Enough! We are in crisis

Enough!

We are in crisis.

The teacher organisations have to get together and act indomitably.

Our way of thinking about education, so inspiringly developed over the decades, so wonderfully employed, is being destroyed by ignorance: an ignorance that is self-structured and assiduously self-protected – an ignorance that knows nothing of our primary education philosophy, wants to know nothing except where it survives – to hunt it down.

School after school is feeling the pain, suffering the debilitation. This is truly our time of troubles.

And let me make one thing clear, let one thing be recognised: these troubles aren’t random, they are inevitable: they are in the structure, inherent in the philosophy and the purpose.

These troubles don’t appear everywhere. Indeed, they serve their authors’ purpose better if they don’t. The apparent randomness of troubles serves to grip all schools, to put fear into all schools. It is Kafkaesque. Most schools, in response, sublimate the fear to be more review office in nature than the review office, to be rigid, narrow, and cautious beyond expectation. But no school is safe. It takes, for instance, only a single board of trustee member to return from one of those wickedly unbalanced STA courses and act on the toxic messages delivered for troubles to start.

The overall effect is a suffocating fog of fear.

Schools are being tied in knots, feeling unfree to act and speak out, and being picked off in isolation.

In such circumstances, the teacher organisations have to do much more of the heavy lifting.

 

Now I have only given myself two hours to write this posting and check it, so I’ll get on with it.

As you know, it is my belief that NZEI is doing well and NZPF struggling. NZPF, therefore, needs to get its act together. I think it can.

One of the difficulties is that neither organisation has worked out a clear and dynamic philosophy to counter the managerialist one that has held sway since Tomorrow’s Schools. I have begged them to do so for 25 years – nothing. From such a philosophy would have come the guidance and structure for more specific policies. It was this lack, and because NZPF lacks an appropriate internal organisational structure, that allowed Phil Harding to give such initial joyful support to performance pay the clusters.

All overseas trips imminent or prospective should be cancelled, as should all meetings with the Peter Hughes. He’s playing you for a fool, ladies and a gentleman. What do you want to say in a few years – sorry for betraying primary education and primary children, but I couldn’t help it, that Peter Hughes was so nice. Let me tell you that that Peter Hughes is in right at the centre of all the bad things that are happening to schools.

This is a crisis, and the teacher organisations should be in crisis mode. If they truly believed that (and I think NZEI does), they will know what to do. At the heart of what needs to happen is for NZEI and NZPF need to come together.

 

Some of the issues:

The Orwellian clusters and performance pay: this is the big one and should be seen as the last straw

STA being out of control with their so-called ‘professional development courses’ – these are authoritarian in nature, miseducative, ideologically-laden, and causing huge difficulties for schools

As a symptom of a much wider education dystopia, the dropping of the ‘Friend of the School’ role by ERO with absolutely no consultation: what is happening in schools with ERO is a disgrace, and now we have this Treasury type jabbering on about Public Service goals

The gross underfunding of public schools for curriculum and teaching purposes – it’s a scandal

The circus of charter schools, that ultimate of distractions, being used to put down public schools

The rort that is the statutory manager role, and the use of it to punish principals for being different (and as discussed above, being used to put fear into schools as a means of general social control)

The creeping, silent infiltration of privatisation from firms such as Cognition and CORE (these firms are just an extension of government control in another form) – they are intended to have a particular role in clusters

The reorganised Teachers Council – another disgraceful turn of events: is this New Zealand?

 

Where is your heart NZPF? I can’t believe you are sitting around having cups of coffee with education-system criminals who are doing such terrible things to schools: this is the time to make the government and public take notice.

Amongst all this is a little encouraging news: I can tell by the response to my postings, also from the results of consultation with key principals around the country – at least 90% of principals are against the clusters and performance pay.

There must be no negotiations over performance pay and clusters: they must be seen as beyond the Pale. To even countenance discussion of them is to give them a prospect they must not be allowed.

In my latest Primary School Diaries (Part Four) is the kind of philosophy statement I have been urging the teacher organisations to develop. A key statement is: ‘Because the holistic is about valuing variety, about democratic, participatory relationships – the holistic means the freedom to be holistic not the requirement to be so.’ (p. 10) In other words, the structure of an education system should be based on the nature of the holistic curriculum [which is carefully defined, indeed explored through the booklet] therefore allowing variety. A national standards education system is based on control therefore not allowing variety.

Teacher organisations this is your time.