For all intents and purposes…
ASCD is an internationally reputable education organization that was “founded in 1943. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 160,000 members in 148 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.” You can check out their website for yourself at http://www.ascd.org/about-ascd.aspx
Longstanding writer and expert on things educational, Walter McKenzie is part of the ASCD team. Under the heading of 2011 EGC - Education Gut Check (http://edge.ascd.org/_2011-EGC-Education-Gut-Check/blog/4000959/127586.html?b=) he lists “10 gut check statements” on education: among them, these two:
“Education has become the most politicized helping profession.
Politically-motivated non-educators are promoting their own agendas for public education that polarize public opinion for their political gain. We have been reacting to their agendas instead of proactively defining the national education debate in terms of the public good.
We are in jeopardy of losing the “public” in public education.
Private interests are inserting themselves into the national dialogue, making it more about money and influence than it is about teaching and learning. If we do not reclaim our profession, education will become privatized and the ideal of a free public education for everyone will cease to exist.”
Does this sound uncomfortably familiar? Then go and have a look at the Ministry of Education’s Statement of Intent to see what’s on the horizon: http://www.minedu.govt.nz/theMinistry/PublicationsAndResources/StatementOfIntent/SOI2011.aspx
“Priority 2” is about primary education…parts of it are reproduced below. National Standards are likely to be only the beginning of the thin edge of the wedge.
Included are such statements as:
- Proportion of students ACHIEVING the National Standards or Ngä Whanaketanga Rumaki Mäori
- Between 2011 and 2013 we will develop benchmarks to assess performance against the National Standards and Ngä Whanaketanga Rumaki Mäori for students including Mäori students, Pasifika students, students from schools in low socio-economic communities, and boys.
- TARGET (2012/13): Evidence of increasing proportions of students achieving ‘at’ or ‘above’ 2011/12 benchmarks (National Standards)
- TARGET (2013/14): Evidence of increasing proportions of students achieving ‘at’ or ‘above’ 2012/13 benchmarks (Ngä Whanaketanga Rumaki Mäori)
- Between 2011 and 2014 we will develop and implement a new national monitoring project which will assess literacy and numeracy achievement in years 4 and 8. This replaces the discontinued National Education Monitoring Project. (Run successfully and independently by the University of Otago for twenty years - until being “disestablished” last year).
Walter McKenzie knows a thing or two – including our kids’ school future….why do we let this happen? New Zealand’s Kelvin Smythe provides good insight on his latest online posting (http://www.networkonnet.co.nz/index.php?section=latest&id=321):
“Sophie Scholl, who has had a German film made of her short life (1921-1943), was brought to my attention by Clive James in his monumental book of essays, Cultural Amnesia. Hans, her brother, did his best to keep his sister out of the White Rose resistance group, but she insisted. They managed to distribute a few handbills before, inevitably, they were captured. Hans and Sophie, from a well-educated German family had glittering Nazi futures, were a few of the very few Germans to protest the treatment of the Jews. Throughout her interrogation, the Gestapo offered her a choice of freedom if she recanted, a choice not extended to her brother. Plans by the Munich party office to publicly hang them were scrapped for fear of the resultant publicity. She walked bravely to guillotine, glanced up at the steel, said not a word, put her head down and was gone.
She had borne witness to goodness against evil, and in doing that provided a point of idealism for her country to begin regeneration.
‘The real damage is done,’ she had said, ‘by those millions who want to survive. The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own weaknesses. Those who don’t like to make waves – or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature.’”
Whose intents and purposes are really being served in our situation?
