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Friday, February 19, 2010
Are we heading down the same failure track in NZ?
It is time for new thinking in education. If we are to transform our syten then our current minister and all the lackeys at the Ministry must go down with the ship. Who needs national standards that will sort out who fails and which will narrow the curriculum and take us back to a mean Victorian era?
An article,see below, was printed in the Auckland Herald last week and seems to sum up the inherent problem in our education system; a system with its genesis in the wrong century.
We can no longer afford to patch up our creaky system, we need a real transformational change. Too much reform of the past decades has been akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
And worse still our current Minister seems intent in looking back to past for answers.
The article read:
Survey slams schools.
'Many British adults say they did not realise their full potential until years after they had left school.
A survey of 2000 people found that, on average, they cited 22 as the age they found their niche in life.
Nearly half of those surveyed felt they were regarded as average or poor students while at school.Of those, 15% said they never got the chance to discover their talent in the classroom because their teacher had written them off as failures.'
Our Minister, and her paid Ministry technocrats, seem oblivious to such a clear message. I can't believe some of those in the Ministry I know personally really believe in what they are being asked to impose - shades of living in the court of Henry the Eighth. . All about keening their jobs; busy learning to sing the tunes of their new master and trying not to lose their integrity in the process. Time will judge them. And for those that do believe in such a narrow ideology God help us.
Andy Hargreaves , who sees the world heading towards an age of inspiration and sustainability,is calling schools to be more innovative and creative. For this to succeed , he writes, will require the articulation of an inspiring moral and sustainable purpose for learning rather than a narrow literacy and numeracy one.
To do this Hargreaves believes it will be necessary to have a 'Great Public Debate' about the future of education. To achieve such a transformation will require like minded schools to work together and to develop partnerships with parents and students; so as to share ideas and to tap into the expertise that lies within school communities.
We have the curriculum to do this even if those who control education seems determined to sideline it to suit their own narrow purposes.
Our students deserve better than out current minister and her lackeys.
Einstein wrote, 'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'
It seems we have a choice, to control our own destiny or someone else will. It is our integrity that is now at stake.
