I may be wrong but . . . .

I wrote back a few months ago about my concerns that the so-called debate over national education literacy and numeracy standards shows an underlying meanness of spirit. As the date for the forced implementation gets closer I see it getting worse rather than better.

I say “so-called” debate because Prime Minister John Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley are no longer listening to opposing arguments. Their standard answer now to any attempts at ongoing debate seems to be: “They’re saying nothing new”. We’re now in ‘final decision has been made, get over it’ mode.

What disturbs me most now, even more so than before, is their condescending defence that the very few people against national standards are teachers, unions and academics. And their purported reasons are, for teachers, that they and their unions have a vested interest and are afraid of accountability; and, for academics, well …. they don’t live in the real world.

This belittling of experts in the education field has rightly opened a rift between the government and those working at the blackboard. Such a rift is emphatically not good for the country or for our next generation. Making skilled professionals (for the most part, they are) feel unworthy to speak from experience and training is hardly going to lift standards, is it?

Recently I discussed this issue with an acquaintance who’s a highly qualified and long-serving electrician. He was taking the same line as Key – that as a parent he knows as much as (or even more than) his kids’ teachers about how schools should be run and what policies are best for his child. Teachers, he believed, were just trying to protect their patch.

We then turned that particular viewpoint around and looked at it from the other side. What would he think, I asked, if the government decided that domestic electrical installation standards were changed so that any homeowner could wire and rewire his own house without the need for a sparky? Wouldn’t that cut down on the amount of work he’d get?

Sure, less work, he said. But far worse would be the reduction in quality of homes if amateurs did the work. Would he object? You bet! But you have a vested interest. Perhaps, but that’s not the point – there’s pride in your work to consider. If the government didn’t listen but just kept on insisting that they and other ordinary people knew better than electricians? Insulting!

Another thought: What if before an electrician started a rewiring job he had to fill out reams of paperwork about standards that were clearly irrelevant to that particular job, and then afterward have an inspection team from the national standards board come in, check it, and publish all the results in the local paper?

By this stage, he was starting to see why it was better to trust true professionals (including teachers) to get on with their jobs within basic legal frameworks.

Like it or not, most teachers do know lots about what’s best for the education of our children, what won’t work and why. They have the training and the experience. Just like most electricians know how to most safely and efficiently wire a house, without the need to have their work constantly tested and fill in all the associated paperwork. And most police and firemen know best how to deal with dangerous situations and people. I could go on.

I repeat: belittling teachers (or any group with real expertise in their field) and attributing their concerns purely to self-interest does nothing to improve standards in this country, and in fact risks educational quality.

I know many, many non-teachers who are firmly against this national standards policy. It’s NOT just a clique of self-interested teachers who know no more than us amateurs. They are convinced by evidence as well as common sense that building an education system around publicly-scored standards is just too limiting in today’s evolving society.

To restate the reasons I and so many others are against this policy:

1. No matter how we try to prevent or downplay it, newspapers make lots of money out of publishing league tables – how schools rank against each other. And no matter how hard their better reporters try to explain how those league tables fail to tell the whole picture, their headline writers will never miss the chance to signal that some school somewhere is falling short. And, sadly, their readers find it so hard to see both sides of any such “school failing” story.

2. No matter how hard teachers try to lift their pupils up to standards, there are some (too many) whose earlier life experiences mean they may never reach “pass” state for their age on a national scale. To tell those children, year after year, that they’ve failed is hardly conducive to raising well-adjusted and happy contributors to community life.

3. Telling the world which children are failing doesn’t in itself achieve anything. Teachers already know, by and large, which kids are in trouble and most will do what they can, given the resources available to them, to make improvements. To make significant improvements in many cases requires huge extra resources, which our government is hardly going to fund sufficiently in today’s fiscal climate.  Instead, they will merely try to shame teachers into trying harder.

Naming and shaming those pupils and teachers may make a few lazy teachers sit up and try harder, but most are already doing what they can; shaming them will more likely make them more defensive.  Providing better resources to help them in their teaching techniques, and giving them smaller classes and more peer support, will achieve heaps more.

4. I agree with the sentiment that teaching in today’s world should be more about individual learning experiences for individual children, rather than a heavy focus on the three Rs. National standards and publicly notified results will inevitably lead to less diversity in learning experiences.

5. By all accounts – and I see no reason to question them – most teachers already tell parents everything that they want and need to know about their Johnny’s progress in core subjects. Contrary to what Tolley and Key keep contending, there is no conspiracy for teachers to hide information from parents – just as my electrician friend never tries to withhold technical information from his customers about a house he’s rewired.