an inevitable result? I’m not referring to those whose parental antagonism to universal education standards – deliberately fostered among some Maori, for example – has pupils fighting the system – but to those who started hopefully with a blank slate and leave school with one almost equally blank. Why? Why are so many of what should be the crème de la crème of our university youngsters unable even to write a coherent sentence? Why are they barely literate, after all these years of immersion in what should have been a first-class education system? Why don’t they even know what a paragraph is? Giving them pass marks at university erodes what were once standards, now obviously much degraded – when one looks with incredulity at those who have emerged to teach a subject in which they have no genuine competence? Why do so many teachers themselves (while buying into absurd titles such as “syndicate leaders”) have no idea, even, of what a noun or verb is – let alone their functions and those of other parts of speech in achieving coherency within a sentence? What precisely have most New Zealanders been taught all those years in primary school, let alone in secondary school? Why was the phonic teaching of the alphabet deliberately withheld? – students no longer taught to add, subtract, multiply and divide? Why was almost every competency downgraded – including even the teaching of cursive writing, rather than mere printing? Teaching writing was suspended in the 80s, condemning many school leavers to the inadequacy of having to print quickly instead. Is it mere coincidence that the ominous withholding of these and other very basic skills invokes George Orwell’s warning that if we cannot use language well – we cannot think well – and if we cannot think well, others will do our thinking for us. This, of course, is the education politburo’s agenda, planned over half a century ago, with the results all round us, and the rubbishy NCEA system simply one of its most recent end products. What happened, and the determined hijacking of formerly sound education syllabi in this country is illustrated in this recent email extract from a former senior inspector, although by the 1960s, the onslaught was well under way. “In the 1960s and early ’70s, several of us in the secondary inspectorate, seeing what was happening in the department, tried to stem the tide of left-wing liber-
alism, but failed. We were outflanked by appointments and promotions only of those who embraced the new philosophy. I am not an English language person, my fields being in the sciences, but I recall the setting up of “The New English Syllabus Committee” [NESC ] consisting of these sorts of people, and leaving out all the experienced and knowledgeable ones. Meetings of people who were following this bandwagon were held at a property in the Sounds owned by the department. These were very discreet and held over week-ends, and the new “innovative” syllabus was finally launched. These moves, and others, have produced the gutless, non-challenging subject prescriptions we have today. In contrast, I can recall my days at Auckland Grammar with an English teacher who had us all learning screeds of Shakespeare “Why are so many of what should be and many of the poets, including Byron, Keats, the crème de la crème of our university Shelley, etc. It was quite youngsters unable even to write a a sight to see some hairy-legged fifth-for- coherent sentence? Why are they mer reciting a love poem barely literate, after all these years of to an attentive and quiet immersion in what should have been a class.” Contrast the long first-class education system? Why don’t respect for the best of our heritage with a recent they even know what a paragraph is? ridiculous statement by a Victoria University Acting Professor of Socio-Linguistics – a provide access to the best of our past, our give-away title in itself – condemning the educationists continue to undermine the important clarifying use of apostrophes as “a possibility of quality education. Basically, symbol of oppression”, by which the super- their politicized takeover depends on wipcilious “assert their arrogance” . ing out the cultural memory, actively or What better illustration of the huge gulf passively. The question is whether we have between pompous academic nonsense – passed the point of no-return. and reality? And what better time than now © Amy Brooke to look at why we are letting this takeover www.amybrooke.co.nz continue? While our libraries, nationwide, www.summersounds..co.nz are discarding important books which http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/ INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM August 2008 67