Overview:
OPINION
Phil Green
You are going to need to reach for paracetamol as the headache of progressive interference in your everyday life is about to get worse.
Dr. David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, and has worked as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career, so he is obviously no slug when it comes to education.
The shame is that the same can’t be said about the bureaucrats overseeing yet another cataclysmic change in direction of our once-venerated New Zealand education system.
You know, the one most of us grew up in, where learning our times tables was chanted rote in the class, where our writing was assiduously inspected, corrected and encouraged. Once the fundamentals were achieved I went to school to eat my lunch and play football. We basically had the necessary fundamentals established by form 2 (year 8) to get on with life. Staying on to 15 was a chore.
Alongside that, was a (1970s) school system that encouraged multi-cultural endeavours, with the most enjoyable being putting down a hangi for the school fair, ably and cheerfully attended to by Maori dads with eager helpers.
Where did all this goodwill and community spirit go? Now we learn it’s not about a colour-blind encouragement to everyone, or even (bless no), encouraging excellence. No, it’s all about equity. If this word hasn’t been drummed into you by now then I’ll help you out.
From a layman’s perspective, equity is lifting up those struggling within society for a variety of reasons. With an abracadabra of the bureaucrat’s magic wand, the ground will miraculously level and the lack of equity will disappear. This of course is nonsense. Over the past thousand years learned people actually observed the benefits of excellence, which we’re all inheritors of today. Just don’t tell Greta.
Never mind, nobody’s daring to tell the NZ Ministry of Education, or whatever name it presents itself as these days, captured as they are by socialist ideology. Like the Blitzkrieg of the 1940s it is determined to flatten everything in its wake, including your children.
Most of you won’t be surprised that the magical wand being waved over the education system is the auspicious aura of Maori e.g.
“The New Zealand Curriculum is being refreshed in a phased approach over the next four years so that it honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and is inclusive, clear, and easy to use.”
Ministry of Education (2022b)
What is being rolled out is a race to the bottom of the lowest common denominator.
Ignoring that many and most Maori pupils and students fare well in the New Zealand academic process, the spotlight is now focused on the rowdiest, the intransigent and the disruptive attendees (or not, as current attendance levels attest), to align the new level of equity.
I don’t like using extreme language with reasoned comment, but this policy is insane. It’s ALL waters and the TV1/RNZ merger on steroids, and is no less than the politicisation and propagandising of your child’s school time.
I will leave the last word with Dr. Lillis, “We must resist the curriculum refresh with all our might. Future generations of New Zealanders are depending on us.”