Party on, Garth

If you do a Google image search for "garth george", this is the second result:


This is the sixth:


The fifteenth:


And, finally, seventeenth:


Inspirational, isn't it? The progression from bitter wrinkly to blonde celebrity, to powerful politician, to omnipotent being seems... fitting?

Anyway, I digress.

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Garth say -

The trouble with any bureaucracy is that it is wedded to the philosophy that one size fits all and, it seems to me, its practitioners are actively discouraged, from the moment they join it, from thinking outside the square.

Well, it's hard to disagree with that, right? Overcentralisation of services like health and education, ridiculous rules written by committees and out of context locally, etc. etc.

This applies obviously to the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Education, who have decided that some of our most dedicated, committed and experienced early childhood educators will have to be laid off unless they achieve further academic qualifications.

[...] [Education Minister Ann] Tolley has said she has asked education officials to come up with ideas for more flexible qualifications, but she will have to keep on their hammer because flexibility is a frightening word to bureaucrats. It means they might have to think.

Hear hear. What bureaucratic schemes will be next to face the cleansing might of Garth's anti-bureaucratic glare? "Bring me my bow of burning gold:/ Bring me my arrows of desire:/ Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!/ Bring me my chariot of fire!"

And that's the guts of the matter. For it is deeply flawed ideology that has put our education system in dreadful disarray and the reason our literacy and numeracy standards have slipped alarmingly across the board.

That's right! Let's get rid of the bureaucratic, "one-size-fits-all" mentality! What shall we do next, Garth?

The stranglehold these two organisations [the NZEI and the PPTA] hold over education policy and practice will have to be smashed if the Government is to succeed in meeting its election promise of setting national standards in literacy and numeracy and having regular assessments of the performance of every primary and intermediate school.

Uh, yeah... the setting of one-size-fits-all national standards in literacy and numeracy? Regular assessments of the performance of every primary and intermediate school? The assessments won't be carried out by bureaucrats, of course. It will be done by... hey! Look over there!

Alright, so maybe we can't expect him to be consistent. But at least he's dropped that whole misogyny thing, right?

Instead of tinkering with things like early childhood qualifications, the Ministry of Education would be well advised to start doing something serious to attract young men to the teaching profession, for the feminisation of our education system is seen as one of its greatest drawbacks.

So bad has the dearth of male teachers become that in many schools the few male teachers who remain refer to the staffroom as "the henhouse".

Regularly we hear deep concern expressed that our boys and young men are not achieving well in our schools and the fundamental reason for that is that there are too few male teachers to guide their steps.

Wait, I thought it was the bureaucrats and lack of national standards. Anyway, it's so good that we have the traditional mainstream media to maintain standards of reporting and truth. If this article were on, say, Wikipedia, where any old crazy can go on and edit, any article saying "the feminisation of our education system is seen as one of its greatest drawbacks" would immediately be tagged as inappropriate for using 'weasel words'. It's lucky then that the high standards of... erm... Hey! Look over there!

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Most excitingly, I am reliably informed by Lew that Garth George is appearing this afternoon on National Radio. I am slightly apprehensive - I worry that his actual voice, no matter how gruff, can only pale in comparison to my MindGarth. I'm too incompetent to find the exact time, so maybe someone can point it out in a comment.

As for me, I won't be blogging it until tomorrow, streaming it from the website. It's my birthday, it's midday, and I'm going to the pub.