Polity by Rob Salmond

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Polity: Hekia's waynebrave

58 Responses

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  • Matthew Hooton, in reply to Russell Brown,

    I agree the government's communications on any substantive policy proposal are usually awful (they don't get to practice very often) but they get away with it because Key can do the hocky-docky thing so well when required and the leader of the opposition is the most hopeless since Jim McLay.

    Auckland • Since Aug 2007 • 195 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Matthew Hooton,

    Key can do the hocky-docky thing so well

    almost as well as these animations

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to andin,

    "A tune was being played, sparing of melodic invention, free too of any marked variation in volume, rhythm, harmony, expression, tempo, or tone-colour, and, more or less in time with it, groups of dancers were wheeling, plunging, and gesticulating while the ogre, more aphasic than before, mumbled at full strength:

    'Ya parp the Hawky-Cawky arnd ya tarn parp-parp, Parp what it's parp parp-parp.'"

    Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, 1954

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Semmens,

    …But the Labour Party, its shills and the teacher unions…

    Hooton, in one neat sentence (repeated in the peculiar staccato delivery method of the paranoid Kiwi right wing male), shows us exactly why National cannot be trusted on education. The authoritarians of the neoliberal right are more interested in revenge on teachers unions they see primarily as political enemies and in punishing them for daring to offer one of the last centres of resistance to the values of the corporate Borgs who want to make money from our kids than they are in better educational outcomes.

    National want to smash the teaching profession so they can then privatise it to profit-driven education companies that will drive down costs by cutting pay and conditions, primarily by employing disempowered and/or untrained teachers and by dumping expensive special needs or difficult students into out-of-sight-out-of-mind COOLs. I mean, does anyone here seriously believe Hekia Parata and John Key and Bill English are interested in properly funding an online education system that will primarily be a dumping ground for the difficult, the poor and the special needs children? If you do, I have got a nice bridge for sale.

    And once they’ve achieved their goal, destroyed the unions and fobbed off education to their cronies they will sit back and enjoy what for National and it’s shills like Hooton and Farrar will be sweet, sweet revenge on one group of those who have dared to stand up to them.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • linger, in reply to Tom Semmens,

    So is Hooton the fool shilling, or not?

    Tokyo • Since Apr 2007 • 1944 posts Report Reply

  • Deborah,

    Steve Maharey has a good piece about on-line learning in the Dom Post this morning: Delivering and education for the 21st century.

    In other words, the key issue is not how we deliver education – in school, online, blended, block course – what matters is if all students are getting the best education. If, for example, online learning translates into receiving large amounts of content to be read, memorised and regurgitated then the student is being short changed.

    This is the model many of the new mass online providers of "education" are using around the world at the moment. It hardly qualifies as education. It simply gives people the opportunity to access content. Learning is another matter.

    The minister is right when she says that new technology offers students and teachers exciting new possibilities. But those possibilities will only be positive and lend themselves to great learning if it is understood that the technology is merely a delivery mechanism. On its own it changes nothing.

    What has to change is the model of learning that will ensure all learners, regardless of the mode in which they learn, get a 21st century education. That means they come out of our schools as flexible, creative, innovative people; that they know how to learn for themselves; that they know a lot; that they know how to create new knowledge for themselves and; that they know what to do with the knowledge.

    Given his experience as a university lecturer and vice-Chancellor of a university that has the most developed tertiary distance education programme in New Zealand, I think that what he says is worth listening too.

    New Lynn • Since Nov 2006 • 1447 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic,

    Is it a Privileges Committee offence to concoct an astroturf group on the hoof?

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    Parata is not backing down, so I hope lying to the house is still actionable.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

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