Oh please. $36m for a book and a school report?
I am entirely for extra funding to enhance the teaching of literature and numeracy in primary education, but I am uncertain whether the money is being well spent on this occasion.
I am being told by Sunrise and stuff.co.nz that these stunning new standards in our education system are a bold step by our government to improve early education which was supposedly left rotting by the previous government. But from what I've read - at least from the mainstream media - I fail to see where the improvements are.
Discourse one: parents will be able to keep track of their children's education with school reports every half year. This is fantastic, and I approve of it. But... wasn't this already happening? I remember vividly receiving school reports twice a year at primary school and - after quickly asking around - so do many of my peers. I have a friend with a five year old son living in Auckland, who also receives half-yearly reports. Stunning new standards there.
Discourse two: all primary education will include a study of the text The Way it Was by Dot Meharry. The enforcement of a text by the government in the same breath as Key talks about small government. Fantastic.
I understand from reading the new standards on the Ministry of Education's website that these are two of the key features of an overall plan, and new objectives to be met at every level. This sure looks and sounds productive.
My primary problem with this whole shebang is how it has been received, and interpreted. I would like to see new education standards challenged, worked over, discussed. Is $36 million being well spent on - what seems to me - to be very similar standards that were already in place? Or is it a another display of incompetency by the Minister of Education?
My primary problem with this whole shebang is how it has been received, and interpreted. I would like to see new education standards challenged, worked over, discussed. Is $36 million being well spent on - what seems to me - to be very similar standards that were already in place? Or is it a another display of incompetency by the Minister of Education?
Whatever the answers are, these are both important questions, neither of which have been asked. The stuff article merely delivered a series of sound bites from Key that mean absolutely nothing, but sure sound pretty smart: no more than further reflections on his poor, impoverished childhood and bullets of wisdom like "being poor does not rob you of hope, having no education does".
This seems to me to be a display of a government merely appearing to do something. And I'll have to presume that is the truth, because the people whose job it is to help me aren't asking that question.
Another success for the river of discourse streaming from the beehive, through TVNZ and into our minds. Who needs questions anyway.
2 comments:
It does seem like a pretty thin thread, spun out to cover the screen with the gloriousness of our leader and his regime.
As you say, it was the breathlessness of the coverage, when it deserved, at best, a "meh", to "huh?"
Key sure knows how to take a triumphant looking photo. The thing that struck me about that whole Carter fiasco is ... man, he WOULD look like Mussolini!
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