The NCEA level 2 economics exam took place yesterday afternoon.  I’d been helping my son with his revision and preparation, in the course of which he’d shown me various exams papers from recent years, and some guidance they’d been given on how to answer some of those (past) questions: what might get Achieved, what Merit, and what Excellence.

I wasn’t exactly reassured by what I saw.

As one example, consider this question from last year’s paper 91222 “Analyse inflation using economic concepts and models”.

The first questions were introduced with this statement

The Quantity Theory of Money states that the quantity of money circulating in the economy is equal to the monetary value of the goods and services available in the economy.

The quantity theory of money starts from the identity –  for thus it is –  MV=PT, where

M = some measure of the money supply,

P = some measure of the price level,

T= some measure of real economic activity (you could think of real GDP, but it generalises –  think volume of transactions), and

V =  the velocity of money (or how frequently the stock of money –  as defined –  turns over (“is spent”) in the period in question.   It is generally derived residually.

All that identity is saying is that the amount of money that is spent (stock multiplied by times it is used) equals value of transactions in the money economy.   The amount of money that is spent = the value of what it is spent on.  Necessarily.  By definition.  Change your definition of money –  the Reserve Bank publishes several, and there are others –  and your V will change too.

As a New Zealand example, nominal GDP in the year to March 2019 was $300.994 billion. The Reserve Bank’s broad money measure averaged $304.193 billion over that year and its narrow money measure was $68.375 billion.   So, on this measure of nominal activity, V(b)  (“broad money velocity”) was 0.99  and V(n) (“narrow money velocity”) was 4.4.

MV=PT is really known as the equation of exchange, and it only turns into a theory (about behaviour) when expressed in the idea that if you change the quantity of money most of the effect will typically be seen in the price level (or that most changes in the price level stem from changes in “the money supply”).  In the extreme, it is a simple enough idea –  in massive hyperinflations there is lots more “money” around (on any measure) and much higher prices/inflation rates (on any measure.  But the theory was mostly used in simpler stabler times (since in the midst of hyperinflations, not only does the velocity typically accelerate –  no one wants to hold money longer than they have to –  but real economic activity is also typically shrinking, perhaps rather a lot).

So what disconcerted me about the NZQA efforts?

Well, go back and look at that definition of the quantity theory of money.   Does it mention the idea of velocity?  No, not at all.

And then it talks of the “monetary value of the goods and services available”, which has a fairly strong sense of stocks, not flows.   Any serious description of this equation/identity would stress that it is about transactions/turnover, not stuff that just happens to be around (whether sitting unsold on shop shelves, in factory inventories, or in the cupboards at home).

Now, in fairness to NZQA the very first question asks the students to label each of M, V, P, and T, so probably people wouldn’t be too misled by the omission of any sense of velocity in the introductory description.  But shouldn’t our teachers/examiners be taking care to be as precise and careful as possible, both to set a good example, and so as not to risk confusing or distracting kids who have read/thought a bit deeper?

The next question reads

Using the Quantity Theory of Money equation, fully explain how a 4% increase in the money supply could affect the price level, assuming other variables are constant.

As I pointed out earlier that MV=PT is an identity, I hope you can see why this question isn’t written anywhere near as carefully as it should (and quite easily could) have been.  In an identity with four variables, if one of those variables changes and two are held constant by assumptions, there is no “could” about what happens, but a “must”.  If V and T are held constant and M increses by 4 per cent then. by definition, P increases by 4 per cent.  Of necessity.

I checked the NZQA marking guide and it is clear that the examiners know this: they talk explicitly about how prices “will” rise by 4 per cent.   But then why muddy the waters for the students?   It isn’t even as if the marking guide says something like “students will get extra credit for pointing out that the 4 per cent price increase is a necessary implication, and there is no “could” about it.

The questions continue, with the third question designed to better winnow out the Excellence and Merit students from the Achieved ones.  The third question starts with a quote from a Treasury document

You’ll notice that the Treasury projections quoted are for an average annual growth rate over the next five years.  By contrast, the assumed exogenous increase in the money supply is a one-off levels increase.

The examiners don’t appear to have noticed the difference.   It is clear what they are trying to get at (P will increase less if T is also rising than if it isn’t).     That’s the answer to the third bullet above. But the marking schedule  makes it clear that they expect the students to answer that in that growth scenario the price level will rise by (about) 1.1 per cent.  But that isn’t the case at all: instead in the first year the price level would rise by about 1.1 per cent and then it each subsequent year it would fall by (about) 2.9 per cent (since T is changing and M no longer is).    But, again, there is no hint that markers should give additional credit to students who point this out.  (Although they do give extra credit to students who point out the V might change –  perhaps rise –  in a recovery.)

Again, there is really no excuse for questions this badly worded (for 16 year olds).  They could easily have posed the questions as “if the money suppply increases by 4 per cent per annum, what will happen to the inflation rate if (a) all else (V) is constant and (b) if real economic growth (in T) happens per the Treasury projections”.

It is sloppy and loose, and suggests that the examiners (and those reviewing their drafts) just haven’t thought carefully enough.  And that is even without posing questions about whether introducing year 12 kids to inflation using models that rely on exogenous money supply increases (when most increases in the money supply these days are actually endogonous –  arise simultaneously with economic activity and the credit creation process) is that most helpful way to structure the curriculum.

The other one that disconcerted was from the 2016 exam for the same level 2 NCEA standard (I didn’t go through them all systematically – these were just ones my son asked about).   This was a question about deflation.

Here what disconcerted me (a lot) was the answers NZQA was looking for in its guidelines for markers.  But the question wasn’t great either.

The key starting point for thinking about the effects of inflation/deflation is that, broadly speaking, there is long-run neutrality (most real variables won’t be much affected by trend inflation/deflation), but that distributional effects can be quite powerful in respect of unexpected inflation/deflation.    Broadly speaking, (unexpected) deflation is great for people with fixed-term/rate bank deposits (the real purchasing power of their money rises) and dreadful for people with fixed-term/rate nominal debt (the real value of what they owe rises).   Otherwise, all else equal, prices, wage, interest rates etc should all adjust to whatever the inflation/deflation rate is, and to much the same extent.

The questions don’t distinguish between expected and unexpected deflation.  Perhaps that isn’t unreasonable for most year 12 students, (but what about those who had read on, or thought more deeply, perhaps even read an MPS?) but it does make quite a bit of difference, and it isn’t obvious that even the markers recognise the difference.

This is the sort of thing I mean.   In answering the first part of the question, the markers are looking for this to get Achieved

Explains the effects of deflation in New Zealand on younger people saving for their first home (e.g. Deflation will mean that people saving to buy their first home will have a lower cost of living and be able to save more).

But this is simply nonsense since one would normally expect that wage inflation would be similarly lower and the real incomes of those young savers wouldn’t be affected, and nor (generally) would the real cost of the house they were saving for.  But to the extent they already had saved some money –  and especially if it was on a long-term fixed rate deposit –  the real purchasing power of what they’ve saved will rise.

What about the old people.  Again, the Achieved standard answer

Explains the effects of deflation on older people in retirement who use their savings to provide them with income (e.g. Older people may find that they receive lower interest income if interest rates fall to offset deflation).

Indeed they may, but…..the cost of living will be lower too.  And, in fact, the real value of those bank deposits will actually increase in this scenario.

The marking guide goes on to elaborate points students would need to make to get Merit or Excellence.  But it doesn’t really improve

Fully explains the effects of deflation on younger people saving for their first home (e.g. Younger people saving for their first home may benefit from deflation because it might increase the purchasing power of their income. This may mean that they can save more of their income to put towards the purchase of their home. It may also mean that the home may become cheaper. Deflation may also lead to lower interest rates and, therefore, make loan repayments more affordable).

That final point is fair (since mortgages are nominal the upfront servicing burden is a little easier), but it is something of a distraction because it doesn’t alter the servicing burden over the full life of the loan.  And these guidance notes suggest the examiners have no sense that wage inflation will also typically be lower if there is price deflation.

Fully explains the effects of deflation on older people in retirement who use their savings to provide them with income (e.g. Older people in retirement who use their savings to provide them with income may find that the value of their assets falls, which means that selling those assets will result in less earnings. Also, if interest rates fall even though prices may have dropped, the people will receive less income and, therefore, may have falling purchasing power).

And this is worse. There is no hint that people with fixed nominal assets are those who gain from unexpected periods of deflation.  And if the value of other assets (eg houses) they are selling falls, those falls will generally (all else equal) just be in line with the fall in the price level.  That fall does not make old people (or any other seller) worse off.   And, yes, nominal interest may fall, but there is no particular reason to expect real interest rates to fall (or thus for real purchasing power to fall).

The NZQA guidance answers to the second half of the question are only a little less bad.    In fact for the “firms producing for the local market” I’m more or less okay with the required answer (as a year 12 simplification).

Fully explains the effects of deflation on NZ businesses producing for the local market (e.g. NZ businesses producing for the local market will find that the prices that they receive for their product may fall. They may also find that their costs of production fall and, therefore, the outcome may be either slightly worse off or neutral).

All else equal-  and on a simple model – you would expect both costs and selling prices to be commensurately lower and such firms to be no better or worse off on this count.  A really smart student might point out that if these firms had material debt outstanding, the real value of that debt would rise, but that is probably a complication too far for year 12 and this bit of the question didn’t mention debt.

But the exporting firms answer is more troubling

Fully explains the effects of deflation on NZ businesses producing for export (e.g. NZ businesses producing for export may also face falling costs of production; but if their markets do not have (or have less) deflation, then they may find that their profit margin rises and, therefore, they may be relatively better off).

But…….our exchange rate has been floating for 35+ years now, and I know year 12 kids get introduced to the exchange rate, and yet this suggested answer implies that the competitive position of our exporters can be improved by a period of deflation.  Over any sustained period deflation here –  not matched in other countries –  would be expected, on simple models, to see an appreciation of our exchange rate, leaving New Zealand producers neither better nor worse off as a result.   (These adjustments do actually tend to happen – you can see it in the trend appreciation of the NZD/AUD consistent with the slightly lower inflation target here than in Australia.)

You’d have to hope that a smart kid  – or just moderately well-read or alert one (they do get exercises that involve looking at real world documents like MPSs –  who made these points would get considerable credit from the markers, but if even the examiners don’t seem to be aware of the point, how many of the markers could be counted on to exercise some independent judgement.

Not one of the points I’ve made here is any sort of highly subtle or technical points.  These are just the simple implications of pretty simple models – ie the sort of standard one might be looking for year 12 kids to be taught, and to be able to understand and repeat in examinations.  But it isn’t clear, that on these questions at least, even the examiners quite understand what they are saying or asking, or how even a simple model works.

I haven’t engaged in a systematic study of all the recent economics exam papers (let alone those in other subjects, most of which I know less well).  I’d really like to think that these two sets of questions I’ve highlighted in this post are exceptions and everything else is just fine.    But, as we used to say in PNG when we saw a dead snake on the road, the real issue wasn’t so much welcoming the dead snake as wondering at all those still lurking in the same neighbourhood.

The New Zealand Initiative was out earlier this week calling for more emphasis on teaching specific bodies of knowledge in the various academic disciplines.  I don’t really disagree with them, but when exams for upper-level kids have the sorts of weaknesses highlighted here it suggests there is quite a long way to go in even getting teachers equipped to offer a systematically better offering.  As things stand, NZQA should be upping its game.  Clear questions and correct answers (to guide markers) would be a good start.

 

 

 

 

The New Zealand Initiative last night released the results of the general knowledge quiz conducted for them by a polling company.     It is a good way to get media coverage –  and I’m as much a data junkie as anyone.

The real point of the exercise was as a prop in making the case for a greater emphasis on a knowledge-based education system rather than the current skills-based focus.  I’ve told the story before about going to a meeting for parents of new entrants at the local school a decade or so ago, where the Principal –  a fairly vocal figure in the world of educational politics –  told us that they weren’t going to teach our children facts, because they would soon be outdated.  Fortunately, when I tried the NZI quiz on my now 16 year old he got 12/13, despite the New Zealand education system.

The headline, of course, was that this sample of New Zealand resident adults wasn’t particularly good at answering the NZI’s questions, many of which look pretty simple or basic (at least to the sort of people who read either NZI material or blogs like this).  Across 13 questions –  of which five were either yes/no or limited multi-choice questions –  the median proportion of respondents answering correctly was 53 per cent (that was the question about how long it took earth to orbit the sun).   And although much of this post will be a sceptical take on the significance of the survey, even I will concede to being surprised that only 32 per cent of respondents could correctly name the year the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed.  I doubt the Treaty was ever mentioned in my whole schooling, but it is (repeatedly) today, and yet the worst results were for the 18-30 age group (where only 23 per cent got the answer right).

The NZI released the detailed breakdown of the responses: we have all the answers by age, sex, metro/provincial/rural, by “deprivation decile”, and by whether schooling had taken place in New Zealand or abroad.  Curiously, there was no ethnic breakdown.

One thing I haven’t seen covered elsewhere – or, of course, in the NZI write-up – is the systematic male/female differences.   For quite a few questions there is almost no difference between male and female responses, but for seven of the questions the differences looked to be material and in only one of them did women outperform men.

					Per cent correct
					Female	Male
How long does it take for earth to go round sun					44	62
What year was the Treaty first signed					29	35
Native Land Court purpose					32	36
Correct use of “their/there”					83	77
Derive distance travelled from speed and time					41	56
Name seven continents					39	50
Compound interest question 1					49	66
(Harder) compound interest question					23	46

I’m not sure what to make of those differences, but since I work on the assumption that women are just as intelligent as men, perhaps it suggests something about how the questions are framed, or…..? (Note that the NZI person responsible for this project is a woman.)

There were some differences between those schooled here and those schooled abroad.  Knowledge of when the Treaty was signed and about the Native Land Court was less good among those schooled abroad, while the migrants were more likely to be able to name all seven continents and to be able to answer correctly the harder compound interest question.

People from poorer areas typically knew (or could work out) fewer correct answers, but by age the answers were a bit mixed. The only one surprised me was (see above) the Treaty response where the older people were the more likely they were to know the correct answer.    Of the other questions, there were quite a few where younger people now knew more the older people now but where you would have to wonder whether those same young people will know as much 50 years hence.  There are plenty of details I learned at school that I’ve either forgotten or are now rather hazy –  while other, mostly unused, things stay locked in the brain and are never asked about in surveys or quizzes (here I’m thinking of the quadratic formula as an example).

In general, I am sympathetic to the Initiative’s cause, for a greater and more systematic emphasis on knowledge in our schools.  But I am left quite sceptical about the value of surveys like this, except as a way of getting media coverage, and perhaps feeding the self-esteem of a certain class of well-educated and knowledgeable adults.  Most people actually do manage to get through life tolerably well and the world is richer and more materially prosperous than ever (as the Initiative would often rightly point out, in pushing back against other nanny-state proposals) and I’m left wondering why, if at all, I should be bothered if people can’t answer particularly well over the phone –  perhaps caught while they are cooking dinner or doing the ironing – compound interest questions (green are the correct answers).

Most people don’t leave a fixed amount in an account for five years and reinvest all the proceeds, there are fees and taxes, interest rates change over time, and actually if you invest for five years at 2 per cent interest per annum and spend none of it and pay not fees/taxes, you’ll end up with with $110.41 which most people would round to $110.

But this isn’t enough for the Initiative

Our poor grasp of maths is also concerning. Basic arithmetic is critical for personal financial literacy. It is difficult to understand mortgages, savings and investments without the mathematical keys. But knowledge of maths goes beyond finance to everyday life. Try renovating your house, baking a cake or calculating medicine doses without basic maths. It is true that the 20th century provided us with calculators, but if you do not understand maths you are poorly placed to check your electronic answer.

And yet people do get on.  We don’t have some mortgage default crisis, we have pretty low rates of elderly poverty, nothing about finance (at a personal or national level) seems to be spinning out of control.  And while the main thing for which I now use the formula for the area of a circle is to adjust recipes to the desired size of cake tin, somehow I expect most homemakers get on just fine without it.  (I raised some doubts about the value of “financial literacy” programmes in a post here.)

And is it particularly useful to know the antibiotics are about bacteria not viruses?  I did know that, but it isn’t particularly useful to me.  Instead, when I go to the doctor I typically take his advice, and when he prescribes something I try to follow the prescribed instructions.  It probably matters rather more –  in term of keeping antibiotics useful – that (a) doctors don’t over-prescribe and (b) patients follow instructions.  Or so I’ve been told, and I’ll operate of those rules of thumbs (especially the latter) for now.

Which brings me to the paper Briar Lipson has written using the quiz results as a prop for calls for reform of the education system.    It is a curious piece in many ways, perhaps especially coming from a think-tank which is generally regarded as fairly libertarian in its inclinations.   Their chief economist Eric Crampton often cites approvingly the stimulating work of GMU economist Bryan Caplan, one of whose books was devoted to casting considerably doubt on the value of much of education (facts-based or not) in building skills –  as distinct from certifying a work ethic, conformity, and basic intelligence.  A screening and sorting mechanism more than anything (as I’m sure knowledgeable parents recognise when they hold conversations with smart teenagers and have to distinguish between richer and deeper answers and those that will jump through the right hoops to secure NCEA credits).

I was a little amused to note her claim that

As a bicultural nation with a colonial past whose ongoing legacy is playing out in our troubling national statistics, it will never be easy to answer these questions.

It could have been written by the Maori Party, but it was actually written by someone who isn’t a New Zealander and who appears to have been in the country for not much more than two years.  It doesn’t invalidate her expertise on education itself, but that ‘our’ is surely just a bit of a stretch?

There is a quite of this black armband approach.  For example, we are told that “inequality…threatens wellbeing and prosperity”, which is a rather different (questionable) tone than we typically get from the Initiative.   I presume the audience for this is the Labour Party, but even so……facts, knowledge etc.  It carries over to the caricature of history.

For most of history, only the wealthiest had the time and resources to pursue disciplinary knowledge. For the rest of society, knowledge beyond daily experience was an unaffordable luxury. Accordingly, the ability to read and write was limited to the elite: noblemen (yes, only men) and clergymen (again, men). If you toiled for a living, your horizons were narrow.

Yes, poverty was quite limiting, but all that “only men” stuff would surely have come as quite a surprise to Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Anna Comnena, Teresa of Avila as just four fairly prominent examples.   Lipson’s treatment of history here is the sort of thing that makes people like me –  who fairly strong support, in principle, the idea of more systematic history in our schools –  rather nervous of what it will turn into in practice.

There is more dodgy –  or at least highly arguable – history: thus on her telling it is the Enlightenment that brought us literacy. Pretty sure it had almost nothing to do with the first New Zealand schools.

I totally agree with Lipson here

Whether you are building a house, playing the violin or deciding to immunise your child, knowledge is essential, because there is not a generic skill of problem-solving or critical thinking. As anyone who has lifted the bonnet of a broken-down car knows, problem-solving skills do not exist in the abstract.

And yet she starts her note with the observation that

For most of history, only the wealthiest in society had the time and resources to pursue disciplinary knowledge. For everyone else, knowledge beyond daily experience was an unaffordable luxury.

And yet I don’t need to know how the engine in my car works.  Most knowledge most people actually use day to day is really rather specific.

A few other questionable snippets

To converse meaningfully with each other, and evaluate the performance of our political leaders, we need to have knowledge that takes us beyond our daily lives.

Set aside the evaluation of political leaders, but does Lipson really suppose that the vast mass of people –  who couldn’t answer her quiz questions correctly –  somehow don’t manage meaningful interactions and conversations?  The revealed evidence seems to be against her on this count.  It won’t be Wellington elite dinner table conversations, but are the relations and interactions –  the thick web of connections that makes up most individuals’ place in society – any less effective or profound?

We get another of those “Wellington elite” type of perspectives in this comment

To grow into active, engaged citizens who can think critically about the wider world, children need to know about language, science, maths and culture (including but not only their own). However, only 44% of New Zealand adults can name the seven continents, let alone locate Afghanistan or South Korea on a map – countries where our defence force has personnel in the field. Issues like national defence, along with migration and trade, are all critical to New Zealand’s role in the world. But how can we expect voting-age adults to engage with New Zealand’s geopolitical challenges – and how our nation should respond to them – if they do not even know where in the world the challenges lie?

I’m simply not bothered if people can’t find Afghanistan on a map. One could mount a –  slightly flippant perhaps – argument that it would be better if fewer people could, because it would probably have meant fewer western armies and associated headlines there, and from there, over the last 18 years.  More importantly, it is delusional to suppose that a school education –  no matter how good –  is going to equip people for debates about the nature, and source, of geopolitical challenge or (to take another topic close to this blog’s heart) the pros and cons of a large scale immigration programme to a remote corner of the earth.

Lipson goes on

We might debate whether these skills are any more important this century than they were in the past; either way, we must agree it would be difficult to think critically about the Hong Kong riots without knowing something about Hong Kong’s history and geography. It would be equally difficult to evaluate policies on use of plastic without a basic knowledge of biochemistry and economics.

I think I am safe in saying that, for better or worse, most New Zealanders have little interest in the Hong Kong riots and although, in some sense, I personally might wish it were otherwise, it isn’t really clear why that is a bad thing.   (As it is our government tries to pretend to having little interest).  And –  while perhaps I’m missing something crucial –  I’m not clear quite what Hong Kong’s geography (does she mean a tight city-state, or located next to China?) really has to do with it.  Personally, when I think about Hong Kong I worry most about the fate –  persecution and repression –  that awaits my fellow Christians under mainland rule, but I wouldn’t really expect that concern to be universal.

(As for plastics, personally I found the values of choices, self-responsibility, and ensuring I  – and my kids –  don’t litter, more relevant to my views on plastics policy than my knowledge of biochemistry –  next to none –  or economics.)

You can read Lipson’s piece for yourself (and it is an important issue). I guess my bottom-line concern is that she has grossly over-reached.    Across her scattergun range of examples, she encompasses a range of topics/knowledge that few (if any) are likely to master, or have much interest in doing so –  even building on decades of adult acquisition of knowledge, not 11 or 12 years of schooling.    I’m all for getting a better balance between on the one hand concrete fact-based knowledge and sketch narratives of things like our history and that of societies to which we are heirs (the narratives, if pushed, matter more than the dates) and on the other the research, reasoning and problem solving skills the current New Zealand system tends to emphasise.

But the modern world relies on a considerable degree of specialisation –  indeed it is integral to our prosperity –  and that is as true of public life, political and social choices, as anywhere else.  I’m not promoting, let alone defending, any sort of “rule of experts” (and I’m pleased to see that here the Initiative is not heading off after things like epistocracy) but hardly anyone votes based on a comprehensive review of in-depth party policies across the board.  Even on a specific issue like climate change, few of us (really can) vote that way – I might claim some expertise in the economics, but not in the science, and there are very few people who combine both.  And values count a great deal, and yet nothing in the NZI quiz –  and almost nothing in Lipson’s note –  was about forming people in the values that make for a successful, stable, and prosperous society.

In truth, we take our lead from others –  rules, precedents, examples, people who enunciate values that relate to our own –  and leave much of the detail to others.  It is unavoidably so –  and I say this as someone who has more time, and probably more capacity, to dig into lots of issues at a fairly technical level.  We rely on others in almost all areas of life, and one could at least mount an argument that learning how to think about who and what one might trust is much more important than, say, learning the details of the Danzig question, Hong Kong’s geography, the biochemistry of plastics, or the precise reason for the establishment of the Native Land Court.   As Lipson puts it in her title, ignorance is not (generally) bliss and yet –  on the other hand – a little learning can, in Alexander Pope’s words, be a dangerous thing.

I could go on, but won’t.    But I’ll end where Lipson starts. In the entire body of her seven page text there is nothing about forming people in the values that a society should live by.  I suspect she is probably an adherent of some fact/value distinction (Winston Churchill was a real person, regardless of you views of the nature of good), and clearly there is something to that split, and yet if her goal is a functioning cohesive effective society and polity values formation is likely to be at least as important as specific factual knowledge.  It isn’t enough to say that home is the place for that, since we all know that nature abhors a vacuum and that what our schools teach is heavily value-laden, by default if not always by design.  Lipson begins with a quote, which appears to be from an Australian teacher

It is not the natural state of humans to live in relatively free, democratic societies that tolerate difference. Because of this, we need education to protect and preserve these societies; to transmit important cultural knowledge from one generation to the next, and value our civilisation.

I’m not sure those two sentences really relate to each other, but if you take seriously the second sentence –  as I do –  you’d find it bearing almost no relation to either the facts quiz that got NZI its media coverage, or to the thrust of Lipson’s appeal to teach facts.  It is about a cohesive narrative that recognises what is good and what is not, what is great (eg art, music, literature, ideas) and what is not, and takes pride in what has been built.  And that requires an ethos, a mindset, that has made sense of life and the world.   You might call it a worldview or a religion.   But it is very different from knowing the names and dates of the kings and queens, the names and dates of all our Prime Ministers (useful as, in some sense, those latter might be).    The (narrow) facts just don’t get you far.  I’d rather people “knew” that Communism has been, and is, a great evil than that, say, they knew the geography of Hong Kong or the biochemistry of plastic

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday – no doubt with Waitangi Day in view –  the history teachers’ association was out with a call (even a petition) for the compulsory teaching of New Zealand history in schools.   You might suppose this was a job creation scheme for history teachers, but I’m happy to grant that that won’t be the only motivation behind the association’s call.

You might suppose that history teachers –  in particular –  might be interested in the entire story of our country, ancient and modern.  And yet, oddly, the “Petition Reason” seems only interested in one brief period.

Too few New Zealanders have a sound understanding of what brought the Crown and Māori together in the 1840 Treaty, or of how the relationship played out over the following decades. We believe it is a basic right of all to learn this at school

As it happens, in principle I strongly favour the teaching of New Zealand history in our schools.  I find it utterly astonishing how little  of the story of our country –  and what little there is (ANZAC Day, Waitangi Day) typically wrenched from context –  and of our people and cultures is taught in our schools.  As I recall, I got through the whole of school with no New Zealand history, other than one School Certificate history unit on the New Zealand and US welfare system.   From what three children wending their way through the school system tell me, it doesn’t seem much different now, unless one chooses to do history in years 11-13 (a pretty small minority), but where apparently it is now only permitted to study history with “implications for New Zealand”.  No man an island and all that, so I’m happy to argue all human history (and certainly western history) has implications for who we are today, but I don’t think that is quite what the history teachers or the Ministry of Education have in mind.  I don’t know much about how it is done in other countries, but I’m struck by my daughter’s English penfriends who tell about studying specific history courses at around ages 10 to 12.  There is so much about New Zealand, New Zealanders, and our interaction with the rest of western history, that could –  and ideally should –  be taught.

Of course, the whole philosophy of many of our “educators” is opposed to learning facts, let alone placing them in a coherent narrative.  How vividly I recall the activist principal of our local primary school telling a group of parents of new entrants that the school tried not to teach facts, as nothing specific they taught now would be any use fifteen or twenty years hence.  Any serious teaching of history –  not isolated tiny NCEA standards –  would fly in the face of that sort of mentality.

I’d almost go as far as the history teachers in calling it a “basic right” for children to be educated in where our country today has come from.  We don’t invent ourselves anew with each new generation, but as individuals and societies we are formed –  and informed –  by what came before us.  That is so even when many want to turn their backs on much of their origins.  Origins they still are.  And choices made yesterday affect institutions (broadly defined) today.

And what counts as history doesn’t simply begin at Paihia in 1840 (or even the few years just prior to that).   So, in principle, I would strongly favour teaching (say) 1000 years of history, introduced from new entrants and expanded as the capacity of the children to make sense of the material grows.    Look back to the first human settlement of New Zealand, and to (say, and inevitably arbitrarily) the Norman Conquest and subsequent British (and European) history.  Tell the stories, establish a sense of the flow, cover (inevitably a bit lightly for most) the politics, the religion, the key figures, the way in which governments developed.   For New Zealand, I’d tell the more recent story partly in a cross-country comparative sense –  New Zealand vs (say) Australia, Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland, or even Fiji and South Africa.  As it is, smart historically-oriented children probably know more about British Prime Ministers and US Presidents than they do about those who’ve directly led and shaped our own country.        One can, of course, mount an argument that those big countries were “more important”, and I wouldn’t really disagree, but New Zealand history is our history.  Depriving our kids of serious exposure to New Zealand history is akin to depriving them of any knowledge of their great-grandparents.

My son’s year 12 history teacher told the class yesterday that he didn’t support the history teachers’ association call, because kids typically weren’t interested in New Zealand history and there was no point teaching stuff kids weren’t interested in.  Frankly, that seems like an abdication of responsibility –  most kids aren’t that interested in maths and yet we give them no choice about learning it.  And it is also something of a vote of no-confidence in teachers: sure, most kids probably won’t be that interested in New Zealand history at 15 if they’ve never learned any previously (I wasn’t then), but if you start early and introduce key figures, key stories, in age-appropriate ways I’m reluctant to believe that kids will have no interest.  But even if they still claimed no interest, they need to know where we’ve come from.  After all, in a very few years each of them will be eligible voters.

What I found most interesting in the articles yesterday was where the pushback from teaching history was coming from.

But the associate minister of education and minister of Crown Māori relations, Kelvin Davis, was quick to quash any impression the government might make the topic compulsory.

Davis was formerly a teacher, so one might have thought he’d favour making New Zealand history, including New Zealand’s place in the world, an integral part of what schools teach.   It is the sort of subject that probably matters even more for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who aren’t as likely to go digging themselves, or to be introduced to some structured narrative of New Zealand from home.

But supportive as I am in principle of a much more central role for history –  New Zealand history –  in what is taught in schools, what leaves me rather more ambivalent (“yes, but….”)  is the sort of people who would be teaching our history, and/or designing any curriculum.      Few of them seem to see New Zealand history as something to celebrate (I’m going to be fascinated to see how our Prime Minister treats the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first visit), and there is a strong theme of shame –  the “black armband” approach to history –  combined with some agenda for how these people think society should be organised now or what role (say) the Treaty of Waitangi should play.  There is little sense of handing down the traditions and insights that made us who we are –  the sense that any society stands on the shoulders of those who went before –  and little interest in the past for its own sake (understanding, for example, why people believed and acted as they did), only as subject for judgement or grist to the mill in current political contests.   And I guess that is why the government resists the idea of making the teaching of history compulsory: they sense that many parents probably really aren’t keen on ill-educated indoctrination.

Give parents effective choice over schools –  proper and full funding for independent schools –  and I’d be a lot keener on translating support in principle for some serious structured teaching of New Zealand history (ups and down, successes and failures, and so on) into something worth implementing, in ways that might usefully amount to more than (often unwitting –  most teachers know no better) indoctrination.

There was a quote from G K Chesterton in an article I was reading yesterday (in the Australian periodical Quadrant)

The trouble with too many of our modern schools is that the State, being controlled so specially by the few, allows cranks and experiments to go straight to the schoolroom when they never have passed through the parliament, the public house, the private house, the church, or the marketplace. Obviously it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school today the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself.  the flopping infant of four actually has more experience and has weathered the world longer than the dogma to which he is made to submit.  Many a school boasts of having the latest ideas in education, when it has not even the first idea; for the first idea is that even innocence, divine as it is, may learn something from experience.

Dated as the wording may be, the ideas seem apt nonetheless.

And there is an interesting new article in Foreign Affairs by Harvard historian Jill Lepore on “Why a Nation Needs a National Story”.   I’m ambivalent about, or even unsympathetic to, where she gets to –  she wouldn’t quite put it like this, but it amounts to history as indoctrination/shaping –   but I was quite taken with this line

“Writing national history creates plenty of problems. But not writing national history creates more problems, and those problems are worse.”

We owe it to our kids to form them in where we (they) have come from.   Only when given a decent base of knowledge can they intelligently challenge interpretations and reach useful views as to what from history should be taken forward and what left behind.  Whether agents of the state, imbibing radical agendas often upending that heritage, can be trusted to do that job is quite another question altogether.