawns in an ideological battle.  Both sides claim that they have the best interests of students at heart but the unions are vociferous in their claim that what the government proposes is damaging to pupils.  Thus, they scaremonger parents into supporting teachers. 

National did not have the stomach for a full-scale, knock down, drag-out fight with the school unions.  It preferred the softly, softly approach where, "we are all reasonable people and we sit down and talk things through and all get along."  This is just naive.  They forgot  that the previous administration had structured state funded support for the teacher unions.  They thought that National Standards were a minor tweak of the national curriculum when, in fact, they are diametrically antipathetic to the current curriculum and the educational ideology which underpins it.  They were confronted with the ideologically hardened spear point of the Left Wing and their ideological naivete meant they could not see it.  Chris Christie they were not. 

So what do we have now?  We have a national testing regime where the academics generally agree the tests are inappropriate and will do damage.  Schools have been allowed to keep their own testing regimes in place and the state enforced testing regime is just one amongst many.  The government has backed down on national ranking of schools.  The unions have largely won over principals, Board of Trustees, and the media with a constant barrage of scaremongering and allegations of great harm being done.  Parents are now doubtful.  It has become a dog's breakfast.  We predict that no-one will be happy. 

Eventually the nation will be glad to see National Standards go.  Lot's of pain for little or no gain.  We cynically smiled yesterday reading of the teacher unions applauding Labour's intent to dump National Testing.  "We just want to get back to teaching the national curriculum," they said.  And, yes, that's the problem.  The national government school curriculum is as vague and nebulous as one could imagine.  That's deliberate.  The prevailing unionist ideological view of teaching is that actual teaching is harmful.  The less teachers teach the better.  For children will naturally construct their own optimal learning matrix, provided teachers do not interfere, but rather facilitate, coach, assist.  (That's why it has railed against National Standards as harmful to children.  Actually to have to teach certain content by a certain age is contradictory of the educational ideology underlying and informing current national curriculum.)

National's naivete has blinded it to these fundamental world-view and philosophical issues.  That's because it is not a rigorous ideological party.  It does not see the world in ideological terms.  It is a national-breathing space party.  It is the party which "let's-all-have-a-cup-of-tea" David Lange would have led very successfully. 

The best thing that can be said about National is that they "mean well".  But National is not a truly classic liberal party.  Nor is it a consistent classic conservative party.  It is clearly not an anarchist or libertarian party.  It is a "Me-too, but we are nicer blokes" party.  It puts pretty ribbons on to rotting carcases.  When the overwhelming tide of history for the last two hundred years has been waxing into ever greater despotism and state controls, National is an irrelevance. It amounts to nothing more than giving a short ebb before the relentless tide of ever-more-extreme apostasy flows again.