Reading comments on my articles reveals that many people really have no understanding of what education actually should aim to achieve. So many think the competency in the basics of reading, writing and mathematics is all that the schooling system should aim for. This, as the title suggests, is very much a 19th century viewpoint.
Before going further into this, I need to reiterate that competency in the basics is vital, and no one who is objecting to Stanford’s agenda is denying this.
Bringing up competency in the basics in a comment shows two things, one that people aren’t reading or thinking about issues raised by the wide range of educators who are putting a great deal of effort into detailing their objections, and the second one being that it is a red herring, to avoid discussing the issues. A third way that commenters seem to use to avoid discussing the key issues is to seize on one very small part of an article and focus on that.
Returning to the 19th century view of education for the masses, this was very much focussed on ensuring the British working class had enough education to enable them to work as wage slaves for their upper class masters, such as the landed gentry, factory owners, and the financial sector. Children from the privileged classes were able to attend the public school system (now there’s a curious misnomer, labelling exclusive private schools as ‘public schools’) which were free to set their own learning programmes.
For the appearance of ‘fairness’ a select group of children who were able to pass a number of examinations at the age of 11 were allowed to join their privileged peers; the rest were diverted to schools that trained them for their working class future.
The inequity that resulted had the privileged in positions of power and influence, with the balance there to meet their needs. Just watch Downton Abbey to see a dramatisation of this, as the class barrier is very clearly portrayed.
The downside of being privileged is that these people need to continually work to maintain their privilege, after all who wants the lower classes to object to their place in society? Restricting educational opportunities is a powerful way of keeping the masses in their place, by limiting the development of anything except basic skills. Who wants a populace who can read critically, to explore issues, and to think for themselves?
Goodness, they may actually realise they are being oppressed and set about breaking down the class barriers. Can’t have that.
Brazilian educator Paolo Friere, whom I’ve mentioned in previous articles, covered this in depth in his famous book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, basing his writing on his experiences working in impoverished communities in Brazil.
So we need to enquire, why is Erica Stanford, on behalf of her right wing influencers from the New Zealand Initiative, and also on behalf of the overseas right wing educators that she is bringing to New Zealand, setting about the introduction of a neo-Victorian education system in New Zealand. Do I need to spell it out?
A recent discussion amongst teachers on a Primary Teachers Facebook page, on how the school day is apportioned to the various subject areas, reveals the impact of Stanford’s agenda on the learning opportunities for New Zealand children, especially the requirement to spend the bulk of the time on the basics.
One example:
8.55 am – 9.50 am. Spelling
9.50 am – 10.10 am. Break
10.10 am – 11.10 Reading
11.10 am – 11.30 am Break
11.30 am – 12.25 pm. Writing
12.25 pm – 1.15 pm Lunch break
1.15 pm – 2.00 pm Mathematics
2.00 pm – 2.10 pm Break
2.10 pm – 3.00 pm PE/Art/Science, etc
(Not allowing for 10 minutes or so to tidy up the room at the end of the day)
Lip service to everything other than reading, writing and mathematics. Back in more enlightened times, schools were required to provide learning in Art, Social Studies, Music, Science, and Health education, in addition to the basics.
It wouldn’t be possible to adequately cover all these subject areas in a daily timetable as set out above.
Our children are suffering as a result. Does that concern you?
Recently Massey University Professor Mohan J Dutta (Winner of the 2025 Inaugural Lawrence R. Frey Award for Distinguished Communication and Social Justice Activism Research) posted a video on X, commenting on the political right’s agenda for education.
The link will take you to the video, and as well I’ve transcribed it below.
Demand your right to education!
“Challenge the far right’s attack on education, mainstreamed by the hard right in politics. Because holding power to account by asking critical questions is your right.
One of the things that we are seeing across the globe, with the rise of authoritarian populism, and the mainstreaming of the far right into politics is the attack on education, whether it is primary schools or intermediate education, high schools or tertiary education, colleges, and universities. Spaces of learning and education are under attack, from being systematically defunded, to being the targets of specific policies that want to shape how education is offered, how learning is offered.
This is an assault on education that we are witnessing globally. If you’re a young person, you should ask why is the far right, why is the political right, invested in the destruction of education and the question to ask is:
What is it in the interest of the political and economic class that holds power that wants to keep young people away from learning, from education, most importantly, from asking questions?
In fact, it is your power to critique. It is your ability to hold power to account. It is your ability to ask difficult and inconvenient questions that the far right wants to remove because it serves the agendas of an increasingly powerful political and economic class that wants slaves, servants, to serve the capitalist machinery, but also servants that would not be questioning power, that would not be asking critical questions, that would not be thinking, so there is an investment of the political class in that sense, in producing unthinking subjects, not thinking critical citizens.
Challenge these policy instruments.
Challenge this mainstreaming of the far right and demand your right to education.
Demand your right to ask critical questions.
Demand your right to critique power by learning.”
Awesome Allan keep up the good work
It’s screamingly obvious that Erica Stanford does not have the necessary credentials or acumen and should not be allowed to run amok with her proposed changes to our NZ Education curriculum. She is out of her depth here and even employing experts, most with differing opinions, is not helping. Far more deep investigation and input is needed before such knee-jerk, drastic changes are made. Is this just another mad CoC continuous distraction or do they see what we see, that the way this CoC is going they are unlikely to complete their full term? So for now, please do not allow Stanford to implement anything as that will likely fall over as well. More patience please, and take time to get it right. One size definitely won’t fit all!
“Back in more enlightened times, schools were required to provide learning in Art, Social Studies, Music, Science, and Health education, in addition to the basics”.
I suspect this is the drift towards STEM. Its happening in the tertiary space as well. Long gone are the Classics, very much gone are Languages – who knows what else. There seems to be a growing belief that science will be humanities’ savoir – well, not precisely what I mean, more like the logical answer to the growing environmental, social and economic challenges of the present age. When politicians and like-minded consultants – even a good many parents – talk about “knowledge” what they really have in mind is STEM and by default science. And all too easily all this becomes an argument (yet again) about the basics. The current thinking it appears is that without the basics science is not possible.
Self evident? Possibly so. But there is a line of academic thought that argues the basics – and the fixation on measuring the basics – is all part of what Marx calls “exchange value”, another way of saying education is simply a commodity to be exchanged on the market place. Perhaps this is what our blogger Allan Alach is getting at, the increasing commodification of education through right wing tinkering of the curriculum.
The flip side is what Marx calls “use value’, the use of those basic skills in one’s life to achieve community and personal goals. Some may not achieve high levels of attainment at school but cope perfectly well in life. Many in my grandparents generation were a bit like this. Yes, times have changed. And academic understandings don’t always translate into real-life understandings so you’re forgiven if you think its a load of BS. But suffice to say, ALL educational decisions are based on one theory or another. The ‘focus on the basics’, for example, is grounded in cognitive theory. The transfer of basic skills to other domains is a theoretical minefield. Nothing falls out of the sky, so to speak.
And all this is not to say science and STEM are not important. Clearly they are. We wouldn’t have velcrose, non stick fry pans, a whole range of plastics (mmm?), GPS, bridges, jet skis, cel phones and modern medicines without it. But I think many would agree that the focus on spelling, math and reading – at the primary level – needs to be balanced with broader curriculum concerns, inclusive of more holistic approaches to learning (and what it means to learn) and a focus on non academic stuff such as personal development etc. And most definitely in post-primary education.
Is this asking too much of schools? Are they already doing it, to the best they can? Or has the classroom – and the schooling space more broadly – simply become a battlefield? And if Allan’s pieces are correct, an ideological battlefield to boot.
Any teachers /educators out there with lived experience? Any parents with their finger on the pulse with kids currently in school? I’m really only making an educated guess as I’m currently neither – although was both in the past.
The education systems Stanford is trying to reintroduce was based on white privilege. When growing up in New Zealand in the 60s my father always said being Maori we had to get double the qualifications Pakeha got but even then, many of us still did not get the better jobs as Pakeha preferred to hire people like themselves even if they just arrived from the UK as long as they were white.
The right is always telling us we haven’t got time to educate a person widely and well. No art, no languages, nothing about social studies. We must stick to basics.
STEM subjects! However, having taken these STEM subjects to the exclusion of all else, followed them to their logical conclusion and come up with some scientific explanations as to why the planet is warming and how human activities are not helping, they then ignore that science. They don’t want to know that bit because it doesn’t suit their donors wishes. It was Al Gore who called it ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006.
They didn’t want people knowledge-rich in medicine and statistics, telling us we needed to have lock-downs for covid either.
So, what’s the use of STEM subjects when the knowledge that is gained is then ignored and dismissed by right wing govts?
Standford is just another ideologically-driven, in-experienced amateur pushing teachers, children and families around, bullying everyone involved, until she gets her way. Pig-headed hypocrisy.
I can only comment on when I went to school from 1967 to 1976 although I started with a church school (SDA) then public school from form 1 as my parents moved to the other side of town. I thought that the public schools had excellent teachers and a variety of subjects although it was noticably absent of any spiritual education. While I can understand why public schools would keep our of religious beliefs the current situation where right wing Christianity which it almost totally opposite to what I believe is being imposed on society I think that it would have been an advantage for society to be able to say that the book these people claim to believe doesn’t agree with their views.
The fact is if we stick to STEM subjects students will never be disadvantaged in terms of vocational opportunities. If one has taken maths and physics through high school , one has few problems getting into and understanding accounting and architecture and medicine, let along engineering. Whereas if one has not taken maths and physics , students are disadvantaged and need to go into one or two years of intensive bridging education, often at their own expense. This disadvantages in particular Maori and Pasifika
That’s true but not everyone has the kind of brain that can do maths and physics easily. We need a basic level of understanding in both those tough subjects but teenagers are loathe to keep up really hard subjects because their friends have opted for easy ones and they aren’t that interested anyway. Old heads/young shoulders.
The right has an agenda and it’s to privatise public education and health and they hate unions.
I happen to agree, mostly. A curriculum that limits itself only to reading, writing, and math is ultimately ineffective and unfair. Complex skills are inextricably linked to domain-specific knowledge. Without that knowledge (from a broad curriculum encompassing the arts, sciences, and humanities), literacy skills quickly plateau. Disadvantaged students, in particular, rely on school for this rich content, making a broad curriculum essential for equity. The teacher’s real task is to broaden horizons and introduce students to wondrous worlds of human achievement, not just drill three subjects.
Narrow curriculum make it impossible for teachers broaden horizons and introduce students to wondrous worlds of human achievement.
However, your continual mischaracterisation of a knowledge rich curriculum taught through explicit instruction isn’t helpful in this debate.
Don’t students need some leadership? They are woefully likely to be distracted without it. I say this after having spent a period in the school library with a class there to explore the resource, and how to access all the library to follow their own interest. There was a subject they needed to write about to have an aim. But they just wanted to use the time to sit with friends and talk about their social lives. Couldn’t concentrate.
Some drilling is necessary I think. But they need to choose from a set of topics rather than spend their time in formless nattering which seems what happens. One young guy followed his favourite line – motors and looked through a magazine with good coloured images all the while making vrooom noises!
The fact is if we stick to STEM subjects students will never be disadvantaged in terms of vocational opportunities. If one has taken maths and physics through high school , one has few problems getting into and understanding accounting and architecture and medicine, let along engineering. Whereas if one has not taken maths and physics , students are disadvantaged and need to go into one or two years of intensive bridging education, often at their own expense. This disadvantages in particular Maori and Pasifika
Challenge this mainstreaming of the far right and demand your right to education.
Demand your right to ask critical questions.
Demand your right to critique power by learning.”
Demand your right to know the difference between delivered education and edification!
Be wary of how we can *anthropomorphise machines – one of my likes is Johnny5 in Short Circuit – mad to learn:
‘More input’! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnTKllDbu5o
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rlI3Xg9g_A
*Anthropomorphism (from the Greek words “ánthrōpos” (ἄνθρωπος), meaning “human,” and “morphē” (μορφή), meaning “form” or “shape”) is the attribution of human form, character, or attributes to non-human entities.[1] It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. wikipedia
Agree it’s not all about the three R’s. However without the three R’s everything else is pointless, it’s like saying one wants to play football but one can’t run or kick a ball. So the focus has to be on the three R’s and that opens up a world of knowledge to students.
Let’s all pretend that there is a point to education. It’s been reduced to a ticket to get a non existent job soon to be reduced to AI or offshore to Somalia.
I get your point, over the top as it is. But we’re better off with it than without it I think.
Back in the day a bunch of scholars with nothing better to do did some research on the differences between people ‘with an education’ and people ‘without a education’. I think in the far north of Russia. These were people who had never gone to school, couldn’t read or write and couldn’t use pen and paper to write down the answers to math questions (but of course could do simple math, if you asked them stuff like how many children do have or animals were missing from yesterday, they knew this. And they could build a shelter and all that entails. They got by perfectly well in the world they lived in).
I can’t recall what the researchers found, a bunch of stuff about what it means to be “intelligent” and what it means to learn, and what difference “an education” makes. The world now is a very different place to what it was and its hard to imagine what its like without “an education” – although there are many in the world who still don’t have access to education, or have limited and interrupted access. There’s still a tendency to label uneducated folk as somehow cognitively deficient. They’re not. But evidently they think quite differently.
Good points Bozo. But I think you need to look and think differently when you pontificate. Getting it not fully right should not sink the boat but what’s needed for the right weighting 80:20, 85:15? And then making sure that the students are thinking not just absorbing to pass exams. They need a template to rake away after formal education finishes, for analysing future dilemmas so they can think wisely about decisions in the fast-changing stream of modernity.
From your comment – …they could build a shelter and all that entails. They got by perfectly well in the world they lived in).
I can’t recall what the researchers found, a bunch of stuff about what it means to be “intelligent” and what it means to learn, and what difference “an education” makes. The world now is a very different place to what it was and its hard to imagine…
I’ve stopped with ‘imagine”. We have to try in a group of practical people, not dreamy glazed eyed, place-saving teachers and academics.
We need to have stability in employment yet make enough changes to cope; encourage enough questioning to get around or over the problems piling up for young ones. They need to be given experience through tasks carried out an earlier age for themselves, so they can think through problems calling on advice. We are in an age where you work for a corpse, you might think up something great for mankind, but the corpse owns all your output. The big legal entity, with a showpiece at the top, is a juggernaut these days.
People have to get together and learn to brainstorm on a subject and outcome, but on the way pick up irrelevant but good ideas, note them with keywords for themselves to be expanded later. Ideas and answers will not come in a silent room with everyone studying their devices, or AI, or their navels. But thinking starts on what is desired, and what expected outcomes would look like, how they would work, for how long, serve what purpose for whom, be easy to operate, be repairable.etc. Then be trialled, and if good, be owned and managed by a local trust with all shares. funds, to be owned locally. The ferrets would make offers if viable, but the idea would be to hold on as long as poss. Trouble is if it is a fast-changing market the big corpse can swamp it.
Practical has its own kind of intelligence, there’s manual skills my generation had I’d contend should be taught at school. My comment was really aimed at NACT who seem to think it’s ok to demand more and more of our students without doing anything to help build long term meaningful employment opportunities.
Yes, that’s the next problem and they aren’t too worried about a solution. They’ll be long gone before this year’s intake have their degrees and are making scientific discoveries. Where are the jobs for them?
Many engineering jobs have disappeared just this year, because this Coalition of the Incompetent cancelled infrastructure and capital works for schools, hospitals etc. A few very select projects are going ahead.
If they don’t show they value the rich knowledge people are gaining and provide the right kinds of jobs, they may as well all resign right now.
Those works need long planning periods and they can’t just be picked up again next week.
From what we know about student attention, one-hour classes are hard going even for motivated adult students. Pushing this model down into primary is simply professionally untenable.
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