NCEA, the cult of competition and the purpose of public education

The Government have decided to reset NCEA in a radical move that everyone is still digesting.

What is the purpose of public education in a liberal progressive democracy?

Critical thinking citizens or worker drones?

As a pakeha parent who put his pakeha daughter into immersive Māori education since she was 5, I can see the difference between the competitive pakeha education model and the collaborative Māori education approach, and my fear is many of the gains from NCEA risk being lost to a very Eurocentric view of education.

If you are bristling at my use of the word ‘Eurocentric’, thank the luck stars I didn’t say, fucking racist redneck cracker agenda’..

Bevan Holloway, writes about curriculum changes ...and had this insight into Erica Stanford’s remodelling of NCEA..

…Rata, National’s educational guru is very clear what the gaols are here, ‘ending decolonisation’s success’.

This review is aimed at reasserting 19th Century White Settler Privilege and reducing our children to worker drones for Late Stage Capitalism, it sure as fuck ain’t about public education being obliged to empower everyone who is taught by it!

The concept of naked competition between students as a justification for going back to grades and exams misses the point that we actually collaborate with one another in society, rather then compete in some Hobbesian state of nature competition for survival!

Gen X Parents and Boomer Grandparents have been frustrated they don’t understand where their children and grand children are academically thanks to the removal of an educational grading system they did understand, and this political populism is being exploited by National to Trojan Horse a new set of values into education.

Pāpāmoa College principal Iva Ropati argues the Government had poorly understood the complexity of the modern standards-based assessment qualification and that “Their ‘fix it’ attitude will result in the complete demolition of a strengths-based approach to student learning and flexible pathways in a NZ context, and I agree with him.
Also, 15000 teenagers are working more than 50 hours to support whanau while chronic absenteeism is at 80 000  – how will these NCEA changes re-engage those students?

It won’t.

The purpose of public education is not to set up a list of winners and losers, it’s there to create critically thinking citizens to the best of all their potential.

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