In the middle of the last century, I attended two primary schools where we sat at our desks in bare rooms all day long.
We were not allowed to move or speak. If anyone did move or speak, they got the strap (boys) or detention (girls).
To punish a boy, one teacher would call him up to the front of the class, raise the leather strap shoulder-high, and hit his upturned palm as hard as he could. Seeing that the teacher was much bigger than the child, that really must have hurt. The boy would often drop his hand to avoid the blow, only to have it hauled up again for a second go.
Flushing red and trying not to cry, he would return to his seat, his hand tucked into his armpit to ease the pain. The rest of us sat silent and scared.
Subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic were taught at set times and for set periods, regardless of individual need or attainment level. We learned mostly by rote, repetition and chanting.
Detention consisted likewise of compulsory immobility and the repetitive writing of lines. The glum class photograph (at right) confirms my sense that we were not very happy.
I remember little of what I learned at primary school, except for the day that Dr Richdale, the founder of the albatross colony at
Taiaroa Head, took us outside to see what we could find in the coprosma hedge –– new leaves, a bird’s nest, fragments of a newly-hatched shell, various stones and a fly struggling in a spider’s web. Quite simply, this wonderful man taught us how
to look.
Thanks to teachers like Dr Richdale, education in New Zealand has changed markedly for the better.
For three years now, I’ve been hearing 6 to 7-year-old children read. They still have desks where they can do maths, read, draw and store possessions, but much of the time they sit on the floor or move from one activity to another. The teacher moves about also, interacting with the children as individuals.
When not working together, they can choose to read books, listen to stories on iPads, play maths games, or finish their pictures.
These colourful images, some based on mathematical concepts such as concentric circles in grids of nine, hang on strings criss-crossing the room (art + maths).
A large brightly-coloured cardboard waka is driven by oars painted by the children, who learn numbers, dates and concepts in te reo Māori (language and culture).
They usually work quietly, but if the noise-level goes up, the teacher says, "Hands on heads", and starts counting backwards from 10 (maths). By the time she gets to zero, everyone has joined in and is sitting on the floor paying attention.
The television screen serves as an extra blackboard, with changing displays of images and animals from other countries (geography + zoology).
The children borrow books from an extensive and varied library, ranged by alphabetical order and genre. Each child also receives a book appropriate to their reading level (literacy).
At the end of the day, they take it home to read to their families (parental involvement). For at least five of the 25 children, English is not their first language, so it’s no mean feat to match the book to the child. But the teacher does it.
This structured yet flexible system is called "integrated learning". Instead of one hour each to a limited number of subjects, as National leader Christopher Luxon is proposing (reading, writing and maths), a wider variety of them merges smoothly into one another.
When I arrived today, the teacher was asking for examples of what she called "bossy verbs". Hands waved enthusiastically and responses came quickly –– "pick up the paper" or "play with Lego" (grammar).
The teacher then read a poem with several words ending in "ing". The children correctly identified them as forms of verbs, with some also noting rhyming words and alliteration.
She reminded them about their topic of cylinders, and asked what was meant by "volume" (maths + literacy). One child said "turning up the TV".
The teacher didn’t laugh, as in my day, but explained that a word could mean two different things.
The next activity continued the theme of volume. Children drew the outline of a teddy bear, coloured it in, then figured how many little cubes fitted into the space (art + maths). By moving the cubes around, they learned subtraction. And so the day went on happily and busily.
For the sake of these eager children and their innovative, hard-working teachers, we cannot return to the old-fashioned, repressive, punitive, one-size-fits-all formula proposed by the National Party.
I have seen integrated learning in action, and it works.
— Jocelyn Harris is an Emerita Professor of English, University of Otago.
