Editorial: A curriculum for all seasons

The release of a new curriculum for primary and secondary schools invites considerable contention. It is in everyone's interest that young people leave school with the knowledge, skills and assurance that will serve them, and society, well. Almost everyone has a view on how that can best be done. It is to the credit, therefore, of the Ministry of Education that the draft curriculum released this week has been well received.

The document is remarkably unobjectionable. It streamlines the existing curriculum in a way that teacher groups find user-friendly. Equally, those who will implement the revision welcome their greater freedom. In effect, schools are given more power to decide how they teach. They will be better able to adapt to the different needs and expectations of a school in, say, rural Southland from one in central Auckland. That flexibility, however, must never be allowed to detract from an emphasis on the teaching of core skills.

The curriculum also pays heed to a changing society, different economic imperatives and new technologies. But a significant change, and the one attracting most attention, is an emphasis on learning a foreign language. On one level, this may seem curious. English has become the international language and is commonly used in business and diplomacy. Its supremacy has been reinforced by the internet and shows no sign of waning. Now, more than ever, some may say, there is little value in New Zealanders learning a language apart from English or Maori.

Fortunately, the curriculum has not embraced that viewpoint. Rather, it highlights the benefits to be derived from knowing another language. A foreign language offers a valuable insight into how other people think. Pupils learn words, concepts and ideas that may have no precise equal in their native tongue. Language is the fuel as well as the vehicle of thought.

Children's ability to absorb a new language is never sharper than when they are young. The draft curriculum proposes only that schools with pupils in Years 7 to 10 (Forms 1 to 4) offer a second language. Implementing that will present problems. Good language teachers are in demand. More teacher training and resourcing will be needed.

Encouragingly, the Minister of Education has suggested that migrant communities might be targeted in the hunt for language teachers. That could be fertile ground. Within the ranks of each migrant group are teachers, some in work that does not take advantage of their professional skills because they have not been encouraged to reach an acceptable degree of fluency in English.

It is important to note that it will not be compulsory for all pupils to learn a second language. Flexibility is at the heart of the curriculum. The same characteristic should help schools reflect the nature of their community. Its flexibility is the reason this draft curriculum should come into force largely as it is.

School values not just words

If any part of the revised school curriculum is likely to give people qualms it could be a section headed "values". It is one thing for private or religious schools to promote a set of values, quite another for the state to do so. In a diverse and competitive education system most people might find a school that fits their idea of what is important and desirable. But the idea of a state monolith prescribing values is challenging indeed.

The draft curriculum lists a number of values that it declares, "the New Zealand community supports because they enable us to live together and thrive in a diverse, democratic society". Some are fairly indisputable, such as personal integrity and respect for self and others. A few are worthy but possibly not everyone's priorities (excellence, innovation, community participation), and several are quite contentious.

"Diversity", for example, (as in "cultures, languages and heritages") could be opposed by many who do not want their dominant heritage diluted. "Equity", which the curriculum writers define as "social justice", begs big political questions. And "care for the environment (the Earth and its interrelated eco-systems)" is giving ecology a status no paradigm warrants. Is it to be an offence to educational values to question the worth of preserving every species on the planet?

More important, values are not simply a set of fine principles to which any reasonable person would give lip service, they are, as the curriculum document observes, expressed in the way people act. The values of a school are not found in the fine words of its prospectus but in the demeanour of its students. And their conduct is influenced far more by the manners and dignity of their teachers than the homilies they might be told.

Values, as state schools must be tired of hearing, are what many people think distinguishes private or religious schools from those the public owns. But it is not true that the state system has lacked them. For a generation or more it has promoted a set of beliefs so assiduously and successfully that is has been accused of "social engineering". Those values are often derided today as "political correctness".

The values listed in the curriculum revision widen the previous focus on racism, sexism and sexual orientation and puts "excellence" at the top of the list. By that the document means, "aiming high and persevering in the face of difficulties". It looks like an answer to the main criticism of public education trends but only on paper. The test would be to see whether this value is expressed in refinements of the new examination system and much else that schools do.

It is a valuable exercise for education to put guiding principles on paper but actions matter more. Whatever the curriculum may say, values will be measured by what students do.