This from 'The Press' newspaper in March
New Zealand schools get a new curriculum next year and it is winning approval from many quarters, writes JOHN McCRONE.
What is the capital of Ethiopia? Which year was the Flagstaff war? What is the chemical formula for sulphuric acid?
A generation ago, we might have expected educated people to carry
such facts around in their heads. Now we would say forget it, just
Google it.
The world is not merely changing, but changing at an accelerating rate. Information is growing exponentially.
In 1900, a scientist could pretty much keep on top of every
important development as only 9000 research papers were published in
any year. By 1950, it was 90,000. By 2000, it was 900,000.
Today, drinking from this well of knowledge would be like trying to
sip from the Huka Falls. Every 24 hours another 4000 papers are churned
out.
A good job all this human wisdom now goes online because even
university libraries have long since given up trying to accommodate the
flood. They do not have the shelf-space. And extrapolate the curve 10
or 20 years into the future and you can see what a hopeless task faces
our children.
Some parents do not understand this phenomenon yet. Just look at the
rough ride given to the NCEA exams, the constant calls to go back to
basics.
But it is the reason why the Ministry of Education is about to tear
up its old curriculum. Next year, with the adoption of the new
curriculum, New Zealand is plunging wholeheartedly into a different
style of learning. And the rest of the world is jealous.
Top Canadian educationist and director of the Council for Human
Development, Stuart Shanker, of York University, is here on a
whistlestop tour of the country's schools.
We meet at Rangi Ruru, the private Christchurch girls' school.
Through the window, we see young women toss rugby balls back and forth.
But Shanker spent the morning at low-decile Linwood Avenue Primary and
to him, the view was not really that different.
Shanker says he is bowled over with what we are attempting here. New
Zealand is already top five in the world for its quality of education
-- something he is puzzled to find we do not seem too aware of.
"It's been kind of surprising that New Zealanders don't seem to see
that they have an outstanding education system. Here I am looking at
all the great things you're doing and the only questions I seem to get
asked are what are we doing wrong?"
But it is a fact. Shanker says just check the OECD Programme for
International Student Assessment results which place our school
children near top of all English-speaking nations for science,
mathematics and reading.
Now we are going to be the first country anywhere with an
educational curriculum specifically designed for a knowledge economy,
for the internet age. "What you're doing is what other people are
saying -- you know, at a think-tank level. But you're actually doing
it. And doing it at the population level, so every kid benefits. I mean
no-one else has gone near that far," he says.
So what is this curriculum all about? For such a revolution, things
have gone rather quiet since the slim document was released in November.
The reason for the silence has been the new curriculum appears to be
that rare beast -- a radical policy change which has met with almost
universal approval. Everyone from teaching unions to business leaders
are saying it is a job well done.
Mark Treadwell, an e-learning consultant and member of the
curriculum's review group, says it would only be natural to expect
moans. Teachers are going to have to put in a lot of extra hours to
prepare. And problems may arise once theory begins to be put into
practice.
"But people have been going rah-rah. No-one's complaining. They've
been saying this is fantastic, it's what we dreamt of as teachers,"
says Mark Treadwell.
The old state school curriculum, which covers what pupils are
expected to learn in both their primary and secondary years, had become
an enormous tick-list of topic points to be taught. Facts to be crammed
into small heads, says Treadwell.
Each year, new essentials seemed to be added and teachers were
rushing through course work so they did not get marked down by school
inspectors for skipping mandated items.
The new curriculum goes in the opposite direction. It is light on
details, emphasising broad principles and flexibility. The thick
manuals have been thrown out.
Indeed, the new curriculum is written in such wholesome tones that
those with an old-fashioned view of education -- the
chant-your-times-tables, sit still and shut up brigade -- will find it
positively toe-curling.
There is a vision statement that speaks of creating confident,
connected, lifelong learners. The new curriculum lays down principles
like excellence, equity, cultural heritage and coherence. There is a
long list of values to be fostered, such as integrity, respect and care
for the environment.
And there are five key competencies which our education system is
now meant to teach. These are the ability to manage self, relate to
others, participate and contribute to the community, think clearly, and
be comfortable with language, symbols and text.
Yes, it sounds more like a bunch of hopeful New Year's resolutions. But Treadwell says it is bang on for many reasons.
Take a step back, he says. The old education system was designed for
the print age. You read books and memorised the facts. There was a
premium on how much you could store in your head. And clerk or
carpenter alike, good hand-writing and quick arithmetic would get you
ahead in life.
Another big difference was that children learnt values and basic
life skills at home. Parents were not working all hours and had time to
talk. There were no chatrooms or PlayStations to distract. Modern life
and the modern workplace have irrevocably changed and so a new kind of
education is required.
"The internet has made a fundamental shift of the kind we haven't
seen since the 1450s when the printing press was invented. And we're
only a few years into it. The transformations it will make over the
next 10 or 15 years are going to be stunning," says Treadwell.
It is all about the quantity of information and the ease of tapping it.
"This shifts us from a `just in case' kind of framework -- learning
stuff just in case it might one day be useful -- to a `just in time'
framework," he says.
But a Google-based approach to life then requires a new set of
"meta-skills". Treadwell says children have to become more expert at
evaluating sources, more questioning, more able to apply the knowledge
they glean.
Some schools, such as Christchurch's Cobham Intermediate, have
already pioneered classes with this inquiry style of learning. In
inquiry-based teaching, children are encouraged to work in teams. They
choose their own study projects and present their findings to the
class. They are not pinned to chairs and forced to work through a
textbook but go out into the real world to gather information from
businesses and community groups.
Treadwell says it sounds dangerously like having fun. People are
fearful about children having too much control over what they learn.
Parents are naturally conservative and prefer any educational
experiments to be carried out on someone else's kids.
But what is education for but to teach children the exact skills
they will need to employ in tomorrow's workplace? Teaching them
yesterday's skills would be ridiculous.
Treadwell says we already need to be lifelong learners. The facts on
which jobs are based are no longer static but always changing.
In the old days, it was conformity that was valued. Learn a trade or
profession and then apply that knowledge mechanically. Only about one
in 20 would have a job that was in any sense creative. But now
economies are being held back by a lack of creative self-starters.
"Creative cities like Dublin are saying their growth is stalling because they're running short of clever people."
Treadwell says the new curriculum plugs important gaps. There is a
new emphasis on statistics as that is crucial to evaluating the quality
of information. Second languages are being pushed, vital for working in
a global economy. And perhaps surprisingly, oral skills have been
identified as a new priority.
Treadwell says teachers everywhere are finding children are becoming
more inarticulate. And yet 80% of jobs are in the service sector where
being a good speaker, a polished presenter, is arguably the No. 1
requirement.
An obvious criticism of the new curriculum is that it may suit some
but not others. Some may blossom with the freedom of inquiry learning.
Others might find it too airy-fairy and prefer the comfort of strong
structure.
Treadwell says this is a misunderstanding. In fact, the move away
from a prescriptive "one size fits all" curriculum to a more flexible
approach means schools are being encouraged to find the strategies that
best suit each pupil.
"It will allow for a more vocational style training if that's what the child requires."
The new curriculum's focus on values might seem another "warm
fuzzy". But Treadwell says the need is obvious. If we want children to
be good citizens these days, we actively need to teach it.
Sadly, he says, many children are not learning the lessons at home.
But also a more complicated world means children have to have the skill
of navigating their own path through life. Moral debates which were
once for the few are now a requirement for the many.
And Treadwell says the greatest misunderstanding is probably that
all the old subjects will be junked from next year as children just
study competencies.
In fact, what children learn will remain largely the same. It is how
they learn it -- a nationwide shift to inquiry learning -- which is
changing.
Principals who have been looking at the new curriculum, such as
David O'Neil, of St Mary's Primary, in central Christchurch and Chris
Reece, of Linwood Avenue Primary, agree.
Reece says in many ways, the new curriculum is simply endorsing
changes already made at many schools. The old curriculum did nail down
what needs to be taught and that will be carried forward. So all that
will alter next year is teachers will be given more freedom to apply
effective teaching methods.
One concern is there might be a knee-jerk reaction from parents to
the new curriculum. Feelings that the NCEA was a dumbing down of
standards quickly led to pressure for international qualifications such
as the Cambridge exams and International Baccalaureate.
Treadwell says it is widely agreed the introduction of NCEA was
bungled. It was not the shining success that the new curriculum seems
to be.
But tinkering is seeing the exams come right. And half the problem
was that they were simply ahead of their time. Treadwell says NCEA
stems from the same educational philosophy, valuing understanding over
rote learning, and so should sit much more happily with the new
curriculum.
It all sounds like good news. Much too good really. That old Kiwi
inferiority complex rises to the surface again. We are taking a bold
step. Are we sure we are doing the right thing?
Treadwell, and others like Shanker, have no doubt. This is no whacky
liberal exercise, says Shanker. It is the kind of training required for
tomorrow's jobs.
Treadwell says other larger nations, like the United Kingdom and
United States, have fallen for the political call to go back to basics.
An obsession with testing has led to an environment where children are
just taught how to pass tests.
"In America, for example, the `no child left behind' policy brought
in by Bush has just reduced every school to a testing machine.
"The educational system there is going backwards at an incredible
rate. Whole states in the US now don't teach things like drama or art,"
he says.
These countries responded to the dawn of the internet age and the
apparent erosion of standards by going down the wrong path. Treadwell
says that is the theme at every international educational conference he
now attends.
New Zealand is lucky because we are small enough to react quickly.
We can be the first to embrace the new direction. But the rest of the
world is scrambling to follow.
Treadwell was actually on his cellphone from Australia, there to
tell them about what we are doing. Treadwell reckons Australia is about
10 years behind in its policies. He says Tasmania did try to make a new
curriculum-style change but stuffed it up by being overly ambitious.
However, the new Rudd Government will soon be throwing serious dollars
at the issue.
And if on this side of the Tasman there is an Achilles' heel, this looks like it. Resourcing.
Robin Duff, president of the Post Primary Teachers' Association,
says the theory of the new curriculum is right, the practice is
do-able. But will our government really spend what is required?
Duff says promises have been made about giving teachers time to
prepare, and to provide other support, but he has learnt to be cynical
about such commitments.
"Our experience with recent initiatives like NCEA has been that they
say here it is, we've spent a lot of money creating it, now you go put
it into operation."
Duff says another nagging issue is that, so far, the new curriculum
covers the early years, yet is missing the detail of what happens over
the NCEA years. It would be helpful to have that sooner rather than
later.
But as to the new curriculum itself, Duff agrees it does indeed seem
that rare thing, a case of a well-considered, well-timed policy change.
normally write about. The post was linked from Guy Kawasaki and his blog, How to Change the World However this article puts together a fantastic collection or visual tools. Tools that harness the power of th web in many cases to collate information or as a mode of sharing. The opening paragraph puts it well,
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