Faith@Work:The Education Sector
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Faith @ Work 21 August 2011 The Education Sector
Nicola Marshall and Christine Nelson http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons
Nicola Marshall:
For four years now I’ve been working at the Ministry Of Education as a Research Analyst. I work part-time in the Comparative Education Research Unit, in a position which draws on both my training in statistics and social science research as well as my past work as a secondary school teacher.
I’m part of a small team of researchers which is responsible for New Zealand’s participation in a half-dozen major international education studies. Every year or so, you will see a headline saying that New Zealand school students have been part of a study testing their reading, maths or science, - and that they came out ranked somewhere below Finland. Behind that headline is three to five years work: we help to develop the assessments with our international colleagues in over 40 countries; we draw up samples of New Zealand schools and almost always succeed in persuading enough overworked teachers to let their students take part in the studies; we supervise the scoring of the assessments and collect and collate a whole raft of background data from the students, their schools and families; we analyse the results and finally we write up those results for a variety of audiences.
Beyond the simple ranking, which the newspapers inevitably concentrate on, are some consistent patterns which raise serious questions about our education system. Our top students are regularly among the best in the world, and our average performance often in the top handful of countries. Why then, compared to those other high-performing countries, do we have a somewhat larger proportion of students who struggle to reach the lowest levels of proficiency that our studies measure?
To try to answer that question we look at how various groups of students within New Zealand perform; I could give you a recitation of factors ranging from teachers’ qualifications, school size and location, parent’s occupation, gender, ethnicity, age and home language (to name but a few) which can have varying degrees of influence.
But how does all this relate to my life here as a member of this faith community? The first thing to note is that for me, education is not an end in itself – it’s a process which at its best gives us crucial tools for self-fulfilment and for participation in our society. It’s not just about acquiring skills but also about our emerging sense of ourselves and what we can achieve and contribute. Education is something that doesn’t happen only at school.
I’m immensely proud to be both a product and a continuing part of a state education system and of a church, which even half a century ago were able to nurture and encourage the exceptional talent of someone like Sir Paul Reeves, despite his humble background. (Although, I hope that these days students would not feel the same need to deny their bicultural identity as he did back in his childhood).
But what about the kids who are not exceptional? – the ones who start with too many odds stacked against them, and who so often follow an all-too-predictable path to failure and despair. My commitment is to do my work as well as I can – to crunch the numbers accurately, yes, but more importantly, to try to ask the right questions, so that we learn what can be improved at a system or class level – but also so that we recognise which factors are up to the wider society to grapple with.
Above all, my faith calls me always to remember that the students whose performance I analyse are not just bundles of characteristics, to be split and dissected in a dozen different ways. They are each of them flesh-and-blood individuals, of equal worth and dignity, and equally entitled to the best education that we as a society can offer.
My ten-year old daughter’s school operates a buddy system, where kids in the senior classes are paired with those in the younger classes – at the start of the year, it’s just so they can have a friendly face in the playground among the older kids, but as the year goes on, they spend time with their buddy classes, sometimes helping out with reading and other activities. It was one of my proudest moments as a parent a few weeks ago, when I realised that my daughter Sarah had volunteered to have as her buddy, a little boy who is perhaps the most behaviourally-challenging child in the whole school.
I applaud the school for giving her that opportunity – I also like to think that some of what we as a faith community talk about every week is actually rubbing off and bearing fruit.
Christine Nelson:
When I could no longer cope with the physical demands of an active classroom, that door closed. But, in God’s awesome way, another opened, through which I have learned so much. I now teach at Te Aho O Te Kura Pounamu. You may know it better as The Correspondence School – a huge institution, with over 24 000 students and staff spread around the country, 5 minutes walk from the Cathedral.
Students in remote areas, unable to get to school? Yes, to be sure. But the students I teach are more likely to be the ones hanging out outside the movie theatres, lurking in alleyways, shaking their cans of spray paint. I’m sure we all shake our heads in despair, and wish someone would do something for them. But the really disturbing thing is that “they” are part of OUR society. The underbelly of our society, perhaps, but we can never heal our community until we meet them as part of our lives.
Jenny spoke last Sunday about – among other things – the need for community. In his novel “The Man who was Thursday” G K Chesterton claims “It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.” In other words, we need companions.
Yet, it has to be said that we tend to choose companions with whom we are comfortable. That’s normal, but do we then set all those NOT like us into categories of otherness? “them” and “us”? What about the youth slouching past with hoodie up and jeans - almost – down? When we walk past him on the sidewalk, don’t we avert our eyes, walk a little faster, clutch our bags or wallets, sneak a peek for that spray can? Or what about the girl with studs in her nose, pregnant, belligerent, leaning against the wall outside the supermarket? Are we community with them? Yes.
These are the students I teach. Not all of them, to be sure, but enough to have shown me that • yes, society has a problem, • yes, education is passing them by, • yes, they are falling through the cracks... • and yes, we can do something about it. We are so quick to point the finger, to find the fault in the system, to shake our heads at the helplessness of it all. But I tried an experiment recently. I was walking along the pavement, and three young men were headed towards me. They were everything the stereotype suggests, and much bigger than me. Scary. Intimidating. As we approached, I took a breath... and smiled. “Evening guys” I said clearly enough not to be missed. That moment will be forever frozen in my memory as one of the times I have met Christ. Their faces lit up – eye contact was made, smiles exchanged, “Have a good one Ma’am!”
I teach the students who have nowhere else to go. They have been told at home, at school, by the media and by every person who avoids contact with them that they are losers. They’re good students: they’ve learned the lesson well and it has been endlessly reinforced. We try to change their opinion of themselves, but they may speak once to a teacher who believes in them and then have the opposite message hurled at them a dozen times. The loudest voices carry the day. We are subject teachers who can only respond, mark what has been attempted, encourage and cajole on the telephone.
Some of my work is alongside teachers at two institutions where students are given a “last chance” at making it in formal education; one of these is the City Mission. The other is an Activity Centre. The Activity Centres have been threatened with cuts in funding. I’m awed at the work these centres do and the way they turn young lives around. I could tell you their stories for hours. They all have a common thread: I didn’t think I was any good. I thought I was thick. I hated school. I was a loser. Over and over, students tell me that they like these schools because for the first time they are treated “with respect.”
Respect. What is there to respect? If nothing else, their humanity, their need, their vulnerability. How would it be if these young hopeless, hurting, human beings were shown what it means to be community? Not through an expensive government initiative, but through the smiles and greetings of the people they would never even begin to identify with, because they have never been given permission. We might feel threatened by their defensive body language, but they are excluded from community, and we are the gatekeepers.
You can support me, and the 600 other teachers at Te Kura by acknowledging the humanity of that kid sitting in the gutter and that sulky girl sneaking a cigarette. Let them know that they are visible. They matter. Eye contact, a smile, a greeting. It’s that simple and that difficult.
The solutions to our problem sometimes lie in unexpected behaviour - as the King of Israel discovered in our reading tonight, when he found himself wining and dining his enemies! I suppose that, if society really embraced these vulnerable and frightened children, and they found it possible to learn and find work, my job might come to an end... but what a wonderful conclusion that would be.
