State Children

State Children by

Michael L Drake

State Children by

Michael L Drake

Š Copyright Michael L Drake, November, 2009 ISBN 0-908806-20-1 Published by Wycliffe Christian Schools 43 Pilkington Road Panmure Auckland 1072 New Zealand

Email: wycliffechristianschools@gmail.com

STATE CHILDREN © Michael L Drake, November, 2009

a condensation of The Child Moulders © Michael L Drake, September 2009

To reduce space and improve clarity, footnotes and sources of quotations have not been included: they can be found in the corresponding sections of The Child Moulders. Only one reference cannot be sourced in this way: the quotation on page 34 is an addition, taken from the Mathematics Standards for Years 1-8 Ministry of Education, Wellington, 2009, p10 as that Standard, unavailable at the time The Child Moulders went to press, had been published by the time State Children was being completed.

Copyright Notice: This book is Copyright © Michael L Drake, November, 2009. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

A note about copyright: Those who feel tempted to copy pages from this book despite the fact that to do so is illegal should prayerfully consider Romans 13:1-7, 1 Timothy 5:18 and Exodus 20:15.

Scripture quotations: Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION; © Copyright 1973,1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.

About the Author: Michael Drake is Principal of Carey College in Auckland and has over 40 years experience in education: in consulting in the establishing and management of schools, in curriculum development, in teacher training and professional development, and in teaching in state and private schools at pre-school, primary and secondary levels.

Contents The man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out a posterity in what shape they please. ~ C S Lewis The Abolition of Man

1.

The Changing State of State Schools

1

2.

Taking Children Captive

3

3.

Good Education and Freedom from State control Go Together

6

4.

Keeping Children Safe from Looney Education

5.

Rights Need Protection Not Compulsion

12

6.

State Schooling Subverts Parents

16

7.

The State Buys Control of Children and Schools

19

8.

The State’s Despotic Use of Regulations

23

9.

A National Curriculum of Ignorance and Social Control

9

26

10.

National Unstandards

29

11.

NCEA: Failed National Standards

31

12.

State Schools Are Religious

34

13.

Say “No” to the Madness

37

1

The Changing State of State Schools

Fundamental things about the state schooling of New Zealand children have been changing:  decisions about children’s education no longer rest with parents  what is taught is now about what children should believe. It is no longer about passing on knowledge or skill, learning what other people know or have known, or searching for what has not yet been discovered  schools that once aimed at growing children into adults who would make their own decisions about the society they would live in now aim to mould children to state-designed “outcomes” in which individuality and choice are controlled.

Five Ideas Changing Schools and Children:  The first is that there is no such thing as right and wrong – there is only acceptable or unacceptable “relationship”.  The second is that a good education will produce a society in which all relationships are acceptable. This shifts the focus of schooling away from learning knowledge to “outcomes” of experience and social training.  The third is that there is no truth, so there can be no heritage of knowledge and wisdom to pass on to children who must make their own knowledge. The knowledge and wisdom of parents and past generations is made worthless and is hidden from children.  The fourth idea is encapsulated in the term “holistic education”.

Rightly recognising that education encompasses more than academics, 1

educators wrongly claim that the state school must control and deliver the totality of a child’s “intellectual, physical and spiritual education.”  This gives traction to the fifth idea: the state is best. Not only must children be compelled to have a state education (in state schools or statelicensed schools), parents must be denied choice and control, and be sidelined with superficial consultation.

What God Makes Known The Bible makes clear that as God is Creator and Sustainer of everything and every age, so there is a body of knowledge that is true and valuable, and there is an absolute standard of morality to which he holds us all accountable.

It makes parents responsible for children’s education.

Equally important is the future hope with which the Bible would shape our view of the present: this corrupted creation is terminal, and we and our children are called to live not for the present alone, but for God and for eternity.

We are God’s, and while he calls us to live for him now, we do so with the sure hope of living with him for ever.

In contrast, the state claims total sovereignty over everyone, demanding that we and our children live with one aim, the greater good: satisfying the state’s demand for oneness without God. If we care for our children and treasure their integrity as individuals, we can do no less than restore control of children’s education to parents and give to children an education that equips them with knowledge and ideas they can rely on and use, instead of enslaving them to their own immature ideas and limited experiences. And we can do no better than give them an education founded on and leading to a faith in the God who has made us and is near to each one of us if we (and our children) would seek him and perhaps reach out for him.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth ... and he determined the times set for men and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. ~ Acts 17:24-27 2

2

Taking Children Captive

On any normal school day around three quarters of a million New Zealand children head for schools where they can expect to be taught by dedicated, enthusiastic and highly motivated teachers. Apart from the more than 30,000 who are truant, almost all will be attending schools that are part of a national system of 2,300 state schools that cost the government over $7,500 million a year. Children spend up to 13 years in state schools. In that time they receive over 13,000 hours of planned and structured teaching. What do they learn?

Curriculum to Mould Children to Conformity The national Curriculum is compulsory for all state schools. A new national Curriculum in force from the beginning of 2010 aims to mould children to social conformity:  It has no specified content of what is to be learnt.  It has replaced passing on knowledge and skills with changing children’s beliefs as the central core of teaching.  It has changed the meaning of “knowledge” from facts and ideas individual children can master to sharing the experiences of groups.  It no longer focuses on giving children knowledge and allowing them to grow to maturity with individual integrity.  Its focus is on moulding children to fit a national pattern of the ideal child, a dependent member of a peer group.

A Curriculum that Prescribes Belief but Not Knowledge Once what was to be taught was prescribed and what children believed was personal. Now there is no prescription of knowledge but a very narrow prescrip3

tion of belief. Now children must believe what the state prescribes (what it euphemistically calls “values”) and can know whatever.

Instead of social order growing from the free choices of people, state schools now prescribe the shape of society and give an “education” that conforms children to that mould. Children and education are now the servants of the state.

The State’s Monopoly in Schooling is Tyrannical Since 1877 school enrolment and attendance have been compulsory in New Zealand. Education is not compulsory – just going to school. Parents who want to choose a different way of shaping their children’s thinking, knowledge, skills and beliefs can only do so with a licence given to parents or private schools.

The first element of a totalitarian education is state compulsion exercised over all children. In New Zealand only 4% of children (30,000 children – about the same number who are truant each week from state schools) attend private schools. Compare that with our nearest democratic neighbour, Australia, where over a third (33.6%) attend non-state schools.

Limiting What Children Know Another element of totalitarian education is manipulation of knowledge.

Three dramatic and almost unbelievable ideas shape the national Curriculum:  First is the idea that nothing can be known in any objective way, that knowledge has to be made up by children from their experience. As a result the Curriculum has no prescription for what content is to be taught in state schools.  Second is the idea that individuals cannot know, and that only groups can know. As a result the Curriculum makes children dependent on groups to know anything, and continue to know anything.  Third is the idea that what groups do know is temporary and always changing. As a result what children “know” can never really be tested, and children are to be declared educated if they have taken part in the process of schooling irrespective of any objective knowledge they may or may not gain or retain.

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As educator Dr Michael Irwin says: We have a virtual monopoly of schooling and a far-reaching government curriculum ... which seeks to force on all children particular and contentious views about the nature of humanity, ... and the way in which people should live.

Moulding Children to “Outcomes” The national Curriculum does not list what should be taught, but lists a range of experiences designed to:  Change what children believe, replacing parent’s values with peers’  Enable them to “create” their own temporary knowledge  Ensure every child fits the state’s design for conforming citizens Nearly 70 years ago, C S Lewis predicted values or beliefs would cease to be what motivated parents and teachers. Beliefs, he said, “will be the product, not the motive, of education.” That is what the national Curriculum prescribes.

Traditional beliefs are to be discarded for those “produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning” through group discussion and peer pressure. Lewis warned, the result can only be unbridled selfishness: “When all that says ‘It is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.”

Despotic Control of Minds and Lives When the state mandates what is thought and taught, freedom and individuality are destroyed. The state that claims the right to shape children’s thinking is a state that claims children belong to the state and not to parents. The national Curriculum claims it “engages the support of (students’) families” for schools.

Schools were once meant to help parents educate their children; now parents are being recruited to help the state educate “its” children.

J S Mill’s statement on state education, made in 1859, is still accurate: A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government ... it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

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3

Good Education and Freedom from State Control Go Together

The state has a vested interest in the education of children because education equips and shapes children in a way that shapes the character and conduct of society.

In a totalitarian state, the state asserts ultimate authority. It claims powers for itself, but its citizens have no function other than serving the common good, defined as “the good of the state”. In a democracy, the state exists and governs for the good of the people.

The democratic state  answers to its citizens and  exists as their servant and the good of the state is found  in the good of its citizens, seen as people having individual integrity.

The good of citizens corporately in a democracy is a result of individual good, whereas in a totalitarian state the good of citizens corporately defines individual good.

So far as education is concerned, a democratic government cannot act with disregard to the people it represents without becoming totalitarian. The democratic state’s responsibility for the education of “its” youth is a responsibility to represent the people in the education of their youth.

People Matter It is in the nature of people to regard people as people. Good government depends on the manifestation of what can only be described as humanity. When the humanness of any within a state is lost, despotism is loosed.

Where people are accorded individual integrity, democratic government works.

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When people are denied individual integrity, democracy fails, and as modern history demonstrates, fails with incredible speed and awful abuse. The Bible asserts that an awareness of and commitment to people’s integrity is rooted in the creation of all people in God’s image, and in the implanting of an awareness of God and people’s humanity in the soul and conscience of everyone.  Democracy depends on and begins with the integrity of people.  Totalitarianism depends on and begins with denial of the individual.

Democracy depends on education that teaches children to think and act as people who have personal integrity before God. Totalitarianism uses education that makes the community more important than the individual.

To have lasting values, to have a basis of social order that is not dependent upon the power and policies of a momentarily dominant leader or gang, we are dependent on there being a true God outside of our universe, and at that a true God who makes himself and his values known. It is unquestionably good then that God has made himself known and knowable through creation and the Bible.

Freedom of Education Depends on Constrained Government The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the right to education and the prior right of parents to choose the education their children get. Only in a free state can those rights be protected.

A free state depends for its freedom upon clear constraints on government.

When restraint of power gives place to balancing rights, totalitarianism is stalking in the shadows.

A free state’s interest in education is threatened when there is a shift from balancing the powers of government to balancing rights:  a balance of power restrains government, protects the people, and leaves them free to choose the education they want  balancing rights gives government arbitrary and unrestrained powers, imposing whatever rights it values over the rights it despises, choosing the education children get.

Government in which powers are restrained is government able to serve; government in which rights are balanced is government able to enslave. Only a government restrained in its powers is able to protect rights. A government, like ours in New Zealand, that seeks to balance rights is a government that has 7

stopped controlling its powers, and is in the bud of totalitarianism.

Sadly, the state in New Zealand at present is transparently equivocal in this regard. It has claimed to champion the needs of children and the rights of parents. It has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting the prior right of parents to determine the education of children and to have choice in education. At the same time it has increasingly denied such choice and subsumed the rights of parents and the needs of children to what the state claims to be its interests. The remedy is to protect the rights of parents and children.

Among the conventions that constrain the state and protect individuals in New Zealand today is the convention that citizens are free to do whatever the law does not prohibit, whereas the state and its servants may only do what legislation expressly permits.

This is the exact inverse of a totalitarian state in which  there are no private persons  people as organisms of the state may only do what the state permits, and  anything the state does it has a right to do because the state does it.

Democracy Must Protect People’s Right to Choose The freedom of parents to choose the sort of education given their children, and in fact the freedom to educate their children, resides in constitutional and democratic conventions. It is one of those matters afforded “royal protection … [one of] the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects” as so fittingly put in Article three of The Treaty of Waitangi.

Because it has chosen to run its own schools, the state has to make laws that govern those schools. But it invariably applies those laws to private schools and to parents who do not choose state schooling. Worse, most of those “laws” are not made by Parliament but by officials or crown agencies.

For example, the Ministry of Education has designed the national Curriculum which overrides the freedom of parents and their children without any law being passed by Parliament to specifically endorse the curriculum.

A free state protects its citizens’ rights and restrains its own powers, which in the sphere of education means it will protect the freedom of parents to choose their children’s education and protect the integrity of individual children. A despotic state will dictate and control education.

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4

Keeping Children Safe From Looney Education

According to Education Professor Michael Matthews, “New Zealand is small and thus, unfortunately, only a few key people need convert to a loony doctrine for it to have national influence.”

In a democracy the state’s interest in the education of children can only be considered in terms of how it protects and nurtures individual children within their families rather than in terms of some imagined state good, or other “loony” fad.

The more the state claims to enhance the common good at the expense of the individual good the more it tends to totalitarianism and the less democratic it becomes. An education determined by parents independently of the state’s aspirations, values or control, is a truly free education.

There has probably been no state in the history of western democracy that has known such consistent and monolithic state intervention in education as New Zealand. But its objectives have never been fully reached.

In New Zealand, as in most western states, today’s literacy rates are lower than before compulsory free state education was introduced. Compulsory state education has not improved education.

State Control Abuses Children The Numeracy Development Project (NDP) running in New Zealand for the past nine years was meant to fix poor mathematics teaching.  In 1994 an international study ranked New Zealand 14th in the world for children’s mathematics achievement.  The government spent over $130 million to fix the problem.  After nine years New Zealand is now ranked even worse, at 23rd.

9

 Over those nine years, an entire generation of this nation’s primary school children has been abused with mathematics teaching that has left them worse off on the world scale than the previous almost-bottom-of-thewestern-world generation.

The state excuses this appalling failure with the claim that when a new approach to teaching is introduced you get a short term reduction in achievement, but claim it will get better in 2010. This is a deceit, a justification after failure.  If the state knew the NDP would fail for nine years, it lied when it introduced it.  If it did not know it would fail, it is lying now when it says failure was inevitable for nine years.  What they told us then was wrong, what they are telling us now is wrong; where does that leave their promises?

The German Model of “Community Schooling” In Germany today one of the most effective institutions of the Nazi era survives essentially unchanged. In 1938 Hitler banned home schooling and insisted all children be educated in “Community Schools.” The aim of the schools was to ensure every child was taught to the same standards and achieved the same outcomes. It worked in Germany in the 1930s as history makes so sadly clear.

Today Hitler’s policy of state controlled schools still applies.  Germany still outlaws homeschooling and  requires every school to teach the same curriculum.  Private schools are allowed only if they conform every child in their care to the state prescription.

A German father has withdrawn his children from their “community school” and sought political asylum in the United States because “the lessons are neither Christian nor value neutral … the children were being educated in an antiChristian worldview.”

The German consul has responded, “For reasons deeply rooted in history and our belief that only schools properly can ensure the desired level of excellent education, we (Germany) go a little bit beyond that path which other countries have 10

chosen.” In 1938 Germany went a bit beyond that path which other countries had chosen with Jews. Today it seems they do it with Christians.

The State’s “Benevolence” Takes Rights from Parents New Zealand is following Hitler. The New Zealand state’s claim that to give “effect to the right to education justifies the state having a supervisory role in ensuring that an ‘education’ is indeed provided by all schools in new Zealand” is identical to the position adopted in Germany under Hitler.

When the power of the state is loosed on those who want to think differently and have the freedom to educate their children to think differently, the state has become tyrannical no matter how good its aims or how benevolent its posture.

Critical to these assertions is the arrogant myth that the state gives effect to the right to educate. It does not.  In 1877 New Zealand passed an Education Act that took from parents an existing freedom: the right to educate children according to choice.  Every development of education law in New Zealand since 1877 has entrenched that confiscation of parental responsibility.  Today’s Education Acts do not grant to parents and private schools the right to educate: they restrain that right, and vest it principally in the state.

In 1877 the state took away the right to educate, and now the state claims benevolently to give it, conditionally, to those from whom it was taken.

Parents Can Take Back Control No one has to live with this. Parents, teachers and community leaders can retake control of education, can reject the state monopoly, and can take responsibility.

Professor of Education Policy James Tooley has found parents around the world are making the choice to get a good education for their children when state schools are, like ours, failing. Even poor parents “are abandoning public schools en masse to send their children to budget private schools.” These schools do not have all the luxuries that are on offer in other schools, but “they are far and away superior to those provided in the state sector, and that is the relevant criterion for comparison.” If they can do it, why can’t we?

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5

Rights Need Protection Not Compulsion

It is false to argue that since there exists a right to an education, the state has to provide education.

Imagine a state that protects the right to marriage by deciding who it would be good for each person to marry, and enforcing its choice. Is that any more difficult to imagine than a state that claims to protect the right of parents to choose the education given to their children by prescribing that education, where it will take place, and who will provide it, then taking children by force of law from their parents and institutionalising them?

To uphold the right of parental choice and the right to education, the state needs neither to provide nor compel: it merely needs to protect.

Imagine a state  where parents were free to choose their children’s education  where children were free to think differently  that prevents bureaucrats controlling children’s thinking and education  that allows a diversity of education and thinking.

Principal Family Court Judge, Peter Boshier, assumes that the state owns the education of children: “Families are given the primary responsibility for providing [protection of children], although some aspects, such as health care and education, are generally accepted as being the domain of the State.” He regards it as generally accepted that education is the realm of the state and not of parents.

Education has been confiscated from parents by the state.

Imposing Meaningless Standards The Law Commission says the state should insist education is “meaningful”.

But what does “meaningful” mean, and, “meaningful to whom?” Parents might imagine a meaningful schooling was one in which knowledge is passed on to children, but the national Curriculum excludes that in state schools.

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The national Curriculum excludes the concept of passing knowledge from someone who knows to an individual child, and insists knowledge is a group experience. A curriculum with no knowledge to pass on is a prescription of nothing to teach and how to teach it. Is any of that meaningful?

If not examined too closely, a call for meaningful education sounds good; who after all would advocate for an education without meaning? Yet that is exactly what is prescribed in the national Curriculum.

Teach Nothing, Learn Nothing, but Experience the “Right” Process The Ministry of Education in New Zealand says that mathematics competency is not about getting the right answer but using the right process. According to the Ministry:  Expecting students to get the right answers … “is no longer the prime goal of mathematics education.”  The prime goal of mathematics is now involves children “seeing their world from new perspectives” and exploring “relationships in ways that help them to make sense of the world around them” but with no requirement to get right answers.  Today’s children better understand their mathematics even though they can’t get it right.

Once the state has the power to define standards, it will inevitably demonstrate (to fools, bureaucrats and the gullible if not to those with common sense) that what it has done and what it does meets those standards. It has no other option: it cannot admit it is not reaching the standards prescribed as a justification for its seizing control.

For the last 40 to 50 years teaching phonics as a means of giving children reading skills has been ridiculed and banned from classrooms. The argument was that children might learn to pronounce words phonetically, but that did not give them understanding. In place of phonics “ understanding” was to be taught to children who were deprived of the means of recognising words. They were expected to “understand” words they could not read.

Even the teaching of technology has become irrational. Instead of basic skills training “an awareness of the process” must be taught. Why is a particular set of knowledge and skill not to be taught? Because, argues one teacher who supports this lunacy, “multicultural and feminist theorists” have established that all process 13

is of value. It does not matter any more what you know or experience, because any process or experience has value.

The State is Not Competent to Set Standards To define standards is to define the curriculum. To impose standards on all schools is to impose a curriculum on all schools. When the Law Commission speaks of ensuring education in private schools is “meaningful” it is calling for the imposition of the state curriculum and its standards on them.

A democratic state will give parents the protection of their right to choose an education they value, an education measured by standards they have chosen.

It is not that there is something wrong with standards. The problem is that the state cannot set standards that have meaning, or keep standards it sets.

The state itself measures and interprets the standards it writes and applies in its schools; since those schools exist on the mandate that a state education is a good education, it will find ways to demonstrate that the standards it actually achieves meet whatever standards it prescribes.

The Government’s “standards” announced in 2009 at first appeared to require the testing of content and skill. But they do not: instead, they reinforce the Curriculum’s myopic focus on process without objective knowledge. Why then did teachers object to the new standards? They threaten teachers with accountability.

Teachers Demand Secret Standards School Principals have agreed to test for standards so long as the results are kept secret. They are afraid of being made accountable. They explained that in England publication of results saw schools begin to teach children how to read where they had previously failed. Remarkably, the principals see this as detrimental. They protested:  standards caused knowledge to be taught instead of social outcomes  “teachers will teach to the standards and prepare children to achieve”  parents will be able to see which schools are achieving the standards That just might be the point: schools should start teaching knowledge and skill to standards parents want!

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Testing Parents is Hypocritical Abuse What is the state to do with incompetent parents? The question wrongly presupposes the state is competent to test parents and it wrongly assumes the state is competent to replace failed parental education with its own education.  The state cannot ensure children are educated in its own schools  It forces children to attend its schools but fails to teach thousands to read  The state is no more competent than parents it seeks to replace.

In a free society the prior right of parents to choose their children’s education can never be subject to a test of competence. If it is, it ceases to be a right based on being a parent and becomes a privilege granted by the state. It must lead to licensing parents to have and nurture children, as if the parental rights and responsibilities are not natural rights or God given responsibilities.

Alternative State Incompetence The Alternative Education (AE) programme funded by the state sees thousands of children deemed to be “alienated from the school system” given activities meant to end their alienation with false promises of “educational success”. Every year hundreds of providers take thousands of disobedient and wilful children into the bush and community for adventures that leave children without an education.

The Education Review Office reports “There (is) variation in curriculum coverage … with a possible narrowing of the range of future career opportunities”.

In other words, after bumming around our communities and forests asserting their selfishness and enhancing their self-images while suffering the abuse of a deceitful “system” that claims to be doing them “good” while giving them nothing in the way of knowledge or skill, these poor children end up with “educational success” that leaves them just where they were when starting AE. If a family chose to educate their own children in such a way, to keep their children home and give them life skills, they would be regarded by education officials as failing to provide an appropriate education.

But if parents were to be held responsible for providing motivation, discipline and guidance to their AE children, many of these children would be better off at home learning life and family skills and being held responsible for their behaviour instead of being taken into the unreal world of privileged adventures.

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6

State Schooling Subverts Parents

Where the state has the power to determine what constitutes good schooling, it necessarily defines good or bad parenting in terms of compliance or noncompliance with state schooling.

A bad or incompetent parent is thus, by the standards of state schooling, one  who is in opposition to the school, and  whose children take that opposition into the school.

If the parent and the child do not support the school, the school can change little, and the outcome will be replication of parental morality and behaviour.

Parents who want to be seen as “good parents” must comply with the school’s programme. Where that programme includes changing children to a model that differs from their parents’, compliance of the parents paves the way for the school to change children to its model, to mould them to its shape.

Acquiescence Empowers the State The power of totalitarianism lies in the acquiescence of individuals. Many parents hope that their children, though unable to infuse their studies and school activities with their religious beliefs and practices, can practice their religion in other contexts. For most that is a significant compromise, for there are few religions that do not call for the infusion of their belief system into all of the activities of the believer. Parents who give in to state schooling give up their children.

State Schools Aim to Isolate Children from Parents The genius of John Dewey’s “democratic education”, upon which all contemporary western compulsory state schooling is founded, is in its conscious creation of schooling for conformity that separates children from what parents choose.

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Dewey asserted  It did not matter what children studied so long as they engaged in a common experience that isolated them from what parents really wanted.  “Education is a social function, securing direction and development in the immature through their participation in the life of the group.”

His democracy requires conformity to the group and rejection of the family.

Replacing Parents Unrestrained, schools replace all the functions of the home. They now dictate  what food children should eat to be healthy  what outdoor experiences they should have that threaten their safety, regularly injure them, and occasionally kill them  and how much sunlight they can be exposed to.

The euphemistically labelled Education Outside the Classroom is a significant sphere of what was once parental responsibility now captured by schools. It seldom has anything to do with knowledge or skills traditionally taught in schools.

According to the Ministry of Education, the purpose of adventure education is to “improve social interaction … by deliberately exposing participants to (physical) risk.” The aim is to put children in danger of injury or death for social change. State schools want to endanger children because:  It breaks down parental influence. “Unless we take children away from their parents … we will never be able to replace parents’ influence.”  Fear and achievement bonds children in groups and replaces families.

The state can only control if it breaks down family influence.  It is easier for modern parents who spend little shared time with children to have schools organise what parents might otherwise do.

Schools replace parents because schools want it and parents find it easiest.

How the State Deceives Parents In 2006 Children’s Commission Dr Cindy Kiro published her plan to have the 17

state invade the privacy of every family, monitoring, reporting and controlling every child from birth. She described the B4SC (Before School Check) programme, launched in 2007, as a step in her plan. Parents were told that B4SC was to make sure children were ready for school, but the secret handbook states:  The aim of B4SC is to engage every child in permanent state therapy  Parents must not be told this  Parents must not be told the results of tests that identify children at risk  Parents must not be told the true purpose of questionnaires used Demanding every child be controlled by the state leads ultimately to licensing of parents to conceive and nurture children. It fits that one Auckland school told a mother she should stop having children so her other children could do better at school. This is staggeringly rude and abusive, no matter what the intent.

We Don’t “Protect” the Right to Marriage like the Right to Education!

If we did, all marriageable people would be taken from their homes and parental control, placed in state institutions, trained to state standards, married to partners of the state’s choosing, inducted into the state’s family life curriculum, and inspected and tested by the state. If that intrusion into family life is repugnant, why allow the same level of intrusion into family life in the name of education?

Education is Best Without the State Providing It It is wrongly assumed free, compulsory schooling is good. Research shows:  Children learnt better before compulsory state schooling  Many now failing at state schools would have succeeded without them  Literacy was 50% higher in the UK and USA before state schooling In 1880, when compulsory schooling was introduced into the UK, tests show over 95% of fifteen-year-olds were literate. Now it is only 60%. When free state schooling began, poor parents still preferred to pay for private schooling.

The highest standards of education have been achieved and will be achieved when parents are free to choose an education they believe and invest in. Freedom in education exists when it is protected but not provided by the state.

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7

The State Buys Control of Children and Schools

The absolutist state regards itself as the only agency that can properly educate.

Its ultimate goal must be to extend control over all dissent until nothing is private.

Should it starve private schooling of state funding in the hope of forcing submission, or should it pay some funds to entice a closer relationship with the state? In New Zealand it does both!

Capturing Private Schools with State Funding One Associate Minister of Education has said, “Accepting government funding also means … Government interference in daily operations.” In the last 50 years most private schools in New Zealand have become state schools as a direct result of state funding. Pivotal have been two Acts of Parliament in 1877 and 1975.

When the 1877 Act established a national system of “free, secular, compulsory” state primary schools, many claimed the “secular” part was more about ending sectarianism than establishing atheistic secularism. But two other issues featured:  the political separation of Catholic and protestant communities  the idea that education was by nature religious Although there were many protestants who saw education as religious, Catholics were especially outspoken on the issue, demanding the state fund schools in which Catholicism was taught. One bishop demanded “for the Catholic body help from the state to educate their children in their own way.”

Nationalising Catholic Schools with State Funds For the next 100 years Catholic schools educated Catholic youth, with the proportion of Catholics in state primary schools seldom rising above 5%. Until the First World War state primary schools were protestant rather than truly secular.

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By the 1960s however the Catholic schools could no longer fund their teachers or maintain buildings, and the standards of teaching were being bitterly criticised.

The state faced the prospect of the complete collapse of Catholic schools, dumping thousands of children on a state school system that could not possibly cope.

The solution was the 1975 Act which offered to nationalise private schools, allowing them some provisions that were deemed to preserve their “special character”. The condition: those schools have to teach the national Curriculum.

Most private schools, including over 260 Catholic schools, took up the offer and became “integrated” state schools. They could keep some of their religion, but all became state schools, committed to teaching the secular state curriculum.

Dependence upon the state eventually meant capture by the state.

Enslaving the Poor Compulsion and state-payment were instituted to compel the poor to attend state schools despite the fact that the poor were attending schools, paying for them and gaining high levels of literacy before schooling became free, compulsory and state controlled.

If the need for compulsion and state-payment has any traction, the children of New Zealand’s poor would now be succeeding at school. But they are not, and particularly so for Māori. It is a matter of national shame that  rates of school failure, truancy, suspensions and dropping-out are shockingly high and that all are significantly higher for Māori than non-Māori  39% of Māori have no formal educational qualification  only 15% of Māori school leavers have university entrance compared with 36% of the total population Māori are a significant proportion of the 340,000 New Zealanders who are illiterate graduates of compulsory schooling, and the 780,000 with literacy and numeracy “problems” who learnt in compulsory state schools.

Whatever the causes, the reality is that compulsory state schooling fails children in our poorest schools at a huge rate. Success in compulsory state schools is exactly aligned with the decile rating (government wealth index) of students, with decile 1 students almost never reaching the levels of decile 2 students.

Compulsory state-paid schooling does not help the children of the poor. Nor does it help the children of the affluent who always patronise high-fees schools.

Middle-New Zealand is the only group that benefits from compulsory state-paid 20

schooling. Educationally these students are achieving at a lower level than before schooling was made compulsory. But for their families there has been huge economic advantage throughout the 20th Century.

Compulsory state-paid schooling is an educational failure that has failed the poor, and especially failed Māori, but provided middle New Zealanders with economic advantage at cost of dependence upon state benevolence and control.

Making Control Life-Long Totalitarian education calls for lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is not a goal, it is the goal. John Dewey advocated it as the only goal as far back as 1916.

He said the only “aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education .” There is no purpose in education except continuing education.

Replacing the aim of mastering a body of knowledge and skill with the aim of preparing for the next stage of learning replaces achievable and measurable standards with, at best, more unfulfilled needs that only the education system can satisfy. Since the state has mandated itself to manage education, the state empowers itself to manage increasingly greater chunks of people’s lives under the pretext of educating them. Schools exponentially expand the scope of syllabuses to control more and more of children's lives in preparation for lifelong educational control of their lives.

Expanding the Curriculum to Control Life “Holistic education”, the idea that education must address the intellectual, physical and spiritual needs of a child, is fashionable. Having forced children into its schools on the pretext of educating them, the state now demands control of the whole education of children.

In the past, school graduates always knew more learning was needed. But they took two critical things to their next stage of life and learning:  a recognised level of acquired knowledge they knew had meaning,  a basis of knowledge and skill upon which to build future learning.

Students who leave school with a “qualification” that says no more than that they have to carry on learning not only lack accomplishment, they are equipped for future learning with nothing more than uncertainty. The New Zealand Cur21

riculum will create such uncertainty and dependence. The aim of each successive level is to prepare students for the next level of lifelong learning. The overall “vision” of the Curriculum is given as “Young people who will be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.”  they do not have to know anything  they do not have to be able to do anything  they will exude confidence based on ignorance and incompetence  they will be lifelong dependents upon state education.

Lifelong English that Has No Meaning The Curriculum specifies “In English, students study, use, and enjoy language and literature communicated orally, visually, or in writing.” No knowledge mastered, no skills acquired, no competence expected; only the activities of studying, using, and enjoying. Just two skills are to be taught at all levels: “making meaning and creating meaning.” Children have to create their own meaning for what they have read because according to the Curriculum children  cannot gain knowledge from others through what they read or hear, or  pass knowledge on to others through what they write and speak They have to make knowledge for themselves with no expectation that it is the same as anyone else knows. This is mumbo-jumbo.

Next the State Plans to Test Financial Viability Some schools won’t sell-up to the state, so it now proposes to make a test of “financial viability” a criterion for licensing those private schools. But that has no relationship to the quality of education given. Many “poor” schools provide great education; many “rich” schools fail miserably. James Tooley has pointed out some of the poorest schools in the world are able to achieve outstanding academic results because parents, teachers and children are committed to learning.

Most private schools in New Zealand, even the well established ones, depend upon bequests, volunteers, subsidies, fundraising and prayer. In terms of viability such schools are doomed — but they teach successfully for decades.

Proposed financial viability testing is about control, not education.

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8

The State’s Despotic use of Regulations

Government by regulation, law making by a state council, agency or officials, is a favoured mechanism of despots and much used in controlling education in New Zealand. The power of regulation is three fold:  regulations can be made and changed virtually instantly  they can be made with a minimum of public scrutiny and awareness  they engender uncertainty giving officials de facto powers of control.

Professor Tooley notes that regulation is not only despotically intrusive, it invites subversion and impinges most upon those it professes to protect.

Regulation Enforcing Precrime Testing of Teachers Fails Who may teach in private schools is controlled by regulation empowering the Teachers Council to make and police rules to control teachers. Law Commission President, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, once warned of this evil, quoting a 1765 legal expert: “In all tyrannical governments ... the right both of making and enforcing the laws is vested in ... same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.”

Licensing teachers by testing their likelihood to be moral does not work.

There is no way pre-testing can determine who will or will not commit crime.

The movie Minority Report might be fictional, and its warning about social control graphic, but its precrime investigation is fundamentally what the Council is supposed to engage in to protect children in schools. Between 2002 and 2008 almost 1300 registered teachers faced allegations ranging from fraud to sexual violation of pupils. All these teachers were precrime vetted. Precrime vetting  Does not stop teachers who will offend against children teaching  Does not protect children The regulations making registration of teachers compulsory extend intrusion 23

and control for no useful purpose. Despite this the state now plans to extend it to the owners of private schools.

Forcing Every Teacher into the State’s Mould The Teachers Council makes and polices other arbitrary laws. It  demands all teachers in private schools be trained by the state to teach state content and state methods they are not going to teach or use  binds Christian teachers to ethics that conflict with their faith Professor De Groof of Boston University rightly says, The most crucial issue – beyond the fundamental right of parents to choose a school for their children – was the right of the school … to select staff on the basis of criteria specific to the distinctive mission of the school rather than to some universal standard established for all.

New Zealand fails on this “most crucial issue.”

Despotic Control Deceives with Pretended “Consultation” Consultation that has a pre-determined outcome conforms participants to a predetermined point of view. You will look in vain for any significant differences in what was first proposed for the national Curriculum from what has been finally imposed by regulation. In the process however, vast numbers of teachers have been persuaded their involvement has resulted in a “good” curriculum.

Limiting most responses to a predetermined selection is indoctrination not consultation. There is never discussion about replacing morality with values, only which values to use from the state’s list. The values in the draft are the same as in the final version. Either the Ministry prophetically happened upon a handful of values that the entire community regards as best, or they sucked everyone in.

Replacing Children’s Beliefs with the State’s Values Parents are to be “consulted” too, but not about which values are to be taught, only about how the values the curriculum prescribes will “find expression in an individual school.” There will be no consultation about replacing family beliefs 24

and godly morality with temporary values chosen by the state.

What are values? The anti-Christian philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche chose the idea of “values” to replace the idea of morality. The Curriculum’s values are  wants and desires, not standards for behaviour and motivation  convictions, not standards of right and wrong  temporary commitments, not standards of truth for all generations  what a group of children chooses for the moment Values teaching corrupts children in two stages:  First, students are told to be independent of the values received from families and churches because there is no right and wrong, only opinion.  Then they are manipulated into accepting the Curriculum’s values as “right”, and trained to conform to temporary group decisions about how to live and behave.

Regulation for an Immoral Education A moral education is one that teaches children there is right and wrong that applies to them as it has applied and always will apply to people everywhere.

Morality taught from the Bible’s revelation of God who has moral perfection, makes known his moral will, and is able and willing to help us in our moral imperfection, is a morality of lasting value and everlasting security.

The religion of state schools is now out in the open, imposed by regulation.

The Curriculum prescribes teaching children to abandon the morality they have inherited and to replace it with the capricious choices peer groups make from time to time, unrelated to the wisdom and experience of the past, much less to any transcendent standards of right and wrong.  Values formed by groups turn children into atoms of the group with no personal responsibility.  Values education is a mechanism for social control. The state is casting every child from the same mould, its mould of conformity and dependence.  Choice and difference are stripped from parents and children alike and all become non-persons.

The state is everything.

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9 A National Curriculum for Ignorance and Social Control In every state education system there comes a time when prescribing the content of what is taught is replaced with a “New Curriculum” that prescribes social outcomes. We are at that point in New Zealand today.

Content-based teaching, being thrown out in New Zealand  defines the knowledge and skill to be taught  does not attempt to control future choices or the future shape of society.

The outcomes education of the new Curriculum is the opposite, aiming to control the future by conforming every child to the outcomes chosen by the state. It  does not define what will be taught  attempts to define what the social results of schooling will be.

Social Conformity Means Loss of Individuality A broad education that encourages children to master knowledge of facts, concepts and ideas, frees a child to be a person who thinks and acts with individual integrity. Outcomes education aims to have every child fit the predetermined pattern of social uniformity. It is cloning not schooling, child abuse not education. Its aim is not children who will make independent choices, but clones  whose individual integrity is taken hostage to the state  who divest themselves of personal beliefs in favour of group values  who conform to the Curriculum’s Marxist aim of securing “a sustainable social, cultural, economic, and environmental future for our country” at cost of personal choice and responsibility.

A state that posits the good of the state in the good of the individual values individual knowledge, but a state that sees conformity as the key to social harmony always replaces schooling in content with schooling in social outcomes.

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Sexualising the Young through Group Pressure Sex education classes now ask children to decide by a group vote when they should have sex. Here is the discussion starter for eleven-year-olds: Should I have sex? ... What are your values? Sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. It depends on what you and your partner want.

Such education is aimed at changing children’s morality, conforming children to a social outcome uninhibited by traditional values. Instead of being told it is wrong, consequences are minimised with the advice that if they do something “they regret,” children can do things differently next time Knowing Isn’t Knowing Any More The national Curriculum hides new definitions of learning and knowing that make content of learning accidental and irrelevant. Its outcomes will be a state generated addiction to experience and ever increasing dependence upon the state.

But its greatest vice is its annihilation of the integrity of individual children. Jane Gilbert, for the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, explains The traditional idea of knowledge as something that is linked to ‘truth’, to ‘the facts’ … is being replaced by [the idea] … that knowledge is important now, not because it is true, but for what it can do.

Truth is excluded. Facts are excluded. The only thing that matters is the process of classroom activity which replaces learning and knowing. This is a design for a curriculum in ignorance. The new meaning of knowledge is spelt out by Gilbert:  Knowledge is a process, not a thing  It happens in teams, not in individuals  It does things, rather than just ‘being’  It is developed to be used, modified, replaced and destroyed quickly  It develops as and when it is needed Only Groups Can Know This explains why so much group work happens in schools: no child is expected to learn anything as an individual. Only groups can learn. When the na27

tional Curriculum is fully implemented, a child’s school report telling parents the child has achieved some level of learning will mean that the child’s group has “learnt” something. There will be no evaluation made of the individual’s learning because individuals cannot learn. But even more important, the “learning” the group has experienced is no more than a shared process. So what the school report will really mean is that the child who is said to have learnt something has done nothing more than share in a group activity.

Creating the Group’s “Knowledge” An exclusive focus on generating knowledge means children must not be given the accumulated wisdom of the past or share in discoveries of the present. Not even a teacher can instruct because a teacher has nothing of value to transmit to groups. There is no truth older than the group’s present experience: “Learning is primarily a group activity, not something that happens in individuals.”

Education adviser Bruce Hammond explains, since learning “is a process of students creating their own ‘knowledge’ … led by the interests, questions queries and concerns of the learner,” a curriculum cannot plan what students will learn.

The Futility of Teaching Ignorance The Ministry of Education published an “Exemplar” in which the teacher, instead of deciding what students needed to know, asked students to form questions about what they knew, then make a presentation from what they knew in answer to their questions. The lessons were considered successful because students participated, even though they gained no knowledge.

This approach is specified in the Pedagogy section of the national Curriculum: Teachers encourage this process … everyone, including the teacher builds the language that they need to take their learning further.

The teacher has nothing to offer but shared processes, in which the group builds language for more shared processes (“learning further”). What futility.

The individual child has no meaning apart from the group:  the dignity of each child as an individual person is stolen  children now have dignity only as group members There are no people left, only groups.

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10 National Unstandards

The intentions of introducing National Standards were to specify levels of achievement, relate those to individual children, and report achievement to parents. Each of those three intentions has been subverted by the way the Standards have been written even before they are put into practice:  “levels of achievement” are not objective standards but examples from which teachers select bits or do something similar  assessment of individual children may take place in groups, or with previously studied text, teacher prompts, or reference to other resources  reports to parents will purport to describe a child’s knowledge or skill, but may relate to nothing more than taking part in a group activity Teachers Make Up Their Own Minds There are no specifications of what must be known or achieved to meet any standard, only “examples that illustrate” how students can “engage” with the tasks of the national Curriculum. The Curriculum states: Examples of problems and students’ responses are not a definitive collection for use in assessing achievement in relation to the standards. They are illustrative, and they represent only a small sample of possible problems and responses that teachers might draw on.

Teachers are required to choose whatever data fits. Whatever the government intended, National Standards look good, do nothing, and will report less.

“Standards” that Deceive Assessment of reading and writing standards is to be based on what students do 29

“largely by themselves.” What nonsense! A student who cannot read or write on his own cannot read or write. Although the reading standard describes a 90% accuracy in reading previously studied text, even that is never once referred to in the examples of assessment: no particular level of accuracy is required in reading.

In fact, the standards stipulate that children can “gain meaning from the text” they are supposed to be reading by using illustrations or the classroom’s wall charts!

Mathematics that “Thinks” but May Not Calculate Accurately Mathematics standards relate to “solving problems or modelling situations”.

Although this may include calculations, it is in the context of the Ministry’s statement that right answers are ... “no longer the prime goal of mathematics.”

“Multiplicative and additive thinking,” are among things to be assessed. What will be assessed as a mathematics standard is the process of thinking to solve problems, not necessarily the accurate computation of mathematical solutions.

Asking Children to Solve Problems without Knowledge or Skill “Problem solving” is a pervading feature of the national Curriculum and the National Standards. Behind it is the idea that the troubles of our world arise from adults, and if children in their innocence are given the opportunity to sort out the world before maturity corrupts them, we will have an unblemished world. But:  real children do not have the understanding to solve adult problems  real children do not have the maturity to solve adult problems According to one Principal, “Thinking skills are to be taught instead of, not on top of” facts. But with no knowledge, “Children need to have the affirmation that they have thought … and have contributed to a group discussion.”

Let the children be children. They learn to solve problems by first being given the knowledge and skills that are a foundation for life. The dominance of problem solving and thinking skills is symptomatic of an education system that is foolishly inverted: it starts with an expectation of maturity in the immature, and ends with immature arrogance, ignorance and dependence, carefully manufactured by compulsory state schooling, and validated by National Standards.

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11 NCEA: Failed National Standards Since NCEA became the national standard for senior students in New Zealand, standards have been fudged, falsified and failed. In 2008 the NZQA reported that 71,000 grades, over 25% of assessments they checked, were wrong because  the tasks were too easy  teachers “gave too much direction”  wrong answers were marked as correct.

Even valid tasks were not very demanding: in 2008 18,000 students failed out of more than 36,000 students who attempted NCEA standards in such things as  picking up litter in a group  talking to a friend on the phone  role-playing applying for a benefit  answering a phone survey  filling in a passport application  reading Wikipedia Hiding the Truth about Results Shockingly NZQA refused to fix the errors. NZQA knows that more than 25% of assessments it has looked at are wrong, but children with those results have not been told and results have not been corrected. Children have false qualifications which NZQA knows are false and will deceive employers or tertiary institutions.

NZQA says it “usually finds problems with about one-third of the papers it checks,” but instead of fixing the problem says it is going to change the way it checks assessments so the results will look better even if the level of cheating stays the same.

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Hiding the Truth about Student Ignorance Even without the cheating, there is no guarantee that any student who has “achieved” can actually remember and do the operation “assessed”:  students may be assessed on what they have done in class or in groups, and may never get tested on what they know or can do on their own  assessments are normally completed when the teacher thinks a student is ready: the assessment is given in isolation from any wider context.

Hiding the Truth about Cheating To fail a student is to discriminate against the student. Failure is the responsibility of the teacher, who should use one of the fixes listed by NZQA :  do the same task again after telling them how to get it right  set a new activity they can pass  offer another activity later  talk to the student to get answers not provided in the activity  have the student add to unsatisfactory answers  use evidence from work done during the teaching programme  use anything else as if it is from the test even if they missed the test NZQA says that the purpose of an assessment task is not to evaluate the skill or knowledge of a student but to help that student gain the qualification.

Hiding the Truth about Standards The reason “guidance” can be given is that NCEA is about process not content.

Credits earned on the basis of what a student knows are invalid unless they gained that knowledge through a “learning programme.” Einstein would fail if he did not take part in a group activity even though he knew so much, but a student who does not learn anything he can remember or use must be “passed” because he has completed a learning experience.

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So instead of a “standard” consisting of a prescribed range of skills and knowledge that is demonstrated with creativity to a specific degree of accuracy, we get such meaningless standards as  “has engaged in writing” for an achieved grade  “has engaged in writing effectively” for credit.

In history the pretence is just as transparent: students are expected to have  identified “historical facts and ideas” for an achieved  identified “a range” of historical facts and ideas for merit  identified “a wide range” of facts and ideas for excellence.

One eminent critic explains: For subjects like English, science, maths, economics and history there are no clear, one-dimensional ladders for students to climb, making it impossible to define clear standards. What you get is vague, open-ended descriptions open to a wide range of interpretations. … In subjects where there are networks of knowledge, few black and whites and lots of shades of grey, standards-based assessment simply doesn’t work.

Hiding the Truth about Fragmented Knowledge Standards based assessment measures students against a pre-determined description of an isolated bit of experience. So long as the pre-determined stuff is done in the pre-determined way, you pass. Students do not need to be able to use knowledge in different ways or apply it to different contexts. If every activity has been completed, pass; if any single item is incomplete or missing, fail.

By isolating prescribed experiences from each other, standards based schooling makes it improbable knowledge can be integrated. Passing English essay writing never guarantees a student can write an essay in any other context.

A “pass” in English means nothing about a student’s overall English knowledge and skill. It simply means he has chosen a combination of bits of English he could complete assessment tasks in. For some students it means they are able to choose to “learn” tasks in which they are already competent.

In such a miasma of mindlessness is it any wonder that some teachers up the marks, while others cannot work out what mark they should validly give?

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12 State Schools Are Religious For most of the 130 years New Zealand has imposed secular state schooling, everything to do with the state school curriculum has been shaped by the concept that knowledge is neutral and that facts can be comprehended independently of any belief system: that either there is no God, or that he is not involved in giving life meaning. That is a myth: such a secular view is itself a belief system.

Religion Prescribed in the Curriculum For years the Health curriculum has prescribed that children engage in  searching for meaning, the purpose of life and spiritual well-being, and the values and beliefs that determine the way people live  finding well-being in Taha Wairua, the life force said to determine who children are, where they have come from and where they are going.

Another indicator of state school religion is the provision of “chaplains” in the state’s schools. Half of state primary schools and over 20% of state secondary schools now have chaplains on their payrolls, offering religious guidance.

The religion of state schooling goes further: the Ministry of Education advocates mystic sessions in classrooms as a means of bringing social harmony to schools and resolving emotional and spiritual problems. Jenney Mosely, promoted by the Ministry as the expert on this, says it is the same as Hindu philosophy, “integrating the spiritual, emotional, academic and physical beings.”

This is religion prescribed by the state for compulsory “secular” state schools.

The Two-faced Religion of the State State school spirituality has two faces: it now rightly acknowledges what it denied for decades, that there is a spiritual dimension to all learning; and it wrongly 34

removes choice by imposing on every child the vacillating beliefs of peer groups.

All the talk of open mindedness is overwhelmed by the requirements  to “respect” the official form of spirituality  to teach the state-prescribed list of beliefs  that children choose beliefs from the list by group decisions  that the beliefs children adopt must always be viewed as temporary.

State Religion Opposes Christianity The foundation for a biblical education is in the first statement of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It conflicts at every point with what is being promoted by the state’s demand for  knowing without reference to God  believing without acknowledgement of God  choosing values without submission to God. The responsibility for teaching children within a biblical belief system is expressly vested by the Bible in parents. The state has abandoned its duty to protect the right to an education by substituting a duty to provide and supervise it. There is no room for parents to determine anything, even the faith of children.

The goal of a biblical education is to teach children to glorify, serve and enjoy their Creator, whereas the goal of the national Curriculum is to condition children to serve the greater good of the state.

The content of biblical education is determined by the Bible’s declaration that it is only as God is reverenced and known that any fact is properly understood.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom.”

Every subject must be considered and taught from the viewpoint that God is God. To try to know anything without this perspective is to distort what is true.

Religion Shapes the Content of Every Lesson  In history, children should see what God has been doing and how he regards the response of men to his law and providence. A secular educa35

tion must see history merely in terms of relationships and accidents.  In science children should see they are “discovering” what God already knows and sustains in a universe he gives meaning and order to. The state Curriculum claims children create knowledge and make meaning.  In mathematics children should see how God has ordered and sustains creation and learn to use the tools of mathematics to serve God more faithfully. Secular mathematics sees man as having deistic mastery of reality through mathematical description and manipulation.

People Have Personal integrity the State Must Protect A biblical view of education regards each child as created in the image of God, thereby being imbued with a dignity and identity that can never rightly be taken captive by any group in the way the New Zealand Curriculum insists upon.  Replacing the protection of the right to choose education by providing education defined and compelled by the state defiles people’s integrity.  Telling parents which beliefs and moral standards the state requires all schools to compel children to believe defiles people’s integrity.  Making the good of people dependent upon the supposed greater good of the state, instead of recognising that the good of the state depends upon the greater good of its people, defiles people’s integrity.  Denying the existence of and access to personal knowledge by limiting knowledge to group experience makes each person nothing more than an organ in an impersonal organism.  Grafting children’s consciences and loyalties onto groups other than their families, so that they look to those groups for morality and security, instead of protecting children’s freedom to think and believe and find personal identity apart from groups is abusive.

The state has two choices in pursuing its interests in the education of children: protect or provide. It must either uphold personal dignity and human rights, protecting parents’ and children’s freedom to think and act according to their own beliefs, or it must dictate what the minions of the state will believe and do.

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13 Say “No” to the Madness

What sort of a mindset has seized our nation when we are willing for our children to be schooled by those who say they will not pass on knowledge or skill?

What sort of mindset has seized us that accepts without reform over 100 years of the state replicating generations of unskilled unemployable poor and highdependency families as an “outcome” of a state school system that has never helped them, and that has left them less educated, less skilled, and more dependent than before compulsory free state schooling was imposed upon them?

The first chapter of the book of Proverbs paints a picture of teaching that results in wisdom, discretion and discernment. It is teaching that  requires discipline and instruction  requires parental responsibility and motivation  loves knowledge as treasure to be won with diligence and sacrifice.

We can, we must say, “No! We have come too far: we will go no further.”

Yet reform of schooling on its own will not be enough to save children from the ignorance and incompetence of state schooling. If parents are to reassert their right to choose the type of education they secure for their children – as they must – they must also reassert their responsibility to nurture children in families. And the state must protect such family life without attempting to provide or control it.

We can do no less and no better than to turn to the Bible for both the model and the means of securing true family life. In Christ alone is life to be found – life for children, life for adults, life for families, and life for the state: Jesus (said), “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free … so if the Son (Jesus) sets you free, you will be free indeed.” ~ John 14:6; 8:31,36 37