I first heard Judge Becroft speak at an RTLB conference many years ago. I was struck by how sensible he was and how clearly he understood and articulated the the issues and impact of poverty on the lives of our children. In my work and growing understanding of restorative practice in schools and in my role as a Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour, I also work with the marginalised and disenfranchised youth in our country. I have been fortunate in my work to be trained as an IYT facilitator and with the UBRS programme. Combined with my training in Restorative Practices these programmes have helped to form my growing sense that we have the knowledge to work better with our children. Judge Becroft believes that we also have the capacity to do so much better for the 95,000 New Zealand children living in poverty. As our Children's Commissioner with his office of 12 dedicated people he is the voice and advocate for the 1.12 million children (18yrs and under) who our future. These young people are largely voiceless and disenfranchised. There has been no budget increase for the Children's Commissioner Office in 7 years.
We undervalue children in our country all the time.
In a recent article titled 'Why New Zealand is failing its kids' (May 2, 2017, www.newsroom.co.nz) written by National Affairs Editor Shane Cowlishaw, Judge Becroft stated that "I suspect history will judge us quite harshly. We judge those in the Victorian era of having a very crude approach to child welfare ... well I think a lot of what we're doing right now might be judged as almost, putting it crudely, sending a blind person to prison because they can't see". Every child who comes into a classroom must be taught by age the same curriculum and be judged to be at, below, above an artificially contrived standard. It is essentially an aspiration established by a political regime. A 7 year old child from a loving two parent family living in a warm, insulated house with ready access to medical care and quality nutrition, with a bedroom of toys and books, a personal ipad; is expected to have the same educational outcomes as a 7 year old who is cold, hungry and abused by bullying siblings fighting for space and limited resources such as a bed, a sandwich, a blanket and neglected by adults who may be psychological absent due to drugs or alcohol. This hungry child is treated the SAME as the other lovingly nurtured 7 year old child. Surely this is a barbarity we should be beyond?
The natural progression of treating both children the same, judging both children by the same measures is a progression separation of outcomes. A trajectory of success for one and failure for the others. Can we afford as a society to allow 10% of our youth to be born and grow into failure from the day of their birth? I am deeply saddened by the overwhelming sense of a society that is not outraged and actively working towards changing this system that is willing to allow a new born to fail before they even begin to live. It seems on a par with the atrocity of Generals in war accepting a reasonable loss of life to achieve military goals. As a teacher I cannot accept that there is an acceptable number of children doomed to be way below standard. As a teacher I have been complicit for most of my career being a tool of a school and "Schools grade, and, therefore, they degrade". Ivan Illich wrote these words in his 1971 book "Deschooling Society". That was nearly 50 years ago and we are still treating children with a barbaric grading system. I agree with Judge Becroft that we need to listen to the voice of our children. Many schools are working to develop student agency and then our society and the political system in Aotearoa silences the young. I do not know of any school that has asked students what they think about being graded against National Standards. I use National Standards as just one example of educational barbarity.
Our school systems are riddled with 'fatted cows'. Ideas and systems that are so deeply entrenched in the notion of schools that they are reified. Not even open for discussion. The concept of compulsory schooling from 5 to 15 in New Zealand is rarely discussed. The sense of herding students into age group cohorts. The 9-3 pm time structure for school hours. The compulsory activities that students have to participate in even when it is painful or humiliating - we all know the obese child who comes last in the class race every - single - time. Children who are punished for being late to school, made to do PE, made to sit still in a classroom as a five year old, made to stay at school when it feels like a prison as a 14 year old. The arbitrary nature of many of our systems owe more to industrial British traditions that to humane responses to the needs of children.
Professor Johansson from Sweden who visited our country and (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty_in _New_Zealand) spent some time working in New Zealand, said that New Zealand needed to address child poverty as not a political question, but an ethical question, a moral question. I agree, I suspect that Judge Becroft would agree also. This reflection is my small candlelight of moral outrage.
No comments:
Post a Comment