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About Networkonnet - Click here.
About Networkonnet In 1989, when New Zealand schools were
restructured under a New Right philosophy, Kelvin Smythe left the formal education system to be a
critic of some of the restructuring outcomes, and to stand with classroom teachers, many of whom
felt threatened and unrepresented. His main voice for doing this was Developmental Network Magazine.
In its heyday, Network Magazine, published three times a year, was purchased by nearly every primary
school. It provided ideological support and classroom guidance for teachers, and some notoriety and
legal consequences for its publisher. (When publication of the magazine stopped in 1999, a
compendium of the best of Network was published. To mark the re-establishment of the networkonnet
website, this publication, for a limited period, is free on request.) Some years after Network Magazine stopped being
issued, Kelvin Smythe set up networkonnet but decided to take a break from that as well. Now he has
reconstructed the website to continue the philosophy of Network Magazine and to take on a number of
issues. Kelvin Smythe continues to be frustrated by the paucity of attention given by teacher groups
to the ideological underpinnings of education issues. He would like to see schools become less
bureaucratic, so that teaching could become more joyous, and attract and retain more adventurous
people. The metaphor he has in mind is more knight errant (if the chauvinist image can be excused)
and less Round Table. When, from time-to-time, he says schools have developed an unattractive
prissiness, he is really hinting at why he thinks schools will fail to attract or retain male
teachers. Foucault’s nightmare vision of the surveillance society, he believes, should be a major
topic at professional meetings. As well, it is his view that schools are allowing their clarity of
education vision to be confused by the electronic tools available. He is concerned about an apparent
shallowness in learning programmes. Process, he believes, is being emphasised at the expense of
knowledge. He
is not impressed with a lot of the slickness surrounding school marketing (aren’t markets where
things are bought and sold?); the way some schools allow themselves to be used as poster schools to
promote a narrow, conformist view of education; the large number of out-of-school meetings for
principals (more time should be spent standing with their teachers and less sitting with other
principals); the review office (still), yes they are kinder and gentler, their wings having been
clipped, but there is a better way; claims of new knowledge – it is that confusion with process
again; university jargon – an academic rite of passage, but also useful for obscuring the downright
ordinariness of the actual message in much academic writing; talk of enquiry learning – it is a
label now so widely used as to be meaningless; question taxonomies – good questioning does not come
in pre-packaged sequences; prolix ministry publications – stop doing international surveys, try
being original; the abundance of overseas gurus with ideas, which seem to him, based on pop
psychology; and, finally, anyone claiming to prepare children for the 21st century (the
best way to do the right thing for children’s future, he believes, is to meet their needs
now). These ideas are likely to
be the rubric for networkonnet. On the other hand, he may have a change of mind, and concentrate on
his horses, or write a book or something … In the likely event, however, that networkonnet will
continue, your contributions and comments will be warmly welcomed. And unless a particular posting
is otherwise designated, you are invited, indeed encouraged, to download, or cut and paste items,
for any purpose that suits. Kelvin
Smythe makes a plea for teachers to see behind the commodification of education, the
managerialism, the data gathering, the claims of new knowledge, the fads, the array of electronics
to what teaching is really about - key interactions between teacher, child, and what is
being learnt. He knows that many of his concerns about education, his aspirations for education, his
style of writing about them will be dismissed as out-of-date. His claim, though, is that these key
interactions are the essence of what teaching should be, and are timeless. One of the first series of postings on networkonnet is about Elwyn
Richardson. Kelvin Smythe analyses Richardson's inspirational country school experiences from the
'50s and '60s, recounted by Richardson in his book 'In the Early World'. In subsequent
postings Kelvin Smythe analyses Richardson's minor publications written 20 years
later, which he declares to be generally confusing and disappointing. Then, to Kelvin Smythe's
relief and delight, there appeared in one of these minor publications, two of the kind of key
interactions referred to. A boy
wrote: 'If you look at a flax plant you will
see it wave in the breeze ... Richardson
discusses how he would talk with the boy about the use of the impersonal 'you', rather than 'I',
leading on to the flax bush being non-specific as indicated by the use of the indefinite article
'a'. Another boy wrote: 'I saw the wind catch the pine trees. It blew them from side to
side.' Richardson praised the boy for the expression
about the wind catching the pine trees, but asked, did the trees actually move from side to
side? This is what teaching is about, and
networkonnet. Kelvin Smythe urges readers to take the time to read the series on Elwyn Richardson.
It is the signature series for the website. He assures teachers that after reading it, few will
be unaffected, and few will be unsure what developmental teaching is.
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