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Deborah Williams

CHANGING THE LITERATURE OF EDUCATION

Topic: What would you change

about NZs Education System?
UoA ID: 2679555
Email: dwil499@aucklanduni.ac.nz
1399 Words

This art of communication. When we have stifled the symbol of it and suppressed the desire
for it we have achieved respectability how I hate respectability!
Sylvia Ashton Warner, Teacher.

There is much to be said about the art of communication in the classroom setting. Learning is always
necessarily an interactive process and yet it is all too easy to view the relationship between students
and learning as a one-way communication, with pupils on the receiving end of a flow of information.
However, to view education this way is to ignore the fact that if the learner has no chance to
personally engage with the materials, then it is unlikely that anything will ever be learned from them.
In light of this, as I examine the canon of literature used in New Zealand schools today, I have to
question whether or not the texts used in schools are really applicable to the interests of New
Zealands young people, and particularly those of priority learners such as Maori and Pacific
students? According to recent government surveys, Maori and Pacific students are in the range of 20%
lower pass rates at Level 2 than that of other groups (ERO 2012). Are we really engaging these
students with our English canon? I would argue that the canon of literature used in schools should be
changed to one that more directly engages with the personal interests of the learners and which
enforces rather than undermines their own culture and values.

A young Polynesian woman, made to study Williams Wordsworths poems in school, once amusingly
and pointedly wrote her own response to I wandered lonely as a cloud in which she described her
inability to engage with the concept of a daffodil. Her poem is interesting in that it shows her own

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communication and interaction with the work, but also in that it very clearly emphasizes the alienating
nature of the poem, and her struggle to engage with it as form that did not present itself as relevant to
her. In light of this, I have to then ask, why is it that so many of the texts that dominate our classrooms
come from these high English canons? Texts such as Austens Pride and Prejudice, which I
personally studied for my Level 3 examinations, although of interest to some, are only going to
engage a very small proportion of New Zealand High School students, and almost certainly not those
in the priority learners category. Why? Because they do not engage with young New Zealanders on a
level that they can identify with. They speak the language of European values and cultural identities,
many of which are archaic and have no relevance to children growing up in New Zealand. As such,
they have the potential not only to be extremely difficult to broach, but also to be highly alienating to
a group of learners that already find themselves as a minority in a very Eurocentric culture. As stated
in a recent ERO report (2014) examining issues in New Zealand education, too many of our most
vulnerable students, especially in secondary schools, are the unlucky recipients of a curriculum that is
fragmented and bears no relationship to their cultural backgrounds or to contexts that have relevance
and meaning for them.

To illustrate this, let me draw upon my own experience as a university student tutoring NCEA English.
I once tutored a young man studying for his Level 1 English examinations. His subject text was To
Kill a Mockingbird, a novel which he had very little engagement with. The book had very little
relevance to his own world or interests and its language both challenged and alienated him. After
struggling to help him through the study for several weeks with limited results, I realized that if
progress was going to be made, it was the curriculum, not the student that would have to change. I
stopped half-way through the lesson one day and asked the student what books he did enjoy. He
immediately identified one, an adventure-based young adults novel, the protagonist of which was
roughly the same age as the boy and identified with many of his own circumstances and interests. I
asked him if he would like to write a paragraph about this character instead of the one we had been
looking at and he readily agreed. The results were astounding. Within just a few weeks he went from

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struggling to get two lines on the page to writing full-page descriptions and discussions of everything
from themes to character.

In light of this, I have to ask, would it not be better to incorporate the learner into the choice of such
literary studies in schools? If students own interests could be identified and acknowledged in the
selection process for many of our curriculum studies then I believe we would have a much better
chance of engaging with all students, and in particular priority learners. As another recent ERO report
states, students success is dependent, among other things, on students having a sense of belonging to
and identifying with the school community. Acknowledging students own interests and cultural
heritage is a step towards helping them identify themselves as a part of a learning community and can
instil in them a sense of value for that community. Engagement with both community and curriculum
is key for a successful learning environment. As Sylvia Ashton-Warner sadly observed in her book
Teacher, Education practices can so often quell the communicative aspects of the learning program,
and yet it is this art of communication as she calls it, that creates the connection and engagement on
which the learning process is built. Learning is never a one way process, and to assume it as such is to
forget that learners are first and foremost social beings. In the aforementioned ERO report, it was
noted that schools implementing changes that didnt take into account social elements were usually
ineffective and short-lived. Communication is a vital element in any effective education system.

To exhibit how such communicative processes can be effective, I would like to draw attention a
particular group of young pacific students who, in 2006, formed the production company known as
The Black Friars. Originally formed to keep young pacific students off the streets in South Auckland,
The Black Friars perform many works of Shakespeare, including Othello and The Merchant of
Venice, yet with a twist: the plays are re-enacted from a Pasifika perspective, set in the islands and
emphasizing pacific culture and values. The result has been astounding. Still continuing now, eight
years later, The Black Friars run workshops in schools, training institutes and even prisons and are an

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amazing example of the power of identification and communication in creating and maintaining an
effective learning community. They are also a good example of how otherwise predominantly
Eurocentric texts such as Shakespeare can be altered and incorporated into the canon of another
culture in a way that speaks to that cultures values and identity positively instead of alienating or
excluding them. If such practices could be incorporated into the NZ Education system then I would
argue that they would be much more effective in engaging the interests and attentions of young New
Zealanders, and specifically Maori and Pasifika students.

To effect such changes in the New Zealand Education system, I would therefore suggest a more
interactive and selective process surrounding case studies used in the NZ curriculum, and in particular
those used in English programmes. Incorporating student preferences into decision making processes
surrounding such choices could lead to a higher level of student engagement with these studies, and as
a consequence, better learning results. To conclude, I believe that communication and interaction with
students about their interests and backgrounds is vital to the learning process, and that for any
effective change to take place, students must be able to identify with the interests of the materials they
are studying, and be able to feel that their culture and values are relevant and important to the learning
community in which they operate.

References:

Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. Teacher. Simon & Schuster: New York. 1963.

Education Review Office. Evaluation at a Glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand Schools. August
2012. http://www.ero.govt.nz/National-Reports/(year)/2014. Site Accessed 10/10/2014.

Education Review Office. Towards equitable outcomes in secondary schools: Good practice. May
2014. http://www.ero.govt.nz/National-Reports/(year)/2014. Site Accessed 10/10/2014.