The System

Teens captured by media inside the Malmsbury youth detention centre. Picture: Darren Howe

So this is language I hear all the time. The System, with a capital ‘S’. It comes out of the mouths of youth and it comes out of the mouths of adults, typically laced with a substantial amount of disdain. At work it’s normally talking about the systems of Youth Justice and Care and Protection under the Ministry for Children. It’s about the web of protocols and personalities and bureaucratic red tape that surrounds any of the youth who come through my classroom door. The web is born of a good intention. Of course it is. But ultimately it becomes a tangle of the above named elements that threaten to strangle the youth, along with their whānau. It’s certainly strangling me, an educator trying to provide services to youth whose education has not been a priority for a pretty long time.

No judgement. It’s hard to think about literacy and numeracy, let alone creativity and innovation, when the immediate concern is finding a safe bed for the child to sleep in. And when the adults making the decisions—social workers, youth workers, therapists, remand home kaimahi, and sometimes parents—have almost all had a traumatic history (at best an unsavoury one) around education, it’s hard to convince anyone that what a teacher has to offer has any value. In fact, it’s worse than that. Try convincing someone who has been let down by a school system, one that has allowed them to be shamed or jeered at for their cultural ineptitude (or aptitude!) or simply counselled them out of mainstream education because it “wasn’t a fit for them” that education itself is not actually harmful, and you’ll begin to see the barriers that are in place. These barriers are systemic.

Most of the students I get are around the age of 16…nearly there or just past. They’re in custody because they have offended…it’s a lot of car theft and shoplifting, a lot of substance abuse, but sometimes people and even animals are hurt, too. These kids have done some damage. We must know, though, that kids don’t think up these things on their own. They don’t exhibit deviant behaviours because they’re bored of their abundant, happy, safe home lives. Most of the kids I get will remain in custody after they’ve served their time, because their homes are also considered unsafe, and such decisions are not made lightly. Evidence to support them usually appears on the youths’ bodies or in the behavioural manifestations of their trauma. My job? It’s rough, and there is a lot of posturing, a lot of resistance. But those behaviours, that resistance? They are not the problem.

In New Zealand, kids are allowed to stop going to high school at 16. It’s a choice they’re allowed to make, along with their whānau. The scenarios I see in this remand-home-educator position had me convinced that this opportunity to leave school at 16 was one of the most visible aspects of colonisation at work in New Zealand today. I thought, “It’s innocent enough. Listen to the ‘voice of the child’ and all that. But the result is actually quite sinister, and it is that those children and their whānau are kept in the precise positions they currently occupy: in the ranks of the lower socio-economic class”. This is indeed the result of that last step in a sequence of problematic decisions and situations, but of course leaving school at 16 is not solely to blame. In fact, it doesn’t begin in secondary school at all; unfortunately, it starts a lot earlier than that.

So then I thought, “Well, my tauira (these youth on remand) are not representative of the typical high school student”, so it’s not fair to judge anything based on my experience with them and the system that enfolds them. But you know, they are in many ways representative of a large number of New Zealand’s students. While the current education system more or less works for about 82% of New Zealand’s youth, for almost 2 in 10 of them, it seriously does not. That’s around 16,000 kids. By the time a youth turns 16 and is given a choice of whether or not to continue in the struggle of what many would describe as trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, they’re most likely going to make the obvious choice to leave school. At first my argument was this: ultimately, a kid who has just turned 16 simply doesn’t know. They aren’t equipped to make an informed choice about education. It’s like asking a five year old if he wants to wear underpants or if if he’d like to cut all vegetables out of his diet. Let him steer that waka and the problems of personal hygiene and nutritional health will sink it.

But then I had to ask myself: are underpants and vegetables really good analogies? When I hear from despairing parents about rampant bullying and what I can only describe as a culture of exclusion…it makes me wonder. Maybe to some of these youth (and their parents), education looks a lot more like arsenic on the plate than broccoli. I suspect many of them choose to take their chances on their own (and without education) because the vehicle for receiving it is so…I would say unpalatable, but…might it even be toxic? In Dunedin, there are close to 60 seats in the various alternative education centres offered to youth between the ages of 12 and 16. And those seats are in high demand. But why? How can the solution be to continue to expand the programming for alternative education, rather than to address the problem at its source? Why are there so many youth for whom mainstream school isn’t working? Do you know that over 23,000 kids, from early childhood to year 13, are currently being educated online with our country’s biggest online education provider, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu? Parents seem desperate for alternatives to what is being offered in our mainstream settings.

Ask any of my prospective students if they want to learn in a classroom, and the answer will be a resounding no. They have yet to understand education as their right. And, in fact, most of their parents are not there yet either. They might like the idea of their child becoming educated, but they don’t believe in it enough to fight for it. It’s far too easy for them to be convinced that, like they were often told as young people, education, especially higher education, is “just not for them”. This messaging to their children is simply a reinforcement of the messaging they got when they themselves were children, and it bolsters a core belief that lives deep down, whether they are conscious of it or not: I don’t deserve a proper education. We don’t deserve it. This is what is meant by colonisation, but we should know: it doesn’t only affect the colonised cultural group. Anyone who is not born into a financially secure situation, whose inheritance is less than stability and the fulfilment of basic needs, is a victim of this System in which those who don’t have continue not to have. We are talking about food and shelter and clothing, yes, but we’re also talking about knowledge. We’re talking about access.

The social workers and youth workers with whom I interact on a daily basis seem resigned to the idea that while education, in a perfect world, is a right, one that youth should be encouraged to demand for themselves, it is simply not available to kids like the ones we deal with. I am regularly treated like a naive do-gooder for insisting on the right of our rangatahi to education, and I’m beginning to understand why. By the time we get them, these youth have fully absorbed and assimilated the messaging that they probably got from their earliest moments in a classroom: you’re not suited to this space, you can’t sit still and focus and are therefore not a good student, you’re disruptive, a nuisance, and you will do best to make your exit as soon as you can. And by the time they’re a bit older, If you don’t volunteer to make that exit, we’ll make it for you. This message, when fully integrated into their sense of self, often manifests as behaviour that is surly, oppositional, and resistant to anything that even remotely looks or feels like a classroom.

So it’s our job (in our roles as social service providers) to get these youth sorted with a training or activity centre where they might be able to grow and gain some valuable skills. Typically, our youth are already known by multiple centres like these, because they have cycled through, each time failing to keep their impulsive behaviours under wraps, each time responding aggressively to words and actions that trigger their trauma around being in a classroom and looking “stupid”. It’s a vicious cycle. They’re not wanted in these spaces, because they detract from the learning of the others who have come there, many of them after plucking up the courage to surmount a previously traumatic educational experience of their own. I don’t blame these providers for prioritising that latter group. But why is our System producing so many of the former?

It’s become clear to me that we have to go back further. How does a kid get here? To this place where they are offending and being incarcerated as a youth and rejecting those things that might empower them? Well, trauma, for starters. Yes, it often starts in the home. That’s what cycles of poverty and violence (and by extension trauma) look like. When systems are in place that keep those cycles rolling, not allowing the inertia to be disrupted by a new force acting on it (like early intervention programmes, which are dismally funded in comparison with those that react when the problem has already escalated to extreme heights—you wouldn’t believe how much money is wrapped around a youth who is already in the youth justice system because they have offended. Add the services that are needed for that same child to be cared for outside of their home—because their home has been deemed unsafe—and given the psychological services needed to address their traumas…it’s expensive, to say the least). Where is the money to support whānau trying to keep their children from resorting to these negative pathways?

Down the rabbit hole, right? Yes and no. It can be done. Our educational system, from its inception at teacher training right on through to the nurturing of an educational community, must support teachers to be able to deliver learning for ALL of their students. Is it easier to remove the 10 out of 30 kids who are “trouble makers” or who require more from the educator? Of course it is. But what of those 10? And you may have guessed it, but a disproportionate number of those 10 are Māori and Pacific Islander—and it’s not because they’re inherently less suited to the classroom. And what is lost for the remaining 20 whose homogenised experience of life in the classroom is a poor reflection of the diversity they will actually encounter in the world?

An inclusive system doesn’t just mean the absence of racism and classism, though this is essential. It asks the school to support the teacher to integrate those 10 kids effectively into the learning environment. And why are we talking about 10 and 20 anyway? How about 5 and 15? A lot of the success of elite private schools has to do with the fact that they have funding to guarantee a smaller class size. It is in those settings that teachers have a chance at success in truly caring for their young charges (not just performing triage in an unmanageably overpopulated setting). I know because I have taught in them.

With 160 students on my roster at the last mainstream public school in which I taught (that one happened to be in the U.S.), it nearly killed me to deliver what I believed they deserved (exactly the same thing my students in the last posh private school in which I taught got). It’s too much to ask of our educators. I didn’t stay at that mainstream public school for long, because my commitment to delivering quality education to my students was at odds with the parameters of my job—so much so that delivering it was at the cost of my personal health and wellbeing.

If instead of focusing on reducing those numbers, we come at the problem with the reasoning of “We need to be able to teach the kids who want to learn”, our schools unwittingly perpetuate a system of colonisation whereby brown and poor kids are pushed out of pathways that involve higher learning before they ever even have a chance to discover their strengths. We laugh about the outdated rhetoric of “No child left behind”, but what would that really look like? What if our school system supported teachers to look at their roles in the classroom differently? With 160 kids on their rosters, most teachers have to just try to survive the year and drag as many youth across the finish line with them as they can; with 60 or 70, they could look at it this way: if any child is failing, I am failing. Full stop. It’s MY job to make sure each one is seen and heard and accommodated. And whatever strategies I have ever devised for struggling students has always and invariably benefitted ALL of my students, not just those whose challenges precipitated my efforts. Those students made me a better teacher.

It would require a major overhaul of the educational system. And it’s not just about numbers. It would require money, for sure. And time. Our teachers would have to be trained to move in a way that is trauma informed. Trained not to ask, “What’s wrong with you?” of the child who is disrupting the entire class with their bizarre behaviour but rather, “What happened to you?” They would need to spend as much time on learning effective classroom management as they do pedagogy. Not classroom punishment, classroom management…where an atmosphere of restorative justice is upheld. Kids can be taught to honour their classroom community and to take responsibility for its functioning as an inclusive, safe, edifying place for ALL. Young children, aged 5 to 11, for example, still thrive on positive attention and accolades, so there’s that. But they also, simply because they are human, thrive in an atmosphere of love. And if they believe that this atmosphere exists in large part because they personally contribute to it, there really is no limit to how that little community can grow and foster learning experiences for all those who are a part of it.

If we want ALL youth to be supported by our public school system, then we have to support all teachers and beyond that all SCHOOLS to provide what is needed to foster this kind of inclusiveness. With the relative “luxury” of a manageable-sized roster, a teacher would have the time and energy to actually care for the youth they engage. Not just deliver a product to those lucky enough to be able to survive in that space without any accommodation. Statistically, that’s 82% of New Zealand’s youth. So chances are, if you’re reading this and you have kids, yours fall into that category. But is it enough to raise kids who can thrive against the odds?

If you think that as long as your own children steer clear of these pathways, you’re good, doing your part, then take a look at local statistics. See how much of the local crime is perpetrated by these very youths who have not managed to steer clear of those paths. And each of their crimes has a victim, or a set of them. When one group in our society suffers, we all do. Figures obtained under the Official Information Act in 2016 revealed that Corrections assessed that “63 per cent [of New Zealand’s prisoners were] deemed to be below a basic standard of literacy.” Having a basic standard of literacy simply means that one can read and write to the limited extent it is required to function in their community. According to a 2018 study by the New Zealand Book Council, 40% of adults [in New Zealand] cannot read at a day-to-day functioning level. RNZ reported that when in 2017 New Zealand participated in a test which scores 10-year-olds on their reading ability, a test in which 50 countries participated, the results showed about 27 percent of New Zealand children did not meet the "intermediate benchmark" for reading compared to an international median figure of 18 percent.

Maybe your child will be an exception to the current trend. Maybe they will have the well within to transcend what is happening all around them. But it’s a bit of a crapshoot, and I don’t know many parents willing to gamble with their children’s lives. Beyond that, are your children—your well-adjusted ones whose achievements shine and are recognised by their teachers and peers—are they being guided to include the children who don’t share in that golden light? Are they taught to be KIND? Not just by you but by all of the adults in their school? Is it modelled to them every day that every life deserves to be recognised and honoured? That every mode of learning “fits”? This is the standard to which we need to hold our schools. It has to come from their leadership. It has to come from the very moments a teacher is trained in their craft, and it has to be sustained until a child crosses the threshold into their post-secondary life.

So, it’s pie in the sky kind of stuff, for sure. But why can’t we dream big? These are our children’s lives we’re talking about. And it’s not only Māori and Pasifika whānau who are kept in these cycles of un-education; it’s all of our whānau struggling with poverty. Yes, that’s the line. It happens to match a lot of cultural lines, as well, and that’s not unique to New Zealand. It’s across the board in colonised countries. That’s what’s meant by “System”, by the way.

Confession time: when I was a young, new teacher, fresh out of uni, I counselled the parents of a severely dyslexic student of mine to try a school for learners with challenges like his (even though it would require sending him away to boarding school; there was no such specialised school on our island). It just seemed like his needs were too great for me to handle. They went beyond my training at the time. Luckily for him, his parents dismissed my recommendation. His parents were themselves highly educated. They knew that education was the key to open pathways that would allow him to earn the life he hoped to have one day. They had money, so they hired tutors and supported his learning that way. He muddled through my class and many, many others on his way to completing his secondary education. That kid went on to become a Princeton Law School graduate.

And yes, privilege is a real thing. I would never shame that family. I love them. But if people like them are not aware of the difference between their situation and that of a kid who has grown up hungry, then they are blind to the System that people say keeps them down. It’s not the “Māori card” to say that that kid whose ancestors lost thousands of acres of land over the slow course of treaty-violating history and whose parents now squat in an abandoned house on the edge of town is set up to struggle in school; it’s the truth.

Teachers in New Zealand face the same challenges to delivering services that I did in California or in Colorado. It’s the same everywhere I’ve been. I don’t have the solution. I’m afraid it lies in the sector of finance, and that’s just not my forte. But I know this: given the autonomy to develop creative, relevant, meaningful curriculum for youth and given the tools with which to deliver it (books, school supplies, a building that is conducive to learning, and a manageable number of students), there is no limit to what a well trained teacher can do for our young people—including fostering a healthy, safe, and inclusive environment where bullying is just not a thing. I’ve seen it done.

And I also know this: it’s not right to counsel (or kick) kids out of school because they struggle. If they are not shamed and dismissed for their struggles, they won’t want to flee. Learning stuff is fun! School should be a place where kids feel comfortable, in their element, surrounded by people who care about them, youth and adults alike. So how do we stop marginalising those whose learning modalities don’t fit the mainstream? Those whose homes have left them a little broken, a little tentative? How do we stop making kids feel small for having intelligences that aren’t easily demonstrated in the classroom space? There’s got to be a way. We ask scientists to keep trying to find a cure for cancer. It seems impossible, but with support and funding, we believe it can be done. Our Systems are choking the life out of people. I see it every day in the youth that I serve. And I see it in their caregivers. Kids need to be given a chance, and not just the ones who are lucky enough to be born to parents who haven’t been traumatised by their educational experiences or who, against all odds, have come to understand the secret potency of learning.

I’m also not saying there’s anything wrong with a youth choosing the path of a brick and block layer or that of a builder. But give them the opportunity to gain the tools to own their own business. To be a leader in their industry. To run the show if they want to…and to earn the pay check that might break the cycles of poverty that keep so many of our whānau from exceeding the expectations set by a System that hurts us all. And maybe, just maybe, don’t give them the opportunity to opt out so young. In a perfect world, maybe they wouldn’t want to. Do you know how many kids I’ve taught who discovered that they were artists or philosophers or poets in those last two years before California law said they could quit (at 18) if they wanted to?

This is not to suggest that we should, in New Zealand, force kids to stay in mainstream schools until they are 18. Certainly not in mainstream schools as they look today. And, in fact, New Zealand has come up with a lot of viable options for youth who choose to leave school. It’s probably as good as it gets within this paradigm. But what if our mainstream schools looked different? What if teachers weren’t overworked and underpaid, and they were encouraged to find a way to MAKE school a positive place for learning, even for those whose learning styles and backgrounds don’t immediately lend themselves to success in traditional classroom assessment? We don’t have to ditch the activity and training centres…just introduce them later. Maybe 18 is the magic number. Maybe it’s not. But one day into a child’s sixteenth year of life seems awfully early to me.

Education doesn’t just give us literacy and numeracy. It gives us a new way to see ourselves. As capable of moving in our world with confidence and of communicating effectively with those around us. For many, it means understanding that we can make it…without resorting to crime. It gives us the means to lift ourselves out of limiting financial situations and dead end paths. It shows us what we can do. And it fosters in us a sense of our community and our own role within it.

We can do better than the System we’ve inherited by our colonising (and colonised) ancestors. It’s time we recognised how damaging it is for all of us, not just those suffering from a lack but also those who appear to benefit from the inequities. When all our people are not given the opportunity to excel, we all suffer. I’m not advocating more programmes for disadvantaged youth and their whānau. I’m saying the System itself needs revising, and what better place to start than with schools that are committed to delivering equitable, free, inclusive education for all?