From Matt and Madeleine…

The litany of the forces arrayed against quality state education systems is long. We believe these forces make state education’s decline inevitable. Without a thoroughgoing reformation of the fundaments of Western society itself, resistance is futile. The Borg is here.

We know that in New Zealand roughly one third of all graduates from state schools are functionally illiterate and innumerate. They cannot read supermarket shelf labels. Nor can they compare prices. We also know that on any given school day one tenth of pupils will be absent, without a conscientious reason. Truancy is systemic.

Recently we sought to interview potential candidates for a teaching position in our Christian school. These candidates were committed Christians; they were currently studying at a teacher training institution; they were zealous for their prospective careers–but they were unable to write a paragraph that was grammatically or syntactically correct. Apparently they had never learned through thirteen years of state schooling what a full-stop was, or how one was to begin a sentence. Yet, they had all graduated with “flying colours” from NCEA levels 11 through 13 in English! Sadly they were unemployable in our school.

Read the remainder at MandM here.