The chattering classes of the Commentariat are presently discombobulated over an OECD report showing that New Zealand's performance is waning in educational matters. Government schools, it would seem, are a sunset industry. This from Stuff:
New Zealand's education ranking has fallen from seventh to 18th in science, from 13th to 23rd in maths, and from seventh to 13th in reading, according to a report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last night. The figures in the report were based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Just over 4000 15-year-old Kiwi students took part in the assessment, which is done every three years.These results need to be considered against the backdrop of taxpayer funded lavish largesse being poured out upon government schools in a Noahic deluge over the past ten years. [Sound trumpets . . . ]
Budget 2013 delivers $901 million in the current year and over the next four years for operating initiatives to lift educational achievement at every level of the system – from early childhood, to primary, to secondary, and into training for work, Education Minister Hekia Parata says. “We are increasing spending on education – for the fifth Budget in a row. The Government’s total investment increases to over $9.7 billion for the 2013/14 financial year. “New Zealand’s total education investment sits at 7.2 per cent of GDP – well above the OECD average of 5.8 per cent,’’ Ms Parata says. [NZ Government Press Release]The present government, and a litany of previous governments, have succumbed to the fallacy that more government spending will generate better educational outcomes.
The brutal truth is that the majority of public money spent on our government schools is wasted. It funds a vast bureaucratic enterprise organising, managing, monitoring, and compliance checking an increasingly dispirited bunch of teachers at the chalkface who cannot blow their noses without completing an incident report in triplicate. But, the system apologetes retort, such a monumental edifice is necessary to ensure quality education.
Our government schooling system has now come to represent a gigantic Monty Python skit. Thousands upon thousands of people going through the motions of educating in a vast game of national charades, whilst pupils stare dumbfounded and mystified at what is going on. The sad, but hard truth is that far too many pupils sit in government run classrooms disengaged because they are mystified and confused.
We suspect that the government schooling system is beyond reform. The vested interests (unions, educrats, tertiary institutions teaching teachers how to teach, and politicians) are so strongly entrenched they cannot be changed by external influences--and they are far too hidebound ever to change themselves. The most recent, yet classic, illustration is the launch of a pilot experiment with charter schools. The compliance and reporting regime pressed down upon these alternative, more "liberated", alternative educational institutions is heavier and more onerous than regular government schools. One more dead parrot skit queued in.
One reason the establishment is incapable of reform is its myopia. If ordinary folk knew the philosophical and intellectual propositions that shape our national government school system they would be aghast. And rightly so. The prevailing educational philosophy is constructivism which is the product of an elite hard-core cadre of secular marxists and post-modernist academics. Our national curriculum is infused with this philosophy. Constructivism proposes that the most sophisticated and successful educational approach is to teach nothing prescriptive at all. Pupils learn best when they construct their own curricula, following their own interests, as and when they are ready (if ever). One would struggle to conceive of an educational philosophy more inveterately opposed to educating.
So here we have a moronic situation where an entire national educational edifice is philosophically controlled by "experts" and curricula which seriously propose that the best education system is one which teaches nothing prescriptive at all, but only exists to facilitate pupils discovering for themselves. Imagine a teaching profession which lauds anti-teaching as the acme of its excellence. Yet that is the dominant and prevailing paradigm in New Zealand government educational system.
The government and teacher unions think they will improve the system by throwing more money at it. Now the graduates of this educational system are being thrown into a head to head comparison with senior pupils from other nations which have the advantage of not being wedded to such pedagogical lunacy, and guess what, our educational performance and scores are deteriorating.
Peter has come out of Neverland back into the real world with a sickening thud. Ah, well. It was good while it lasted.
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