KEY POINTS:
The education fraternity and wider community have been called on to comment on a draft curriculum proposed for final release in less than a year and implementation by 2008.
It takes its place in a long line of changes to schooling since 1989, and is intended to replace
the curriculum statements that first emerged in 1993.
Now those statements have been condensed into one document that "sets the national direction for learning" which will guide all schools that will have to "design and implement" their own curriculum. The document also adds the requirement of a second language taught from Year 7.
This glossy Ministry of Education publication seems to raise more questions and problems than answers and solutions. It includes new and trendy concepts, notably the latest buzz phrase, "key competencies' which the document refers to on 22 occasions.
The competencies are managing self, relating to others, participating and contributing, thinking and using language, symbols and texts.
Some will breathe a sigh of relief at last, because it is nothing other than the "3 Rs", albeit dressed in the finery of MOE-speak.
If anything about the document is clear, it is that the wordsmiths were perhaps intoxicated by the view over Lambton Quay. Take for instance the prose exhorting teachers to "facilitate shared learning" in which students "engage in shared activities and conversations with other people" while teachers design "learning environments that foster learning conversations and learning partnerships".
Students, for their part, "engage in reflective discourse with others". As students do this, they "develop their metacognitive ability".
The mind boggles at the prospect of two 5-year-olds debating the relative merits of playing a game of touch or sitting eating their lunch while pondering the vicissitudes of the oil price.
A critical reading of the draft will show it is replete with idealistic phrases and ideas. Some of what it says, though, is very explicit about what education is for.
Business leaders will prick up their ears at the view that a "successful school leaver is prepared to face economic challenges, global competition and technological change".
The draft challenges schools to have a vision of students who are "confident, entrepreneurial and enterprising", to value innovation, and to design a curriculum that will help students to successfully seek out options such as self employment.
Schools are not only about attaining national economic goals, however. They are also to be places where students will learn citizenship, democratic participation and values "the New Zealand community supports".
It is not clear precisely who makes up or determines the "New Zealand community", and in this day and age where countries like France, England and Australia are getting hot and bothered over precisely such distinctions, it may be best not to go there at all.
The draft does seem to have something for everyone. There is reason for the business community to feel that finally, in its view, education is to take a step in the right direction.
The free traders will be pleased to see the references to a system that helps to prepare our young to compete in the global job market, while the green left will feel comforted schools will design curricula that value the environment and sustainability.
The politically active will be pleased schools will still be committed to developing an educated democratic citizenry and even the moralists have a sop thrown their way by a commitment to pursuing the values of respect and integrity.
One may question whether or how it will be possible to balance these clearly contradictory positions within one curriculum. What is clear is that the Ministry of Education has decided to make that a problem schools will have to sort out for themselves, because "each school will design and implement its own curriculum".
At first blush, this seems to give schools enormous flexibility and freedom. Yet it does not, for it will apply to "all school students".
So the immediate spectre is of schools having to cope with yet another plethora of paperwork compliance as they endeavour to show the hands-off MOE precisely how their local version curriculum seeks to implement the various values, principles, key competencies and so on.
Any astute observer will also wonder how hundreds of curricula will guarantee national objectives.
Families moving from school to school have no guarantees their children will not be disadvantaged by the fact their current school emphasises enterprise competencies whereas the one they move to has a greater focus on participation competencies.
On the matter of enterprise, entrepreneurship, innovation and financial literacy, the business world is likely still to be in despair.
Schools and these concepts are probably mutually contradictory. Teachers are not, by nature, enterprising and entrepreneurial people. If they were, they would not be teaching.
Many who become teachers do so out of a desire to make a difference or to pass on skills and knowledge. The question therefore arises of how and where and by whom such competencies will be taught in schools.
If one trawls through the "achievement objectives" of the "learning areas", particularly in social science where economics sits, there is no reference to answer these questions.
In this process of consultation, schools have typically set aside one teacher-only day. Many will also probably have had an evening session with parents and boards.
The reality of this document is that it is a very complex piece of material that proposes some very complex changes. Given this, it is unlikely that many communities will have had anywhere near enough time to digest and comprehend what is proposed.
Teachers, particularly secondary teachers, are numbed by constant change, and are probably resigned to the inevitability of yet more change.
To even properly consider just one page of this 34-page document, namely "Designing a School Curriculum", is probably akin to taking at least a semester university course in curriculum design.
All those "who have an interest in education" are invited to complete a feedback survey. Even this document is suspect, and merely adds to a sense that this process is a sham.
* Leon Benade is Deputy Principal of St Paul's College, Auckland.
