The democratic price we’re paying by shrugging our shoulders at the curriculum change takeover
Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read, get in touch, and share my report on what the OIA documents, so tenaciously pursued by NZATE, revealed. As I write, on Saturday morning, 31 August, the report has been downloaded over 3600 times. I know it has traveled throughout the education sector in New Zealand, including government ministries and universities. I have received a “collective thank you” from within a ministry for writing the report because they have been scared to speak out about what has been happening.
I am writing to you this morning because I want to make clear my thinking on what the report raises. It is easy to get sidetracked into a curriculum and pedagogical discussion, and yes, that is part of the story. Indeed, those of you who know me know that I am not a fan of Michael Johnston’s vision of education. However, we must not let that cloud the way we talk about what has happened here. We must be wary of falling into the rhetorical trap of saying “We were doing a lot of these things anyway so not much is changing” or “Structured literacy is great — I think everyone should do it”. Yes, these are true. Yes, some of what is being put into the curriculum as a result of the work of the MAG is good practice (although, it’s worth noting these were already available to schools and widespread). At issue here is the price we are paying for them: a pedagogical price and a democratic one. It’s the latter that really concerns me.
We are being asked to pay a pedagogical price. The curriculum being developed now is highly prescriptive and it takes concepts from specific approaches and applies them across other, unsuited domains of learning. A recommendation in the MAG report, agreed to by the Minister, is that key principles from ‘the science of learning’ — working and long term memory, cognitive load — are used to frame all learning areas and the common practice model. As Guy Claxton pointed out in Appendix 1 of my report, these principles are outdated and using them to justify a didactic approach is “bad education and bad science”. Furthermore, the draft year 0-6 English curriculum, at 62 double-sided pages of knowledge-based prescription, shows that what this Group has in mind is highly prescriptive and directive (!!! - how big is this curriculum going to be once all eight learning areas across all years are completed; are there enough days in the school year to get through it all?, because in a content driven, prescriptive curriculum that is what will be asked of you). It leaves little space for local autonomy when it comes to school and classroom decision-making — remember, the MoE argued in the Ministerial Briefing Note of 27 November 2023 that doing so would be a “significant departure from evidence about the value of enabling and expecting the profession to respond to individual learners needs and interests”. This new curriculum is out of balance. Yes, it contains elements of good practice, but its exhaustive, prescriptive nature will work to crowd out anything that is not in it that you do that is also good. I urge you, in your commentary about it, to make this point. Do not take the reasonable line that “We were already doing lots of these things”. That is true. But this curriculum will mean you will not be able to do lots of other things that work for your learners. Everything changes when this becomes the case.
We are being asked to pay a democratic price. This is the price I am most concerned about. I would not be willing to pay this price even if I was on Team Michael. The OIA documents show the MAG pushed against and subverted very clear public service policies. This puts our democratic institutions at risk. Those policies are in place because democracy is not just a vote once every three years and then the winner gets to do what it wants — that is the illusion of democracy, and we mock overt examples of it such as Russia. Democracy only works if power is used in service of the people on a daily basis, and that requires participation and inclusion, supported by clear and strong public service guidelines and policies. That is why Public Service policy is very clear on what a ministerial advisory group is for and what they can do. They are not allowed to create regulations (remember, regulations provide the legal framework which guide what we can do, and in the case of schools this is the curriculum) because their purpose is to advise on a specific area. They are not allowed to, as Anya points out in an email, do “the work of government”. That this MAG did, and have got away with it, is an absolute scandal. This is why Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa is so concerned about this. What they have done is execute an almost textbook example of the far-right’s theory of political change. That playbook traces its roots back to Nazi political theorists like Carl Schmitt. There is no world that exists where I would be happy to have an education strategy baked into a curriculum if that was the means through which it happened.
If we let this stand, we have assented to a new paradigm of politics. We, the people, become vulnerable to the whims of special interests groups and their interests. For the playbook is clear: capture the mind of a minister, use an existing tool of government like a ministerial advisory group to open up a scope for action, use that tool to begin writing regulations, have the minister agree to your recommendation that you are the ones best suited to write the new regulations, and then feast on the public money that becomes available so those regulations are rolled out. It’s one hell of a price to pay for better ‘outcomes’.
The reporting needs to get much better on this. The story is not, really, the curriculum and ‘look, the kids will be learning grammar now too'. It is that what has happened with the curriculum represents an erosion of our democracy. It is that what has happened with the curriculum represents the exclusion of voices who should be, and were, at the table. It is that what has happened with the curriculum represents a threat to your ability to make decisions about what your learners need.
So, sector leaders, I urge you to become a little less reasonable in your commentary about this. Are you really happy to swap democracy for something you already had, like structured literacy? It’s time for you to stand up.