Erica Stanford is clear in her priorities, but there is saying and there is doing. Ambitious aims are all good but it is how policies play out in the classroom with teachers and students that matter.
Thanks Mark - great analysis. I well remember Tomorrow's Schools being introduced during my early years of teaching but it was not until I returned from a stint overseas that I began to see the impact of those neo-liberal policies on our egalitarian education system. I often wished for the kind of support for schools the old Education Boards used to offer as they worked to ensure all schools could deliver the best teaching & learning opportunities for all. Oh, and thanks to the nod toward Scottish Presbyterianism!! [We need to catch up for a chat over a cuppa soon!]
Yes we lost so much with Tomorrow's Schools but you are right that it wasn't immediately apparent. I remember that it seemed to take a few years before waking up to realize a lot of the support structures were no longer there. And that the sort of work that the Education Boards did (with local knowledge) and the Department were gone. Thanks for your comment and definitely a catch up soon is in order.
David Lange took on the Education portfolio himself because he feared what another Minister in the thrawl of the Treasury thinking of the time would do to Education. One also has to consider the implementation by National in the early 1990s of the decile funding system and the removal of zoning on schools. I went to Melville High School in Hamilton, which had over 1200 students when I went. I considered it to be a model of egalitarianism... until deciles came in and zoning was removed - before the end of the 1990s, Melville High School was no longer representative of the NZ society I grew up in - white flight had happened and the roll dropped significantly.
I do know more than many others on NZ literacy history because my knowledge is first hand from family experiences , from working in the educational field not just from texts.
Academia is not fond of me since I accuse them of wrecking NZs once world class education system with destructive theories , many originating from Dewey and his cronies.
I have a special hatred for Marie Clay who somehow taught the entire English world to cancel explicitly taught phonics which has destroyed the futures of multi millions of children . Her research was quite dishonest but she was ideologically driven and of course her theory complied with Progressivism so her bogus research was not challenged except by a few brave academics.
American Emily Handford , journalist has written very excellent critiques of Clay .
How junk science by one dishonest NZ er could dominate the reading methods of the entire English speaking world is astonishing but certainly worth writing about . Having lived through the 'bloody' battle of the reading wars , and at a very personal level seen the outrageous persecution dished out by the Ministry and Dept. of Education , towards not just my mother Doris Ferry , who taught privately intensive traditional phonics to thousands of remedial reading and other students . Her students were also persecuted which is recorded in a 20/20 documentary programme late last century and screened on natiomal TV. According to a professor of education this helped change NZ back to phonics because it was so shocking that small children should be subjected to threats and fear simply because their parents took them to phonic reading instruction.
Anyway I have spent many years reading and researching the NZ , literacy history and have very many boxes of historical school texts illustrating how literacy and numeracy were taught last century.
I am very interested in this history being documented and am willing to help anyone else in their research or writings. My phone number is 04 9022537. NZ.
Dear Mark , I was pleased to read your assessment of Tomorrow schools which I know less about than the nature of our education earlier last century.
I have been involved , intimately and at the forefront most of 50 years in the problematical "Reading Wars' particularly in the 1980s with my late mother Doris Ferry an educational reformer in literacy education.
Being of Scottish descent and raised in Dunedin as a third generation educationalist , I have an entirely contrary interpretation of Scottish Traditional Education. Unlike most academics I have a distinct dislike for Peter Fraser's and Clarence Beeby's introduction of Progressive Education in about the 1950's . NZ academics , seem to have glossed over the destructive nature of this revolutionary but gradual change in our education . For me , Fraser's statement on egalitarianism is all hollow rhetoric and towards the end of his long life Beeby , himself deeply regretted the changes he was responsible for implementing. Personal letters he wrote confirm this.
There are currently t overseas thinkers and educationalists who are challenging the tenets of Dewey's Progressive Education and frankly it is time we have discussions on it here - Traditional vs Progressive beliefs.
As long as Traditional Liberal education dominated in our schools we produced an egalitarian society . I maintain Progressive Education destroyed it.
Thanks Gaynor. I really appreciate you reading and engaging with my work and your critique of Beeby has given me something to think about. In my next post, I'm having a crack at the structured literacy question and unpacking how this ties into some of the 'reading wars' issues from the past. I'm trained as an historian (of education) but i acknowledge that you know a lot more about this area than myself so i will be interested in your thoughts here. Thanks for your response and apologies to not replying sooner - i have been spending some time in the South Island mountains/lakes.
Thanks Mark - great analysis. I well remember Tomorrow's Schools being introduced during my early years of teaching but it was not until I returned from a stint overseas that I began to see the impact of those neo-liberal policies on our egalitarian education system. I often wished for the kind of support for schools the old Education Boards used to offer as they worked to ensure all schools could deliver the best teaching & learning opportunities for all. Oh, and thanks to the nod toward Scottish Presbyterianism!! [We need to catch up for a chat over a cuppa soon!]
Yes we lost so much with Tomorrow's Schools but you are right that it wasn't immediately apparent. I remember that it seemed to take a few years before waking up to realize a lot of the support structures were no longer there. And that the sort of work that the Education Boards did (with local knowledge) and the Department were gone. Thanks for your comment and definitely a catch up soon is in order.
David Lange took on the Education portfolio himself because he feared what another Minister in the thrawl of the Treasury thinking of the time would do to Education. One also has to consider the implementation by National in the early 1990s of the decile funding system and the removal of zoning on schools. I went to Melville High School in Hamilton, which had over 1200 students when I went. I considered it to be a model of egalitarianism... until deciles came in and zoning was removed - before the end of the 1990s, Melville High School was no longer representative of the NZ society I grew up in - white flight had happened and the roll dropped significantly.
I do know more than many others on NZ literacy history because my knowledge is first hand from family experiences , from working in the educational field not just from texts.
Academia is not fond of me since I accuse them of wrecking NZs once world class education system with destructive theories , many originating from Dewey and his cronies.
I have a special hatred for Marie Clay who somehow taught the entire English world to cancel explicitly taught phonics which has destroyed the futures of multi millions of children . Her research was quite dishonest but she was ideologically driven and of course her theory complied with Progressivism so her bogus research was not challenged except by a few brave academics.
American Emily Handford , journalist has written very excellent critiques of Clay .
How junk science by one dishonest NZ er could dominate the reading methods of the entire English speaking world is astonishing but certainly worth writing about . Having lived through the 'bloody' battle of the reading wars , and at a very personal level seen the outrageous persecution dished out by the Ministry and Dept. of Education , towards not just my mother Doris Ferry , who taught privately intensive traditional phonics to thousands of remedial reading and other students . Her students were also persecuted which is recorded in a 20/20 documentary programme late last century and screened on natiomal TV. According to a professor of education this helped change NZ back to phonics because it was so shocking that small children should be subjected to threats and fear simply because their parents took them to phonic reading instruction.
Anyway I have spent many years reading and researching the NZ , literacy history and have very many boxes of historical school texts illustrating how literacy and numeracy were taught last century.
I am very interested in this history being documented and am willing to help anyone else in their research or writings. My phone number is 04 9022537. NZ.
Dear Mark , I was pleased to read your assessment of Tomorrow schools which I know less about than the nature of our education earlier last century.
I have been involved , intimately and at the forefront most of 50 years in the problematical "Reading Wars' particularly in the 1980s with my late mother Doris Ferry an educational reformer in literacy education.
Being of Scottish descent and raised in Dunedin as a third generation educationalist , I have an entirely contrary interpretation of Scottish Traditional Education. Unlike most academics I have a distinct dislike for Peter Fraser's and Clarence Beeby's introduction of Progressive Education in about the 1950's . NZ academics , seem to have glossed over the destructive nature of this revolutionary but gradual change in our education . For me , Fraser's statement on egalitarianism is all hollow rhetoric and towards the end of his long life Beeby , himself deeply regretted the changes he was responsible for implementing. Personal letters he wrote confirm this.
There are currently t overseas thinkers and educationalists who are challenging the tenets of Dewey's Progressive Education and frankly it is time we have discussions on it here - Traditional vs Progressive beliefs.
As long as Traditional Liberal education dominated in our schools we produced an egalitarian society . I maintain Progressive Education destroyed it.
Thanks Gaynor. I really appreciate you reading and engaging with my work and your critique of Beeby has given me something to think about. In my next post, I'm having a crack at the structured literacy question and unpacking how this ties into some of the 'reading wars' issues from the past. I'm trained as an historian (of education) but i acknowledge that you know a lot more about this area than myself so i will be interested in your thoughts here. Thanks for your response and apologies to not replying sooner - i have been spending some time in the South Island mountains/lakes.
Thanks Mark. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Thanks Stephen. Hoping to have part 2 out in June.