Education’s not what it used to be in Aotearoa. That’s something to be glad about, argues David Hill, who taught high school in the 60s.

Our schools are a mess. At least, that’s what The New Zealand Initiative (especially its “Senior Fellow”  Michael Johnston), Family First, various business leaders, and the coalition government all say. 

NZ Initiative frets that “we have a school curriculum that elevates nebulous competencies above rigorous academic knowledge”. (Actually, we have a multitude of curricula and syllabuses, acknowledging the range of ambitions and abilities across students, but moving on.) Critics of our education system say we need to go back to basics, reintroduce Shakespeare and grammar. Things ain’t what they used to be.

Indeed they aren’t, and as an ex-teacher (secondary, 16 years), I’m so pleased.

It’s exactly six decades since I taught my first class. They were Year 11 (Form 5E, in 1964 parlance) at an inner-suburb Auckland high school, and I still marvel at how they endured the English syllabus I had to inflict on them. 

It was “rigorous academic knowledge”, all right. NZI would have been delighted. The “E” of 5E meant that in the rigid, academically-streamed system of the 1960s, the class was ranked second-bottom of the six fifth-form classes. They knew this: “We’re dumb,” was how Jonas put it. Yet I was meant to teach them exactly the topics that 5A covered. No tailoring of content to acknowledge their struggles, thank you. That way nebulousness lies.

Of the 34 pupils in 5E, 28 left at the year’s end. The boys went to apprenticeships or factory and other semi-skilled roles; the girls also to factories or office jobs. They expected such work; were looking forward to it in many cases. And to prepare them, I was supposed to teach the difference between a gerund and a participle, between metonymy and synecdoche, how a compound sentence differed from a complex one. Yes, the same grammar lessons we’re being asked to reintroduce. Again, I marvel at 5E’s tolerance.

I didn’t teach them Shakespeare. Instead, I had to take them through 100 laboured pages of The Admirable Crichton, J M Barrie’s Edwardian fantasy of an aristocratic English household shipwrecked on a desert island. Note the relevance to 5E’s own lives.

Their poetry anthology featured Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson. Their set novel was Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. They floundered through its compound-complex sentences, sighed with relief when it was over. Poor innocents: waiting for them in the following term were Charles Lamb’s 19th century Essays of Elia. How long before 5E never wanted to read a book again?

I taught high school English for four years before I dared introduce any New Zealand content or female authors, and then the only class set available was Katherine Mansfield. Now? What riches. What relevance.

I like the idea of classes studying a set text. It can unite them, develop their academic and social skills. Shakespeare? I know a number of schools where the guy is taught – to classes with appropriate abilities. Making him compulsory? Seems a sure way of turning many students off literature.

So instead, why not use set texts which our students can immediately relate to? How about New Zealanders Eileen Merriman, Kate de Goldi, Des Hunt, Rachael King?  I’m sure Family First and the NZI know them. Catherine Chidgey, Ted Dawe, Owen Marshall for the seniors? Some of those might feature on Family First’s hilarious Woke Up list.

It wasn’t just 5E English who had to endure. In 1964, I also taught a mid-level Form 4 (Year 10) Social Studies class. Their syllabus for Term 1 was 18th century British settlement in North America. That gripping relevance again.

I’d like to reassure concerned critics that I taught my 1964 classes no “nebulous competencies”. I made no acknowledgement of Māoritanga or ethnic and gender diversity. No silly stuff about social backgrounds, interaction with others, creativity. Our schools do now, so it’s no wonder New Zealand 15-year-olds have just scored highly in the OECD’s Pisa Tests for Creative Skills. 

I know it’s a cliché, but an education system should prepare students for life as well as work. Does that mean giving priority to “rigorous academic knowledge”? Actually, both those adjectives are so, well, nebulous, that it’s hard to answer lucidly. 

Of course I want our kids to acquire knowledge, plus an awareness of academic skills and a persistence in achieving them. As a writer, I still visit schools, and I see those elements being taught in almost every class I go into, in ways apposite to each group.

Was my 1964 teaching “rigorous” in other respects?

Hell, yes. I dictated whole pages for them to write down. I ran tests every Friday on what 5E had battled through from Monday to Thursday. (Note that NZI wants regular tests reinstated as well.) 

If anyone scored below the arbitrary level I decreed, they got a lunchtime detention. That included Sharon and Gary, who were in 5E only because they’d topped 4F the previous year, and who found the level of their new class almost entirely beyond them. It was only when I saw Sharon in tears after her fourth consecutive “failure” that I consigned such detentions to my teaching dustbin. But just think how splendid it would have been for her if another government recommendation – to rank students in terms of test results from their first year at school – had been implemented then.

In 1964 classes, everything was handwritten. That, especially cursive script, is one more essential skill our concerned critics want reinstated. I took marks off assignments which were untidily written. Poorly coordinated Brian and Joy scoring consistently badly as a result? Their problem. Rigour ruled.

I mentioned earlier that a few of the 5E students came back in 1965. Six of them, in fact. Two made it into Form 6 (Year 12). Four didn’t: they’d fallen short of the magic 200 marks, which was the criterion – a rigorous criterion, of course – for passing the School Certificate exam and moving up. Yvonne missed by two marks. Tough luck, Yvonne: she and the other three had to endure the entire fifth-form year again, alongside younger kids and with self-esteem visibly bruised.

Useful training for life’s setbacks, I hear you say? In fact, life is usually more flexible, flecked with sensible compromises. So is our current system, where students can take subjects at different levels, acknowledging their varying skills. 

One other form of rigour in my first teaching year: I caned boys who misbehaved. A couple cried with pain; others slouched back into class, defiant and truculent. I never saw one become a better pupil as a result. All hail our education system for abolishing corporal punishment.

Some criticisms of our education curricula show breath-catching unawareness of the multiplying demands on today’s schools. Teachers today are expected to handle a constantly expanding range of subjects. They can no longer feel confident of parental or community support. They deal with greater numbers of pupils afflicted by increasingly severe physical, intellectual, and behavioural issues. In a society of yawning economic inequality, many state schools are ludicrously underfunded.

Teachers are the ground troops of education. They need appropriate backup. Instead, the ministry of education is trying to chop nearly 600 positions, and building cutbacks mean 100-plus schools have to hold classes in halls, staff rooms and libraries while they wait for proper classrooms. 

I’d be grateful for suggestions from critics on how a school with such dwindling support and accelerating demands can enable 16-year-old S., autistic, dyslexic, and physically violent from foetal alcohol syndrome, to get the best out of rigorously taught Shakespeare and grammar. I encountered S. recently, and I marvel at the patient skills his teachers show towards him.

We’re all experts on education. After all, we’ve all been to school. It does fascinate me, though, when people say, with head-shaking disapproval, “I don’t know what they teach them in school these days”. Don’t they hear what a disqualifying admission that is?

I think we should listen to critical voices, such as those in my opening paragraphs. In fact, I urge it. Outside viewpoints can be relevant and helpful.

But demands which mostly seem aimed at reversion, at going back to the “good old days”? In what other field of human activity would we urge such a step?