So the National party, under the new leadership of Christopher Luxon, has reshuffled their portfolios with Erica Stanford given Education.

An interesting choice; not necessarily bad, but interesting. Erica was one of those who supported the most extreme abortion bill in Western civilisation, where a baby can now be killed up to, and during, birth. Also of note is that a 13 or 14-year-old can be whipped off to the abortion clinic with the parents, potential grandparents, being totally cut out of the loop of communication or support or guidance of the child. This recent law means schools have powers of life and death over human lives that should not be within the parameters of education.

Now with a stronger leader who may return the values of conservatism to the National party, Education needs to be both protected and promoted.

I am not a teacher. I am a youth worker, a community worker, someone who has spent decades, whether in professional or personal life, building resilience, lancing trauma, constructing support networks and facilitating leadership. My scope has mostly been with young people in East, West and South Auckland, generally from intermediate age to early twenties, and I have been blessed with the experiences, even when tragic.

With that in mind, I have a few recommendations.

Remove Te Hurihanganui:

This is a process of culture-replacement that is known by another process being pushed through Western nations; Critical Race Theory, or CRT for short. It is known for being highly segregational and racially divisive, with examples of advocate educators segregating classrooms by skin colour or training white students to believe they are born racist. The New Zealand version catalogues children into three ‘kinds’, that is, “Māori”, “Pākehā” or “Tauiwi”, with one of the first statements being:

“Education became a vehicle to promote western values, knowledge and systems, actively suppressing the indigenous language, knowledge, culture, and ways of being. In this system, dominant Pākehā perspectives of independent success through education became normalised. Those who demonstrated aptitude within the Pākehā view of the world succeeded and were subsequently privileged. Those who did not, were deemed to have failed and subsequently highly disadvantaged.”

I find this to be very damaging to children who are then caught up between being a ten-year-old ‘guilty oppressor’ or a ten-year-old ‘oppressed’. Pasifika are mentioned, with an apparent ‘secondary level’ of victimhood. In my work with young people, once the gangsta kids found out this theory, all of their problems and negative outcomes were because of “white people”. In fact, one of the major references in this ideological, academic experiment is “White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism”, written by white Leftist Academic Robin DiAngelo, an excellent example of a ‘disconnected Academic’. I would also point out that in the US, parents across the nation have started forming protests at school board meetings with many members being fired or resigning.

Get rid of this divisive, innately racist process. You will save money and lessen the damage being done to young minds.

Remove embedded Gender Ideology:

From womb to 3 years, then to 16 years of age, are the most important times in our development as human beings. In these formative years, we deal with emotional, neurological, psychological, physiological changes and dynamic interpretations. Then add in social dynamics, chemical and hormonal phases. On top of that throw in the risks of humiliation, fear, anxiety, where imagination heightens everything. We build work ethic, morality, trauma recovery speed, decision-making processes in that timeframe. All within needing to be equipped and prepared for the future with adults as the annoying, boring, bossy, aggravating…and utterly needed stable-rocks-in-the-maelstrom.

Telling a child from 5 years old the unscientific allegation that they can be a girl if they are, in fact, a boy, is to become part of the swirling, psychologically violent maelstrom that a child does not need from a supposed educator. I subscribe to the theory that it borders on ignorance at best, but likely abuse towards a child’s development. I am proud to have been a part of the team that exposed to the New Zealand public that gender ideology had infiltrated the education system through the innocuous-sounding Mates & Dates programme. Imagine our surprise when, last September, Tracey Martin of NZ First announced that gender ideology would be embedded into schools, to be inculcated to children from 5 years old to the end of secondary school. I have spoken of this topic before, explaining where it comes from and why it will damage your children in a deep, possibly lifelong way.

Stop this unscientific, psychologically brutal form of insidiously grooming the child through what should be a safe school environment. You will save money and lessen the damage being done to young minds.

Bring back the Charter school model:

Charter schools were absolutely awesome for our ‘priority learners’, basically meaning brown kids, Māori first and then Pasifika. I feel very honoured to have worked in the first charter school for three years and also linked in with three other charter schools, a Pasifika-based Primary/Intermediate school, the first Pasifika-based senior school that took on young people that even Alternate Education programmes couldn’t take, and New Zealand’s military academy. The charter school that I was a part of was consistently over 90% in terms of Pasifika/Māori student body. And we had great successes; indeed, all of the charter schools that I was linked with had majority ‘priority learners’ and had excellent results. In fact, one of my worst jobs was to contact families who had not made it into the next intake. Charter schools work because it is given to those who are ready to make moves in dynamic ways that will work in a particular context (eg – Christian, Military, Ethnic) of their focus. I can recall that the ERO report was glowing in all bar one area; there was criticism that we had too much discipline, and I recall my reaction was to laugh heartily. Keep in mind that Jacinda Ardern got rid of the charter school model almost definitely due to PPTA direction. It is interesting that now PPTA is happy to throw hundreds of teaching staff under the bus in the expansion of government mandates. They seem to prefer defending teachers who have been found to be sexually inappropriate with students than teachers who simply do not want to be injected. Interesting.

Bring back the charter school model and allow children to become the priority again. You will save money and lessen the damage being done to young minds.

There is more, of course, concerning STEM, hours, support structures, community building, covid rules, etc, but this simple youth worker will leave it for now. I hope that Erica will prove less damaging to your children than the current ideologues infecting our education system. Perhaps this sickness is not entirely the fault of the current ideologues but of the political ‘Progressive ideas’ of the last generation, considering that:

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next” – Abraham Lincoln

Keep that history in sharpened mind when you are in power, for the sake of both our future and legacy, our children and their’s.