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
This week's winner, Jack Rutherford, of Ranfurly, receives a copy of Grahame Sydney's The Art of Grahame Sydney, Longacre Press, $99.99.
