One teacher’s view of education in New Zealand

Schools put our kids in ‘boxes’

SARAH AIONO

Last updated 05:00 20/03/2014

What are your views on education in New Zealand? As the election season gets underway, we asked our readers to share their stories.

People who work in education move in similar circles. The police and nurses are no different. It’s like meeting someone at a party and finding out they’re a kindred spirit – they walk your walk.

In my case, I can identify most with people who have been teachers. If not teachers, education advisers, or psychologists. We automatically connect, as if we are a family of sorts.

Most recently, these connections have highlighted for me several common themes through our conversations.

Firstly, the conversations usually start with the heavy workload, the stress, the late nights and the feeling that no matter how much we do, it is never quite enough.

Then the conversation progresses to policy impositions and ultimately, national standards, and how it’s directly impacting on the ability to do the job we once were excited to do.

For those of us who are parents, there comes a third component to the discussion: given that my younger children are just starting out in the school system, the chat inevitably returns to how I view school for my own offspring.

This is where I have made some startling observations.

My teacher friends are worried. They are genuinely concerned for the well-being of their own children within the education system.

They work hard to try to select the most appropriate school for their child to attend, often having to drive past several other schools to ensure this happens.

They liaise closely with the school staff in order to ensure the impact of policies such as national standards, larger class sizes, clear reporting, etc, doesn’t filter down to mean their child has a negative experience of school.

More recently, the teacher/parents I have spoken to have all categorically stated that if they could they would choose to home-school their child. That they felt their child’s emotional and mental well-being was at-risk in some schools because of the pressure schools are now under to conform to the government’s policies.

You know it must be bad if teachers, given half the chance, would choose to home-school their own kids.

Read more here on why they say this “For teacher/parents who have children who find school somewhat challenging, be it socially, emotionally or academically, the current policy direction will require the school to label them and make them fit in a box.” : http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/nz-election-school-of-politics/9845052/Schools-put-our-kids-in-boxes

Or this “So as a teacher/parent, I would raise my hand to have my children out of this system. And it would seem, so would many others I speak with. They see learning as experiencing, making meaning, doing and exploring – not always having to meet a benchmark to prove one’s ability to learn.

Learning should be happening consistently in the life of a child, making meaning from experience. As such, children don’t need to be boxed in and limited to a range of criteria determined by someone that will not walk their path in life.

The knowledge they seek will be relevant to their life experiences and as such cannot be measured. So, as a teacher/parent, I feel it is that bad.

I do not want my children categorised and ranked, given a number or a grade. I want them having experiences, making connections and engaging in motivating learning. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/nz-election-school-of-politics/9845052/Schools-put-our-kids-in-boxes

Here are a couple of the comments:

Reading through these comments it becomes apparent that a lot of people have no understanding of what learning is or the testing thereof. If all of us stopped learning the day we left school I am pretty sure very few of us would have achieved anything. The fact is most of the useful things you learn in life you only learn once you have left school and as some people have intuited school has become a “box”, a place where for 13 years a form of “crowd control” is practiced and inquiring minds are frowned upon to some extent, rote and parroting of some other persons “learnings” is in no way or form education.

I totally agree. I only wish my parents knew what I now know and had the same values as me. Then I would have had a real education instead of going to school.