Straitjacketing Students?

Although the National Government's introduction of new, across-the-board national standards may have some positive short term benefits, little good can come of further straitjacketing of New Zealand's educational system.

The new national standards are merely the latest in a long line of governmental reforms aimed at curbing the deteriorating quality of education in New Zealand. However well intentioned the latest reforms, the government needs to wake up and realise that the true problems lies with the continual packing of pupils into schools which merely exist for the sake of bureaucratic convenience.

The children and teenagers of New Zealand, like any nation, are an incredibly diverse group of people, with many different talents and abilities that don't reach their full potential. The only way to get pupils to shine, is to treat education as a genuine value.

Education has its greatest value at the individual level, which then rubs off on the rest of society later. How can we expect the youths of the nation to thrive, if they themselves are not taught to see it as that themselves?

The only way to do this is to, once again, get education to be a task of parents and teachers, not of bureaucrats in Wellington. In short: the government needs to butt out of educational arrangements.

So, however well intentioned and well informed National's education reform is, the government simply cannot drastically improve education levels without realising the basic truth: education, fundamentally, is a value. Until the government treats it as such, and gets its head out of bureaucrat-run doll houses known as public schools, continue to expect educational standards to fall into the abyss.