In the spirit of Christmas the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) is continuing its commitment to help John Key with his holiday reading and has carefully selected themes he can use to reflect on the past year and the year to come.
Clarence E. Beeby’s biography will give John Key insight into the thinking behind Beeby’s reconstruction of our education system. He turned it from being one that served the needs of the wealthy into a more equitable system, serving all young New Zealanders.
Dear Prime Minister - you have the opportunity to take a long-term strategic view, develop it with the sector and be informed by the best evidence available.
19 December 2011
Dear Prime Minister
Today I am pleased to be able to give you a biography of a great New Zealander. Clarence E. Beeby was instrumental in changing the New Zealand education system from one that served only a wealthy elite, to one based on principles of equity and democracy, and which sought to provide a “broad and generous education for all”.
The challenge that Beeby and his political masters faced in the 1940s was not so different from the one that exists today: reorienting secondary schooling to prepare all young New Zealanders for citizenship and participation in a rapidly changing society. They found that the ‘flexible’ market-driven secondary education system that existed until then had patently failed at this task because it focussed too narrowly on the interests of a small group. As the book notes: “…the divisions within secondary education tended to reinforce social divisions”.
What was constructed instead was a “comprehensive, relevant and egalitarian system,” with a common curriculum, which Beeby explained was vital because “…the community cannot afford to have citizens who are lacking a certain common core of knowledge and barren of certain experiences that seem essential to intelligent participation in communal activities . . .” .
It was Beeby’s reforms (as enacted by the minister of education at the time, Peter Fraser) that allowed ordinary New Zealanders like you to receive a world class education at their local school.
Yes, the world is different now and the supposed ‘education consensus’ that served New Zealand well through the middle of the twentieth century has gone, but there is still much to learn from Beeby. Piecemeal tinkering and political game-playing as evinced in the introduction of charter schools are not the way to make our system better; instead you have the opportunity to take a long-term strategic view, develop it with the sector and be informed by the best evidence available.
If charter schools are to be introduced, it does raise the question of whether the bust of C.E Beeby that graces the Ministry of Education foyer should remain there. It would be ironic indeed, if this champion of quality public education for all were to preside over the wholesale dismantling of the noble and progressive ideals he stood for.
I will be sending book nine tomorrow.
Yours sincerely
Robin Duff
PRESIDENT
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