Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why is it so hard to do the obvious thing?

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

I've been thinking overnight about the news yesterday that a second Christchurch school has decided to put the walls back up in their classrooms and abandon those modern learning barn style spaces that we were doing in favour of going back to the traditional single class.

The school is Shirley Boys High.

And then last year, Rangiora High School did the same thing.

Something that Rangiora High School's principal said struck me.

He said, the results have been a huge shift in engagement, in attendance, in achievement.

It is not what I was expecting. I was expecting a small shift, but it has gone through the roof. It's made a massive difference in everything in the school.

And that reminded me a lot of what the principals and the teachers said after we banned the phones in schools.

Remember that we banned the phones, and suddenly they were saying, well, the difference is huge.

But all we've done in both cases is the obvious thing, isn't it?

I mean, obviously, if you take the phones away from kids, they're gonna be less distracted.

They're gonna learn better, they're gonna talk to each other more, they're gonna play outside more.

And obviously, if you put 30 kids in a room by themselves, there will be less noise than if you have 120 kids in a big space together.

Why is it so hard for us to do the obvious thing?

Why was the Ministry of Education so hellbent on doing the wrong thing?

Because if you listen to educators or everybody else who's involved in this, they will tell you it was virtually impossible to get a school upgrade unless you agreed to take all the walls down and buy in, and yet, obviously it was a really big mistake.

It feels a little bit like the Ministry of Education went through a weird experimental phase that has cost our kids, with everything from classroom styles to weird ways to teach English when they didn't have to do it.

And when common sense would tell you that it wasn't gonna work, why is it so hard when it comes to schooling for us to do the obvious thing?

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