New Zealand’s maths curriculum has been in the news recently. The experts are saying there are big issues, the education community is divided – something just doesn’t add up.
According to recent reporting, international assessment studies show Kiwi kids have fallen below most other English speaking nations in maths. It seems that where we once ensured students had a core or solid base of understanding for a subject like maths by memorising times tables and basic facts, the emphasis is now less on the ‘knowledge’ and more on techniques and strategies for solving problems.
NZ Herald writer Roger Partridge addressed this in a February column ‘Counting the cost of New Zealand’s failed maths experiment’, explaining ‘rather than ensuring all students master a basic core of knowledge and skills, teachers are encouraged by the Ministry of Education to let children lead their own learning. Teachers are told that learning-related-to-the-child matters more than the knowledge contained in traditional subject disciplines.’
Um, what? Isn’t children leading their own learning a bit like the animals being in charge of the zoo? There’s more than a few red flags here.
If a generation of students are struggling with ‘how many beans make five’, then there’s a direct correlation with a recent TVNZ news item which highlighted the lack of quality maths teaching in this country. Surveys are showing that there is little time spent on the maths component during teacher training – just 27 hours in a year-long graduate programme. Consequently teachers are admitting that they are embarrassed about their own deficiencies in the subject and so lack the confidence or desire to teach it, even at primary level.
With national monitoring results showing only 45 per cent of Year 8 students are above the curriculum level for mathematics and statistics, then the consensus seems to be that educating teachers is also an issue.
And it doesn’t stop there. Our reading competency is apparently just as poor.
What this does throw up is the need for some serious consideration of our education system. There is no easy solution. In a fit of deep thinking, and pleasant nostalgia, I recollect my generation’s most important scholastic influences.
Sesame Street made learning fun. Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney recognised the influence television had on the lives of American kids, and that the show could fill an educational and entertainment gap. We were a long way from being Americanised and globalised when the show first broadcast in the US in 1969 but even Kiwi kids back then felt an affinity with the characters from ‘the Street’ and the universal language of learning that it spoke to them so easily through Grover, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Count von Count, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster.
Really only a guest star on Sesame Street, it’s amazing to think that one of the most famous crossover stars of the 70s and 80s was Kermit the Frog. The fluffy green amphibian managed to capture the attention of millions on daytime television, then do the same in prime time in the evening on The Muppet Show. In between times he took up the banjo and knocked out the odd best-selling tune.
Like all of us, Kermit was searching for more about the meaning of life, and asked the searching questions: Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side? Does a frog even have elbows? Is this hand going to be up my backside forever?
Sesame Street’s catchy opening song ushered us all into a place where we felt like old friends with the integrated cast, both human and puppet, and where there was a moral, message, lesson, concept or theme in every scene, and every episode was brought to us by a letter and a number.
Unlike school, lessons on Sesame Street were delivered in such a simple, magical, captivating and often hilarious way that I can still remember them now, over 40 years later. That’s some influence. Somehow I think there’s a lesson there for both teachers and students.
Rich Pooley
Editor
info@mangawhaifocus.co.nz
