Parata: wrong, indefensible, immoral, unethical, inhuman and brutally unjust

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Hekia Parata is at it again. Our Minister of Education is getting ahead with the blame game as she tells us her proposed educational reforms will give the government more powers to deal with schools Parata says are failing their children.

It’s a repeat of her regular mantra that poverty and decile ratings are not relevant to student success and where students are failing then the schools and teachers are to blame. Generally the middle class goes along with this rubbish because it doesn’t affect them directly.

If “decile is not destiny”, as the minister is fond of saying, why is there such a strong correlation between a school’s decile rating and the achievement of its students in external exams?

We all know there are students who beat the odds in low-income communities. Schools and teachers work minor miracles every day to achieve this though inspiring and encouraging children living in the most difficulty circumstances to achieve to their best while Parata’s government piles more pressure on their families – trashing beneficiaries, selling stage houses after slashing tens of thousands from the waiting list and treating people like human garbage at WINZ.

The very successful exceptions from low-income communities simply prove the rule – that poverty in a land of plenty is socially and educationally disabling.

Parata’s comments are wrong, indefensible, immoral, unethical, inhuman and brutally unjust. 

They condemn the majority of children at schools in low income communities to a life of unemployment or work as part of the well-established and growing-by-the-day “precariat” – workers on or close to the minimum wage with no guaranteed hours of work. This is no problems for National’s core supporters who are typically employers who like unemployment, especially youth unemployment, because it keeps wages down and profits up.

Here’s a graph from Infometrics. Note the 15 – 19 year old age group. Despite the growing success of students in NCEA this means little when the jobs simply aren’t there. Youth unemployment has remained consistently high for 30 years with bugger-all done in education, the economy or government policy to change anything. In fact the result of government policies had been to cement in place high rates of youth unemployment because that’s what National and Labour’s backers want.

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The sheer inhumanity of the last 30 years is reflected in the fact that the unemployed young people of today are the children of the those in the first big hump of youth unemployment (1987 to 1996) created by Labour and National economic policies.

We don’t need reform of our schools. We need reform of our economy.

56 COMMENTS

  1. The first impression I had when I heard this on Radio NZ yesterday was, “oh great, here’s another ‘incentive’ laid on by government to motivate schools not to report problems they might be having’.

    As we’ve been seeing in the last seven years, National hates statistics and data that show their policies in a bad light, whether it be resisting calls to measure poverty; not recording foreign investors buying up houses and farms; mis-reporting crime statistics; mis-stating state houses that are allegedly “wrong size/wrong place”, etc.

    You’re right, John, that the middle classes seem spectacularly unconcerned at what is going on with the children from poorer families. Unless it affects them directly (eg; Parata’s doomed attempt to increase classroom sizes), it’s a matter of studiously ignoring these problems (I refuse to call them “issues”) and focusing solely on their own circumstances/

    The fragmentation of society is well under way.

  2. The Middle Class are concerned but we don’t think intergenerational welfare is the solution.

    In fact it’s probably part of the problem.

    • You’d rather have families starving? People will riot in the streets before that happens. Learn from overseas circumstances and be thankful of the safety net successive governments have put in place.

      • I wish the oppressed working classes WOULD start rioting in the street. No sign of that so far. They seem remarkably compliant and often quite reactionary. A good number of them must be voting for John Key because a lot of middle class people actually vote for Labour or the Greens.

        • Nope. Too many of them don’t vote, that’s the problem.

          Alot of the middle class and especially the ‘upper middle class’ vote National. Definitely more vote National than Labour based on everything I’ve seen, read etc.

          Still think the majority of those oppressed working class who do vote vote labour or greens.

      • Obviously not.

        But the devil is in the detail, and some of the rules regarding welfare entitlement have, over time, entrenched an underclass of welfare recipients.

        In short, the benefit has stolen their mana.

        Although it may suit some on the left to retain a breeding ground for disenchantment and dysfunctional behaviour, I think we could do a lot better than we have to uplift these people rather than give them a hand-out and pretend they don’t exist.

          • I think Andrew does not quite understand that the rubber hits the road in very Maslovian way. We need a roof (rented) warmth (clothing / energy paid for by $s) and food ($s)….
            Andrew might wish to live in a state where there is little or no welfare: the “criminal” classes would definitely have him on their radar. To many on the Right welfare is an abomination only to be tolerated because the social costs to them might get too high. It gets tolerable if you can minimise it and “punish” recipients to “encourage” them to pull themselves out of it. That means taking someone elses’ job at a lower rate of course.

        • I can sort of understand those who say teach them to fish rather than giving them a fish but we still need to provide the equipment & training for that, this rubbish that welfare only creates dependency can only be believed by those who live a privileged life having no contact with the multitude of hard working (or those trying to find jobs that have been destroyed) people in NZ.

      • Ahh I see. So someone with say a disability, with limited income and opportunities, perhaps facing prejudices because of their age, sex, race etc, can haul themselves up by their own bootstraps, to join you in the brighter future, on fresh air and a smile. Such glad tidings should be shared widely Patrick. Pray tell, how does someone defy the Laws of Physics and make something out of nothing, without at least some form of outside help and/or a goodly slice of luck? You’ll transform Western society as we know it, so please, do share.

      • You make your own ladder, Patrick? Pray tell, who taught you how to do that? And who paid the wages of the person who taught you that? And who keeps your ladder from being nicked? And who pays the policeman’s/woman’s wages?

        Funnily enough, if if weren’t for a lot of people contributing to your well-being, you wouldn’t have a ladder at all.

        You need to look further afield than your narrow outlook on life which extends no further than the reach of your hand.

    • By that logic then we should remove all welfare.

      That would remove an “incentive” to be “lazy” and would mean those lazy poor people would go and get jobs or create their own businesses.

      How does that work in other countries? Does a lack of welfare mean there is less unemployment and less homelessness?

      Because to fit your logic you’d have to find a real life example where it actually works. Go on.

      • Good question Lara

        I’ve spent a large part of my working lives in the 3rd world and know how it works. Most recently in Indonesia.

        The bottom ranks of this society are poor beyond belief and seem to scrape a living out of next-to-nothing. They work hard for what little money they get. Living on NZ welfare would be wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

        One point that the visitor notices immediately in Indonesia: There are lot of smiling, happy but dirt-poor kids and very, very few sullen teenagers. Almost without exception they are polite.

        There is some very un-PC discipline in operation and it looks like it works. Maybe we’ve lost something of value in western society?

        • Just how AndrewO likes it- a large group of compliant, happy, extremely poor people, ready to exploit for labour (business) purposes. No hard to see what sort of person we’re dealing with here, is it. Is that your vision for NZ, Andrew, is it? Meanwhile, his landlord ilk are renting out their ‘rentals’ to these poor people and getting the rent fully, or partially, paid for by WINZ i.e. the Taxpayer. Who’s bludging now? Let’s talk about the intergenerational landlord bludgers, shall we? Or you might have a business and you employ these poor people but you pay them minimum wage, casual (of course, 3 casuals is way cheaper than a full-timer) so they have to get a government top-up to survive or worse, you get a government subsidy for your employee. Let’s talk about the ongoing business/corporate welfare, Andrew.

        • Are you suggesting that a brutal dictatorship like Indonesia is a model for New Zealand? Because the people look happy to you?

          Is that the best you can do?

          Here’s another question for you.

          If all those poor people on benefits are just lazy bludgers who really don’t want to work, then why do numbers of people on benefits decrease when the economy expands and more jobs are created?

          Could the numbers on benefits be more a function of the economic cycle of expansion and contraction?

          We had full employment for a while there in NZ back in the 1960’s to early 1970’s. Perhaps focussing on expanding the economy to provide employment might work better than moving to a brutal dictatorship?

          • Open your mind too much and your brains will fall out. Ok, it’s an old cliche, but kinda appropriate nevertheless.

            I doubt many folk would “open their minds” to a brutal dictatorship. Especially when you’ve just referred to Hitler and book burnings. Are you going to “open your mind” to nazism?

          • Lara, you missed my point. There is indeed massive poverty in Indonesia. This is definitely not good.

            My point was that despite their poverty, there is self discipline and pride in self.

            Things that many in the West have lost.

            • Indoctrination as you have been suggesting now for some comments, runs counter to individual pursuits.

              Poverty got you twisted, what are you? Free marketeer, or commie scum?

            • You guys really did miss a great opportunity to post this; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3DWB7CBdvXU ; in reply to AndrewOnuts. When he brought up the point of poor Indonesian kids being happy to not eat on the regular. I could not wait any longer, so there it is.

              Goldmen Sachs have a habit of making big and loud market calls for the price of gold and oil to surge $100USD respectively. Then the price drops by $100USD. There calls should be seen as another contrarian buy signal–
              http://lawrieongold.com/2015/04/22/downwards-price-manipulation-of-gold-to-asian-buyers-big-advantage/

              There are many concerns about Indonesia. Many foreign investors are doing a Key, devaluing the Raphia and buying in the dips. Making the Raphia the worst performing currency in Asia. Just like Key did to us in our dollar devaluation in the 90’s.

              These dirty, grubby market manipulations have had profound effects on the way Indonesian children live there lives. Children work in Gold mines, under soft unsupported ground. Indonesia’s gold is as tainted as blood diamonds are–
              http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/unearthing-toxic-conditions-impoverished-gold-miners/

              The only thing we should take away from the Indonesian education experience is private corporate interests should stay the hell out of education.

            • Bullshit! There is exploitation of illiterate uneducated children so families can scrape enough together to eat each day. The “pride ” you carp about is a form of fear instilled by a culture of dire poverty. What an arrogant ignoramus you are! I was met at Ataturk airport recently by a child to get my suitcase to the shuttle. 11 or 12 years old possibly Kurdish and seen as inferior in Turkey. He is barely surviving along with his father who is paid less than other shuttle drivers simply for not being Turkish. This is the reality not some pathetic middle class pakeha condecension as seen thru rose coloured glasses.

            • If you know and live with poor people in NZ you will know they have pride and self discipline.

              Your attitude comes across as very judgemental.

              And stupid.

              Because my original question was asking you for an example where removing welfare worked, in respect of a result of less unemployment and less homelessness.

              My bad for not including a minimum measure of human health such as maternal mortality or child malnutrition. I thought such a concept would be rather universal, in that if removing welfare WORKS then it should lead to a better result on any / majority of measurements than the reverse.

        • Well, I guess – if you consider “Third-World level of poverty” to be something of value that we shouldn’t lose. I don’t think many NZers visiting Third World countries look at those “smiling, happy but dirt-poor kids” who are “scraping a living out of next to nothing” and think “Gee, I wish we had this at home.” Or at least, I sure as fuck hope they don’t.

          • Of course you’re “lucky”, Patrick. I’m guessing you were fortunate to be born into an affluent middle-class family; white; and educated at a private school. Plus you’ve had the benefit of everything that past taxpayers have built; communications infrastructure; free hospitals; low-cost medicine; electricity; roading; railways; airlines – all paid for by our parents and grandparents.

            That doesn’t excuse your attitude toward poverty, which is based on victim-blaming because to consider the problem more deeply means having to set aside your cherished prejudices.

            You might begin by considering why, since 1984, we’ve had;

            * falling rates of home ownership,

            * growing child poverty

            * an increasing wealth/income gap

            The Rogernomics “revolution” was supposed to benefit us all. Instead, only the top income earners, or wealthy, have increased their financial position.

            You can blame those who are the poorest, but it only shows your personal lack of insight, clinging to parroted cliches, and little else.

          • MILT: You’re conflating two issues.

            I’m not suggesting poverty is a good thing. Far from it. What I AM saying is that poverty need not be associated with crime and other antisocial behaviour.

            Poverty is therefore not an excuse. Just because you’re poor doesn’t you can have no self discipline.

    • Um, you know most of these kids have parents who are working, right? Sadly your comment seems to reflect the very middle class insularity John is referring to.

    • You’re dead right Andrew. Intergenerational annihilation is the answer.
      Mind you, who is going to look after you stupid pricks in your retirement?

      • If you don’t like it, Patrick, set up your own blog.

        For someone who whitters on about self-determination and independence, you sure have a heightened sense of entitlement.

        Word to the wise; don’t piss the moderators off. Never a good move. (A lesson I learned a wee while ago when I was first starting out on the ‘netty-thingy.)

  3. All the policies National want to try have been tried in the USA and have been a disaster. The teachers, the parents and even the kids have been telling their Dept of Ed that the policies are a disaster but their Dept of Ed listened to Gates and the other billionaires and belittled the “suburban moms” and anyone who said to look at the evidence about good educational practice.

    Anyway, a large group of (middle-class) parents are rebelling and that has caused some claw back of policies. Unfortunately, the policies that mostly effect the poor and black stay in place because they don’t have the same political clout e.g. forced closure of schools.

  4. ” We don’t need reform of our schools. We need reform of our economy. ”

    Never a truer word spoken my mother would have said.

    @ Andrewo has highlighted an interesting point.
    Unless @ Andrewo is a farmer, and I mean an actual farmer, not someone employed by a corporate to exploit a living organism by any means, fair or foul. I.e . Chemicals, crushing them together, stacking them on small plots of chemical soaked land etc, then he too is a beneficiary of money. Money borrowed from off-shore which is lending leveraged against our Primary Industry which is …..

    “ Little @ Andrewo ! ? Stop picking your nose boy and answer the question ! ? What is New Zealand’s Primary Industry ? Quick now ! ? We haven’t got all day “

    The hilarious irony is that, that borrowing against primaary industry swindle is what unhinged our economy, begat our bastard society and created the idiots that @ Andrewo is desperately trying to prove he is while pretending he isn’t, all the while blaming our most at risk and our most powerless, all of whom are collateral damage of a Great and on-going swindle of a Global magnitude. Whew ! That felt good.

    New Zealand / Aotearoa is heading to an iceberg captained by greedy fools educated beyond their intelligence after they threw that most human instinct that defines us as a species over board with their women and children. Their empathy. ( Please excuse gender bias re Captaining boat )
    Cruelty is profitable however and SERCO will attest to that. And so will the top four banks in NZ now sporting a $ 4.4 billion rise in profits. I can only imagine the coke and hooker parties going on amongst the Insurance Industry parasites. But you’d be ok about that @ Andrewo.
    Those Banks need to go from our lands . All mortgage debt needs to be written off . All private debt should be consolidated into a national debt and paid off with our taxes then those money traders and lenders should be licensed like the dogs they are and sent to back to their mental hospitals for further evaluation, experimentation and tagging to help keep an eye on the fuckers.
    We must demand the re nationalising of what were once our public assets and conduct a public inquiry into what happened to the money from their sale and seize assets under the proceeds of crimes act as appropriate.
    Then ? We invite all those poor bastards on benefits to a huge party on Mercury Island in Mercury Bay. It’s owned by little micky fay and he has 890 million so it should be a blast man ! Money mostly gleaned from the sale of OUR stuff by his little playmate politicians of the day.
    We could invite davy richwhite too. He has another $ 890 million NET WEALTH Oh, oh ! ? What about Alan Gibbs ? He could bring his giant tin trumpet and jam around the tar and feather pit ? Roger douglas could actually BE the pig on the spit.

    To defeat National and its cadre of swine any opposition must take the farmer and their money away from National and to do that any Opposition must take advantage of what’s destroying family farming in NZ and offer alternatives to that destruction. Of being constantly debt burdened thus left to the mercy of banksters and sundry other money lenders . The woman who’s suing ANZ and others for credit swap swindles would agree I bet.

    Welding farmers to trade unions will fix NZ / Aotearoa right up and make us a food producing nation second to none in the world and what’s it even easier is that our farmers, like Australia have a global advantage . It’s summer here when it’s winter there. It’s that simple.

    hekia parata is a puppet with an, I believe, Zionist hand up her skirt. She’s being told what to do to fit to a script, just like jonky.

    Global warming means huge rise in ocean levels

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/scientists-predict-huge-sea-level-rise-even-if-we-limit-climate-change

    Vast numbers of people will be displaced because of weather events, war and occupations . Fresh water supplies are being ever more polluted , see Indonesia and the fires there.

    National Party selling off our primary industry infrastructure to our primary industry customers ?

    What , about that isn’t an opportunity for any opposition politician to unify our farmers with their service industry people in transport, rail, shipping, storage and rural township retail infrastructure ?

    What’s Andrew Little sitting on other than his hands and why ? Fuck jonky, he’s doesn’t matter. We know what he is . We should be more concerned about the opposition and their blatant lack of enthusiasm for attacking jonky and his jonkyphiles. By taking National’s rural support network and by assotiation the source of their cheap money away Labour could win. So why hasn’t Labour even vaguely tried to do that? Labour and Green should be flat out winning over the farmer from National. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel . Farmers love to farm. That’s what they do. They do not like debt and they do not like the dollar fiddled with ( Since their product is export orientated ) they do not like their land values subjected to being fiddling with by money fetishists and they definitely do not like being treated like fucking idiots down on the farm kicking shit and drinking beers in socially isolated, and stinking little rural pubs surrounded by half naked sociopaths running about with little balls. Take that as you like.

    Something stinks . Something’s not right about our politics . Other than the obvious I mean.

  5. Hekia Parata is doing all she can to please John Key,but she still went to the RWC for how long, I don’t know, but her trip and all the other hangers on, cost taxpayers ,while she grudges decent education, and attempts to save on a budget for schools .
    Paula Bennet is the same ,she is looking more prosperous with her lowering the bar for poorer people.
    Well said John Minto , keep it up.

  6. Most all schools are failures. They have failed children by destroying their creativity and tried to produce mind controlled robots. Art and music labs turned into computer labs getting young ones addicted at an early age and leaving their creative expression and confidence building that happens with the arts, in dire limbo. Shame full disgrace our education system has become and Hekia has no answers.

    The whole educational system needs to be put to rest and a whole new system put in place that honours individuals expression and creativity and awards free thinking and body/mind health and encouraging confidence and inner strength.

    We have failed and Hekia and her pathetic ” out of touch ” train wreck of a government are not the answer and never have been. They have failed us all and the school system deserves so much better. Our kids and teachers and parents deserve so very much better.
    Thanks John – keep up the great work.

    • Schools are there to educate kids, not to foster individual expression, creativity and confidence. Those things tend to go along with the education, but they aren’t the purpose of it. The schools’ “failure” to focus on peripheral aspects of education isn’t actually a failure.

      • Schools are there to educate kids, not to foster individual expression, creativity and confidence.

        And yet, our education system produced the likes of Peter Jackson, writers, poets, artists…

        “Man (or woman) cannot live by bread alone”, as the saying goes…

        I’d like to think schools are there for the whole of a child, not just producing another “Carbon Worker Unit”?

        • Sure. But if you ask yourself what the primary purpose of a school is, do you answer “to educate children,” or “to honour individuals’ expression and creativity and reward free thinking and body/mind health and encourage confidence and inner strength.” If your answer is the second one, it’s wrong. Those other things are welcome byproducts of time spent at school, but they aren’t its primary purpose.

          • “Expression and creativity and […] free thinking” is definitely worth encouraging. In the 21st Century, those may be ‘assets’ worth more than rote-learning (not that you’re advocating that, I understand).

            To me, education is a broad spectrum, to “arm” our youth for the challenges of the 21st Century (god, I sound like a fricken spin-meister!!) and we need a wide ranging set of skills for that.

          • A well rounded education is what we all want but to deny the importance of the arts and encouraging confidence and creative building is naive and very damaging.

            Your education system has failed and there is no defending it.

              • Hahahaha, you are seriously missing the point. Abstract algebra is the rigorous proof of arithmetic and algebraic principles from base axioms of mathematics. Basic order of operations is not one of them. Basic order of operations is an entirely artificial construct. Find me a logical proof of your basic achievements in numeracy and then we’ll talk.

      • Psychomilt – Of course the three R’s – Reading; Riting and Rithmatic are the main focus in most school systems. No one said the schools MAIN focus should be on fostering creative expression. But and the BIG BUT is that most schools fail miserably in the arts; drama and music and a place for kids to not compete but just express themselves without grades or some teacher trying to tell them that trees are not pink.

        To even state that the arts are ” peripheral aspects ” of education shows why we have failed because we do not consider them important enough nor do we offer a well rounded place that is fun to learn. Look at how many kids hate school and leave and want out. To defend a system that fails them; fails teachers and fails society, for the most part, does not make sense. Sure there are some, very few, great schools and very fine teachers but they are, unfortunately, in the minority.

        We now have mostly righteous power tripping; male bashing (so few good male teachers now over this abuse issue); competition oriented; stressed out teachers who focus mostly on the 3 R’s and leave the rest mostly to chance. Some schools only give kids a half an hour or so (?) a week to do some form of creative expression in drama ; art and/or music. That is not enough. Kids crave a place to express themselves, where they will not be judged or graded and can just be themselves and grow their confidence and creativity. I know from intimate experience.
        We need school systems that work in providing kids with an environment that encourages their individuality – enjoyable and happy places and most
        schools are far from that. Ask kids why they dislike their school experience and be willing to really listen.
        Computer labs pushing out art and music rooms is not the answer.
        Burnt out teachers ==>> Testing, testing – producing robots who are addicted to screens and not learning about and experiencing active, sensory integration play and cooperation and creative expression with no competition and NO grading – that is what I am referring to and our school system, for the most part, have failed so many. I feel we need not an overhaul but a complete end of one system to make room for a much better one that helps all to be healthier and happier folks on all levels. Hekia is so far out to lunch on so many levels that I refuse to address her failures here.
        They are clear to anyone who wants the best for our kids and a great place to learn to be well rounded and balanced and confident. We ain’t there yet.

        • I guess it’s a matter of perspective. From mine, at a university, kids are leaving school woefully deficient in mathematics, lacking general knowledge and very poor at reading and writing, but have often had 13 years of teachers telling them what special little flowers they are and praising everything they do as though it were some great achievement.

          I agree with you re the standardised testing etc that National are so keen on, though – it’s an enormous waste of good teaching time.

  7. The National government is a thoroughly nasty pack of cunts and need to be called out everytime they manifest this sociopathic nazism.

    Good on ya John.

  8. Somebody failed to educate Hekia in taking personal responsibility and not blaming others. A few years ago she came out of an apartment into a lift we were in accompanied by her daughter. She realised that she did not have the needed an access card to get into a secure basement, so loudly asked us for help..”My daughter has left the card….” and berated the girl. For mercy to the girl we complied with the request. What a nasty bitch.

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