Charter cruise to asylum

Einstein defined insanity as making the same mistake repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. While there are numerous sad examples such as Vietnam, then Iraq-Afghanistan, or the entire so-called "war on drugs," there needs to be another expression when applied to one country's repeating the mistakes (recognised or not) from the experience of another country. Call it insanity by proxy.

In the US, the poor school performance of black students (Asians consistently outperformed) compared with that of white ones led the Bush administration and now Obama's to decide the fault lay with teachers and the remedy would be an approach to weed out those whose students underperformed on standardised annual tests. The Bush programme was called NCLB or No Child Left Behind; Obama's was Race To The Top or RTTT. It was part of a Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and threatens to infect every developed country including this one.

In addition to firing "bad teachers", entire schools may be closed under the programme and the funding given to private corporate-run institutions, "Charter Schools", using a voucher scheme in which tuition (these are private schools, remember) is partly paid from taxes as a voucher. Any shortfall would be assessed as user pays.

The entire enterprise rests on a negative view of teachers as an overpaid group, entrenched in privileges guarded by unions. The so-called solutions rely on faith in the market and the view that private enterprise is better than anything done by government.

Just as the faith in corporate wisdom may be shaken momentarily by such "small matters" as JP Morgan's outrageous trades that lost US$2 billion ($2.6 billion) or the late near-meltdown of global finance as a result of bankers betting the house, losing it, and being bailed out by taxpayers, so also there may be a moment's pause to contemplate the fact that the US educational reforms designed with a corporate mindset have been a grand failure.

As may be expected, teachers fearful for their jobs, taught to the test, thus hollowing out the curriculum. Of course, teachers were never the root of the problem. Poverty and familial disruption and inadequate nutrition and health care were not even being addressed.

Research has shown that while teachers are important in school, a greater amount of influence over academic performance is attributable to family and other non-school factors such as poverty. This is not to minimise teachers' importance but they are only part of the solution.

The privatising of schools has not proven advantageous. Dr Margaret Raymond of Stanford University's conservative think tank, The Hoover Institute, set out to demonstrate Charter Schools' successes and found the opposite. Only 17 per cent matched public schools, 37 per cent were worse and 46 per cent did no better. This despite the many advantages with which Charter Schools begin. They can cherry-pick their student population in that, unlike public schools, they don't have to accept everyone.

A similar experiment in New Zealand would probably produce no better outcomes - pace Einstein - just impose on a teaching profession the new burdens of a competitive atmosphere where merit pay is the incentive and decisions about advancement left to managers who need have no teaching experience themselves.

In such an atmosphere it's hard to imagine the fostering of such innovative teaching and creativity as I witnessed at Aramoho School, under the then leadership of Helen and Henry Ngapo.

In a low-decile school, with kids from underprivileged families, there was an eagerness to learn and a culture of respect. Children from backgrounds wherein you'd least expect it, would meet visitors, provide guidance to the school and to the rules of behaviour expected, in the most polite and charming way. You can't buy that. You can't quantify it. You can't make a business of it. You have to love it.