I recommend to Education Minister Anne Tolley that - before
she returns us to the 19th century - she reads my master of
arts (honours) thesis on teacher organisations in Otago from
1856 to 1883, available in the University of Otago archives.
There, she will learn of the stranglehold the standards
system imposed on schools by the narrowing of the curriculum,
the "cramming" to get youngsters up to speed and the
community/school committee/teacher tensions if the public
reporting of results put the school in the bottom 20%.
Yet, this fixation on standards made not one whit of
difference to the more than 20% of youngsters who could not
achieve at the supposed level.
I conclude with three thoughts that Mrs Tolley seems to have
missed: In spite of all our efforts, the curved graph of
intellectual distribution still appears to be valid; she
appears to be determined to reinvent the wheel, which by 1936
when the last of the standards was abolished was found to be
a disastrous failure; and finally, a nation which does not
know and learn from its past is doomed to repeat the same
mistakes.
Jack Rutherford
Ranfurly
- In recognition
of the importance of readers' contribution to the letters
page, the newspaper each week selects a Letter of the Week,
with a book prize courtesy of Dunedin publisher Longacre
Press.
This week's winner, Jack Rutherford, of Ranfurly, receives
a copy of Grahame Sydney's The Art of Grahame Sydney,
Longacre Press, $99.99.
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