#17 - Dellis Hunt 2008-03-22 12:04 - (Reply)

My husband tells me that due to us being a high income family, we will benefit from your party becoming government. I personally don't care about the money, I care about our children, all of them. I'm nervous to think that your party will become government and take us back, educationally, to a place that suited our country decades ago. Look at the countries (like the states and Australia) who have stayed with this benchmarking, testing mentality. They have taken the wrong path. It is obvious with the state of their education system and the failings of it. Where do they rank and where do we rank in regards to education in the developed world? We are near the top for english, maths and science! We got there due to visionary people (NZ people) who created documents such as Te Whaariki (the early childhood curriculum), and now the new primary curriculum which is close to being released. These curriculums let the educators breathe. They allow teaching to individual children and their needs. They free teachers up from the masses of mandated skills that was our past way of learning. They take into account our new world and how we are living now. Our world understanding is growing exponentially and we cannot learn it all anymore. Education in NZ is at the forefront of the world with the way we are addressing our present understanding of the information and technological world we are now presented with. We understand that our children are individuals and their needs are different and varied. As soon as our educators are freed up from an horrific list of mandatory skills, testing and reporting, will they finally be able to offer a true, individual learning experience for each child. This will address our children who are slipping through the cracks. We need to allow our teachers time to work with each child, share experiences, the ability to contribute to taking the child to the next level without predetermined skills in mind. I don't need to benchmark how my child is doing in maths compared to the national average. What I need to know as a parent is: +Can he plan so that he knows how and where he is going to find the information he needs +Can he use his time well and manage daily stress, highs and lows. +Can he differentiate between good information and poor information +Can he apply this information in his everyday world +Can he reflect on this information, how it went, what can he do to make it better next time. +Does he see himself as a confident lifelong learner. To share one small experience. I have a child who has always been reported as academically above the national average for all subjects. I have a daughter who has been reported as been below the national average for pretty much all academic subjects. My daughter is an amazingly creative person, she draws, paints, sings, dances and writes stories. Always has. She can plan her day, manage it to include some down time as well as utilising the best 'thinking time'. She has basic reflecting skills and can apply her learning to day to day living. She is 8 yrs old. My son on the other hand cannot seem to plan and manage time even in the most basic way. He thinks that because it is on the internet it must be true. He is very bright but at 11yrs his sister has more skills than he does that are transferable to the world we live in today. Our future is now uncertain. Gone are the days when you could pick a career, gain the degree and work comfortably for the rest of your life doing the same thing. Our world is changing so dramatically, so quickly that we need to change the way we teach our children. We can't know if this will be enough or exactly right but what I do know is that the old way doesn't cut it anymore. Please don't take us back. Be bold and take us down the path that suits our world, NZ, each community, each family, each individual. Otherwise we will be training a generation of children to understand widgets when widgets don't exist at the completion of their training.