Ivan Snook writes

Ivan Snook writes

Kelvin Smythe writes in introduction: 

Ivan Snook, Professor Emeritus, Massey University, has been kind enough to write the following letter in support of the Primary School Diaries, Part Five, The Magazine Years.

I am most grateful. 

As recent postings have explained, an important quality teacher organisation leaders need to possess is a philosophy alternative to the one currently used to organise the education system. That alternative philosophy can only be the holistic which is what the Magazine Years is all about. For classroom teachers, the holistic is the philosophy that empowers them and is capable of endless extension and development. I acknowledge that the holistic is unsympathetically responded to by the bureaucracies, but it is either the holistic or eventual control by multinational corporations. Even if the holistic is not something that can be fully pursued in classrooms, it is something that should be fully understood. No matter the odds, the struggle for the holistic is vital for the kind of education system we nearly all want and children deserve.

I also need your support because the Diaries are my only means of financial support to continue my campaign for a more democratic and participatory education system and for greater individual freedom for teachers in classrooms.

Dear teachers (writes Ivan)

I have just read a brilliant exposition of where teaching is, how it got there, and where it should go.

Do you feel that there is something wrong with the way education is going but can’t put your finger on exactly what is wrong?  

You should read as I just have, Kelvin Smythe’s Magazine Years, Primary School Diaries, Part Five, based on more than 50 years in New Zealand education and see how the ‘reforms’ of Tomorrows Schools ‘took the bounce out of teaching’ and year after year successive governments have undermined what was a basically sound system of education. 

The Magazine Years has it all, building from extensive writing on the holistic curriculum to the leadership and organisation to match. The central idea is that there is another way, indeed it is our way – the holistic. There are nuggets to be unearthed all the way through, including a straightforward way to make computer learning pedagogically sound.

But the command form of education continues near unchallenged: with the end-game predicted as ‘education dominated by global corporations delivering computer-based teaching programmes to classrooms along with an associated range of services to clustered schools.’  

Read and weep. And resist.

Ivan Snook

Magazine Years 

One copy: $20.00

Two or more: $17.50

ksmythe@wave.co.nz