Gifted Education Political Meeting

I attended a meeting hosted by the Gifted Education Centre Friday 20th June and was quite impressed. Not particulary looking forward to a bunch of politicians talking in election year, I only really attended to support my wife’s interests, but I found several politicians who had gone out of their way to learn about that really challenging subject – Gifted Education.

I’ve written an Open Letter to the candidates who attended, thanking them and encouraging them to dig deeper as they learn more about it.

The big take-homes from the meeting for me were:

• As at 20 June 2008, no party has a Gifted Education policy, other than the Government, whose Minister of Education appeared to have a very thin understanding of GAT issues, and defended their mainstreaming policy to the hilt. Act apparently has had a long-standing Educational policy along the lines of “parents should be able to choose”, but nothing specifically regarding Gifted.
• It seems that politicians will always be politicians. Some of them couldn’t help but politick amongst themselves even outside of Parliament, and this was a totally inappropriate setting to do this. Why they have to do that beggars belief, actually. All it does is alienate good people who might otherwise have listened to them.
• There is a very serious divide between those “in the know” (i.e. the teachers and parents of the Gifted) and the politicians. The Gifted Education sector really has got some serious work to do if things are going to improve. It was quite remarkable to see on the night how poles apart the two sectors appeared to be.

Attending were the main political parties Education porfolio representatives:

1. Rodney Hide (ACT),
2. Chris Carter (Labour, Minister of Education),
3. Keith Locke (Greens, standing in for Metiria Turei),
4. Dale Jones (NZ First),
5. Wayne Mapp (National, standing in for Anne Tolley) and
6. Judy Turner (United Future).

The meeting commenced with each politician giving a quick speech outlining their party policies. Rodney Hide and Dale Jones shared how they had recently spent time learning about the unique challenges of working with Gifted children. Top marks to you both for making the effort to get to grips with the subject. I was genuinely impressed with this effort and also your forthrightness in fessing up that your learning was recent.

Judy Turner and Chris Carter both shared a bit from their own past experiences, Judy as a classroom teacher assistant involved in acceleration programmes and Chris, as Minister of Education, having just spent time with the North Shore secondary school principals.

Wayne Mapp (filling in for his absent colleague) was brave enough to confess that he had just established that National again didn’t have a policy on the subject “at this stage”. Keith Locke spoke in a form that I found hard to understand or follow. Sorry, Keith! I did actually try to stay with you, but you lost me.

There were essentially only a few areas of discussion:

Firstly, funding of course has always been an issue in Education. Everybody thinks that there is never enough government funding in their own sector. I recall a slogan when I was a teacher in training. This was when Defence seemed to be slightly quite a bit more important than Education. It went something along the lines that “It would be a cold day in hell when schools got all the money they wanted and the airforce had to run a cake-stall to buy a new bomber”.

Secondly, the issues of freedom of choice and user-pays, by way of vouchers or other similar ideas contrasted with Chris Carter’s strong defence of the centralised government owned school system. Rodney Hide would be happy to see total freedom of choice, whereas it appears that the Minister is determined to protect and reinforce the current status quo with a strong government monopoly. Having witnessed over the last decade or two the increase in power of the MOE and ERO, the closing out (and sometimes closing down) of alternative eduction options, such as homeschooling and religious schools, it is clear that the Governement is concerned about the potential to undermine the state system and is therefore determined to mainstream at all costs.

Thirdly, funding aside, there was an interesting question asked by Dale Jones, never really given an opportunity to be answered where he genuinely wanted to know what the parents and teachers of the Gifted actually wanted. Simply more money? More One-Day schools? Better mainstream teacher training or what? This is an important question to answer, as politicians can easily ignore causes that do not have a strong message.

While it was great to see a hundred plus people who cared enough to attend, and it was a positive initiative, I think the GAT community actually fumbled a good opportunity. Moderation of the meeting was very light, whereas strong leadership with tighter structure and prepared direct questions could have achieved a lot more. As long as there is a lack of co-ordinated meaningful or an authoritative message that gets through to the people who allocate funding and determine policy, the Gifted teaching community will continue to struggle to gain influence and resourcing.

While there is of course always a philosphical basis for all decisions, I’ve observed that politicians generally make choices first based upon their own interests, chief among them being elected (or re-elected), then whether or not they believe in a given cause personally, then lastly (sadly) whether something is fair, proper or right.

A leader in the Gifted community (not named here deliberately!) mused with me on the night along the lines that it was a sad state of affairs when the Minister of Education struggles to understand the difference between Gifted, Bright or Talented. True, but the idea that the Minister should know everything and care about Gifted as much as the current poltical hot-topics is naive. It takes two to tango. The Gifted teaching advocates need to do just as the Maori activists, Homosexual lobby and Conservationists have done for years. They look to the long term – five, ten, twenty years out. They work strategically to place their people in positions of influence, and work to bring their issues to the forefront of public attention. By doing so, they exert subtle (and subtle overt) political pressure to cause the government to think their way.

The challenge to the Gifted community is not just to fight for a bigger slice of the pie. It is to find ways to get their message through in a compelling way that makes sense to those who make the decisions. Resourcing will always follow the good ideas, especially the ones where decision-makers can gain “political capital”. While it is a challenge, this first necessitates a strong and coherent message. Having watched the Gifted Education field from the outside for a while, I struggle to hear a clear message that says anything other than “We need more money”. Dale Jones had a good question. The politicians in five, or ten years will be asking the same question too.

It’s time for a clear coherent and unified message from leaders with vision – well-spoken, intelligent, passionate, clear-thinking, creative-gifted people who can think beyond the next funding round, and communicate a clear compelling message.

To the Gifted Education Centre – well done for putting the meeting on.

To the politicians who attended – well done for fronting up and tackling the issues as you did, and of course to the other attendees for making the night work.

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