Mercantile approach to our education simply isn't enough

MANDATE: John Key's Nats may view electoral success as a mandate to give New Zealanders more of the same.PHOTO/APN

Lenny Bruce, an American comedian, developed a unique stand-up style that consisted of his free-flowing associations on issues of his choice, some political, some personal - even intimate.

He saw these improvisations as analogous to the spontaneous riffs of jazz musicians. In these externalised ruminations, he sometimes used colourful language that offended the authorities. He was convicted of obscenity in New York City and was banned from performing in Sydney, Australia, for using language the like of which and more we hear weekly without complaint or protest on Seven Days and others.

Times change. But one part of Bruce's routines remains cogent today. He pointed out that his week's earnings from performance exceeded the average annual salary of teachers. He spoke out against that inequity because he believed that while what he did was transient, teachers' influence on children's education made an impact on the country's future.

Valuing and supporting the work of teachers remains important on the 48th anniversary of Bruce's death. It is also part of the yardstick by which we may assess the accomplishment of the Government led by John Key. It's useful to do this in view of the coming election in which National, it is claimed by some pollsters, will probably return to power and can be counted on to view a positive electoral outcome as a referendum on its past performance and a mandate to do more of the same.

National's plan, only partly implemented so far, is to change the rules of the education paradigm. For many years, New Zealanders have been the happy beneficiaries of a very good educational system from early childhood education through university years. While successful completion of schooling was the lot of many, a significant minority - often, but not exclusively Maori - has not been performing well in school. Not incidentally, those with poor performance tend to come from the families of the not-so-well off. They're educationally deprived and they're economically poor as well.

The Key/National programme depends for its rationale on a theory and practice developed first in the US. It's that the goal of education is to prepare young people for the world of work, holding out the carrot that the better the education, the better-paying the job attained.

From that theory flows the belief that if children aren't learning, then it's the fault of the teachers. And consistent with the business-orientation of this model, the best way to find out just which teachers are most blameworthy is by subjecting the students to standardised testing and then measuring the quality of the teachers on the basis of the results of the testing of the students. Once the poorer teachers are replaced, the full benefits will flow to the students' achievement and ultimately to their economic advancement.

The trouble with this approach is several-fold. As a practical matter, it's been tried in the US for the past 10 years and failed spectacularly. When the teacher's performance is measured by her student's test scores, it becomes a matter of survival to teach to the test. And since the quantitative models don't apply to art or music, those "accessories" are soon dispatched. In some American cities such as Atlanta and Dallas, the cheating by desperate teachers and administrators has led to scandals and criminal sanctions. Worse, the performance of poor and minority students has not been improved.

This one-dimensional approach of National's doesn't address other important bases of poor educational performance than teaching, such as poverty. As one critic put it, "the people who say poverty is no excuse for low (academic) performance are now using teacher accountability as an excuse for doing nothing about poverty".

And then there is the question of education's goal. Beyond its mercantile possibilities, education ought to help make a person into a better citizen, by providing the tools for critical thinking and engaged exposure to help foster and develop curious minds in our young people.