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Without
a doubt, the welcome sound of the New Zealand National Anthem
ringing out from the London Olympic Games rekindles that
wonderful sense of pride in being a New Zealander. The Games
serves to remind us of what a powerful motivating force
competition is. It is the very thing that pushes the
boundaries of human endurance and effort. How tragic that the
guardians of our education system have progressively removed
competition from our schools, when striving for success is
such an important driver of achievement.
This
move away from competition is undoubtedly one of the main
reasons for the fall in the attainment levels of boys,
particularly over recent years. The Ministry of Education
reports that boys are now over-represented in statistics
relating to disengagement with school.
They
recommend that to improve boys’ achievement it is essential
to ensure that they are engaged in and excited by their
learning. But isn’t that exactly what competition does?
In
watching the world’s top athletes performing at the highest
levels of their codes it is easy to forget the many thousands
of hours of practice and training that they have put in. Dr K.
Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State University in
the US, has done a great deal of research into what it takes
to succeed in a given field. In a 1993 paper, “The Role of
Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert
Performance”, he explained that success in life is due
mainly to hard work and practice rather than to some innate
genetic talent: “The differences between expert performers
and normal adults are not immutable, that is, due to
genetically prescribed talent. Instead, these differences
reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve
performance.”[1]
In
particular he found that it takes around 10,000 hours of
practice in a discipline to become an expert. In other words,
anyone who works hard and focuses on improvement in a
particular field has a very good chance of achieving
significant success, if they stick at it for around 10,000
hours. It is that endless concentration on improving effort
and outcomes that leads to success.
For many, that pathway to success begins early in life. It is
said that Tiger Woods was given a sawn-off golf club before he
could even walk, and by the age of three was able play nine
holes of golf for a score of 48! Andre Aggesi’s professional
tennis playing father taped a racket to his son’s hand when
he was just two years old! One of the world’s best known
child prodigies, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was so entranced by
his older sister learning the piano, that at the age of three,
his father taught him to play too. By the age of four he was
proficient, and by the age of five he was arranging his first
works. His first symphony was composed at the age of 8!
But
while it is obvious that some children are fast-tracked on the
path to success early in their lives, most progress in
familiar ways, learning to walk and talk, to dress themselves,
do up buttons, use a knife a fork, count, recognise the
alphabet, colours and shapes, recite nursery rhymes and their
favourite stories all by the time they go to school. The
problem is that growing numbers of New Zealand children are
now failing to reach some of their more crucial developmental
milestones by the time they start school.
This
week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is journalist and broadcaster
Lindsay Perigo, who has long expressed concern about the
on-going deterioration in linguistic and literacy standards in
New Zealand. In his article Lindsay quotes newspaper reports
on the growing number of children who are starting school
unable to string a sentence together. If children haven’t
been taught to talk properly, they will find learning to read
and write almost impossible. Tragically many such children
will remain functionally illiterate for all of their lives -
unable to even fill in an unemployment benefit application.
Lindsay
writes, “The country is now caught up in a vicious circle
arising from decades of state-mandated dumbing down in the
education system… Normally I'd advocate simply retrieving
the thing from the clutches of the state and letting market
forces generate a drive for remedial excellence. But all of
society is now so steeped in barbarism that the private sector
too is zombified. The state must act urgently to stop and
reverse the rot it started and sponsored to such devastating
effect. Hand in hand with the overdue revival of grammar,
spelling and punctuation that is already supposed to be
happening, the state must restore to phonics its former
hegemony, and it must introduce speech-training into the
curriculum, both for pupils and teachers.”
He
concludes his article with this: “What stake do I as a
libertarian have in this matter? In a nation of inarticulate
illiterates, liberty doesn't stand a chance. In the domain of
dunces, demagogues dictate.” To read The
Dunce-ification of Everythink, please click here
>>>
It is scandalous, that increasing numbers of children are
turning up at school at the age of 5, hardly knowing their own
names let alone being able to talk properly. The point is that
as far as language is concerned, children are absorbent, like
blotting paper. By the age of six months they usually reward
their parents’ endless coaxing with their own versions of
simple words like “Mummy” and “Daddy”. Once they can
get their tongues around more complex sounds toddlers will say
more and more until they start parroting phrases then whole
sentences, copying whatever those close to them say as they
learn to speak for themselves. If children arrive for their
first day of school unable to talk is it is because adults
around them have failed to talk to them for almost their
entire lives.
What
loving parents would not talk to their babies, sing to them,
recite nursery rhymes, tell them stories, and read to them?
Surely, failing to teach their child something as basic as
language amounts to gross neglect? If such parents are on a
welfare benefit, is this not why we pay them - to care for
their children and raise them properly? And what about the
wider family – why doesn’t someone notice that a child
cannot talk and step in to do something about it?
There
are many social agencies that provide support for families who
are struggling with raising their children, but what a sorry
state society is in if such basic parenting responsibilities
can be neglected on a growing scale. It’s no wonder that the
government is putting in place parenting courses for teen
parents who are on benefits, that they are working hard to
ensure pre-schoolers do not miss out on early childhood
education, and that they have decided to trial Charter Schools
for children who will otherwise fail in mainstream education.
Fortunately
the majority of New Zealand children are raised very well by
their parents, and served moderately well by our state
education system, which ranks 4th in the OECD in
average reading skills. The problem is with the 1 in 5
students who fail to engage in education to the point where
they leave school with no qualifications and few skills,
virtually denied the opportunity to achieve anything of
personal significance in their lives. In other words, not only
have these children often been failed by their parents, but
the education system fails them too by denying them that
lifeline to a better future that they so desperately need. The
social and economic consequences of this are clear – the
story is told in the statistics around unemployment, substance
abuse, and criminal offending, not to mention that waste of
human potential.
The
National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) Level
2, which is the equivalent of the old sixth form certificate,
is generally regarded as the gateway to work and further
study. The government has set an ambitious target of having 85
percent of 18 year olds achieving the equivalent of NCEA Level
2 by 2017. Present statistics show there is still a long way
to go with only 69 percent of 18 year olds achieving that
goal. Clearly major changes will be needed to the education
system if the outlook for students, who are presently on a
path to failure, is to be turned around.
The
Charter School trial that is part of the confidence and supply
agreement with the ACT Party is one of the strategies being
used to improve the outcomes for the 20 percent of children
who are currently being failed by mainstream education.
Partnership Schools, as they are being called, will need to be
approved by the Minister of Education and will be monitored by
the Education Review Office.[2]
They
will be contracted to the Crown to raise student achievement
levels, in contrast with private schools that are contracted
to parents. Just as parents today can choose to send their
children to a range of schools, including religious schools,
bilingual or Maori immersion schools, single-sex or
co-educational schools, public or independent schools, so
Partnership Schools will provide families with yet another
option.
Partnership
School sponsors are expected to include businesses,
philanthropists, iwi, community organisations, faith-based
groups, and private schools - operating on a not-for-profit or
for-profit basis – but existing state schools and tertiary
education institutions will be excluded. Since the present
rules allow state and state-integrated school boards of
trustees to run multiple schools, Partnership School sponsors
will be able to do the same.
While
Partnership Schools will be given the option of using either the
New Zealand curriculum or developing an alternative
curriculum framework, they will be required to report against
National Standards for Year 1-8 students, and they must offer
NCEA or an equivalent qualification recognised by industry and
tertiary providers in New Zealand.
When
it comes to staff, Partnership Schools will enjoy far greater
freedom than state schools, which are dominated by the
powerful NZEI and PPTA education unions. The unions are doing
all they can to discredit the trial for reasons that are
obvious - the new
schools are likely to use non-union staff, who will be
rewarded through performance pay, and who may or may not be
registered teachers. Let’s not forget that the teachers’
unions are multi-million dollar organisations that are
fighting to retain their monopoly status. Unfortunately their
pursuit of self-interest has damaged children for far too many
generations - it’s time their stranglehold on our schools
was removed.
Partnership
Schools will also be free to set their own hours of operation.
They will not be tied to the traditional Kiwi school day that
had its origins in an era when children were needed back on
the farm in time to help their parents with the afternoon
milking!
The
schools will be required to accept all students who apply regardless
of their background or ability, and if they are
oversubscribed, students must be chosen using a ballot system.
Most important of all, Partnership Schools will only succeed
in fulfilling their contracts if they are successful in
lifting the outcomes for disengaged students who would almost
certainly fail if they remained in the state school system.
Given
the huge potential that lays waiting within each
individual child, a new model for giving failing students the
chance to achieve a better future, should surely be supported.
For the sake of all of New Zealand’s disadvantaged children,
the unions and their political allies should back off to give
the Partnership School trial a chance to succeed.
This
week’s poll asks: Are
you supportive of the Partnership School trial? Click here for poll >>>
FOOTNOTES:
1. K. Anders Ericsson et al, The
Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition
of Expert Performance
2.Ministry
of Education, Partnership
Schools
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