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Depoliticise Teaching

Entry 2264, on 2023-03-17 at 09:58:48 (Rating 4, News)

Yesterday, teachers in New Zealand went on strike. They want improved wages and conditions, and claim that their job has become increasingly difficult in recent years. This is quite a big deal, because the current left wing government has a reputation for being friendly to workers, and especially teachers, and these strikes cause a lot of problems for the country, so what's going on?

Teachers here start on over $50,000 per year and more senior basic teachers (not principles or those having other extra responsibilities) make $80,000 to $90,000. Those are the numbers I heard on our national radio station this morning, anyway.

They also teach about 6 hours a day and get far more holidays than other workers. So, what are they really complaining about?

That rate of pay is OK, but not great, but at the top, it is more than I get and I have a computer science degree and almost 40 years experience! And those holidays: I mean, I know there is extra work outside of those hours, and many teachers do some work in the holidays, but for most I think it would not bring their hours worked up to an average person working a 40 hour week.

And why are teachers strikes taken so seriously? Well, I suspect it hasn't got much to do with how much we value their contribution to education. I think the more important function they perform is as a baby sitting service for working parents, and keeping all the feral kids out of town where reasonable adults prefer to congregate without them.

My wife used to be a teacher, and I know at various times she did put in quite long hours, mainly because the previous person teaching her subject had done more or less nothing, but I still don't think it is a very tough job, except for one thing: having to put up with the revolting children! I'm sure I could teach really well, if there was someone in the room with a whip of taser to control the feral mob of children!

So I have very little respect for teaching as a profession, although I do respect some teachers (like my wife, and about 2 other teachers in my whole time at school).

Let's think about it: children attend school for about 12 years, for 6 or 7 hours a day. Now we can do some quick maths: 6 hours a day x 5 days a week x 30 weeks a year x 12 years is over 10,000 hours. That's a huge commitment, but still a massive fraction of them have poor basic skills in maths and literacy at the end of that time. What are they doing for all those hours, because they certainly aren't learning much!

And I know we hear this in every generation, but I think education levels are getting worse over time. There are two reasons for this, and both of them seem to be inherent in a large proportion of education professionals, and I mean both teachers, administrators, and academics.

The first reason is a predisposition to taking education theories seriously without putting too much thought into whether they have been proved in practice, and without having any genuine feedback regarding their efficacy. Of course, education isn't the only profession which suffers from this (see my blog post, "Great in Theory" from 2023-03-07, and others) but it does seem to be worse than most; maybe the worst.

I often see arguments that a particular "new" way of teaching reading, for example, is best, but I then find that what they are suggesting is the preferred method from 10 years ago, and it was replaced with something else then, which hasn't worked out so well. If they changed I'm fairly sure they would find in another 10 years that they need to change back. Again, teaching is not the only profession susceptible to this, but it seems to be amongst the worst.

The reality is, in my humble opinion, that there is no "best" way, and that different students will learn in different ways. Finding out what that way is should be what teachers do, instead of following some dictates from a faceless bureaucrat in the ministry of education (or whatever it is called now, because it probably has a silly Maori name, see below).

So let's move on to the second reason: teachers tend to be very left wing, politically correct, and often not competent in any "real" job. Of course, there are many exceptions. My wife, for example, ran cafes before and after teaching home economics, but many teachers have never worked outside of the education system. By the way, my wife doesn't read this blog, but it never hurts to say nice things about her anyway, does it? :)

I remember when I was at school, I was very naive politically, but even I noticed this trend, including one teacher who had to be a committed Marxist, and wasn't shy about making that known.

There's nothing wrong with having a political opinion, of course, but when teachers political views are so one sided it does tend to affect the way that profession performs. Leftists tend to be very politically correct, meaning they let their emotional preferences overcome facts and reality. Please note, at this point, that if I was criticising a right oriented profession, I would also be making criticisms, but of a different type,

So the political correctness at all levels of education makes certain subjects very dangerous. The obvious example here in New Zealand at this point is the new history curriculum, which according to many fairly reliable sources, is extremely woke, criticising settlers without also presenting the benefits they brought, and making the native population seem far more virtuous than they really were.

Education is just too obvious a mechanism for pushing propaganda onto young, naive, easily influenced minds, and the left know this and make full use of their dominance there. So schools teach extremely distorted versions of subjects like colonisation, climate change, capitalism, and race and gender politics. No wonder we see so many school and university kids making such fools of themselves in debates and protests. they are hopelessly naive, because they have been grossly mislead by people they foolishly trust.

So do the teachers deserve a pay increase? Well, if they do, there's a lot of other professions which deserve one as well, and probably a bigger one than the teachers. Inflation is high at the moment, so everyone should get an increase which covers that, but I can't see much justification in going beyond that. And if we want to improve the conditions teachers work under then go back to more practical policies which give the teachers more freedom. We need to depoliticise teaching.

Comment 1 (7400) by Allan Baxter on 2023-03-18 at 17:54:17:

Funny that you have not had more response to your Blog.
Perhaps it is because that everyone probably agrees with you

Comment 2 (7401) by OJB on 2023-03-18 at 21:07:14:

I do get people talking to me in person and saying they agree, but they don't feel the need to say so here, for some reason. And those who disagree are too scared to debate me, I reckon! :)

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