Dialogue: Reading 'cure' starts with respect ... for the teacher

Our falling literacy standards are a symptom of teachers no longer being allowed to concentrate on teaching, writes RUTH WILLIAMS*

To suggest that merely changing the way children are taught to read will be an antidote to the literacy "problem" in New Zealand schools is simplistic.

The correlation between the education and science select committee's statistics relating to the literacy levels of children and the way that reading is taught does not reflect the complexities of the situation.

Statistics have been used from international reading studies in the 1970s as the comparison for the present. At that time we were one of the world leaders in literacy levels. Many factors contributing to the situation that now exists have not been acknowledged.

In the 1970s, our population was considerably more homogeneous than today.

Since then, we have had an immigration explosion and schools now have to cope with a multitude of ethnic groups. It is not uncommon in the Auckland area, in particular, to have up to and sometimes more than 20 nationalities in one classroom.

New Zealand society has changed in a variety of other ways, none of which can be ignored if we want to find explanations for today's situation.

Not the least are underfathered children, dual-income families, children whose main leisure activities are watching television or playing video games, and children whose behaviour is less easy to manage in classrooms than in previous times.

Added to this, all children, regardless of the severity of their individual need or disability, are entitled to be integrated into mainstream classrooms.

Many factors contribute to the academic success of children. John Langley, head of the Teacher Registration Board, suggested that at the heart of the issue were those who bore the child, who raised it and who taught it.

But this explanation does not take into account other variables at play in the complex world of literacy achievement. Undoubtedly, the teacher is one of the variables and it is critical that all children be taught by outstanding teachers.

Another variable is the environment in which children are raised.

Invariably, my experience of teaching new entrants has been that children who are well loved, well cared for and given rich language experiences - whatever that language might be - before starting school, have few problems academically and create few problems socially.

Much also has to do with Government policy. No one would deny that the remodelling of education in the past decade has brought positive aspects.

Ask principals whether they would want to go back to when they had to ring the Education Board to have a plumber sent to fix a drain.

But the remodelling has also introduced the notion of teacher accountability based on a market rather than a professional model. This requires teachers to keep extensive assessment records about children's progress to prove that they have made the difference.

Donna Awatere Huata, an advocate of national testing of literacy skills, has little understanding of what such measures would do to our education system. She should take a trip to the United States if she wants to view the effects.

Children in the US are the most tested in the world. Tragically, this has narrowed that country's education system significantly. Because teachers are judged on results, they spend an inordinate amount of time teaching to the tests, to the detriment of children's learning rather than its enhancement. No amount of testing, as such, will improve children's learning.

Unfortunately, our schools are in a situation in which if it moves, we assess it. Inevitably, that has resulted in less time for quality teaching.

Rather than enhancing children's learning opportunities, the remodelling of the past decade has reduced them. The Education Review Office, as the political watchdog of the system, has compounded this, not that we can blame it entirely. It has carried out the job it was required to do - to make schools more accountable - doggedly and determinedly.

Another strategy implemented to ensure the accountability of teachers was the introduction of curriculum documents for every subject area. The inevitable result was that teachers are now weighed down with the pressure of the overcrowded curriculum.

Then, to exacerbate the situation, society as a whole has decided that there is a problem with children not being taught values, so who better to teach them than teachers.

We expect male teachers to be father figures for fatherless children. Next year it will be something else.

We expect teachers to cure all society's ills but at the same time, over the past decade or so, we have castigated them at every opportunity.

Those in positions of power need to take a soul-searching look at why a disproportionate number of teachers have left the profession in recent years and how the influx of overseas-trained teachers has compounded our problems.

We say that, as a society, we value education. By association this should mean that we value teachers. In fact, we value neither.

Repeatedly there are cries, from politicians mainly, about why we cannot attract the best people into the teaching profession. This is particularly so with men.

We are naive if we think that, on one hand, we can rebuke teachers at every opportunity, and, on the other, hope to entice the best people into what society should regard as an honourable profession.

As someone involved in teacher education, I look at our students, many of whom will make outstanding teachers, and wonder why, at a time when teachers are so maligned in our society, they could possibly want to be teachers.

But they do, and I suspect it is because they know, if only intuitively, that they will join a profession in which they will have real opportunities to make a difference.

When I graduated as a teacher in the late 1970s, I was much less prepared to teach reading than beginning teachers are now. Yet I was trusted as a professional to get on with the job without the checks and balances that are in place today.

Amazingly, my children learned to read, admittedly in a much less complex environment than today's, but successfully at that. There were not the assessment requirements placed on teachers that there are now.

Of course, I monitored my children's progress. As a professional I had the responsibility to do that with a deep sense that I was accountable first and above all to my children.

After all, teachers have the future of our country in their hands and because I was free to put my energy into teaching rather than assessing I achieved results.

It is commendable that at the Knowledge Wave conference in Auckland recommendations were made related to the importance in our society of valuing of teachers.

Unfortunately, it is not until we politically and societally regard teachers as trusted professionals critical to our nation's future (such as in Denmark), and stop treating them as workers who need constant surveillance, that we will achieve the results we were once so proud of and, indeed, were acclaimed for internationally.

* Ruth Williams is a senior lecturer at the Auckland College of Education.