Educators have labored under the premise that this is a much more sophisticated world than the past that other generations grew up in. As a result they have included more and more into the curriculum. Instead of the three R’s its now reading, writing in genre, speech writing and delivery, performance art, music, physical activity, computer basics, coding etc., etc.. The focus is so diverse that learners are failing to master the basic 3 R’s.
The result is that teachers don’t have time to cover all of the curriculum areas effectively. So that basic literacy and numeracy are suffering. This is a major factor in the decline of the education sector in New Zealand. At the same time changes have been made to the way education is administered in New Zealand that have been largely ineffective in practice. An example would be the roll out of the numeracy project which rather than remediating falling standards of numeracy has largely only served to make the situation worse.
Now education is not rocket science. It's a simple matter of “Get the basics right and you can't go wrong.” It used to be understood that children at school would learn to read, write and perform basic math by the time they reached Year Nine. It was also understood that if they achieved an understanding of those basics they could go on to advance to higher qualifications at high school or leave to join the work force and continue study at a later date if they so desired. Simple enough right?.
So why is the education system in New Zealand failing so badly with imparting even a basic level of education to so many of today’s children? Things like wrote learning, times tables and essential word lists were crucial to success in the past so wouldn’t you think that they’d be useful again in a time of crisis? Back to basics and the 3 R’s would at least impart a basic and useful education to most children by the time they reach High School.
Of course teaching pedagogy and the curriculum are not the only issues at play here. Society has changed vastly in the last fifty years. In 1970 one of the fundamentals of society was the nuclear family of Mum, Dad and the Kids. The stability that this family structure afforded underpinned our education system. Children were well cared for and loved and well disciplined and so prepared to learn and participate in society. Parents supported the schools and their children’s teachers but the strong departmental structure of Schools stopped interference with classrooms by parents at the same time. A necessary safe guard.
In 2022 the nuclear family is in the minority in most schools. Many children live with a parent, a grand parent, a relation or even with no relation. The pool of previous support, education and expertise of the nuclear family is lost to the current education system. Poverty, gang culture and the drug and alcohol pandemic lay waste to the lives of many. Among them many of the students of our schools.
Another factor that is a large part of the issue here is the impact of the Smart Phone. The children who arrived at High School to Year Nine in 2022. Have had access to smart digital devices for at least the last ten years. For the last five years it has been a constant battle to control their use in the classroom and in the school environment as a whole. Phones are out in the classroom at the drop of a hat and social media causes disputes, bullying and recorded fights on a daily basis.
Add to that the concept that a student can now live a virtual, digital life which has real life interaction, virtual entertainment and instantaneous communication to organise events at a moments notice. I have had children contacted on their devices about a fight that involved a friend. They jumped out of their seats and fled the room to rush to the assistance of the other student and as group ended up in offices and classrooms around the school. This doesn’t happen often but shows that the students can easily be greatly distracted by their smart device. Also, if you already have a virtual life that seems to be working for you on your smart device. Why would you want to stay at school?
In that vein, the Covid Pandemic seems to have been the catalyst for entry into this brave new world of virtual living through smart devices. Now we’re seeing students ceasing to attend school. During the pandemic they found that life didn’t end with the closure of schools and they began to question whether they needed to attend school. At the same time, the powers that be seemed unable to find the right controls to return the education system back to some form of normality.
What it seems to come back to is that the reason the powers that be aren't prepared to adopt the tried and true strategies of the past. Is simply that they have an agenda and that agenda involves restyling society in a way that will not benefit the majority of people. An agenda where the poorly educated and impoverished masses will we easier to control and therefore easier to lead toward goals that are not in their best interests.
The reason that I say this is because despite the apparent best efforts of successive governments. The education system in New Zealand has be increasingly less able to impart a good standard of education to all of our children. The children of the elite continue to do well but it is more often the case that the middle class group of society is joining the poor in not achieving a good education. This has been easy to predict for decades but it is still a shock to see that we have finally reached a time in which there are only the rich and the poor. A time of those who have and those who have not.
So what started with Neo-liberal Economics thirty years ago ushering in a system which transferred the wealth of the middle class into the hands of a few wealthy elite persons. Has with the advent of smart devices, social media and the Covid Pandemic brought us into a brave new socialist world. Set to deal with climate change and to usher in a New World Order of centralised global government. It will be interesting to see what the world looks like in 2030.
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