Dialogue: More codswallop from Codaapoo

By Gordon McLauchlan

The daily light provider was well over the demarcation line between the sky and the earth when Education Review Office report-obfuscator Judy the Obscure achieved an outcome from the floor-parallel apparatus on which she had lain prone for eight aggregated 60-minute periods after taking a small globular input which, she knew, would ensure a consciousness barrier whose outcome would be narcosis.

After a high-quality grime-removing stance beneath a shower and some liquid and solid nutritional inputs, her movement-orientated, bulk-fuelled car was moved by her from her domestic environment to the place which for the time being was her service-providing environment.

Her first operational activity of the morning was to review the obfuscation of a new report provider, Lulu Bright, whose first-up opacity had fallen well short of the industry standard. If, of those attempting to glean information from your work quickly, more than 50.34 per cent who have code-books gain an understanding after an initial read, or if more than 11.81 per cent of information gleaners who have no access to the code pathways have more than 29.3 per cent of comprehension after a week, then you have not sufficiently obfuscated for the purposes of the EROs outcome objectives, said Judy.

"How do you work out those figures?" asked Lulu. "We don't," said Judy, "they are red cods, large red herrings, designed to divert attention from any germ of meaning that may otherwise be in the report."

After explaining to Lulu that governments pay large salaries for people who can effectively, professionally obscure meaning, Judy read the revision Lulu had made of a shockingly brief and succinct report input from a primary learning institution. This was the new version: "The definitions of levels of achievement given in the curriculum statements are not yet sufficiently precise to enable teachers to assess student against them. In addition, the student assessment procedures which were to be developed to enable teachers to carry out levels assessments are not yet established. This means that two of the principal assumptions which were made about the level of information which would be available in schools when effectiveness reviews (ie outcomes analyses) were proposed, have not been realised. As a result there is very little achievement information in schools which is of sufficient quality for aggregation or use in outcomes analyses." (From an actual report.)

Judy offered an input of coffee as a reward for Lulu's obfuscation outcome. She wanted to discuss with her the possibility of renaming the ERO. Far too simple and direct as it is, she said.

Quick as a flash, the gifted Lulu said: Curriculum Objectives, Delivery and Assessment and Academic Pathways Outcomes Organisation, or Codaapoo. Judy was speechless. Jargon failed her.

Early this week I asked myself would Education Minister Trevor Mallard duck the language issue, so I sought his comment with an e-mail, pointing out how extraordinary it was that an organisation responsible for educational standards issued reports so badly written they would fail any standard literacy test.

Mallard clearly thought my note a canard, so the logorrhoea epidemic continues to rage around Wellington. The reply the next day read: "Thank you for your e-mail message. Ministers receive a considerable volume of correspondence [a lot of letters], but the points you have raised will be considered and a further response may be provided [get lost]."

All of which lends weight to the case of a Taradale, Hawkes Bay, schoolteacher Margaret Schofield, who is making a submissions for creative writing to be included as a subject in the new qualification to replace School Certificate. She says that creative writing doesn't fit specifically into the arts or English curriculum whereas art, dance, music and drama do.

For example, if you want to develop your skills in art, you get four hours a week, four terms a year. But not for writing. I would hope those who believe education should be heavily biased towards vocational training will accept that the ability to use language flexibly with skill and subtlety is fundamental to our lives as thinkers, and therefore as workers, especially in the Info-Age.

And a social advantage is that writing creatively may help to heal emotional wounds, as I believe more women know than men. Also, a knowledge of the process leads to more perceptive reading of imaginative literature, a pastime that can be an antidote to the loneliness that afflicts us all at some times in our lives. A friend of mine's mother used to say portentously: "You can't learn about life from books, you know, experience is the great teacher. Get out there and meet people."

Well, for even a gregarious person, reading is a vast expansion of experience and companionship. An intelligent reader's friends will be young and old, tried and true and an overwhelming advantage available on demand.