This week's teacher strikes will punish parents, generate both sympathy and hostility towards teachers and reduce productivity. Whether they advance the conversation around the future of our primary schools is another question.
Strikes work for the same reason they fail - they become the focal point, rendering an issue to its most simplistic slogans while punishing innocent parties in an attempt to gain leverage. Which is a shame because, in this case, there are serious issues at play, issues most New Zealanders should be capable of discussing soberly.
How big do we want our classroom rolls to be? How many extra teachers and classrooms will we need to achieve that? Should high-needs children be in our regular classrooms and, if so, should dedicated staff support those children to ensure the rest of the class isn't neglected?
Are we losing teachers and failing to replace them? If so, should teacher salaries be far higher to attract more people and retain them? Should we all pitch in as a community to ensure after-school activities are run well regardless of teacher involvement, or should teachers do that for us? If so, are we willing to pay them more for that service?
Do teachers spend the bulk of their personal time planning, writing reports and marking? Are they working from home when staff car parks are empty after 3.30pm on weekdays and throughout the school holidays? Can that work be done at school during normal business hours, including school holidays?
Are teachers happy to argue on the one hand that the best of them are leaving for other professions, yet on the other hand demand those good teachers be paid the same as the worst, to ensure collegiality?
If we must spend more on salaries, extra support staff, extra teachers and extra classrooms, where should that money come from? Should we raise taxes? Should we change how we divvy up the tax take to put far more focus on primary schools? Our two major political parties create policy by canvasing, consulting, forming committees, listening to advocates, experts and lobbyists. They gauge the public mood and alter course accordingly, ensuring they fall, for the most part, just to the left or right of that mood.
And what has that mood delivered? That if tertiary study is even cheaper, we'll vote for you. That if you give us tax cuts, we'll vote for you. That if you throw billions of dollars at the regions, we'll vote for you. That if you put environmental causes ahead of industry, we'll vote for you.
When it comes to our primary schools, we seem to have indicated things are OK as they are. Are they? Or are our teachers right when they say we are heading towards the catastrophic scenario of classes filled with children but no staff. Where is the peer-reviewed, unbiased data?
These issues must be analysed, debated, understood and, if at all possible, settled. Instead we are seeing what should be a serious conversation careen towards the ad hominem, slogan-filled rabbit hole of teachers and their supporters versus the rest. Such is the nature of strikes.
It is on all of us - not just teachers and government - to do far better than this. It is a discussion we simply cannot have while shouting at each other, only referencing extreme examples and refusing to countenance the concerns of others. It's a discussion we can't have when successive governments declare there is simply no more funding for schools - despite allocating billions of dollars to other vote-grabbing policies.
In the end it all comes down to money and how we prioritise the spending of it. And that is a conversation demanding reason, facts and the frank acceptance that changes and sacrifices may be needed. But as long as hyperbole, ad hominem attacks and exaggerated slogans trump accurate, respectful debate, we will solve very little.
