Wanting kids taught online shows Government’s utter contempt for teaching as a profession.
National see teachers as Taxi drivers in an uber world.
The latest attack on our cultural fibre and sense of collective citizenship is National’s plan to start bringing in more on-line ‘learning’.
This is an all out war now on public education. It has started with the funnelling of millions into private education and secretive idealogical Charter Schools and it ends with the National Government effectively killing off Teachers altogether.
This is such short sighted madness driven by budget cutting needs. All National see when they look at state expenditure is huge money sunk into education. This desire to attack Teachers was a key theme of rich lister Stephen Jennings when he paused from plundering the planet to spread his neoliberal wisdom to us all on TV last month.
The truth is that we have one of the best public education systems in the world. Where we fail is with those living in poverty, the solution is more money into education, not eliminating the Teachers!
It takes work to be a nation. It takes work to agree on a set of universal expectations and values we place on ourselves and society. If you remove Teachers, you are removing one of the most important social influencers in your child’s life, alongside the need to socialise with other children. On-line teaching has a place of course, but to consider replacing Teachers suggests an utter failure of recognising what our education system is supposed to actually do!
We are teaching citizens, not just cogs in the machine, (even if the machine is a fancy computer). We are teaching about the human experience, what it is to be part of a wider society, considering the challenges ahead of us. We are trying to equip tomorrows citizens with a critical mind and self autonomy with a strong sense of common bonds and sharing. Removing young people from that vital social interaction only serves to diminish the individual, it doesn’t celebrate it.
Wanting kids taught at home would be the last nail in the coffin of a progressive liberal democracy – solitary units powerless in their individualism is a neoliberal wet dream.
No wonder National are pursuing this.
To quote a mega hypocritical National minister namely Hekia Parata, responding to Chris Hipkins and Annette King in parliament yesterday:
“We actually trust New Zealanders to make choices for themselves rather than have them prescribed to them by all-knowing other people”.
“Trust” eh Minister?
Given your control freak boss John Key is so bloody paranoid and so keen on spying on New Zealanders, I would assume he for one does NOT trust New Zealanders at all. Therefore what is this “trust” thing you so insincerely waffle on about?
So, by definition, Parata with her own statement IS a all -knowing other person because she is telling others what SHE wants.
Well said Xray.
Pity Hekia Paratas parameters of choice don’t include allowing cannabis use amongst consenting sane normal Kiwis.
It is clear this is all coordinated planned social engineering.
“We actually trust New Zealanders to make choices for themselves rather than have them prescribed to them by all-knowing other people”.
Yeah, the usual line from a neoliberal government, junk food for school kids was the result of one of their first decisions when taking over government in 2008.
If they believe in people being able to make choices for themselves, why do they then not liberalise or legalise marihuana, as people can then choose to not only drink or abstain from alcohol, but also to smoke or not smoke a soft drug?
Professionally I stand to gain from this, as an experienced elearning provider. But I think it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. I have personal experience of giving and receiving this kind of training. It’s best suited to training push-button automatons to complete mundane tasks without any thought needed. In other words, bio-machines. That’s the elite agenda. They do not want people able to critically reflect on anything. Workers will sit attached to a computer, with computer-generated times for toilet breaks and you will be paid only for work completed, judged by the computer which will probably put the few cents earned into your account.
Middle managers in the private sector (the ones who sneer at tax-payer funded, unionised workers like teachers) better beware. Teachers are actually highly employable. Most are degree educated with exceptionally strong communication and influencing skills. They are generally quite amenable too, and so very appealing to employers. When the unemployed teachers flood the job market they will end up taking jobs from the very middle class workers who might support this.
one can see smaller ‘poor kids’ schools being closed, and Serco or similar getting the contract as budget on line “cools” providers while the Kings Colleges stay open and get even more funding!
the filthy Nats have tried and tried to break teachers solidarity and have failed so far, unite all who can be united to help teachers and parent communities resist this ACT fantasy
YEP, John Oliver telling it like is really is. Charter schools have failed in America, UK and elsewhere. But the fat cats at the top want that public money in their bank accounts and they do not give a stuff what long term damage their greedy agenda causes. They see the poorly educated, bigoted, unsocial, narrow mindedness as a result would be a plus to maintain their status quo of corporate greed and corruption.
Sweden has come out and apologized for destroying their once great education system for corporate greed. At least they recognize after 2 decades that it’s an abysmal failure and they have let down their children.
Children should never be made into a business, and exploited for profit.
Why should the tax payer, that includes the poor, pay for private business. This is a rip off as public money gets funneled into rich people’s pockets. If hypocritical business people, who believe in the flaming free market, want charter schools, let them fund it themselves without any state assistance. Let the business wear the loss, not the public and certainly not the children.
If your goal is to create a society of mindless consumers then providing educational opportunities is counter-productive.
George Carlin nailed it a decade ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE
What a load of bollocks saying its about providing choices when its about saving money and making money of the backs of our kids education. If pnats want all NZ kids to get a good education pay for them to go to private schools and who will not like this aye!
There is a clear strategy behind this. It includes further disempowering teachers, so the unions lose more members, and sink into insignificance. It is also aimed at individualising the teaching and learning experience, which fits the neoliberal agenda perfectly, those that do well will manage and move ahead no matter what, even faster, those that struggle and need some team spirit to get ahead, they will be left to their own.
It is aimed at further dividing the population, at individualising thinking, learning and doing things, in all aspects of life.
And they can use standardised teaching programs and material, so the teacher has no significant role to play, except be a checker and box ticker (online).
Human interaction will be disintencivised, so we have more emotional and mental cripples, with lack of social skills, and that serves the interests of the elite, they rather have powerless robots and nerds, who compete to do the menial and not so menial work, pushing buttons, touching screen templates and doing computerised number crushing and design work.
It will provide ample human material for the in future also more commercialised, outsourced health sector, where service providers will have endless subjects needing counselling, fitness training and guidance and so forth, creating totally new jobs, for an expanding industry.
We can do away with more teachers, same as we have done away with public servants and will get more rid off, all over the show, as the computerised systems will do more work.
I am actually not completely opposed to the idea of online teaching and so, as long as it is only for those having serious problems interacting at school, have physical or other disabilities that are better addressed by allowing time and space to learn from home, and for special teaching of computer type stuff.
But it must not become too large a part of teaching, must be kept in check and supervised and managed by well qualified teachers, who still need to play a key role in having teacher to student interaction (and vice versa).
The unions are alerted, and I hope they take a firm stand on this, further undermining of their profession and skills and role in society must not be tolerated, not in the beginnings, for sure.
I always enjoy your comments MiA, so the following rant is offered as a light-hearted observation.
“intencivised” and “disintencivised” are ugly words recently arising from corporate-speak and rooted in the neolib/competition paradigm (J Key loves using these terms). They also reflect the (largely) US habit of converting into verbs as many nouns as they can.
Much better to use perfectly adequate older terms like encouraged and discouraged.
Mike: “…so the teacher has no significant role to play, except be a checker and box ticker (online).”
Nope, sorry mate. That can easily be done automatically.
😉
John Oliver, a genius, why have we no such character on our MSM?
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