What America needs is a Jefferson Smith

A friend commented at lunch today that you’d have to be mad to run for the presidency, given the enormous challenges facing whoever occupies the Oval Office. That prompted a discussion about why anyone would put themselves forward for the job. Vaulting ambition? A naked lust for power? Unbridled conceit?

That in turn led us to consider the possibility that anyone wanting to become president must, by definition, be unfit to hold the office. In the same way as Groucho Marx said he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member, perhaps no sane, well-balanced person would want to be president of (or even risk living in) a country that would elect him.

We also recalled Yossarian, the US air force bombardier in World War II who was the central character in Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch-22. Yossarian was desperate to be grounded on the basis that he was mentally disturbed; but the fact that he wanted to be grounded (for the eminently sensible reason that he didn’t like people trying to shoot him out of the sky) was taken as proof that he was, in fact, perfectly sane. Follow that line of reasoning, and the only person who could safely be elected president is someone who doesn’t want the job.

In the great Frank Capra movie Mr Smith goes to Washington, the naïve, honest Jefferson Smith (played by James Stewart) is elected to the US Senate at the behest of corrupt interests who assume he can be easily manipulated, but in the end Smith’s wholesome idealism wins out. Where’s Jefferson Smith now that America needs him?

Reclaiming control of education

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 10.)

Across much of the English-speaking world, a struggle is raging over control of education. The good news is that politicians, the people we elect to make decisions on our behalf, seem to be winning.

The pattern is remarkably consistent. Governments, both of the Left and the Right, are wresting control back from teachers’ organisations. They have realised that education is too important to be left in the hands of teachers.

Julia Gillard, now prime minister of Australia, made her name as a reformist education minister. In that capacity she launched My School, a website that provides access to information on achievement standards in nearly 10,000 Australian schools. (Within hours, the website crashed because it couldn’t cope with the demand.)

Needless to say, Australian teachers opposed My School. They raised the bogey – all too familiar here – of “league tables” which would enable parents to compare schools. Nothing seems to terrify teachers’ unions more than the thought of parents and taxpayers being given information about how schools are performing.

The launch of My School was preceded by the introduction of national literary and numeracy tests, also vehemently opposed by teachers and academics.

More recently, Ms Gillard took the first step toward introducing performance pay for teachers, another initiative bitterly resisted by teachers’ unions. Payment on merit supposedly undermines the sacred principle of “collegiality”, because teachers argue it has the potential to sow discord in the staff room. Diddums, as Helen Clark might have said.

The parallels with New Zealand are obvious, except that we’re several years behind. The arguments are exactly the same here as in Australia. What’s noteworthy is that the Australian reforms were instituted by a Labor government, which might normally be expected to take the teachers’ side. That Ms Gillard was prepared to bulldoze teacher opposition aside indicates that education reform was seen as too vital to delay any longer, regardless of teachers’ protests.

Similar scenarios have been played out elsewhere. In 2001 the United States Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, a critical component of which is standards-based education reform. Sound familiar? It’s based on the premise that measurable goals – such as our national standards – can improve outcomes in education.

Co-written by Democrats and Republicans (the late Senator Edward Kennedy was one of the legislation’s sponsors), the No Child Left Behind Act requires standardised annual testing and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measurements. Schools that fail the AYP for two consecutive years are publicly identified and must undertake improvement programmes. What’s more, children attending those schools must be given options such as shifting to another school.

American teachers fought the changes and continue to oppose attempts to impose greater accountability. A key issue in a recent Chicago teachers’ strike was a requirement that schools introduce an evaluation system in which a teacher’s rating depends partly on student test scores. But as the New York Times commented in an editorial, teacher evaluation is increasingly popular across the US and is unlikely to be rolled back.

Interestingly enough, the teachers’ main adversary was Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat who was formerly President Barack Obama’s chief of staff. As in Australia, agreement on the need for education reform transcends normal political divides. The Obama administration supports merit pay, charter schools (another idea that induces apoplexy in teachers’ union leaders) and teacher assessment systems.

In Britain, the Conservative-Liberal coalition government passed legislation in 2010 allowing parents, teachers, charities and businesses to set up their own version of charter schools, known as free schools (so called because no fees are charged).

Funded by the taxpayer but outside the control of local authorities, free schools were introduced in the face of almost hysterical opposition from the National Union of Teachers. The NUT also fought the “academies” programme instituted by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2000, under which schools enjoy a high degree of autonomy but remain publicly funded.

“Academies” were an innovative attempt to deal with the problem of entrenched failure within schools with a record of low academic achievement. You’d think the teachers’ union would applaud such an initiative, but no; academies were seen as a threat to centralised control of education, which in turn is a threat to the union power base.

The common theme across all these countries is that governments, dissatisfied not only with performance in the education sector but also the lack of transparency and accountability, are forcing through changes in the face of determined opposition from teachers’ organisations which are understandably reluctant to relinquish their power.

Politicians, the representatives of the people, are quite properly reclaiming the right to decide how schools should be run. This ranges from demanding better information for parents (in other words, accountability) to providing options beyond the narrow ones available under the status quo (in other words, choice – the ultimate dirty word in the teachers’ union lexicon).

This process is much further advanced elsewhere than in New Zealand, where both National and Labour governments have allowed themselves to be bullied and intimidated by belligerent teachers’ organisations. (Remember National’s feeble attempt to allow schools a degree of autonomy by introducing bulk funding in the 1990s, and how the initiative was sabotaged by teacher defiance?)

What we are now seeing played out, in the furore over the release of national standards results, are the opening skirmishes in a battle for the control of education. And while Education Minister Hekia Parata may lack the experience and political skill for such a challenging job (her performance so far has been of the bull-in-a-china-shop variety), she must stand her ground.

Before anyone accuses me of teacher-bashing, I acknowledge that my four children have had some admirable and dedicated teachers to whom I will always be grateful. The problem lies not with individual teachers but with the collectivist mindset of their unions, which have called the shots for so long that they genuinely believe they have the right to determine education policy.

But teachers and academics no longer control the debate and I sense public opinion is shifting. New Zealand is at last having a vigorous public discussion about important education issues.

The response to Fairfax Media’s recent release of information about individual school performance has been huge. Parents have had a tiny taste of how things might be in an education sector where schools are no longer, in Ms Parata’s words, “a secret society”. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

 

Shaky ground for Shearer

I see David Shearer is accusing the Government of using the Christchurch earthquakes as a smokescreen for a "wider agenda" of closing and consolidating schools.

He should be very careful here, because this is shaky ground (pardon the pun) for a Labour Party leader. Shearer was elected to Parliament only three years ago, so his political memory is short. But if he'd been around in 2003, he would know there was a national uproar then over a brutal school closure programme which traumatised many communities. It was masterminded by his own colleague Trevor Mallard, then minister of education, who exhibited a Pol Pot-style indifference to the damaging consequences. There seemed to be little understanding of the central place of schools in the lives of many communities, especially in rural areas (not that they mattered much, since they vote National).

The effects of that clumsily executed programme are still evident in places like Masterton, where I live. Besides causing enormous stress and disruption, it left the town with several unsightly, abandoned schools that inevitably became magnets for vandals, taggers and arsonists. A local secondary school teacher wrote a PhD thesis on the closures in 2010 and concluded there was still no evidence that the benefits outweighed the costs.

At least National has the excuse that the Canterbury earthquakes forced a reappraisal of Christchurch's education infrastructure. Part of the reason for the pain felt over the 2003 school closures was that little attempt was made to explain why it was necessary.

A video worth watching

I recently wrote an article for The Listener (it's in the October 6-12 edition) about the Tironui Music Trust, a music education programme launched in 2006 by former Montana Wines managing director Peter Hubscher and his wife Pam. Funded by the Hubschers, the trust provides instruments and tutors in low-decile schools in Papatoetoe, South Auckland. It grew out of Peter Hubscher's love of classical music (his father was an original member of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) and his conviction, shared by Pam, that children from low socio-economic backgrounds can benefit in all sorts of ways from music tuition. I spent a day watching the kids involved in the programme rehearse for their big concert of the year and came away deeply impressed by the commitment not only of the tutors but also the principals and staff of the schools involved (not to mention the children themselves, who clearly enjoy their music enormously). 

Video producer Baz Caitcheon of bazzacam was also there that day and captured some wonderful footage of the kids playing. You can see from the sparkle in their eyes that they love what they're learning. Baz also interviewed two of the principals whose support has been crucial to the scheme, along with a couple of the inspirational tutors. If you have four minutes and fifty seconds free, it's worth watching.

If you want to know more about the Tironui Trust (and no, Peter Hubscher didn't put me up to this), you can go to the website here. While there's no provision on the site for making donations, the Hubschers are keen to introduce the programme more widely and are looking for other sponsors who might be able to help.

We baby boomers have a lot to answer for

(First published in The Dominion Post, October 5.)

THERE'S a new lobby group in town: Apologists Incorporated.

Their basic premise is that no one is ever responsible for anything bad that happens to them and therefore no one should be made to suffer the consequences of wrong, dangerous or stupid behaviour.

This applies whether you are a convicted criminal, a hopeless parent, a bad tenant, a drug user, a welfare bludger or a tagger.

Apologists reject the notion that disapproval or (heaven forbid) punishment might be useful in deterring people from doing things that harm themselves and others. To them, disapproval is just another example of a judgmental society ganging up on the vulnerable and marginalised.

In their eyes, no one is ever allowed to judge anyone else and “discrimination” is by definition a dirty word. Never mind that discrimination is the social judgment that allows us to distinguish between the good and the harmful.

Apologists Incorporated have become noticeably more active in recent weeks, indignantly raising their voices in defence of people’s right to ignore the rules by which the rest of us try to live. A few examples:

● The howls of protest at the suggestion that people receiving the unemployment benefit might be required to submit to drug tests. Clearly, drug users are entitled to expect that the taxpayer should subsidise their illegal habits.

● The outrage that greeted Social Development Minister Paula Bennett’s announcement that beneficiaries with outstanding arrest warrants will have their benefits cut. Clearly, it’s the taxpayer’s responsibility to support criminals while they evade the law.

● Green MP Julie Anne Genter’s statement in Parliament that taggers should be allowed to “assert their mana, passion and courage”* – this in response to the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. In other words, mean-spirited ratepayers and property owners should stop grumbling about the defacement of buildings and the huge cost of cleaning up.

Unfortunately it’s my generation, the idealistic baby-boomers, that’s responsible for all this anguished hand-wringing. We have a lot to answer for.

* * *

THE DOOMED TV current affairs show Close Up wasn’t exactly a journalistic heavyweight, but whatever replaces it is likely to be even frothier. The marketing people who control TVNZ regard news and current affairs with the same distaste as a gardener regards slugs and mealy bugs.

Taken on its own, Close Up’s impending demise is worrying enough, but it takes on an even more disturbing dimension when considered in the context of other media trends.

Newspapers are shrinking as advertising support falls away. As a result, there’s less news in the papers – and most conspicuously, less information about what’s happening in other parts of the country since the demise of the New Zealand Press Association.

The American playwright Arthur Miller reckoned a good newspaper was a nation talking to itself. What he meant was that a civil, democratic society depends on the free flow and exchange of information and ideas.

Cheerleaders for the digital media revolution believe online platforms will more than compensate for the decline of traditional news media, but that remains to be seen. The Internet does some things well, but has proved a poor substitute for old fashioned print media when it comes to the gathering and dissemination of “straight” news.

* * *

PACKAGING manufacturers are pressing on with their attempts to produce the ultimate impenetrable container.

They encase products such as batteries in armour-like plastic packaging that resists everything short of an axe.

They drive music lovers mad by wrapping CDs in brittle plastic that peels off in small pieces. This is often exacerbated by tiny, sticky labels that prevent you opening the CD case and have to be painstakingly removed with a razor blade.

They delight in taunting consumers by capping soft drink bottles with tear tabs that come away in your hand, leaving the bottle top securely in place.  Ditto with milk bottles, where the supposedly removable seal is often anything but.

Recently I was a guest in an up-market B and B where it took several minutes to prise the tiny foil seal off the complementary shampoo container in the shower.

But perhaps the packagers’ greatest triumph yet is the fiendish plastic seal I encountered on a tube of cream for treating muscle inflammation.

The tube came with a pamphlet that explained everything except how to open it. I studied the seal for some minutes wondering how to attack it. Then I did what I invariably do in such situations: I passed it to my wife.

She soon figured out that the plastic seal had tiny notched edges that fitted snugly into a recess in the top of the cap. A quick twist and the seal was broken.

But buyers of the product are left to work this out for themselves, and I bet there are cases where the muscle pain goes away of its own accord long before they manage to get the tube open.

* My reference to Genter's statement was based on a report in The Dominion Post. It's since been pointed out to me that Hansard reported her as saying: "I think there is great potential there, and I think it would be sad if we wrote off people who are currently tagging as people who could not become constructive members of society and channel their passion, their bravery, and their willingness to flout the law into something more successful."

Twitter shmitter

Today’s Dominion Post has an article (not available online, as far as I can see) by New Zealand pollster Stephen Mills, of UMR Research, who is in the US observing the presidential campaign. His theme is that Twitter has usurped American bloggers in  terms of political impact and significance. He quotes someone called Garance Franke-Ruta (is he sure that's not a made-up name?) from the Atlantic as saying the "conversation" has moved off the blogs on to Twitter, "especially for political insiders".

Problem is, the article doesn't really bear that out. Sure, it cites some superficially impressive numbers: in 2008 the two major party conventions generated 360,000 tweets; this year the figure was nearly 14 million. Mitt Romney's speech peaked at 14,000 tweets a minute, we were breathlessly informed. Michelle Obama's speech doubled that figure and Barack Obama nearly doubled it again, to 54,000. 

Holy habadashery, Batman, there's obviously something deeply significant going on here. But is there?

Mills' piece tends to confirm my suspicion that Twitter proselytes are transfixed by numbers and speed. It's all about being first with a piece of information, regardless of its value.   But elections are still determined by voters, not Twitter users. And even though the US reportedly has 140 million Twitter users (many of them not active), most people have lives to get on with. I can't imagine that more than an infinitesimally small minority feverishly pounce on every fresh morsel from the candidates' speeches.

Political "insiders" can excitedly tweet to their hearts' content, but are they just babbling among themselves? How much of their digital chatter penetrates beyond their own self-absorbed realm to the masses who will choose the next president?

How many people are interested enough to absorb all this information? Years ago, someone came up with a clever analogy to describe the impossibility of keeping up with the flow of information online. They said it was like trying to drink from a firehose. If it was impossible then, how futile must it be now?

Mills quotes someone named Adam Sharp as suggesting Twitter is ushering in an exhilarating new era when people can be "directly engaged in the political process on a one-to-one basis again". But he would say that, because he's a highly paid Twitter executive. Mills' article certainly doesn't bear out his extravagant claim.

More and faster doesn't equate with better, least of all when you're considering politics. Quite apart from anything else, how much intelligent analysis can be packed into 140 characters?

Thankfully Mills allows himself some scepticism, but only towards the end of his piece. "There is certainly a risk," he writes, "that Twitter will lead to ever faster-moving but even more shallow politics." Quite so. He quotes expatriate New Zealander Hamish McKenzie, a reporter for tech blog Pandodaily, as saying that as stories emerge faster and burn out faster, full consideration of their importance is lost. Sam Weston, another Kiwi who works for digital company Huge, says work and thought go into most blogs, whereas Twitter is instant and easy.

It's encouraging to see that not everyone working in digital media has been sucked in by the noisy evangelists overselling its benefits.

 

 

 

A very enjoyable birthday

I recently attended a very enjoyable 70th birthday celebration for John Buck, co-founder of Havelock North's famed Te Mata Estate winery. Naturally we tasted quite a bit of wine - not just Te Mata's, but some historical curiosities from the Te Mata vineyards of more than a century ago (when they were owned by gentleman farmer Bernard Chambers) and an extraordinary selection of vintage madeiras which John had gone to some trouble to source, the oldest of which dated to 1827. I have written about the event on my good friend Raymond Chan's wine website, here.