Our Schools Have Die-Back Disease

The State and Education Do Not Mix

The clip below is about a principal of a school highlighting a problem in the government education system.  The state system is premised upon a belief that government schools are both the authority and the expert when it comes to education.  The entire government school system is built upon the premise that parents are both incompetent and ignorant when it comes to educating their children.  The state is the expert.

In fact the opposite is the truth.  The government is thoroughly incompetent when it comes to education.  The less it has to do with the education of the nation's children the better.  In the (Christian) schools we have been associated with over the years, we have believed in and applied the Triangle of Pedagogical Power.  Effective, potent education involves three parties, and no more: the school teacher(s), the parents, and the pupil.  These three are equally vital and necessary.

The intrusion of any other power or authority in that triangle makes for ineffective, impotent education.  The involvement of the State is worst of all because it squashes and drives out the influence of parents, and their fellow-team members: the school, and the pupil himself.  The State commands, it does not "partner".  More and more the State looks to its educational institution (the government school) to be responsible for, and drive, the welfare and social programmes of the State.  Almost every social problem amongst youth has the Government pushing for more of its schools' involvement in the child's life--usually over the battered and crippled bodies of its parents.

Richard Hall, rector of Otago Boys' High School spoke out about these matters.

Another Dunedin school principal has publicly aired concerns about growing expectations that schools act as social as well as educational institutions.   In a recent Otago Boys' High School newsletter, rector Richard Hall said he agreed there had been a "definite increase" in the number of issues involving pupils outside school hours which schools were being asked to deal with.

He believed the issue of inappropriate pupil behaviour was influenced by the disintegration of the parent network and the accessibility of cellphones.  He was concerned parents no longer communicated with each other at the school gates or at school activities.

The simple act of dropping off or picking up their children from school gave parents the opportunity to see the parents of the boys and girls their children spent much of their time with.  Meeting the parents of their children's friends gave people an idea of their values and parenting style.  "You knew what they looked like; you could say hi; you probably had a good idea of what they valued and how they parented.  You could also make judgement calls on the connection of their values to yours.  Now, I bet you don't have those connections. And your distance from your son's influences is rapidly getting wider.  If you want to know why, have a look at his smartphone."  [John Lewis, Otago Daily Times]

Rector Hall bemoans the influence of smart phones in his school.  They have introduced "alternative authorities" into the lives of pupils, which second guess, substitute for, and compete with the authority of parents and schools.  The smart phone does not belong in the Triangle of Pedagogical Power: it is an alien influence.  At this point Mr Hall goes rogue:

Hall said many pupils developed a sense of what was acceptable behaviour from seeing how other people behaved via their cellphones.  "Now, through his smartphone, your son's influences are not only people and adults you have never met, but also people who don't even live in the same hemisphere.

"I am no expert, but I would think that it is not the people you know that encourage your child to send or share inappropriate images via that smartphone.  As a school, we have never said a phone is an appropriate learning device.  Teachers let students use them, mainly because they have little choice. But if all smartphones were left at home, we wouldn't cry."

This is an officially unconscionable position to hold if you are part of the Government education system because the State (with all its vast wisdom and superior status-of-being) has decreed that smart phones and the web and similar electronic devices are now the real Sitz im leben classroom and must be used and exploited by schools in every way.  This represents yet another example of the State destroying the true nexus of pedagogical potency and effectiveness.

The motto of Otago Boys High School is Recti Cultus Pectora Roborant ("The right education, makes the heart as strong as oak").  That may well be.  To which we hasten to add: the right education relies upon the Triangle of Pedagogical Power.  Take that away and the strong oaks will not just wither and die, they will fail to germinate.