Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Russell Brown,
And he’s not a bad journalist either.
This will be a test of that. Seriously, the journalistic challenge in this is enormous.
-
Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to tussock,
and had it’s current borders since 1823
Um just because some European drew a circle around that bit on a map and called it a single name does not mean it was a single country. The people within that circle still considered themselves mortal enemies of their neighbours.
I get your point that some/most/a few of the people living in that land look at the kiwis and think they are aliens.
But thinking about the Afgan people as one united group has been one of the major problems with the Western worlds failure to understand and interact with the country. It does no good to pretend they are all one people with all one ideology.
-
Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to Islander,
Including Alexander’s (after being whopped.)
There IS a reason people still talk about him. Seriously how loony do you have to be to think that was a good plan.
-
Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to dc_red,
the bizarreness of how the fairly minimally equipped, outgunned and technologically primitive insurgents could hold the might of the US at bay
They did the same to the Russians and the same to the British and the same to each other.
The key to understanding how that is possible comes from looking at a topographical map. The terrain is impossible. That's one of the things that divides the country into so many segments.
It's the reason historically armies stopped before incorporating Afganistan into whatever empire they happened to be forming at the time. Army rides up looks at the mountains and says "yeah, nah".
-
Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to tussock,
They’re not insurgents, they’re the resistance.
This is just as much of a simplification as the opposing view.
Afganistan is not and never has been one unified country. The people in each region view themselves as distinct from people in other region. It is not simply a religious distinction, it is not simply a physical distinction, it is not simply a cultural distinction, it is not simply a historical distinction. Instead it is all of the above in varying amounts plus extras for added confusion.
Sending kiwis in with guns, just adds targets and confusion.
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
but don’t we want to know that our teaching methods are working and are improving over time?
Just to harp on about this a bit more. There is a very good reason why education is a degree level science and not a high school diploma. Understanding what works in education is not simple. Children are humans and complex, developing methods to help them learn in not straightforward. It really is a science as complex as any other field.
Do you expect to understand the Higgs field? I don't. But I trust the experts in that field. I trust their rigor and I trust the internal checks they have.
Education deserves the same respect. It isn't the simple easily measurable and easily improved task that the politicians insist it is.
Would you trust Winston to design the LHC????
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
National standards or not, how do we measure that the teaching that you are doing is working?
There are several worldwide surveys of performance that show the NZ education system has been working really well at producing children and adults that can think across several disciplines.
The reality is that by "trusting the teachers" and education professionals we have established a genuinely world class education system.
In short you CAN trust teachers.
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to John Holley,
so Hartevelt/Fairfax are going to have a lot of fun
By that you mean that it would be hard work to format the responses into comparable data that can be then used to compare schools in a balanced and measured manner.
However, they have no such obligation. Their obligation is to the shareholders and that means they have to sell more papers etc.
It should be fairly easy to create tables that appear to compare schools and tell whatever story suits the headline of the day. I expect sensational headlines highlighting the waste of taxpayers money in school x that performed badly but received y funding ...
I do not expect proper analysis of the data to help us improve schools that are struggling and/or identify schools that are succeeding beyond expectations so we can learn from them. That of course is the job of the ministry.
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Steve Barnes,
children will suffer the consequences of going to a school that may or may not be perfect for them
That not what has happened elsewhere. What has happened is that schools distort the education of children to get a good number on whatever measure the table uses this year. The result is all children get lower quality education.
And in poorer communities the lower table ranking causes parents to transfer their children to higher ranking schools. This has the effect of removing from the school parents who care about education which has negative effects on the school as a whole.
This happens to some degree now, but league tables make it a much more dominant effect.
-
Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Rob Coup,
If we start down “well, not for <insert controversial topic>”, pretty soon there’ll be no open data
Slippery slope argument.
I really do get the importance of open data.
But I also know that civil protest is tremendously important as well. Without the willingness of people to break laws (even good laws) we would not have the society we cherish today. Are you saying the OIA is a law that should never be broken?
So here's a question
If the OIA is so important that you will not accept any limit to it, how do you suggest schools (those who care) make their protest against this use of this data?And bear in mind that this is a really important thing that is happening. League tables will damage our next generation so no token protest will suffice, it has to be something that makes people notice what harm is being done.
To me this is more important than same sex marriage or even asset sales. I'd also argue that the very fact that parents will move house simply to get to a better school is an indication of how important it is to the public.
Believe me I do understand the principle of OIA. I just don't believe that principle is more important than a quality education system.