Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective.
OPINION: Does it really take six years to learn how to teach 10-year-olds algebra? Incredibly, in New Zealand, the answer is yes.
Teaching in New Zealand is a highly regulated profession. You need a four-year degree and then at least two years on the job with a mentor before you can become registered. This does seem excessive. Adult humans have been teaching their children since before we were humans. Teaching, and learning, is hard-wired into humanity.
If those six years were not enough, a prospective teacher must be assessed by the Teaching Council as being of good character and demonstrate that they adhere to six standards. You will not be surprised to learn that the first standard is to “Demonstrate commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Tangata Whenuatanga is an imprecise term that the Teaching Council describes as “Affirming Māori learners as Māori. Providing contexts for learning where the language, identity and culture of Māori learners and their whānau is affirmed.”
This is fine, I guess, but it is the second part of the standard that is tricky. Does the Treaty create a partnership? This is a political question for which decent and honourable people can and do disagree. Like many who have waded into this area of enquiry, I do not believe that a partnership was created in 1840.
I might be wrong, of course, many people smarter than me think otherwise. It is the nature of politics in a free society that we can hold different views, debate the issue, and go back to work. Our right to hold such perspectives is written into clause 13 of the Bill of Rights; “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”
Everyone except teachers, obviously.
BRUCE MACKAY/The Post
Teaching is a highly regulated profession in New Zealand.
Why, you may wonder, is it necessary for someone who wishes to teach maths to teenagers to hold a politically correct interpretation of a document signed in 1840? The ideological capture of the profession is not limited to this most important of the six principles.
In a study conducted by the NZ Initiative, a Wellington based free-market think tank of which I am a member, a review was made of the content that prospective teachers are subjected to during their four years of study.
Their analysis shows a heavy focus on social justice and related fields, and only a small emphasis on the science of teaching, and on science itself. The report notes that only 15% of year 8 teachers specialised in mathematics. You cannot teach what you cannot know.
One of the authors, registered teacher and researcher Stephanie Martin, wrote of her own experience during her studies when she was forced to confront her white guilt: “My privileges felt like marks against me, for which I had to repent and apologise. I articulated this guilt in my assignment. I poured my heart into it. I was self-effacing and remorseful. Yet the feedback I received indicated that my markers were not sufficiently pleased with my efforts. I had not been self-effacing enough.”
Stuff
Damien Grant: Old sedentary folks like me are trapped. I have nowhere else to go and my business, networks and hard-won insolvency licence resides in these shores.
The analysis makes it clear: our teachers are not taught how to teach but what to teach. The only consolation is that, thanks to the lack of focus on the science of education, they are not very good at it.
We have experienced a steady decline in education outcomes, especially by students from disadvantaged backgrounds, partly as a consequence of forcing teachers to invest time studying topics in the social justice curriculum rather than perfecting core teaching competence.
The Initiative report, authored by Stephanie Martin and Dr Michael Johnston, proposes to deal with the challenges facing our teaching training regime by creating a competitive registration regime, where alternatives to the Teaching Council could emerge.
This, Johnston and Martin believe, would create competitive tension in the sector, improve standards and choice for those seeking to become teachers as well as schools who employ them. I hope that the incoming education minister takes their proposal on board.
While the new minister is reviewing the topic, they may also want to revisit the statutory requirement that schools employ registered teachers. Seymour’s charter schools enjoyed the freedom to employ who they believed was competent to teach their pupils and as far as I can see there isn’t any evidence that these unregistered pedagogues were any better or worse than their registered peers.
If there is real value and skills being acquired in the protracted process of obtaining an education qualification, then those with these skills will command a premium in the marketplace for teachers.
Giving principals the freedom to choose the best person to teach in their schools would appear to be in the best interests of our ensuring our children get an excellent education; assuming that is still the desired objective of our education sector.
