I’ll get this out of the way first, plenty has been said about the monumental stuff-up made by Hekia Parata and National on Intermediate school class sizes. The one up-side is that it may guarantee that National don’t dare dabble in the class size policy area again.
But…
Duncan Garner blogs on this:
I got home last night and my 12-year-old step daughter was waiting for me with a stern message: “We all hate John Key,” she exclaimed.
Why, I said – pretending to be shocked by it all, but secretly knowing what she was about to say.
“Well, he’s going to close our cooking and technology classes at our school. So we all hate him. And we’re writing him letters – no one likes him at our school anymore,” she said.
I have one question for Ms Parata – a question she should have asked the officials when this move was going through the Cabinet process.
It goes like this; who are the losers and winners from this change?
Daniel Mills
/ June 7, 2012Think you missed the point somewhat. I think its great that schools are talking to kids about what impact these changes could have. Teachers now talk about issues and promote learning through exploration rather than instruction. A method that will be more difficult with larger class sizes. Perhaps the “hate” comment was a pre-teen expression of objection to losing her technology teachers and not the instruction from the school or teacher? Which do you think is more likely?
alex
/ June 7, 2012@ Daniel – Excellent point. The technology classes will be closed down, and from what I remember of primary and early high school, it was probably the most popular subject. Incredibly useful too for keeping kids who otherwise wouldn’t engage with learning involved in school.
robertguyton
/ June 8, 2012‘teaching kids to hate’ – what drivel. You share the Tories fear and loathing of liberal teachers and teaching but it’s those that have lifted NZ up so high on the global education tables. It’s just your prejudice that has you think this way, Pete.