2015: Kāhui Ako: A Cluster Schmuck of Learning
November 19, 2018
By AHNZ
Kāhui Ako was a National 5.0 initiative in the Education Wars of very recent New Zealand history. My Anarchist translation of Kahui is cluster, as in group or swarm; Ako is schmuck, verb, as in indoctrinate or brainwash someone into being a foolish or contemptible person. What National 5.0 Ministers of misEducation had us translate it to was Communities of Learning.
The Cluster Schmuck of New Zealand Education
All Governments always bugger about with the prison, health, and education systems but Kāhui Ako was revolutionary. It would be the programme to take individual schools, their values, their heritage, their history, their property, and blend them into an amorphous ‘globalist’ blend. Like the many boroughs and townships, and cities, that were melted down to make the Auckland Supercity, all schools were to be assimilated into the Kahui Ako Borg Collective. Their funding was attached to it and there was extra pay for the principal who would warm the seat of the future commissar by taking the lead.
“We are the Borg. Existence, as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.”- Star Trek
In 2015 the first Cluster Schmuck formed, in Malborough, named Piritahi (being together.) By the time National 5.0 lost office there were hundreds of Kāhui Ako. Labour 6.0 inherited a framework holding hundreds of thousands of hostages (children.) Also, of course, a cadre of National 5.0 corporate beneficiaries (consultants) who had built an industry around advising school executives in how to assimilate and cash in by abandoning their autonomy.
Canterbury, November 2017: Three hundred teachers paid to mingle while 300 relief teachers are back at school covering for them. Costly way to upgrade the teachers into, presumably, more expensive versions of themselves for having had this human capital improvement!
“the main focus for the day was to get the big messages about the Community of Learning”
“in essence it’s about groups of educators working together to provide the best education conditions and pathways “- Stuff news
Sounds like hippy-dippy hanging out. ‘Working together‘ and ‘best educational conditions‘ are such superficial platitudes, aren’t they?
Cluster Schmuck Us Interruptus
Labour 6.0 Education Minister Chris Hipkins has placed the current Education State Programme in limbo but the time is now up. As Socialistic as Kāhui Ako sounds (which you’d think Labour 5.0 would love) it is required politically that it be run by their people and re-branded as to be unrecognisable as having come from National 5.0. So, what’s next?
Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the government had not yet made any decisions around funding for Kahui Ako.
“We are waiting for the outcome of the Tomorrow School’s Review to determine what impact it might have,”- RNZ, Sep 2018
Hipkins created a Task Force to review State Education, specifically the major historical revolution of Labour 4.0: Tomorrow’s Schools (1989.) This State Programme wrested schools’ autonomy from their own institution and into the hands of ‘the community’. This step in the collectivising process Kāhui Ako continues is worthy of its own post. So too are the efforts to break up individual classrooms into Open-Plan Classrooms. The basic theme, as always, is to break down individual institutions and distinctiveness into homogenised (r-selected) mush.
Chris Hipkins, Min. Education. Soon to unleash the latest ‘revolution’ in the never-ending Education Wars. How much worse can it be?
The Tomorrow’s Schools Review was due on Hipkins’ desk on Friday of last week (9/Nov/2018) so we’re all waiting to see what he’s going to do with it. Certainly, although it’s still up and running right now, Kāhui Ako may now be discussed as history. National 5.0’s Educationalist Corporate Beneficiaries (‘”expert partners” that provide advice andguidance for Communities of Learning’) are already being cut loose.
The “organisations were being given one-year contracts for 2019 and it was not clear what would happen in 2020 and beyond.”- National Party education spokesperson Nikki Kaye; RNZ, ibid
Whatever Labour 6.0 are about to do will be all mixed in with taming angry teachers (currently undertaking national strikes seeking more pay) as well as participating in the eternal epigenetic battleground all Governments do. It’s horrifying to contemplate how what is about to unfold can be much worse than what National 5.0 have already inflicted! But if there’s one principle of New Zealand history we’ve seen over and over again it’s that: National builds the slippery moral slope, Labour rides it.
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Update 12/11/2019: Today the new ‘Tomorrows Schools’ collectivisation campaign was finally announced as being a fizzer. (Thank goodness!)
Ref. ” are backing down on their education reforms. No longer will schools have to be part of a regional hub. Boards of Trustees will not only survive, but they will survive and still be effective.”- Newstalk ZB
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