Tapu Misa: For children learning is more than just going to school

COMMENT

The other day, a friend and I were marvelling at how similar we were. Same backgrounds (Samoan-born, immigrant parents), same high school (Porirua College), same weird personality traits (never mind).

There was an important difference, though. My friend has some impressive letters after her name, and I do not.

Somehow she had cottoned on to the whole purpose of the education system a lot sooner than I had. She'd seen it as a means to an end. The end being, of course, a highly paid job, and the freedom of choice that having a lot of money gives you.

And given that my friend now owns her own company and has enough money to buy a house in an expensive school zone, and to house and support her ageing parents and in-laws, I think she had by far the better attitude.

Back in the good old days, when exams were 100 per cent of your grade, she was able to hold down a full-time job while studying full-time at university. She seldom went to lectures, but then it didn't really matter. Passing exams was the thing, and she was particularly skilled at that.

My, how things have changed.

Nowadays, education is deadly serious and so all-consuming that even at intermediate and secondary schools the idea that parents might take their kids out of classes for a week or two during the school year is seen as negligent parenting, a sign that we aren't being properly respectful of the importance of education.

According to a Sunday Star Times report at the weekend, school principals are angry and disturbed by the trend of parents taking children away for holidays during term time, ostensibly to get cheaper travel deals. Some teachers say it disadvantages schools and students, that it sends the wrong message to staff and students about the value of education.

Some cite cases of students missing NCEA assessments and having to catch up.

To which I can only say: so what? Whatever happened to the idea that travel broadened one's horizons? And shouldn't education mean more than exams and achievement standards?

When I took all three out for a much-needed family holiday, it was a matter of co-ordinating time-out for two busy working parents. What message did our kids take from that? That we were still a family. And at the time that seemed far more important than missing out on a few classes.

You see, it's not only education that has changed but lifestyles, too. That's the reality which schools need to get used to. Of course, I know that parents are partly to blame for this. As a teacher friend asked me, a tad testily, the last time I wrote about education: what is it that you want for your children?

Is everything too much to ask for? I want the letters that my friend has, and I want education in its broadest sense. I want enlightenment and knowledge and the instilling of a love of learning. I want character and values.

But still, I think, we're getting just a little too carried away. NCEA ought to be a move in the right direction, yet its reliance on relentless testing throughout the year can be a millstone around our kids' necks.

This may come as a surprise to those who've heard me ranting about the importance of education - especially for kids with the same complexion as mine, who have a point to prove in this society - but I think we're apt to take education a little too seriously, to view it a little too narrowly.

Education ought to do more than prepare you for employment. It ought to prepare you for life.

I tend to the philosophy of education espoused by the Tongan philosopher and educator Futa Helu, who started the Atenisi Institute in Nuku'alofa in the 1960s, a place dedicated to education in its broadest sense - enlightenment, knowledge and the development of critical thinking - and not merely for the sake of employment. Thus, at Atenisi, you might be exposed to everything from Italian opera to Tongan dance and culture, from Socrates to Milton.

Teacher friends of mine worked there in the late 1980s, taking their teenage son with them. He started the third form there and after six months, when it came time to return to New Zealand, their son (the only white kid in a school of about 300) informed them that he was staying on.

When they went back to pick him up at the end of the year, they found he'd turned into a Tongan. His father is convinced that it was the making of him, that the experience had turned him into a much stronger person. A few years later when dad went back to do another teaching stint, junior went him, beginning his university studies there.

What he learned from starting both his secondary and university studies in a developing country is incalculable. He'd never been an academic star, but it was the experience in Tonga, his parents say, that sowed the seeds for what has become a lifelong love of learning.

He'd learned through living with Tongans and hanging about with university students to do things like study through the night, drink kava and make home brew. Far from disadvantaging him academically, the opposite happened. He learned what maths was all about, gained confidence and a wider appreciation of the world.

Oh, and he got the letters, too, from Auckland University - MA, with first-class honours.