Doomed to Disaster

The Government as Uber-Parent

The term "statism" refers to the doctrine or idea that the State is the ultimate reality upon earth.  In matter of justice there is no higher appeal than the State.  In society, the State is not just the ultimate court of appeal in civil and criminal matters, but the State is the ultimate and highest institution to which all other human activity is ultimately subject.   Statism declares there is no higher law than that which the State is prepared to acknowledge.  

Statism is the dominant political ideology of our secularist age.  The State is the most dominant social, moral, and commercial entity in our society.  It follows that all perceived social problems are ultimately the responsibility of the State to solve.  

In New Zealand, because of the dominant influence of  Statism, we are confronted with a weakening and attenuation of all other social structures.  There are many dysfunctional families, blended families, dislocated families, and broken families.  There are homosexual families, plural families, and solo-parent families.  All the colours of the rainbow.

One consequence is child abuse.  Another is successive generations of children growing up unable to function and cope in the adult world.  What is to be done?  The answer is naturally to hand.  The State will use all its efficiencies, potentialities, and powers to put things right.  Enter the State as Uber-parent.

This most recent incarnation of Statism has been championed by Paula Bennett who has put forward a programme of monitoring all children via a national database from the moment they are born to whenever.  Monitoring and recording implies monitors and recorders.  And so the NZ government is rolling out how this will work.  All parents will now answer to the Uber-parent, the State.  All children will be monitored and tracked by the State by everyone who interacts with them.  The details of all children will be recorded and entered into the database by all who interface with those children.  We will all become the State's willing little bureaucratic helpers.

This has led to a very unusual consequence.  A rare occurrence is taking place: we find ourselves in substantial, if not total agreement with one of the dominant teacher unions.  Unprecedented.  How so?  Well, in order for the state to function as Uber-parent it is proposing to require that teachers (along with many others--doctors, sports coaches, community health workers, youth group leaders--the list is endless) function as surrogate parents for all children.  Not only that--they will be required to submit the data arising out of their interactions with their pupils or charges to the State's Child Tracker database.  Teachers will become the eyes and ears of the State.  Teachers will become informants to the State.  If there are any Stazi supporters left in the world, doubtless they will be green with envy.

Moreover, the requirements of our Uber-parent are laughable.  No wonder the teachers' union has walked out of consultation with the Government.  Read carefully the following statement from the union which has us standing with it in this rare instance.

Earlier this year the Secretary of Education, Peter Hughes, had his regular grilling by the Education and Science Select Committee.  Maurice Williamson, who’s not usually the most engaged MP on the committee, asked a question along the lines of “In all the years I’ve been an MP I’ve had principals come to me complaining about the Ministry of Education giving them pointless paperwork that doesn’t help students or make schools run any better. What’s the Ministry doing to address this?”

Hughes, as usual, gave a reassuring and well organised answer which placated Williamson and sent a ‘no story here, move along’ signal to the media.

But as this piece from Jo Moir in the Dominion on Saturday showed, schools, and in fact anyone else who works with kids, are potentially facing a blizzard of paperwork in the next few months, and it’s exactly the sort of bureaucratic, box ticking nonsense that will send principals howling to local MPs like Williamson, and for good reason.  Its genesis is the “Children’s Action Plan Directorate” and the “Children’s Workforce Core Competencies Framework”, which emerged from Paula Bennett’s 2012 White Paper on Vulnerable Children.  [Don't you just love the noun, "Directorate".  In the past, governments that used that benighted word were instantly identified as Stalinist. Ed.]

The draft framework, which is going through final consultation at the moment, contains six domains, 30 indicators and five tiers, describing what everyone who works with kids, from volunteer cricket coaches to paediatricians will have to know and do – and as the document says, these competencies will be “mandated” and “measured”.

Along with those in Dominion Post, a few other examples of the indicators include:
‘Understand the effects of non-verbal communication such as body language, and that different cultures use and interpret body language in different ways’

‘Understand the content of the core competencies framework and can apply the descriptors in self-assessment…’

‘Understand relevant global policy and national legislation to protect children, including the UN declaration on the Rights of the Child, the Vulnerable Children’s Act…’

And pages and pages more of this.

Like rather a lot of what this government is up to, it’s an interesting exercise to consider what the National Party would be saying about this if Labour was in power and doing the same thing.  Key’s speeches in 2006-2007 were peppered with “suffocating Wellington bureaucracy” and “over regulation”, and he wasn’t promising more of it.

A few months ago the Rebstock-led report on CYFs, welcomed by Minister Tolley and about to be responded to with sweeping changes, included a main recommendation about “allowing staff to use their professional judgment … to support children based on clear principles, rather than rules, compliance and time-driven practice.” The contrast with the ‘competency framework’ is stark.

But most unfortunately, it’s hard to find anyone who works with kids who believes that this is going to help. Many teachers, nurses or others who work with young people could do with training to know what to look for in terms of signs of illness or abuse, and what to do about it. But this checklist doesn’t offer that.

Instead it seems to be the approach that public servants take when they don’t have enough funding to do anything really worthwhile, but do have just enough to hold some meetings, print a few pamphlets and make a website – and then pass the work onto people who are already far busier than they are.  [H/T: Kiwiblog]

The doctrine of the State as Uber-parent will fail . . . spectacularly.  It will drown in a bureaucratic morass of corrupt inefficiency.  The State cannot parent.  Neither can teachers.  For once, teachers can see this with startling clarity.  Often they are fundamentally confused and pettifogged on the matter.  But for their rare clarity of vision in this instance we applaud them.

Being fluent in Maori, well-versed on the Privacy Act and diagnosing rheumatic fever are just some of the things those working with children would be expected to know under a new Government proposal.  Everyone from a school rugby coach or bus driver to doctors, nurses, teachers and senior managers will be given new requirements, to be assessed against, once Government signs off its Children's Workforce plan.

But principals and the secondary school teachers' union, the Post-Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA), say the expectations for protecting vulnerable children are "farcical".  The PPTA is so disillusioned by the direction it's heading that they've walked away from the negotiating table.
As it stands the 34-page plan is divided into different requirements for various groups of people depending on how closely they work with children.

For example, those with the least child contact are expected to recognise New Zealand's bicultural partnership, those in the next tier (including teachers, nurses and doctors) would be expected to be "able to use significant kupu Maori throughout their interactions with Maori".

The next level, for those who are in senior practice positions such as school deans, the expectation is that they will be "able to use Te Reo Maori throughout interactions with Maori in a respectful, brave and deliberate way".  As for dealing with students from other ethnic backgrounds, schools would be required to get a translator - providing it's not a family member.

Porirua College principal Susanne Jungersen​ said teaching staff were already "horribly stretched" and this would only add to it.  "It really would be like the final burning log being stuck on an explosive fire.  In a secondary school teachers meet and are supposed to deal or relate meaningfully and individually with about 180 kids a day. That's a reality of a secondary school teacher's working day."

She said putting more compliance on a workforce that is "already loaded up" isn't going to make children safer.  "What we're experiencing in schools...is that agencies are putting so much ring-fencing around what they will and won't provide that all the left-over is the responsibility of a school. So we're picking up social welfare, health, mental health fragments, issues of difficulties at home."  [Stuff]

The unintended consequences will be legion.  The first, and most obvious, will be yet more educational failures in government schools.  Meanwhile, the State in New Zealand will come to resemble fat, bloated Jabba.