Our government sold out our children to gain power

One of the very worst policies of the current New Zealand government is its dogma-driven education changes. The socialist-nationalist-environmentalist coalition is dismantling some of the few positive things about our educational system, in particular its national standards and the charter schools that the previous government introduced. The new government is introducing these changes for the most cynical reasons - as a payoff for the teachers' unions that supported its election.

I was reminded of how bad these policies were when I was listening to Dave Rubin interview Katharine Birbalsingh, a New Zealand-born educator who founded the Michaela Community School, a charter school in London that takes pupils from predominantly lower socio-economic backgrounds and is rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted (the agency that monitors school standards in the UK). Birbalsingh said her charter school emphasises standards, self-discipline and personal responsibility, attributes which are the exact opposite of the post-modernist philosophy that is at the heart of our state education system. She believes in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome and believes the former has very little to do with money.

Birbalsingh talks about how when she was setting up her school, it was poor, ethnically-diverse parents who turned up to hear about what she was offering, while white, middle-class radicals were protesting outside. It sounds very like the situation here in New Zealand where Maori are some of the most vehement supporters of charter schools. 

It is clear that our government was prepared to sell out our children to gain power and as a parent that truly disgusts me. Katharine Birbalsingh and her equivalents here in New Zealand are needed now more than ever and it is a crime that the New Zealand government is so intent on denying them a place in our educational system for cynical, political reasons.