National’s education shake-up: Hour a day of reading, writing, maths - and two tests a year. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by David Cooke
OPINION
“Children learn at different speeds,” says Christopher Luxon in his Back to Basics speech. He then contradicts his claim as he proceeds to rewrite the primary curriculum.
He proposes standardised testing for benchmarks stating “explicit expectations of achievement and knowledge dissemination for each year group”. He doesn’texplain how these standards square with children learning at different speeds, but perhaps we can’t have all these mysteries revealed in a single media stand-up.
Then, without bothering too much with the complexities of learning and teaching, Luxon goes for quantity – more is better. He wants at least an hour each day for each of reading, writing and numeracy, and high-stakes testing at least twice a year, taking up about three-fifths of the school day.
Luxon’s curriculum also extends to tertiary education institutions. He proposes refocusing initial teacher education to ensure new teachers are confident in their teaching subjects. His presentation is silent on whether tertiary institutions support or welcome his requirement.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
To make his case, Luxon relies on some handy myth-making, holding that teachers are spending their time out of school, “trying to figure out what they are supposed to be teaching”.
Now, it’s pretty clear that teachers spend loads of time working beyond school hours, but it’s not because they don’t get guidance. It’s because any teaching demands massive amounts of preparation and attention.
Luxon complains that the curriculum is too loose because, instead of year-by-year standards, it’s grouped into bands that span two to three years. In case he missed this part of his speech, one hopes his advisers might point out to him that this is because children learn at different speeds.
Apart from the inconsistencies of the speech, there are other really troubling points to consider.
One is the question of why it’s apparently OK for politicians to prescribe in detail the lives of thousands of teachers and students.
Education is a profession in which the country invests heavily all the time. Having done that, we should have much greater faith in handing the task over to the profession, rather than meddling with their lives for political posturing.
This is the crux of the issue.
National reaches back firmly into its past to resurrect policies that speak to its ideological base, but not because it can point to waves of successful action. And not because Luxon has laid out the context that education fits into.
He talks often about preparing students for the future, but without any analysis of what that future might hold.
Instead, he relies on platitudes that some politicians have promoted for at least the last 50 years. And not because he has constructive ideas on other areas of education. He has nothing to say about relating to the child’s world; about music, drama, creativity and arts; about storytelling, imagination, excitement; about relating to the outside world.
David Cooke was associate professor of English and education at York University, Toronto. Photo / Supplied
No doubt these other areas could then become the target of yet more obligatory unnecessary testing.
In any case, these other features are not the point. The main idea is to reduce education to scoring marks on tests.
Beyond a passing reference, Luxon has nothing to say about Māori and Pasifika, and for that matter other minorities, or issues of inclusiveness, equity, disability.
Part of the problem is that education is everyone’s football. It becomes a sector for political kicking, like other vulnerable categories in society – the lives of some welfare beneficiaries (single parents of 1-year-olds); certain categories of prisoners (the three-strikes law); young workers (90-day trial period).
What links these sectors is the scope to take tough-love political stances about them.
So education scores two hits. Sweeping reform of an extensive public system. And decisive positioning creating the image of a party imposing firm control in society.
There is no suggestion in Luxon’s address that National might systematically consult teachers and other educators, academics, teacher associations and unions.
But we can presume the party has carefully consulted its polls and its base to see what sells right now.
It has taken some years for National to realise that it has nothing new to offer in education. But then politicians learn at different speeds.
- David Cooke was formerly in education at York University, Toronto.
