OPINION
In 1983, Julie Brown released her sadly underrated pop classic, I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid. The song’s uber-Valley Girl protagonist yearns for a “Superman with a lobotomy”. Authoritarian governments would concur, especially if one translates Superman to its German original Ubermensch.
Authoritarians like their bootboys to follow orders, not think.
Watching the passionate, ignorant children’s crusaders marching behind Uberdummpkopf, the lump-faced, lump-brained Greta Thunberg, one can’t help but think the leftist authoritarians in the education bureaucracies have succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of Bernhard Rust and Trofim Lysenko. These kids are as volubly passionate as they are stubbornly ignorant.
Just how the left like ‘em.
And, if the proposed NZ draft “science” curriculum is anything to go by, how they’re determined to keep ‘em.
That document proposes to teach science through five contexts – including the Earth system, biodiversity and infectious diseases. But nowhere in the draft does it mention teaching the basics of science, like physics, chemistry or biology.
In other words, a whole lotta fluff, and none of the hard stuff. It’s like the work-shy tossers of the 60s and 70s art scene, who thought they could go straight to imitating Picasso, without being prepared, or even being capable of putting in the years of hard slog of draftsmanship and painterly skill the master put in before he got freaky.
In many ways, it’s a rinse-and-repeat of the disastrous fairy-floss of former Tasmanian Education Minister Paula Wriedt’s “Essential Learnings” taradiddle. When you’re copying a Tasmanian Labor failure from two decades ago, New Zealand, you know you’re really in trouble.
And when even modern teachers are horrified by your curriculum, you really know you’re in trouble.
In July, the document was sent to multiple teachers for their feedback but some were so worried they leaked it.
Consultation of the curriculum has now been put on hold for the second time as the Ministry of Education waits to engage with the new Government.
Appearing on AM, National education spokesperson [Erica Stanford] also voiced her frustrations at the so-called “fast draft” […]
“I looked around the world to try and find any other country that has a science curriculum or any curriculum like that and there was not a single one apart from I think Scotland who had tried it but, otherwise, nobody else does that.”
Word to the wise: if Scotland is your only ideological fellow traveller, you need to have a long, hard think about what you’re doing.
“It’s so important to lay out the core curriculum knowledge and the order that it is to be taught especially in topics like chemistry, biology and physics […] It is so important that you lay out the core content knowledge in a curriculum when it comes to subjects like that.”
Newshub
Oh, don’t be silly. Kiwi kids will get a thorough grounding in the really important stuff, like how to count to 72 genders, how the Maori discovered Antarctica, how to say “climate change” in Te Reo, and how many wives Muhammad should be allowed to beat under Sharia.