HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION

IN THE NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM

A Submission on the Draft

EDUCATION FORUM

August 1998

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Education Forum acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of Professor David Aspin and the Reverend Dr Murray Rae in the preparation of this submission.

Professor Aspin was born and brought up in the North of England. He studied at the universities of Durham, Glasgow, Marburg, and Nottingham and holds an Honours degree in Classics and a Ph.D. with a thesis on Mind and Meta-causation in Ancient Philosophy.

After teaching Classics, English and Religious Education in schools, Professor Aspin lectured in the universities of Nottingham and Manchester, before assuming the Chair of Philosophy of Education in the Faculty of Education, King's College, University of London, in 1979. He was Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Education from 1982 to 1985 and also Chairman of the London University Board of Educational Studies from 1982 to 1986. Between 1986 and 1988 he was Head of the Division of Social, Individual and Policy Studies in the newly-merged Centre for Educational Studies in King's College. From 1979 Professor Aspin also taught in the Department of Philosophy of Education in the Institute of Education in the University of London.

In 1988 Professor Aspin left the United Kingdom to take up a Chair of Education in the School of Education at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he was Head of the Division of Policy, Contexts and Curriculum. In February 1989 he took up the position of Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, teaching philosophy in addition to his duties as Dean. After completing five years as Dean, Professor Aspin returned to teaching, research, writing and professional consultancy, both nationally and internationally.

In 1989 Professor Aspin was invited by the Victorian Minister of Education to serve on the State Board of Education, advising the Ministry on Policy Issues in Education; his special concern came to be associated with social justice, teacher education and Asian Studies in education. In 1990 Professor Aspin was invited to be a member of the National Review Group set up by the Asian Studies Council to examine and make recommendations concerning the teaching of Asian Studies and Asian languages in institutions offering courses of teacher education in Australia. In 1991 he was elected Chairman of the Victorian Deans of Education Committee, and became a member of the Victorian Ministerial Teacher Education Reference Group. In 1992 he was appointed to the Victorian Police Training Advisory Board. In 1994 he was appointed as a UNESCO Regional Education Adviser working with the Indonesian Government and as a consultant to a UNESCO/UNDP/Ministry of Education Conference on Decentralisation in Thailand.

Professor Aspin has served as a Visiting Professor at the universities of Newcastle, Auckland and Western Australia, and at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Rand Afrikaans University and the University of South Africa.

Professor Aspin's recent publications include: Quality Schooling - A Pragmatic Approach to Current Problems, Trends and Issues (Cassell, London, 1994; co-authored with J. D. Chapman and V. R. Wilkinson); Creating and Managing the Democratic School (Falmer, London, 1995); and Securing the Future and The Curriculum Redefined (Monograph Series) (OECD, Paris, 1993, 1994). In July 1997 Logical Empiricism and Post-Empiricism in Educational Discourse, a book edited by Professor Aspin, was published by Heinemann. The School, the Community and Lifelong Learning, co-authored with Professor J. D. Chapman, was published by Cassells in November 1997. With Professor Chapman he is currently working on two further books: Leading Learning Schools for Tomorrow, to be published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York; and an International Handbook on Lifelong Learning, to be published by Kluwer Press, The Netherlands.

The Reverend Dr Murray Rae is the Maclaurin Chaplain at the University of Auckland. His qualifications include B.Arch., B.A., B.D. and Ph.D. (London). He has taught theology at the University of Otago, and has lectured at Regent College (Vancouver), King's College (London), and the Bible College of New Zealand. His current position involves regular teaching at the Auckland Medical School.

Dr Rae's publications include: Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation, (Clarendon, Oxford, 1997); "Is the Family Really the Basis of the Good Society?" in Robyn Dixon and Vivienne Adair (eds), What is Family? (University of Auckland, Auckland, 1996); "Chaplaincy in the Postmodern University" in Stimulus, 5.1, February 1997, pp. 7-9; "Engaging the Academy: Encountering Gospel & Culture in the University" in Collision Crossroads: The Intersection of Modern Western Culture with the Christian Gospel (DeepSight Trust, Auckland, 1998). A range of other articles, many of which focus upon the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, have been contributed to books and journals.

The Education Forum is also grateful to Mary Chamberlain, John Clark, Michael Irwin, Reg Lockstone, Bruce Logan, Tom O'Donoghue and three anonymous referees for many valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this submission.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The proposals for the Health and Physical Education curriculum (hereinafter 'the Draft') represent a substantial move away from early models in which physical education (PE) is little more than what might be taught by PE instructors and health what might be covered by nursing auxiliaries. Moreover, the Draft acknowledges the importance of firm theoretical foundations and embraces many admirable aims. All this is to be applauded. [Chapter 1]

The theoretical foundations of the Draft are, however, mostly unstated, though clear enough from other material, and include a postmodernist view of the curriculum, a constructivist view of learning, a needs-based and student-centred view of pedagogy, and a relativist theory of values. The Draft adopts a neo-Marxist/critical theory view of the purpose of education and assumes that this view is not open to criticism. Academic support of these views, however, is weak. This lack of clarity, openness and academic support, combined with an unwillingness to explore other approaches, is disturbing. Further work should expose, critique and evaluate the assumptions in the approach adopted, and compare them with those in alternative approaches. [Chapter 2]

Curriculum development that is based on hidden, and possibly unrepresentative, views will fail. A more pragmatic, problem-solving approach is required: one that asks basic but fundamental questions, such as what is the nature of the study required in individual subject areas. This approach leads to the conclusion that the principal focus of Health and Physical Education should be to encourage healthy lifestyles and a regimen of risk-avoiding behaviours, so as to prolong life to normal term with a degree of quality. [Chapter 3]

The Draft's excessive emphasis on skills risks overlooking a vital concern of all education - the preservation and transmission of knowledge and culture. Moreover, the Draft makes no distinctions between types of knowledge, competencies and skills, and this contributes to an inflated view of the remit of Health and Physical Education and confusion as to how particular skills and competencies might be acquired. [Chapter 4]

Concepts and terms that are mostly of a 'feel-good' quality (for example, "personal identity", "personal meaning", "coherent", "balance", "integration") are scattered throughout the Draft. Although some of these terms are considered key to the Draft, none of them is adequately explained, evaluated and compared with alternatives. In the absence of any such justification, they must be questioned as a basis for curriculum development. [Chapter 5]

The concept of "well-being", for example, is said to have a number of dimensions, none of which is explained, their relationships within human personhood are not explored, and no guidance is given as to how well-being is to be recognised and assessed. The notion of "self-worth" is asserted without explanation, and no criteria for assessing 'worth' are suggested. "Personal identity" is to be strengthened, but what this involves and how the notion of "strengthening" is relevant are unexplained. What is presented in the Draft is, therefore, a covert set of prescriptions which, although presented as naturalistic statements, are in fact a set of value judgments with which many may disagree. [Chapter 6]

The concept of "student needs", long-discredited in the international academic literature, is made the prime determinant of a needs-based curriculum which is based on the principle that the individual student is not only at the centre of the educational process but initiates and directs it. The underlying assumption is that the child will develop on its own, and all the teacher (understood more as an auxiliary or facilitator) has to do is to provide the right environment for development to take place. All this is highly questionable and, as might be expected, no authorities are quoted nor recent research cited in support of it. [Chapter 7]

A different and academically respectable version of 'student-centred' learning focuses on different modes of learning and consequently on the importance of varied and student-regarding styles of teaching. It affirms the need for pupils to acquire knowledge and procedures from teachers who are already authorities in the areas concerned. [Chapter 8]

Lack of precision and clarity, combined with grandiose aims for Health and Physical Education, has produced a Draft curriculum which intrudes into the legitimate concerns of virtually all other school-level educators. This will lead to muddle and the risk of duplication and redundancy. What is particularly lacking is clarity as to the unique contribution of this curriculum area and its proper claims on curricular time and resources. Moreover, it intrudes, particularly via its emphasis on "total well-being", into areas which are the legitimate responsibilities of people outside the school, including parents, church and marae leaders, and medical professionals. Two areas of particular concern in this regard are sexuality and mental health. [Chapter 9]

The Draft acknowledges sport as within the domain of Health and Physical Education. However, the advantages of physical exercise can be gained in a variety of ways, not only through sports. Excessive stress on competitive sports can be excluding, and there is advantage in providing a wide range of physical activities. There are also considerable advantages in organising sport for its inherent satisfaction and on a 'club' basis involving parents and others. [Chapter 10]

Insufficient emphasis is given in the Draft to the importance of schools forming partnerships with organisations outside the school. There is a wide and valuable range of potential partnerships that can be formed in the pursuit of various aspects of education. In Health and Physical Education these include health professionals and organisations, the many and varied sport and fitness clubs, and cultural centres such as schools of dance and ballet. [Chapter 11]

That values pervade all aspects of schooling is properly acknowledged in the Draft. However, its approach to values is relativist and subjectivist, and this poses major problems. The Draft appears to advocate a laissez-faire approach to the choice of values while, inconsistently, upholding particular values. What is missing are an acknowledgement that some values can be wrong and need correction, acceptance of the crucial importance of children being habituated into moral conduct, and discussion of the dispositions essential to the educational enterprise. An even more fundamental omission is the acknowledgement that values are based on prior religious, philosophical and other commitments, and that it is within the context of such commitments that people discern that some things are 'right' and others 'wrong'. The rhetoric of individual autonomy downplays the importance of knowledge and the notion that education involves exposure to accumulated wisdom and truth. [Chapter 12]

The Draft is also correct in acknowledging the spiritual dimension within the concept of human well-being, but here again it presents major problems, especially in its failure to engage with what spirituality means within different religious traditions. Major issues arise for state schools, but a descriptive approach to the major religions represented in New Zealand can be adopted without any suggestion of proselytising. Moreover, much of our Western cultural inheritance can only be understood within the context of Christianity. The curriculum needs to adopt a more modest approach than in the Draft, recognising that vital aspects of spiritual formation can only properly take place outside school. [Chapter 13]

Assessment is correctly recognised in the Draft as a vital component of any educational programme. However, in the Draft its role appears to be largely limited to formative, rather than summative, purposes. A particular deficiency in the Draft is that while it promotes the development of personal characteristics and qualities it does not say how they should be assessed. Such assessment poses particular difficulties for teachers, who need to be shown the various stages of development and how to appropriately assess them. This shortcoming in the Draft is compounded by the lack of precision about the particular outcomes to be expected from Health and Physical Education and the frequent references to general and transferable abilities.

[Chapter 14]

Implementation of the Draft's proposals would involve substantial additional resources. While the curriculum itself need not provide an estimate and justification for such additional expenditures, the necessary analysis, including some discussion of the educational return expected and priority to be accorded, has to be undertaken in conjunction with the curriculum's development. It is not clear whether such work has in fact been undertaken. [Chapter 15]

Finally, this submission advocates making a fresh start to developing the curriculum and aiming at a much more restricted remit for Health and Physical Education. This would avoid the conceptual confusions embodied in the Draft, and result in a curriculum which is more true to the respected mission of Health and Physical Education teachers. It would also have the practical advantages of building on present levels of professional expertise and reducing resourcing difficulties. Under the remit recommended in this submission, Health and Physical Education teachers would have specific responsibility for physical aspects while sharing with others a general commitment to the school's moral and social concerns. [Chapter 16]

This submission recommends that the Government:

(1) note that the Draft rests on weak academic support and upon assumptions which are not explicit, including the central but hidden assumption that its own 'socio-critical' stance must not itself be open to criticism;

(2) agree that the lack of clarity and openness about its theoretical basis and assumptions means that the Draft does not form a satisfactory basis for further work on the development of a Health and Physical Education curriculum statement;

[from Chapter 2]

(3) direct that further work on developing a Health and Physical Education curriculum should adopt a limited, practical, pragmatic and problem-solving approach;

(4) agree that the principal focus of such further work should be constructing healthy lifestyles and a regimen of risk-avoiding behaviours to prolong existence to normal term and to do so with a degree of quality;

[from Chapter 3]

(5) note that the Draft fails to make essential distinctions between types of knowledge, skills and competencies;

(6) note that this omission has contributed to an inflated view of what Health and Physical Education should comprise;

(7) note that the Draft fails to provide teachers and students with the necessary guidance and advice about how to impart and acquire the skills concerned;

[from Chapter 4]

(8) note that the Draft employs many concepts of a 'feel-good' quality and superficial appeal which are not explained, analysed, evaluated and compared with alternatives. In the absence of such defence, they do not provide an intellectually sound basis for the Health and Physical Education curriculum and must therefore be open to question and possible rejection;

[from Chapter 5]

(9) note the considerable confusion on the concepts said to constitute the key elements within the proposed curriculum;

(10) note that the apparent clarity on vital concepts conceals the fact that the prescriptions constitute a set of value judgments which might be widely contested by the general public;

(11) note the dangers - not least to students - of asking any one group of teachers to undertake responsibilities in, for example, matters of mental health, and that this is an unreasonable burden to place on them and should involve others in the school and outside it;

(12) agree that the Health and Physical Education curriculum should primarily concern the material aspects of human development;

[from Chapter 6]

(13) note that the Draft is based on an outdated and internationally discredited notion of student needs, and on the related concept of child-centredness for which no argumentation is offered and no authorities cited;

[from Chapter 7]

(14) reject the concept of child-centredness as promoted within the Draft;

(15) note that there is a more academically credible and rigorous 'student-centred' approach which seeks to identify differences in modes of learning and consequently in effective teaching styles, maintains the importance of knowledge and disciplinary procedures, and upholds the need for teachers who are authorities in both content and procedures;

[from Chapter 8]

(16) note that the Draft lacks any clear demonstration of what is unique about Health and Physical Education, and that this results in inappropriate and potentially dangerous intrusions into areas (such as sexuality and mental health) requiring wide involvement within and without the school, especially that of parents, and, where appropriate, of suitably qualified professionals;

[from Chapter 9]

(17) direct that further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum should place emphasis on the importance of providing a wide range of sporting activities, on the educational value of engaging in sport for its inherent satisfaction, and on the advantages of wide involvement in the management and provision of such activities on a 'club' basis;

[from Chapter 10]

(18) direct that in the further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum guidance should be provided about the range of suitable partnerships, their advantages and the relevance of various environments to the aims and objectives of the curriculum;

[from Chapter 11]

(19) direct that in further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum officials should:

(a) reject the relativist and subjectivist approach to values adopted in the Draft;

(b) reject the values clarification approach to values education; and

(c) emphasise:

- the importance of substantive knowledge in making value judgments;

- the critical importance of habituation by suitable role models in moral behaviours and attitudes;

- the dispositions and attitudes inherent in successful educational endeavour; and

- the dependence of values on prior philosophical, religious and other commitments;

[from Chapter 12]

(20) direct officials in their further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum to:

(a) take a more modest approach to a school's ability to foster students' well-being, personal identity and estimates of self-worth, recognising that vital sources of such education and development (including spiritual formation) lie outside the school;

(b) distinguish between spiritual formation or development and a descriptive (phenomenological or 'religious-studies') approach to the understanding of religious traditions;

(c) encourage the descriptive approach to the understanding of the major religions, noting that this can be pursued without any suggestion of proselytising and that an understanding of religions (especially Christianity) is essential to understanding much of our cultural heritage, including literature, music and art;

(d) consider where education on the various aspects of well-being should lie within the total curriculum, noting that some aspects might be a school-wide responsibility and some might be better located in subject areas other than Health and Physical Education;

(e) consider at what stages of their education students should be exposed to the teachings of the major religious traditions and the concepts involved, the teacher training required, and the classroom resources that should be made available;

[from Chapter 13]

(21) direct that, in further work on the development of the curriculum, attention be given to the need to define the particular contributions that may be expected from Health and Physical Education, the sequences of student learning outcomes that might be reasonably expected, the strategies and techniques that teachers might employ to assess whether and how well those outcomes have been achieved, and the pre- and in-service training of teachers required in those assessment practices;

[from Chapter 14]

(22) direct that further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum include estimating the additional funds required, considering the priority that should be given to, and the return expected from, the investment involved, and identifying the likely source of the funds;

[from Chapter 15]

(23) direct that further work on the curriculum should involve revisiting what has been undertaken hitherto, drawing on the best of the relevant international literature, and reconceptualising and recasting the work;

(24) direct that the aim should be to produce a much more constrained and manageable remit for Health and Physical Education, and one that is more true to its particular and respected place in the school curriculum, while acknowledging that several aspects of the present Draft belong to the school as a whole and/or to the wider community;

(25) agree that work on the new Health and Physical Education curriculum should involve:

(a) removing Strand C ("Enhancing Interactions and Relationships with Others") from the present "Conceptual Framework";

(b) removing the following from the present "Key Areas of Learning":

- Mental Health;

- Sexuality Education;

- Education through Sport;

(c) leaving the following as the sole but proper professional area of responsibility of the Health and Physical Education curriculum:

- Food and Nutrition;

- Physical Activity;

- Outdoor Education; and

(d) pruning the list of "Essential Skills" claimed in the Draft to be developed through Health and Physical Education.

[from Chapter 16]

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The proposals for the Health and Physical Education component (hereinafter 'the Draft') of the New Zealand curriculum for schools contain much that is good. It is certainly a far cry from Health and Physical Education syllabuses of former days in which a crude instrumentalism held sway and in which curriculum and methods followed lines that saw physical education teachers as little more than physical training or drill instructors, and health education teachers as equivalent in role and function to nursing auxiliaries in public health centres.

Indeed, until relatively recently we might have had some reason for applying an adaptation of Professor Dan O'Connor's (1973) censure of education generally:

"Poor dear Psychology", wrote Professor Broad in 1933, "has never got far beyond the stage of medieval Physics, except in its statistical developments, where the labours of the mathematicians have enabled it to spin out the correlation of trivialities into endless refinements. For the rest, it is only too obvious that, up to the present, a great deal of Psychology consists mainly of muddle, twaddle and quacksalving, trying to impose itself as a science by the elaborateness of its technical terminology and the confidence of its assertions". This was of course a libel on Psychology even in 1933 but if we replace "psychology" by "[health and physical] education" in this passage we have a very fair summary of the state of education ... . A major share of the blame for this state of affairs must rest on the inadequate theoretical background of [health and physical] education.

Fortunately, since then much has been done to provide sound theoretical, epistemological and axiological underpinning for work in Health and Physical Education. In 1993 the government issued a curriculum framework (Ministry of Education, 1993) within which the curriculum of New Zealand's schools can be put on a sounder theoretical basis and can be updated and refined. This gives us the opportunity to put subjects onto a much more secure and solid footing - one which will exemplify sound research in theory and practice and make it a curriculum able to meet all the challenges of its times.

The Draft that we now have before us has taken teaching and educating in Health and Physical Education many miles away from earlier minimalist models. Few reading the Draft could doubt that its authors have been animated by the liveliest attachment to these subjects, the loftiest aspirations for them and the most far-reaching moral concerns for education. The Draft is replete with sentiments and aspirations with which few would disagree and even fewer could deny. Indeed many school boards, principals and teachers would be glad to embrace the aims and intentions set out in the Draft as offering guiding principles for the visions, values and pedagogical approaches worth adopting in every part of their schools' educational endeavours.

It would be easy to be swept away by the Draft's tone and rhetoric, however, and signify a glad assent. The intentions of its authors are, prima facie, aiming at so much good and so many laudable outcomes of student learning in the key areas they propose. But such a response would do little to take account of the serious and substantial objections that can be mounted against the proposals, recommendations and suggestions set out in the Draft including its Appendix. It is to the articulation of such objections and reservations that we must therefore now turn.

Summary

o The Draft contains much that is good. It represents an important move away from earlier minimalist and instrumentalist views of Health and Physical Education, and its authors clearly acknowledge the importance of firm theoretical foundations. Many of the aims and aspirations for student learning in the areas covered are admirable, but the proposals and recommendations made in the Draft are nonetheless open to serious objections and reservations.

CHAPTER 2
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE CURRICULUM, HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION,
AND STUDENT LEARNING

Before we can start to consider the soundness and significance of the specific proposals and suggestions made in the Draft of the Health and Physical Education curriculum statement, a preliminary caveat should be made. What needs to be examined most carefully is the nature and status of the theoretical frameworks on which this document hangs.

What we find is disturbing.

The Foreword to the Draft (p. 5) acknowledges the contributions of a large number of people in the preparation of the document and "extensive debate". Nonetheless, it may reasonably be assumed that the Draft owes most to the two people identified as its "principal writers", Gillian Tasker and Ian Culpan, and their articles published in a recent issue of the journal Delta offer eloquent testimony to the influences that have been influential in shaping the Draft.

From even the most cursory reading of those papers, and of other background material examined for the purpose of framing this submission, it is clear that the following obtains:

• The view of curriculum that is adopted is postmodern (cf. W. E. Doll).
• The view of the purposes of education that is taken (the axiology at work) is that of the critical theorists (most notably the work of D. Kirk).
• The view of learning is constructivist.
• The view of pedagogy embraced is student-centred and needs-based.
• The theory of value (the axiology) is relativist.

These positions are largely implicit in the Draft itself. However, the principal writers of the document are quite straightforward in their enunciation of their tenure of these positions in the issue of Delta referred to above (Tasker, 1996-97; Culpan, 1996-97). Some epistemic warrant for the importance attached to these various positions in the Draft can be seen in its bibliography and in those of the two Delta articles.

That warrant is, however, unconvincing. The authors cited are, in almost all cases, secondary sources (one reference is made in the Delta articles to Foucault) but none at all to any of the other sources one might reasonably have looked for in such a case, and there is only one authority (that of Doll) cited for the postmodern view of the curriculum.

One signal of the ideological underpinnings of the position taken in the Draft can be found in the General Aims proposed for Health and Physical Education, where we read that one of the aims is that students should be able to:

participate in creating healthy communities and environments by taking responsible and critical action (the Draft, p. 13).

The notion of "critical" conduct or action occurs throughout the Draft. Given its obvious prominence, we might reasonably expect to see some clear definitions, analyses or accounts of the term "critical" given at some stage to show in what the learning outcomes will consist and how they might be recognised and assessed. Few such definitions, analyses or accounts are forthcoming. However, when this one word is seen in the light of the papers put forward as an elucidation of this curriculum by the principal writers of the Draft, it is quite clear that what is intended here is the concept of a "socially critical" curriculum for Health and Physical Education, advocated by Kirk and others, and emanating from a neo-Marxist/critical theory perspective.

This emerges quite clearly in the description of work in Strand D which includes the following statement:

Students will be encouraged, through individual and collective action, to identify inequities, make changes, and positively contribute to the development of healthy communities and environments (the Draft, p. 52).

There is little notion here of students being able to discover their own needs for themselves. Rather, here is a programme for political action which some political parties and action groups would be glad to espouse as their charter - an impression that is strongly supported in the learning outcomes for Level Eight of this Strand, that have quite obviously to do with taking 'critical action' to change situations which students regard as inimical to well-being as they have 'critically defined it'. One is reminded of Marx's aphorism

Philosophers have, in their various ways, attempted to explain the world. The problem is, however, not to explain it, but to change it (Karl Marx, Theses against Feuerbach, 1888, p. xi)

The programme set out here is thus a manifestation of a hidden agenda: to achieve the goals for Health and Physical Education prescribed by critical theorists, which constitute an exercise in individual and social emancipation, and attacks of a subversive kind on existing social, communal, political and economic institutions, structures and practices.

While there may be good arguments for encouraging students in our schools, through their programmes of Health and Physical Education, to adopt such a perspective, none of them is made available to us to give the reader some plausible warrant for their assertion. Other references in the Draft's bibliography (pp. 59-60) give the game away, however. The titles of the works by Culpan, Hewlett, Kirk and Tinning, Kirk and Spiller, Sage and Tasker provide clear evidence of a particular agenda, either hidden or overt, being advocated and promoted through the medium of the curriculum proposed for implementation in all New Zealand schools. The curriculum proposed is thus part of a larger 'project' to which the authors cited have an evident commitment.

In fact, however, there is something of a paradox here. The critical stance being advocated in the Draft and the theory on which it is based are not being laid open to us for criticism - though, given its proponents' love for 'criticism', it ought to be. If there is no countervailing view offered, then its claim to academic acceptability is vitiated. At the very least, a sufficient number of widely recognised and respected authorities from international scholarship should have been cited, either in support or criticism of the stance taken. But they are not, and thus we must hesitate before accepting the positions advocated in the Draft. Similar reservations may be entertained about many other sources and references cited: this is true even of most of the references cited in the Health and Physical Education Literature Reviews prepared for the Ministry of Education by its consultant Helen Shaw (though in this respect at least the Health Education Literature Review is much stronger than that for Physical Education). They lack persuasiveness and plausibility.

A much more powerful set of supporting sources and arguments could have been found in other books and journals which have the advantage of having secured major international recognition and support in the field. For older, but still relevant, works one can think of David Best (1978), David Carr (1981a, 1981b), Don Masterson (1974), H. T. A. (John) Whiting (1975). For more current literature, a look at any of the recent issues of journals such as the European Review of Physical Education (international editorial board, double-blind reviewing) would show how little the authors of the Draft have drawn upon the extensive and rigorous academic literature available to them.

Thus we may contend that the scholarship upon which all this is based is neither strong nor convincing. Much of its character is simplistic, tendentious and assertive. The authors of the Draft should have indicated their awareness that all the epistemological and axiological elements referred to above are highly contentious and the subject of much strenuous argument and counter-argument in the leading journals in the field. For example, while there are many arguments for postmodernism in the curriculum, constructivism in learning theory, and relativism in axiology, there are equally many - if not indeed even more - powerful arguments against them. Here the Popperian principle should have operated: every theory - and the Draft certainly embodies such a theory - is to be regarded as an hypothesis put up for examination and then exposed to the most strenuous attempts at falsification. Only when all such attempts have been, for the moment, defeated, may we proceed to accept the proffered hypothesis as constituting, for the moment, our temporary best provisional theory (Popper, 1943, 1949, 1960). On this basis, the authors of the Draft, given their predilection for 'criticism', should have sought out and cited the arguments that criticised the concepts, categories and principles on and around which their own theory is constructed, and then given reasons why those arguments were not accepted.

Summary and recommendations

• The Draft is based on unstated, and therefore neither explained nor evaluated, theoretical assumptions (as to the view taken in the Draft of the curriculum, learning, pedagogy, the theory of value, and the purpose of education).
• Most of the works cited in the Draft and in recent articles by its principal writers are secondary sources. Likewise internationally recognised authors and articles in the field have been largely disregarded.
• The Draft seeks to promote a 'socio-critical' view of education which could, if adopted, be subversive of existing social institutions and practices especially if promoted further through in-service programmes for the implementation of the new curriculum.
• Not only is the 'critical' approach adopted in the Draft not explicit, it is not itself regarded as open to criticism in so far as neither it nor alternative approaches are canvassed and evaluated.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(1) note that the Draft rests on weak academic support and upon assumptions which are not explicit, including the central but hidden assumption that its own 'socio-critical' stance must not itself be open to criticism; and

(2) agree that the lack of clarity and openness about its theoretical basis and assumptions means that the Draft does not form a satisfactory basis for further work on the development of a Health and Physical Education curriculum statement.

CHAPTER 3

THE NEED FOR A SOUND BASIS FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING

Those planning and constructing curricula in any learning domain these days have a considerable number of problems to face, one of which is catering for and addressing the competing needs and demands of a wide range of constituencies and stakeholders in the education service and the community. They are not, however, without access to sources of advice. Recent research and development in educational policy, philosophies of knowledge, and theories of learning have been extending and growing more sophisticated and refined widely throughout the world.

Given the challenges faced, it is clearly important that the curriculum in those subjects which the New Zealand government proposes to put into effect - and especially, in this case, in Health and Physical Education - should be informed and shaped by considerations, models and advice drawn from a broad range of advisory sources, the best-developed accounts of the nature of knowledge, and the most widely supported and recommended models of student learning. By contrast, and as discussed in the previous chapter of this submission, the Draft is highly idiosyncratic and is representative of the views of only a very small group of academics. Moreover, the consultation process, of which this submission forms part, is doomed to fail because the motives and assumptions entertained by the Draft's authors and its promoters in the Ministry of Education are hidden, and alternative ones are not advanced and examined.

The search for models of curriculum, and paradigms of diverse styles and types of student learning in them, will require those developing curricula, or their various constitutive subjects and disciplines, to address and provide answers to some vital preliminary questions. These will necessitate giving an account of several matters: what counts as knowledge in the individual subject; how knowledge should be conceived; and how knowledge in that subject, in all its forms, should be established and certified. Answers to these questions will constitute the theory of knowledge - the epistemology - that will characterise all teaching undertakings and all learning initiatives in the subject area. It is thus vital that the basis of that epistemology be sound.

One point emerges from a wide-ranging survey of curriculum models that have been developed recently as a result of explorations and advances in the theory of knowledge and psychology of learning. This is that curricula are not well-based on the activities of conceptual analysis and clarification; rather, they arise from the consideration of the various theories that may be constructed, scrutinised and corrected for the purpose of providing temporary best solutions to educational problems, the lack of a solution to which is otherwise threatening to individual growth, human welfare and social harmony. From this perspective, curriculum building and planning are underpinned by the commitment to framing answers to problems, the investigation and appraisal of the answers tentatively proposed to those problems, and the cautious trying-out in the curriculum of those theories that have hitherto resisted falsification (cf. Popper, 1943, 1949, 1960, 1972; Lakatos, 1976, 1978). This is a principle that can be applied to curriculum planning and construction and evaluation (Aspin, Chapman and Wilkinson, 1994; Chapman and Aspin, 1997).

Thus, the pattern of curriculum planning will not be determined by a set of unexamined preconceptions as to the idiosyncratic, protean and ultimately solipsistic form that the postmodern curriculum must take, nor by a set of relativistic values or subjectively based prescriptions relating to desirable cognitive activities and cultural values. It is the purposes and problems of educational policy makers, stakeholders, and people in the community generally that provide the defining parameters for curriculum planning. And, in turn, these problems and parameters will be informed by, incorporate, and be delivered according to the norms and prescriptions generated by, and the epistemological character and conventions of, the various forms of knowledge, their language and literatures, their categories, concepts and typical procedures.

It is clear that, among such problems, the one that will be the principal focus of any curriculum for Health and Physical Education will be the problem of constructing healthy lifestyles and a regimen of risk-avoiding behaviours for people concerned to prolong existence to normal term and to do so with a degree of quality. This we see as the principal aim and function of studies and activities in that area of the curriculum designated as Health and Physical Education. And it is these concerns that will generate its theory of knowledge. It is to exploring how best to deal with the problems that constitute its primary staple of academic, intellectual and professional concern that the Draft's authors should turn for their agenda.

The suggestion of this particular and rather more restricted remit would be supported by the work of the OECD. In its preparation for the conference on The Curriculum Re-Defined, the Conference Secretariat document suggested the following areas of knowledge, experience and learning that might form the basis for the curriculum in the compulsory years of schooling (OECD, 1993, pp. 44-45):

• mathematical skills and reasoning and their applications;
• social, cultural and civic studies;
• scientific and technological ways of knowing and their social applications;
• communication;
• moral reasoning and action; and
• health education.

The proprium, the staple and the central concerns of the Health and Physical Education curriculum would thus seem to reside with the last-named area - though we note that Physical Education is not mentioned by the OECD as a compulsory subject. It is not being 'healthist' (whatever that particular term of opprobrium really means) to advocate a similar restriction for Health and Physical Education in the new curriculum currently being prepared for students in New Zealand schools. It is to pay realistic attention to those problems and exigencies that acceptance of a pragmatist approach to curriculum planning is calculated to assist pupils to face.

Summary and recommendations

• In contrast to procedures adopted for the Draft, the development of a curriculum must be informed by a wide range of advice, the best-developed accounts of the nature of knowledge, and well-supported models of student learning.
• Critical to successful curriculum development is the establishment of what counts as knowledge in the subject area concerned, and how that knowledge is to be conceived, established and certified. The resulting theory of knowledge must be sound if the curriculum construction is to be successful.
• It is unwise to base curricula on unexplicated, and therefore unexamined, preconceptions such as those adopted in the Draft, which include postmodernism, critical theory, constructivism and relativism. To the contrary, successful curricula are likely to be based on theories which seek to address the actual educational purposes and problems of those directly concerned, including teachers and parents.
• A principal focus, representing widely shared concerns, should be constructing healthy lifestyles and a regimen of risk-avoiding behaviours to prolong existence to normal term and to do so with a degree of quality.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(3) direct that further work on developing a Health and Physical Education curriculum should adopt a limited, practical, pragmatic and problem-solving approach; and

(4) agree that the principal focus of such further work should be constructing healthy lifestyles and a regimen of risk-avoiding behaviours to prolong existence to normal term and to do so with a degree of quality.

CHAPTER 4

THE STRESS ON "SKILLS"

The conclusion of the previous chapter of this submission means much more than that students should simply have the skills with which to face the problems and exigencies they will confront in life. The conclusion highlights that one of the most troubling aspects about the Draft, and indeed about The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, is the excessive emphasis placed upon skills. Of course in this respect these curriculum documents are no different from many others to be found widely across the international arena. The move towards skills and competency-based training has been a feature of proposed improvements in curricula in many national curriculum development schemes for some time now. So the programmes of educating institutions must pay attention both to the requirement for students to acquire command of substantial bodies of cognitive content and to the achievement of competence in certain procedures.

The arguments against the heavy emphasis in curricula on such skills and competencies have, of course, been considerable (cf. Stanley, Jackson and Soucek in Collins, 1993). Some of those arguments have been rehearsed in responses by the Education Forum to other draft curriculum documents (see, for example, Education Forum, 1995 and 1996). We reiterate those arguments in the case of this draft Health and Physical Education curriculum with all the greater force, because it seems to us that their emphasis in the present context risks overlooking a substantial concern of all education - its function of preserving and transmitting valued knowledge, viewed as content, and the need to make the coming generation familiar with such knowledge by inducting it into the relevant forms, traditions and cultures.

Many years ago now Bertrand Russell made a distinction between that knowledge which we acquire "by acquaintance" and that which we obtain "by description" (Russell, 1967). Similarly Ryle (1949) distinguished between our knowledge of facts and states of affairs and our knowledge of skills and procedures - "knowing that" and "knowing how". For Ryle it was clear that mastery of both types of knowledge were vitally important in the development of intelligence and the educated mind (cf. also Ryle, 1967).

The analysis of 'knowing how' was further extended by Scheffler (1965) who differentiated between those patterns of movement and behaviour which can be engaged in uncritically and habitually (such as changing gear in a car or taking guard at the crease) and those where there is a premium on the mastery of open-ended competencies calling for sophisticated appraisals, awareness and movements (such as driving a car from Auckland to Wellington or 'reading' the continual changes and developments in the field of play as an innings progresses).

On this analysis, then, there are two (main) kinds of knowledge: propositional and procedural (though other people have added a further kind of knowledge, such as the knowledge we have of persons). The first of the main distinctions - 'knowing that' - admits of no degree: either a thing is intelligible, true or valid, or it is not. The latter - 'knowing how' - admits considerable variations of degree, from learning simple skills (such as tying a shoe-lace, operating a photocopier, or jumping over the bar in a pole-vault) to the high-level open critical skills (such as setting up a programme of drugs education, writing a computer programme for breaking codes, building a translation machine, or controlling the landing tower at London's Heathrow Airport in the morning arrival rush hour) (cf. Edel, 1973).

The question for Health and Physical Education teachers here is a difficult one. They clearly have a substantial amount of very important information to be imparted to, and acquired by, their students, and this can be defined with a fair degree of specificity (although the authors of the Draft unfortunately set themselves no such limits). In our view, much of this factual information could well be gained in, from and through the work of teachers in other subjects, such as the pure and applied sciences. Much of the matter of Human Movement Studies could well be taught from the expertise of the biologist, chemist, medical practitioner (anatomy, physiology and biochemistry), the engineer, anthropologist, sociologist or psychologist. Arguably, there is nothing especially characteristic or conceptually typical of Human Movement Studies that necessarily restricts teaching, research and professional development in it to people who have qualifications in Health and Physical Education only. The onus of demonstrating that this is not the case lies with those who would claim the contrary - Health and Physical Education epistemologists and teachers. Such an argument is not provided in the Draft before us.

However that may be, our point about restricting what should and can be taught to those who have specific and relevant training and qualifications remains. In this we believe we gain support from sources of the highest repute. Immanuel Kant (1997) rightly pointed to the importance of the principle of keeping subjects to their own proper content and disciplinary procedures, and this can be extended to the school curriculum and the mutual relationships of its subjects:

... there is yet another consideration which is more philosophical and architectonic in character: namely, to grasp the idea of the whole correctly and thence to view all ... parts in their mutual relations ... (Preface to The Critique of Pure Reason).

The matter of students' mastery of skills and competencies in Health and Physical Education is rather different. Clearly there are certain patterns of habitual and unreflected movement, such as swimming, personal hygiene and the manipulation of the fingers on the keyboard, which are candidates for teaching and learning in the curriculum. But the question now centres upon the epistemological character of skills and competencies in the Health and Physical Education domain. It has long been argued (by Peters, 1966, among others) that most of the activities that are central, certainly to the Physical Education curriculum, are of a bounded character. Many of the activities of Health and Physical Education can only take place at particular times, for particular durations, and in particular environments. There is, for example, only a limited number of permissible moves in all sports and games (it is not possible, without changing the rules, to think of new ways of scoring a try in rugby); and they can only be engaged in by people whose achievements are limited by considerations of interest, fitness, levels of energy, purposes and motivation.

The point is that such activities are epistemologically unlike the concerns, activities and procedures of other subjects, such as mathematics, science, history or the arts, where in principle there is no limit to the times, places, conditions and energy levels necessary for engaging in them, nor to the innovations and changes in the central concepts, categories, tests for validity, and objectives that characterise and define such subjects. In Health and Physical Education, the knowledge content, though substantial, is restricted to a particular domain - that of the health and well-being of the material aspects of human personhood (cf. Strawson, 1959); and their skills and procedures seem to us to fall nearer to the 'habit' end of Scheffler's spectrum than to the open-ended and critically reflective end. Indeed, where the concerns of Health and Physical Education educators start to move towards this latter end, it rapidly becomes clear that they are moving into areas that lie beyond their particular professional remit and qualified professional judgments.

So the range of skills proposed by The New Zealand Curriculum Framework as key features of any curriculum for educating rather than simply training people seems to us - in so far as they are acceptable at all - to be too wide for those that may be seen as proper to the concepts of Health and Physical Education. And this is quite apart from the difficulty of attempting to analyse, characterise and give curriculum form to such other highly important competencies and procedures that should be in the repertoire of educated people generally: logical analysis; research; testing the claims to truth and validity of propositions and statements in a wide range of subjects; weighing evidence impartially; appraising the plausibility of other people's arguments; framing a coherent and consequentially developed line of argument of one's own; drawing valid conclusions from a complex and sophisticated line of argumentation; and applying conclusions judiciously and with the proper attention to local variables in the circumstances where such conclusions are appropriate and called for.

In attempting to exhibit, model and educate students in the acquisition and development of excellence in those skills, it seems to us that the whole educative enterprise needs to be involved. We see nothing in the Draft that indicates appreciation of the difficulty and complexity of educating students in such activities, nor do we see specific strategies and techniques for imparting them to students. It is not sufficient to prescribe that the students should 'critically analyse' some topic, issue, claim or problem, without telling them how exactly they might go about this, how they would know when they had done it correctly, much less brilliantly, and how to balance and adjudicate different or competing considerations and interests in order to discern or draw a plausible and defensible conclusion, form a sound judgment or deploy the necessary actions. And even this still needs further elucidation, for such questions make no reference to the affective component of such 'open-ended critical' skills, and how students develop appropriate attitudes, dispositions, capacities, feelings and emotions, in order to render their approaches towards the development of such mastery of procedural knowledge insightful and educative.

In our view, this document signally fails to provide teachers and students in these subjects or matters with guidance or advice. We feel justified in entertaining grave reservations about the Draft, on these grounds alone. But there are others.

Summary and recommendations

• The Draft places undue emphasis on 'skills'. This risks overlooking a substantial concern of all education: the preservation of valued knowledge for, and its transmission to, the next generation. Education must pay attention both to knowledge and to'skills'.
• Much of the knowledge in the Health and Physical Education area could be taught by teachers of other subjects, such as the pure and applied sciences. Some areas of knowledge proposed in the Draft would involve sources of expertise external to the school, such as those of the medical practitioner and psychologist. It is essential that what should and can be taught must be taught by those with the relevant training and qualifications.
• Many of the activities involved in Health and Physical Education are 'bounded' in the sense that they can only be undertaken at certain times, places and situations - unlike say, mathematics or history where there are not such limits. Moreover, the relevant procedures tend to be limited and the relevant skills developed by habit rather than by critical reflection.
• The Draft recognises no distinctions between types of knowledge and types of skill. The consequence is a set of skills that range well beyond what is proper to Health and Physical Education. The development of wider competencies, such as logical analysis and the testing of truth claims, are ones in which the school as a whole needs to be involved.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(5) note that the Draft fails to make essential distinctions between types of knowledge, skills and competencies;

(6) note that this omission has contributed to an inflated view of what Health and Physical Education should comprise; and

(7) note that the Draft fails to provide teachers and students with the necessary guidance and advice about how to impart and acquire the skills concerned.

CHAPTER 5

THE NEED TO CLARIFY CONCEPTS

It will already be apparent from the proceeding discussion that the need for much more detailed clarification and analysis of any curriculum proposals in Health and Physical Education is pressing. It is nowhere more compelling than in the case of some of the central concepts and terms which play such a large part in the Draft. Throughout, heavy emphasis is laid on the terms "well-being", "needs", "personal identity", "self-worth" and "personal meaning". However, these concepts are not analysed in any detail, nor is any account of their significance and intelligibility made.

In one of the crucial preambles to the Draft (p. 7), a definition of the term or notion of "total well-being" is entirely missing. Further, no sources are given to support the claim advanced under the heading Conceptual Framework (p. 9) that the concept of total well-being is "internationally recognised". Also, no arguments are advanced anywhere in the Draft to support the claim that a "socio-ecological perspective" (p. 10) is superior to any other in the promotion of health and total well-being. That preference should be given to this particular perspective over any other is simply asserted and claimed; its plausibility is neither demonstrated nor justified. The contentions made in this context (p. 10) cannot, however, be taken as self-evident, although that seems to be the status ascribed to them by the authors of the Draft.

Furthermore, it is not clear how a concern for developing students' understanding (a claim made with respect to every learning area and context prescribed in this curriculum) will automatically increase their control over their understanding. We believe it is important to show how 'understanding' may be distinguished from 'knowledge' - a distinction made explicit as long ago as in Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (Bloom, 1956). In fact, the concept of 'understanding' is complex, as any examination of the literature will confirm. We need to be told of what it consists and how it may be established, assessed and promoted. Is 'understanding' merely a species of 'knowing how', as Ryle (1949) contended? Does it manifest itself in particular sorts of behavioural outcomes that place it above and beyond knowledge? Establishing some clarity here is a task replete with epistemological, methodological and pedagogical problems. We might think that, whatever the difficulties involved, some activity and practice should be emphasised as providing ways for bringing about understanding in students. But to what extent does such 'understanding' extend beyond knowing procedures, and how and when to apply them? Or to what extent is 'understanding' merely a synonym for 'knowledge'? The Draft fails to make this clear.

By contrast, the curriculum model provided (p. 8) is one of great clarity. It seeks to illustrate the integrated nature of the curriculum proposed and is very elegant. Unfortunately, the framing, implementation and evaluation of curriculum policies, dealing with all the wide range of variables, issues, topics, problems and particular contexts in which they have to be applied, will be much more tricky than the model suggests. It would be better if teachers were assisted to realise how particularistic their own implementation of the Health and Physical Education curriculum is going to be.

The discussion on Achievement Objectives (p. 16) is often quite unclear. For example, we may notice the stress on the identification of student "need" - a highly ambiguous concept (see also Chapter 7 of this submission). The term "contexts" (line 4) is strange here: it would be more reasonable to read "programmes, activities, bodies of content" rather than simply the reference to the environments in which the activities and achievements of learning can be carried on. The critical term "coherent" (line 13) is not defined. Finally, notice should be taken of the different levels of the achievement objectives and the ways in which these are set out. Certainly there is considerable overlap here, but some of these levels seem to be spaced over an unduly large amount of time. Some reference to the psychological theories of development which underpin this model of learning achievements would have been helpful here or in the background papers. Does the model of cognitive, affective, motor and other forms of development reflect the genetic epistemology theories of Piaget, Kohlberg and others of that persuasion?

Again, in the discussion of Health Promotion (p. 10, lines 3 and 4), no definition is offered as to what might count as emotional, physical, social, and spiritual "health". No definition is offered of "balance" or "integration" in the discussion of the Socio-ecological Perspective (p. 10, last sentence). No account is given of the ways in which environments "enhanc[e] personal well-being" (p. 10); no account is given of the ways in which individuals can be "encouraged to increase control ... " (p. 37). There is no elaboration or explanation, in the context of a quotation from The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (p. 7), about how the Health and Physical Education curriculum will help students take responsibility for their own health and acknowledge their part in ensuring the well-being and safety of others.

Similarly, there is a lack of specific suggestions as to strategies that teachers might adopt in order to offer leadership to their students in the attempt to make cognitive gains, increase their mastery of skills, deepen their sense of themselves as centres of individual consciousness, and clarify and apply their values in situations where value judgments and conduct are called for. It would be reasonable to expect guidance on such matters in the Draft and attention to be given to ways in which students may best learn to do these things.

In the discussion on Total Well-being (p. 9), the individual pupil is seen and made to stand at the centre of this curriculum with the stress on the personal in belief structures, identity and the search for meaning. None of these concepts is analysed or explicated, and no justification is offered for this concentration upon the individual and the subjective. Some of the central concepts employed by the Draft are further examined in the following chapter of this submission.

Summary and recommendations

• The Draft gives considerable weight to a number of concepts including "well-being", "needs", "personal-identity", "self-worth" and "personal meaning". Given their importance, it would be expected that these concepts would be explained and their use defended, but such explanation and defence are not provided.
• Similarly, a "socio-ecological perspective" is promoted but the advantages of this perspective over possible alternatives are not discussed. The use of such terms as "understanding", "coherent", "balance" and "integration" are used as if their meanings are self-evident, but this is not so.
• The individual pupil is seen and made to stand at the centre of the curriculum, but no justification for this individual and subjective approach is provided, nor are alternative approaches discussed and evaluated.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(8) note that the Draft employs many concepts of a 'feel-good' quality and superficial appeal which are not explained, analysed, evaluated and compared with alternatives. In the absence of such defence, they do not provide an intellectually sound basis for the Health and Physical Education curriculum and must therefore be open to question and possible rejection.

CHAPTER 6

KEY CONCEPTS REQUIRING ELUCIDATION

6.1 Introduction

From the discussion in the previous chapter of this submission, it will be clear that there are several key concepts in the Draft that require definition, clarification, analysis and justification. We examine some of them in this chapter. The spiritual dimension within the concept of total "well-being" is discussed in Chapter 13 of this submission.

6.2 Well-being

In the case of "well-being" it is clear that these curriculum proposals reject, or at the very least turn away from, the concept of health, as defined in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

"Health: ... 1. Soundness of body; that condition in which its functions are duly discharged. 2. Hence, the general condition of the body ... 3. Healing ... [and then] ... 4. Spiritual, moral or mental soundness ... 5. Well-being, safety ...

The fact that most people use the word 'health' in the first two or three ways has not prevented the authors of the Draft from taking a much more oblique and expansionist attitude to the term and its associated notions. Instead, the notion of 'healthism' (a term which is not found in any dictionary we have consulted) is one of the bêtes noires of the principal writers and the opprobrium they attach to the use of particular conceptions of health is manifest throughout the Draft. This term one supposes to have parallel negative status with all the other -isms abhorred by the politically correct: sexism, racism, ageism and all the others in that particular demonology.

The writers make it clear that what they object to is a medical account of health, which treats it simply as the absence of dysfunctional or pathological physical conditions. They also object to the materialist/mechanistic versions of the workings of the body adopted by proponents of such a view. But if they are going to maintain a concept of "well-being" and a "socio-ecological" view of health above and beyond the reductionist notion to which they so obviously object, then it behoves them to describe their preferred model in some detail. Beyond the minimalist conception of health, of what does "well-being" consist? Many of the pronouncements in the (largely American) literature on this idea comprise misty metaphysics and confusion; if the proponents of the Draft wish to characterise well-being as the most effective functioning of all the body's organs, enabling a person to live to normal term and if possible beyond, then they ought at least to say so. It is not desirable to make references to a 'feeling' of 'well-ness' in the absence of a more precise and detailed specification of what that feeling might consist in and how it is to be defined and measured.

Further, the notion that "well-being" has a number of dimensions - the "physical", "intellectual", "mental", "emotional", "moral", "social" and "spiritual" - is simply taken over from p. 16 of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, reasserted (at p. 9) but not proved. Clearly there is some notion of a partitioned version of human well-being at work here. It is therefore odd that, in light of the authors' obvious predilection for an holistic approach to human well-being, they should seek to divide up the account of human well-being in this way. We are nowhere told of what the character, function or defining excellence of these various supposed dimensions of human well-being consist, how we might recognise their typical features, and how their progress and differential development may be measured or in some way rendered objective and amenable to scrutiny. Yet it is clear from the number of times these claimed different dimensions of human well-being are repeated that the authors of the Draft assume such differentiation in human health, and also its separability. In one instance, in the Appendix devoted to examples of assessment in various learning "contexts", one even encounters the term "moral health" - a notion that might cause moral philosophers to blanch, but for which no idea or justification is given.

We consider that the authors should explain in what the supposed differentiation and separation of human well-being consist. They do not do so, nor do they demonstrate any sound arguments why we should accept what they say. In the absence of any such argumentation, we are entitled simply to contradict them. Indeed, there will be many who would strenuously argue for the superiority of a materialist account of human development and well-being: the arguments, in recent neuroscience, physiology and philosophical psychology, of such authors as the Churchlands (1986 and 1995), Hartry Field (1980), Stephen Stich (1983, 1996) and, in education, Evers and Lakomski (1991) are much more powerful than any of the flat assertions advanced by the authors of the Draft. These counter-views should be taken seriously - especially by those interested in Health and Physical Education, which is directly associated with the material predicates of human personhood (see P. F. Strawson, 1959). The arguments Strawson advances about the constitution of the primitive concept of the person, with its incorporation of both material and personal predicates, are sufficient to reduce all these differentiations to some version of the double aspect identity theory of human personhood.

6.3 Personal identity

Another of the preoccupations of the authors' of the Draft is the notion of a curriculum that will "strengthen personal identity" (e.g. at p. 7). Readers of Strawson (see above) will be in little doubt as to the character of that which makes human beings individually and collectively human: the problem of dualism is solved by his proposal that the human person is constituted of, and characterised by, both material and personal predicates, both of which require attention but neither of which can be reduced to the other. Now it seems clear to us that the principal task of the Health and Physical Education curriculum/syllabus, devoted to the promotion of human well-being, is primarily with the former - those physical characteristics in which human individuation, the development of human persons and the possibilities of the improvement of their physical/material functions consist.

The personal predicates - involving all the presuppositions of personhood ("I am smiling", "I believe in God", "I am going for a walk", "I am falling in love", etc.) - may legitimately attract some of the attention of physical and health educators, though primarily the direction of development and the protraction of excellence in the field of those predicates will belong more appropriately to the work of others - doctors, priests, guidance and counselling experts, and teachers of the natural and social sciences, the humanities, the arts, ethics, and theology and religious studies. That is what we take to be a coherent account of the nature and development of a person's identity, qua 'person'. The notion of 'enhancement' would seem simply not to belong to the economy of such a concept, or, if it did, at any rate only with very considerable strain and the possibility of distortion.

It is plain, however, that the authors of this document mean something different. What they seem to have in mind, when they talk of "strengthen[ing]", "enhanc[ing] [a] sense of" or "contribut[ing] to" "personal identity" (pp. 7, 14, 21, 27 and 32), is not clear (it is nowhere explained) but seems to have something to do with the growth of a person's perception and idea of himself or herself in the world and in relations with other people, and ways in which individuals can 'feel good' about that - seeing themselves, perhaps, as 'significant' creatures in the world, of being looked up to or respected by others, not feeling in any way demeaned or being regarded as of lesser value, as an equal person along with all the other people in the world, and having "personal identity". In this sense, other terms such as "self-confidence" and "self-concept" are frequently employed in the Draft as being synonymous with (though not in explication of) this notion. But, again, no analysis or detailed specification of those terms is ever offered either. We are left with a feeling of ambiguity, uncertainty or, at the very least, lack of clarity about what might be meant by any of these terms. The religious understanding of what constitutes 'personal identity' is not addressed (for discussion of this aspect see Chapter 13.6 of this submission).

6.4 Self-worth

The same unsatisfactory result holds a fortiori with respect to the nebulous concept of "self-worth". This term is somewhat baffling. We are familiar with such moral notions as the notion of "self-respect", but we cannot make sense of the notion of "worth" here without some further help. "Worth" means "value"; but value judged by what criteria? In what class of comparison? Against what kind of scale of things to be valued? If the authors mean something similar to the Kantian notion of oneself as a centre of individual consciousness, being a free agent and equally worthy of respect and consideration along with all other human beings in the law-making and rule-following kingdom of ends, then they should say so. That at least would make intelligible a notion to which they give so much attention and upon which they clearly lay so much weight in the aims and schemes they propose for health and physical education. But in default of their saying so, we cannot do more than throw up our hands; what is it, exactly, that teachers in this subject are aiming to produce when they are aiming to "enhance self-worth"? How would they recognise it? How would they measure progress in such a vital endeavour? No guidance on these matters is offered. The teachers of these subjects are assumed simply to know, because they are also evidently assumed simply to share the ideological preconceptions according to which the aims, goals, and objectives of this scheme have been framed and articulated.

6.5 Personal meaning

We have similar reservations about the notion of "personal meaning". The important works of Ogden and Richards, The Meaning of Meaning, or that of G. H. R. Parkinson, The Theory of Meaning, show how ambiguously and unhelpfully this term is used in the Draft. Ogden and Richards elucidate a considerable number of legitimate and intelligible uses of the word "meaning"; these are reduced by Parkinson to some four or five general categories. When the authors of the Draft speak of "personal meaning", therefore, we need to be told in precisely what sense they are using it: does it mean 'translatability' ('Hund' in German means 'dog' in English)? Does it mean 'sign' (as in 'Rain before seven means fine by eleven')? Does it mean 'value' (as in 'Playing for the New Zealand team means everything to him')? Or does it mean 'concept' (as in 'bachelor' means 'adult unmarried male person')? All these are possible, intelligible and, above all, clear uses of the word; with any of these we could be comfortable and make sense.

What the authors seem to have in mind is something different from any of these possible meanings. Our best guess is that what they have in mind here is something like students' ability to make sense of their situation in the world and the purposes of the communications of other people about it; or finding some sense of purpose in the flow of events, or perhaps some sense of their own importance with respect to that flow and/or those communications; or having some sense of their awareness of, or connection with, some overall cosmic plan or purposes - as in, perhaps, 'Each person feels entitled to an explanation of the meaning of existence' (whatever that might be, or if indeed such a thing could be possible without reference to teleological purposes of the kind found in the religious domain). But all of this is unclear, and the unravelling of a concept upon which so much weight is laid by the authors of the Draft is left to the teachers in Health and Physical Education classrooms to undertake. The task is one requiring a very sophisticated, analytical, interpretative, and critical apparatus, requiring substantial intellectual development and professional preparation. It is highly questionable whether it is reasonable to expect Health and Physical Education teachers to undertake this task in addition to everything else they are expected to perform. It can, in fact, be expected that the task of clarifying the ambiguities of the Draft's concepts, to the extent that it is undertaken at all, will fall to teachers in a number of areas including science, literature and, within integrated schools, religious education.

6.6 Concluding comment

Health and Physical Education teachers might well be daunted by the realisation that an absence of clarity and analysis with respect to the key terms and concepts in the Draft obtains throughout the document. It is interesting to observe that no such lack of rigour in these vital matters has inhibited the authors from displaying, either overtly or covertly, how the ideological perspective within which many of the recommendations of this document have been framed has influenced and shaped this work. Instead, one gets the impression that clarity in such matters is not really looked for.

There is a blatant, though covert, set of prescriptions in operation in this document, masquerading under the appearance of a set of supposed naturalistic statements, which are in reality a disguised set of value judgments. And of course, as is the case with all such judgments, it is possible to disagree with those making such recommendations fundamentally and flatly, without logical error or factual mistake. We might simply say that in some other people's eyes the authors of this document have got it wrong, that they are mistaken. We could, with perfect propriety, recommend the contrary to what they assert or prescribe. In practice, it is highly likely that Health and Physical Education teachers, and teachers generally, will disregard the concepts in the Draft or at the very least interpret them according to their own understandings about the nature of humanity and the purposes of schooling. In many cases this will probably be just as well.

6.7 Summary and recommendations

• The authors of the Draft stress a concept of health that is much wider than that of soundness of body, and they deride any limited, 'medical' account of health as 'healthist'. But they do not go on to explain their preferred model, the concepts involved, and the methods of putting it into operation. Much is misty metaphysics and confusion.
• "Well-being", claimed as a key concept, is said to consist of several dimensions, which suggests a partitioned view of well-being and one that is at odds with the authors' predilection for a holistic approach. Moreover, there is no discussion about the separate dimensions (physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and so on) and how progress in each might be measured or even recognised. There is no discussion and evaluation of alternative accounts of human development, some of which would seem to be at least as plausible and powerful as the one asserted in the Draft.
• "Personal identity" is to be "strengthened" and "enhanced" by the curriculum but there is no recognition of the distinction between material and personal aspects of human personhood. The pursuit of the personal could involve, among others, priests, counsellors, and teachers of the arts and humanities. It is not clear how the notions of 'strengthening' and 'enhancement' belong here. Quite what is intended is largely a matter for speculation.
• "Self-worth" immediately raises the question 'against what is worth to be measured?' It is another of the 'feel-good' but ultimately meaningless concepts with which the Draft abounds.
• "Personal meaning" is capable of several different meanings, but here again the Draft is silent as to what is intended and implied, and how the concept can or should be given curricular shape and purpose.
• The conceptual ambiguities in the Draft raise major issues for the development and training of Health and Physical Education teachers and the reasonableness of the proposed enlargement of their professional repertoire.
• The Draft relies on a set of prescriptions which, in reality, embody a set of value judgments about which many - teachers, parents and students included - will simply disagree.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(9) note the considerable confusion surrounding the concepts said to constitute the key elements within the proposed curriculum;

(10) note that the apparent clarity of vital concepts conceals the fact that the prescriptions constitute a set of value judgments which might be widely contested by the general public;

(11) note the dangers - not least to students - of asking any one group of teachers to undertake responsibilities in, for example, matters of mental health, and that this is an unreasonable burden to place on them and should involve others in the school and outside it; and

(12) agree that the Health and Physical Education curriculum should primarily concern the material aspects of human development.

CHAPTER 7

STUDENTS' "NEEDS" AS THE BASIS

FOR LEARNING

All the ambiguities and uncertainties discussed in the previous two chapters of this submission come again to mind in the case of the concept that the authors of this document make central to their whole case - that of 'needs'. This concept has already been severely criticised in the context of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (e.g. Irwin, 1994, p. 7; Irwin, 1996, pp. 7 and 8). Moreover, it is astonishing - 30 years after the substantial work of conceptual clarification (and necessary professional demolition) was done on this concept by scholars such as Archambault (1957) and Komisar (1961) in the United States and Dearden (1968) in the United Kingdom - to find that so much use is made of, and so much weight is laid upon, this undifferentiated concept by the authors of the Draft.

To return briefly to all that earlier work in very superficial and simplistic form: we may distinguish between empirical deficit needs (such as the requirement of human beings for sustenance, sleep and shelter) and those evaluative recommendations that can be advanced for human beings developing the competencies and being able, not only to extend existence to normal term, but to do it with a degree of quality. If, however, one looks for a moment at Maslow's hierarchy of needs (cf. Maslow, 1959), one quickly sees that the evaluative and normative element enters at a very early point on the scale from empirical deficit needs.

What we have in the frequent use of this term "needs" in the Draft is therefore an apparent appeal to natural factors and conditions, but in reality we have the frequent use and continual bringing into play of a disguised set of value judgments. There is all the difference in the world between describing, or drawing attention to, in a deficit sense, what a child needs for survival, and prescribing what a child ought to have. It is the same difference as subsists between what a child is interested in and those things that others believe to be in the child's interests.

Instead of any realisation of its fallibility, however, what comes across particularly strongly in the Draft is the way in which the previously largely discredited notion of 'students' needs' has been elevated to the status of the prime determinant of a needs-based curriculum poised upon the principle of student-centredness. For in the Draft it is immediately apparent that the student is regarded not merely as standing at the centre of the educational process, but as actually initiating, shaping, controlling and directing it. All the talk is of identifying the students' needs. In this undertaking there is some little play (p. 18) for teachers to work with the students' parents, caregivers and other education professionals - though we note that students are still to be placed first on the list of those identifying their learning needs in Health and Physical Education.

By contrast, there is little if anything in this document about the activities, function and work of the teacher. Indeed the teacher becomes some kind of auxiliary or para-pedagogue, whose function appears to be restricted to organising the environment and resources, and facilitating the occasions on which the learners' needs are to be met and the students given full play for their learning to get under way. The implication here is that all the springs of curiosity, motivations and cognitive resources that are vital to success in learning are already somehow there in the student. From this perspective, all that is expected of teachers is to place the student in the right kind of encouraging environment in which learning will, somehow spontaneously, in some kind of Topsy-like manner, just grow and develop according to laws of its own momentum. This is the impression of student-centred learning that one derives from the term's very woolly, imprecise and, again, entirely unanalysed, unexplicated and undefended employment throughout the Draft, and from the ideology underlying it for which no authorities are cited.

Summary and recommendations

• The Draft places great weight on the notion, largely discredited in the international literature, of "student needs".
• As used in the Draft the notion of "student needs" is undifferentiated in that no distinctions are made between different types of need, including the difference between what a child is interested in and those things which others, including parents and teachers, consider to be in the child's interests.
• Far from recognising its fallibility, the Draft elevates the "needs" notion to the prime determinant of a needs-based curriculum poised on the principle of student-centredness.
• A consequence of this needs-based approach is the significant sidelining of the work of the teacher to that of facilitator on the assumption that the curiosity, motivation and cognitive resources necessary for success are already within the student and only await a suitable occasion for release.
• The notion of student-centred learning is woolly, imprecise, unanalysed and undefended; no authorities are cited in its support.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(13) note that the Draft is based on an outdated and internationally discredited notion of student needs, and on the related concept of child-centredness for which no argumentation is offered and no authorities cited.

CHAPTER 8

STYLES OF TEACHING AND

MODES OF LEARNING

There is a much tighter version of student-directed learning than the one advanced in the Draft and discussed in the previous chapter of this submission. Moreover, it is one that is much more in accord with the latest research findings in the psychology of pedagogy, individual differences and metacognition than that promoted in the Draft. This newer, and academically more soundly based, approach to learning has been associated with the notion that students learn better by being encouraged to 'learn how to learn'. Of prime importance in the planning of new schemes of curriculum and guidelines for learning will be the developments and advances in our understanding of the differences in people's modes of learning that have been developed as a result of the recent substantial, high-level and rigorous work in learning theory, cognitive psychology and metacognition.

To develop new schemes of curriculum, and to promote effective student learning, teachers need to be aware, not merely of the different stages of cognitive development, but also the different forms of intelligence (cf. Gardner, 1985, 1987, 1991). Research has established that students at different stages of development employ many different styles of cognitive operation when they have to learn some new concept, piece of information, or skill. Approaches to, and styles of, teaching therefore need to be equally varied, flexible and student-regarding. This is what we may take the term 'student-centred' to mean.

The principle that has been widely adopted here is that which researchers have come to term 'learning how to learn'. But we should make it clear that acceptance of that idea does not imply the removal of the necessity for students to come to acquire the content and master the procedures in any subject or discipline through the leadership, modelling and guidance of someone who already has them: they are not acquired by learners for themselves, nor out of their own meagre conceptual resources.

R. M. Smith (1994) has expressed this succinctly (cf. also, Smith, 1992):

Learning to learn is a matter of both aptitude and personal experience, and people can typically be said to learn to learn in a relatively haphazard manner. From in-school and out-of-school experience people constantly acquire new information and behaviours. While so engaged, they gradually develop personal learning strategies and personal knowledge about the optimum conditions for learning. Each person develops a concept of self-as-learner. The learning to learn process is understood as haphazard, because it results not so much from deliberate interventions on the part of teachers or trainers to improve learning capacity and performance, as from personal interpretations over time of learning-related experience. These interpretations often prove dysfunctional as far as becoming an active, flexible, confident learner in a variety of contexts is concerned. Hence the growing interest in the deliberate enhancement of learning capacities, dispositions, and strategies, through such means as curriculum planning, instruction and training.

To provide a stable foundation and a supportive environment for effective learning, those involved in curriculum development and teacher training will need to consider the emerging research and knowledge on the ways people learn and the ways that learning can be made more rapid, effective and secure. The challenge is to ensure that learning to learn ceases to be a haphazard enterprise - as it will tend to be if it is based upon something so ephemeral as 'students' needs'. Instead it should become an integrated, conscious and deliberate element in the content, procedures, and structured organisation of learning. For obvious reasons, this necessarily implies the activity of other people, who function as navigators, guides and companions along the various learning pathways. It implies the presence of teachers as masters of those procedures and as authorities in knowledge.

The model to which we argue curriculum planners and subject teachers should now move, therefore, is that teaching and learning in today's schools require us to learn to satisfy a number of public criteria of secure achievement, objectivity and certifiability. The best way of achieving all these ends and establishing and demonstrating learning achievement is via the company of other people of like minds at about similar kinds of cognitive development and capable of similar rates of progress, and under the guidance and supervision of someone already well on the inside of the subject. Naturally learning is best and most effective if it addresses problems that are relevant to the students themselves, their lives and their main concerns. It is for this reason, among many others, that such groups of learners, working either individually or cooperatively, will always require leadership, instruction, guidance, direction, advice or assistance from someone who is already farther along the path of cognitive development than they are themselves.

The Draft's perspective is of much older provenance. It goes back to the 'child-centredness' favoured by those David Hargreaves (1982) long ago called "The New Romantics" in education. According to that view, children had to be allowed to learn what they thought was relevant and 'meaningful' (whatever that means), in harmony and accordance with the idiosyncratic laws of their own nature. Moreover, they could only learn when they were 'ready' to learn. This view was subjected to scrutiny and refutation over 30 years ago and subsequently has not been widely heard of. No trace of it appears in recent versions of the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom, for example.

Unfortunately the authors of the Draft seem to have confused that older kind of child-centred education with newer approaches to student learning based on much more respectable epistemological and pedagogical principles. Those principles, however, presuppose the activity and indispensability of the transactions between a learner and a teacher, who is one of the most 'significant others' in any student's cognitive, emotional, moral or spiritual development. Had the authors of the Draft realised this, they might not perhaps have been so successfully arguing themselves out of a job.

For if the thesis underlying the Draft's approach to learning were to hold, then what need would there be of teachers, or of schools for that matter? Students could learn as and when they felt ready, interested or felt the need. And the supposed laws of their own nature would tell them just when that was - and that certainly appears not to need the intervention, however benign, of other people who might just know a little more about such matters than the students themselves. Indeed, on this thesis, one might even go so far as to say that adults altogether have only the status of helpers, facilitators or learning experience providers.

One wonders what Maori elders or parents within our Asian communities - let alone many New Zealand parents of European extraction - would have to say about that notion.

Summary and recommendations

• A recent and more academically sound approach to learning identifies the importance of 'learning how to learn', the differences in people's modes of learning employed at various stages of cognitive development, and the consequent need for flexibility in styles of teaching. In this respect teaching may properly be described as 'student-centred'.
• This 'leaning how to learn' concept of 'student-centredness' requires students to acquire knowledge in, and master the procedures of, the subjects concerned, and hence requires teaching by those who are already authorities in the relevant content and procedures.
• By contrast, the 'student-centredness' advocated in the Draft allows children to decide what is relevant and 'meaningful' to them, at whatever time suits them: thus it puts into question the need for teachers and even for schools. It is an outdated, discredited view.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(14) reject the concept of child-centredness as promoted within the Draft; and

(15) note that there is a more academically credible and rigorous 'student-centred' approach which seeks to identify differences in modes of learning and consequently in effective teaching styles, maintains the importance of knowledge and disciplinary procedures, and upholds the need for teachers who are authorities in both content and procedures.

CHAPTER 9

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION:

THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE

9.1 Health and Physical Education within the total school curriculum

Two impressions emerge from reflecting upon the wide range of proposals in the Draft. One is the sense of a considerable lack of clarity and precision; the other is the clear awareness that this Draft contains a set of curriculum proposals that is suffused with the ambition for substantial territorial aggrandisement. This impression springs almost directly from the authors' enlarged vision of the subjects involved.

In the Draft it is clear that the authors' thinking has been animated by two conceptions. The first is that disciplinary demarcations between Health and Physical Education and other areas of curriculum thinking and activity do not subsist and that any such disciplinary differentiations militate against the breadth and ambition of the aims they now set themselves. The second conception is that there is virtually no area of the curriculum into which the interests and aspirations of Health and Physical Education teachers do not extend. These assumptions may be less problematic in primary schools where the same teacher teaches across the curriculum and disciplinary boundaries may be less clear-cut. However, one only has to look over the spread of the Aims proposed for Health and Physical Education - the various strands of learning, the range of skills, the list of key learning areas, and the activities to be engaged in at the eight levels of learning activity - to realise very rapidly that these proposals could bring about considerable distortion and damage, not only to other important areas of the curriculum, but also to the work of the whole school and its host community.

Were the range and remit of the curriculum scheme outlined in the Draft to be realised, then at least two things would happen. First, the amount of curriculum time, space and resources to be devoted to its implementation would expand out of all proportion to the relative need for the subject, and would intrude into the time, space and resources reasonably claimed by other areas of academic and educational importance. The second thing that would happen, as a consequence of the first, would be that the particular interests and concerns of other educators - particularly in areas normally covered by Science, Social Studies, History, Geography, Literature, Personal and Social Education (PSE), and Values Education - would certainly be considered infringed upon by the claims of Health and Physical Education teachers, and could well be rendered largely redundant.

The same argument, however, works in reverse. If Health and Physical Education teachers are claiming so much curriculum involvement for their subjects, then a fortiori there is little in what they now envisage as its staple that is in fact incapable of being taught by other educators. A considerable portion of what is claimed for Health and Physical Education in the Draft could be taught by colleagues who are expert in Human Biology, Anthropology, Sociology, Social and Environmental Studies, Science and Technology, Health and Medical Studies more largely conceived, the Arts (Dance and Drama especially) and Humanities, Guidance and Counselling, PSE, Studies of Religion and Culture, and Values Education - to name some of the areas in which these proponents of Health and Physical Education see themselves as capable of operating and as having a brief for action. In such a case the role and function of Health and Physical Education teachers would rapidly reduce and might even disappear altogether. In practice, if the Draft's proposals are approved, schools will tend to disregard them and work out their own allocation of responsibilities. But instead of imposing further curricular confusion on schools it would be far preferable for the government to offer them sensible advice in the first place.

9.2 The need for a demonstration of uniqueness

What is needed in a Health and Physical Education curriculum is, above all, a demonstration of uniqueness as an answer to the question 'why does Health and Physical Education in particular have to be taught and resourced within a programme of publicly funded educational institutions?'. The Draft does not, unfortunately, provide clear and compelling answers to this question.

In default of such answers, we must assume that the proponents of Health and Physical Education have not defined their subject sufficiently tightly to avoid the kind of conceptual muddle embodied in, and exhibited by, these proposals. Not only muddle, but in fact mistake. Teachers of Health and Physical Education, if operating according to Guidelines to be developed from the Draft, will overlap, to the point of reduplication and redundancy, with the legitimate professional and cognitive concerns of a range of other professional colleagues teaching a wide range of other subjects, based upon a set of epistemologically appropriate disciplinary criteria of demarcation. Furthermore, they will also be seen as seeking to move into a number of areas in which others - crucially, parents, caregivers and professionals such as medical practitioners, health and welfare scientists, economists and policy makers, careers and employment advisers, psychological and social case workers, and guidance and counselling experts - believe, and with some justification, that they are best qualified to deal.

Some illustrations may be useful here. The notion of "well-being", which is frequently expressed in the Draft, has many elements in it that are much better promoted by appropriate medical regimes. Moreover, how to deal with grief and bereavement lies surely within the remit of those professionally qualified to deal with such debilitating or dysfunctional personal experiences. Furthermore, there might be others, such as parents, leaders of churches, or elders in iwi, who would want to retain to their own handling some of the more sensitive and spiritual matters connected with appropriate norms and principles governing sexual relations.

Another example of the press for such territorial aggrandisement may be found in the list of "Key Areas of Learning" that the authors of the Draft propose as being the staple of the diet of activities arrogated to the teaching of Health and Physical Education (p. 17). Here there is much to give us very considerable cause to hesitate and to justify the gravest reservations being entertained about the content being proposed in the Draft for the Health and Physical Education curriculum. Quite simply, we believe that the Draft claims too much for itself in the way of curriculum territory. The two areas about which greatest reservations might be entertained are those of sexuality and mental health.

9.3 Sexuality

Certainly the need for an awareness and informed understanding of, as well as preparation for, the developments, changes and problems associated with the development of sex characteristics, gender and sexuality is important. Such matters form vital parts of the growth of young people on the road to maturity. But, in so far as these are matters that should form part of the programmes of the educational institution, one presumes that they will form part of a total school approach. Further, such an approach should be under the guidance, direction and control of qualified experts and personal counsellors, with the active involvement and cooperation of other people significant to the development of the young person, such as parents, caregivers of all kinds, religious ministers, medical practitioners and other appropriate members of the wider community.

It is not clear to us what special role the Health and Physical Education teacher has in this matter of sexuality other than the restricted one of the imparting of biological, physiological or anatomical information (and such matters of information are no more the proprium of Health and Physical Education teachers than they are of teachers of Biology). To go further would surely be to risk acting professionally ultra vires. The same is true with respect to other areas of covert territorial aggrandisement. For example, with respect to the claims made under the heading of "Attitudes and Values" (p. 11), it is simply not clear why "care and concern for others" and "social justice" should be the particular concern of Health and Physical Education teachers. Surely these are matters for the whole curriculum and for the whole teaching staff of the school, working in concert with a range of 'significant others' outside the school having particular experience, expertise and responsibility in and for such matters.

9.4 Mental health

Even stronger reservations must be entertained about the notion of "mental health" being proposed as one of the "Key Areas of Learning" (p. 17). This is an area that is replete with difficulties, risks and dangers of all kinds, and should only be dealt with by those people who have substantial experience and the appropriate qualifications in the area - medical practitioners, qualified psychologists and psychotherapists, psychiatrists and guidance and counselling experts. Such people will work in the first instance with parents, the extended family and other appropriate persons in the community (representatives of churches, employment and probation services, and possibly even legal institutions).

It cannot be expected that any school, even among the very largest, will have on its staff more than two or three persons with even the minimal level of qualifications needed to diagnose problems, difficulties or pathological conditions in the mental realms and make-up of individuals, and these will be largely directed to dealing with such difficult matters as, say, bullying, substance dependence, and the phenomena of self-inflicted harm leading to suicide. Even dealing with these phenomena requires a whole-school approach, in which cooperation with qualified and experienced practitioners and the young person's families are indispensable. No part of the training of Health and Physical Education teachers, as at presently conceived and conducted, contains anything more than a minimal level of information as to how to notice, observe, record and report upon the instances and physical evidence of behaviours or anomalous phenomena that suggest some kind of interior difficulty, disorder or dysfunction. In any case, this is not a function of Health and Physical Education teachers alone - all teachers are under an obligation to record and report such instances.

In seeking to make mental health one of the Key Areas of Learning of the Health and Physical Education curriculum, the authors of the Draft are making claims that not only exceed any reasonable brief arising from a sound epistemology of the subject, but also assign seriously inappropriate roles and functions to Health and Physical Education teachers. In both the above matters, we believe quite simply that they are claiming far too much.

We consider education through sports separately in the following chapter. But this is another area which for success requires the involvement of a much wider constituency than can be found in the Health and Physical Education staffroom or even of the school as a whole.

9.5 Summary and recommendations

• The Draft proposes very substantial enlargement of the curricular territory to be covered by Health and Physical Education. This risks excessive allocation of curriculum time and school resources to this particular area and renders the legitimate concerns of many other teachers, and the teachers themselves, potentially redundant.
• The Draft lacks any demonstration as to what is unique about Health and Physical Education and why it should be part of the school curriculum. The result is muddle, and also unjustified intrusion into areas of expertise of other educators within and without the school.
• Grave reservations must be entertained over the proposed claims of Health and Physical Education in the areas of sexuality and, perhaps even more so, of mental health. In both areas a coordinated approach is required involving other teachers and 'significant others', including parents, outside the school. Further, in both areas significant professional expertise is required which cannot normally be expected to be present within the school and without which 'education' in these areas poses considerable risks and dangers.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(16) note that the Draft lacks any clear demonstration of what is unique about Health and Physical Education, and that this results in inappropriate and potentially dangerous intrusions into areas (such as sexuality and mental health) requiring wide involvement within and without the school, especially that of parents, and, where appropriate, of suitably qualified professionals.

CHAPTER 10

EDUCATION THROUGH SPORT

One might start the discussion of 'sport' as an aspect of Health and Physical Education by making a small logical point about the place of the idea of "education through sport" featuring in the list of proposed Key Areas of Learning (p. 17). No-one will doubt or gainsay the importance of people generally adopting and developing a healthy life and lifestyle by means of physical exercise - the importance of this should be sufficiently clear from all the work that the medical profession has done recently in the attempt to diminish the risks of heart disease and the like by adopting suitable diets and physical activity regimens. It does not follow, however, that this is a goal that may only be, or necessarily must or should be, achieved through engagement in sports and sporting activities of the kind involving competitive physical engagements.

There are, of course, a number of sound arguments for the participation of students in team games in an educational environment. In a recent article commenting on the reported decline in physical skills among boys in Australia, Dr Rod Kefford (1998) summarises the arguments well:

Participation in team games has always been seen as a means by which boys and young men share experiences and develop skills and capabilities which cannot be taught as effectively or as appropriately in any classroom - like learning to work as a member of a team collaboratively and co-operatively; to strive towards common goals; to learn what it is to have someone else dependent upon you, and to learn to respect the umpire's decision.

Participation in team games also enables young men and women to learn to win honourably, lose graciously, develop leadership and contribute to the common good. Furthermore, the camaraderie stemming from participation in team games is also a virtue - camaraderie shared not only with one's team mates, but also with one's opponents after the game is over - a camaraderie which enables one to get up afterwards, shake hands and remain friends.

There is indeed much to be said for using team games as a means of promoting such desirable outcomes. However, two things must be noted here. First, the culture of which Kefford speaks is redolent of many of the characteristic features of the concept of 'mateship', and suggests an emphasis upon the importance of promoting an ethos which many young people find excluding. Secondly, it should be noted that, in presenting the argument in this way, Kefford is stressing the extrinsic outcomes of engaging in team games in school environments and not concentrating upon the ends that are internal to them - winning and the pursuit of victory over others who then become the losers, the defeated. If we could prove that such extrinsic outcomes could be gained by having the students participate in other activities (Sherif, 1966, has an interesting example of such activities at a school camp) then it would clearly be open to us to provide our students with practice in them, if there were other reasons which made it preferable to do so.

There are indeed such reasons. There are reservations about the provision of programmes of physical education involving sporting activities in educational institutions. For one thing, it is not obvious that every student will have any interest in, or motivation towards, taking up sporting activities as a means of taking physical exercise. Research tells us that normal individuals can do quite as much for their physical fitness by climbing a staircase of some 50 steps three or four times a day on a regular basis as by jogging. Also, there can be little doubt that some students have a marked disinclination or distaste for many sporting activities in which other students like to engage.

There are two further possible reservations. To begin with, many of these activities are of a limited kind: the diet of team games of rugby and netball in winter, and cricket and tennis in summer, is too widespread in many of our country's schools to need further comment. It seems to us that if students are to be given introduction to, and activity in, physical pursuits as a means of encouraging physical exercise, these should be from as wide a range of activities as possible - though logistical and practical problems will militate against the range of choice that educators might wish to make available.

The other reservation lies in a clear tension in many institutions between producing winning teams and encouraging students to participate in enjoyable activity without any particular end in view beyond the activity itself. This is the tension between highly competitive sport and sport as a way of enjoyable participation for all. There can be little doubt that a concentration in some educational environments on the former has diminished and then defeated any inclination on the part of the generality of students to any interest in either. Certainly a concentration upon highly competitive sport has often called unwelcome attention both to differences in the abilities and talents of students in the development of locomotor and non-locomotor skills, and to the difficulties very many students have had, outside the top teams, in dealing with those differences and the problems they occasion.

Students are also aware that engagement in any kind of sport - particularly the highly competitive kind - is expensive of time, energy and, very often, money. The need for uniforms, special equipment, special diets and travel tends to move engagement in sport at the top level beyond the realms of practicality for many non-affluent students - at least without sponsorship, subsidy or support of some kind from external quarters. Yet gifted athletes do need support and encouragement if they are to reach the highest levels possible, and in rural settings and small towns there may be no avenues for their sporting endeavours other than those provided by the local school. Thus there may be another tension to be addressed - between meeting the educative needs of the gifted few and those of the many of more modest performance and potential.

It needs also to be recognised that some aspects about modern sporting activity are inimical to educational aims and purposes. There is nothing wrong with a degree and an amount of competition. We are far from agreeing with those "New Romantics" in education who would want to remove competition altogether from it. Kefford (1998) comments that the view that "competition was ... bad" was:

... a view that served as much as any other to convince the wider community that schools were hopelessly out of touch with the world their young people would graduate into upon leaving school, a world where competition was part and parcel of everyday life, where competition was fundamental to the basic processes of commerce and business, where a large number of individuals with different capabilities and talents were in competition for a shrinking number of opportunities to contribute their talents in the service of the wider community.

That is the point, of course: it is the more serious aspects of life that involve competition - and cooperation too. Conceptually speaking, in this sense, games are 'not serious': while certainly a part of real life they are apart from all its main concerns. What principally makes them worthwhile is the 'value by contrast' - in the provision of opportunities to get away from the demands, exigencies and challenges of life and to find relaxation and enjoyment in facing a different set of challenges altogether - in a restricted realm where success lies in satisfactions and outcomes that are internal to the activities themselves. This view reflects a concern within the world of Health and Physical Education that there is not enough stress in syllabi on participation in sports for enjoyment. The argument is that lessons should be developed with enjoyment in mind since this is what leads to increased participation out of school, healthy attitudes, interest, and a desire to develop a knowledge base for one's activities.

Approaches have been developed to facilitate this view while still preserving the other aims of the subject. Particularly influential in this regard has been the 'Sport Education in Physical Education' model in which pupils accept responsibility for running their own sports-based lessons during PE classes, acting as referees, touch judges and so on (Siedentop et al., 1986).

In any case, many people have become only too aware that many sporting activities have become competitive to an unacceptable degree. There is nothing wrong with a certain amount of physical engagement, but these days some sports have become robust, aggressive and even dangerous, to a degree that many parents will no longer accept. And, of course, there is the example of many of the more negative aspects of highly competitive sport to be faced: the rapid recourse to cheating, the ready availability and employment of performance-enhancing drugs, and the stress on nationalistic impulses that in some cases extends to players (and their supporters) exhibiting the worst features of chauvinism.

Many activities can fulfil the need to be enjoyable, challenging or intellectually demanding, can avoid most of the worst features delineated above, and cost much less as well. If one is after challenge we suggest students take up orienteering, mountaineering or sailing; if one is after mass participation without the pressure of competition, one should look at the Spartakiade festivals of aerobics and movement that became such occasions of joyful general participation in former East European countries; if one is after enjoyment, one might look to T'ai Chi or ballroom dancing; if one is after intellectual excitement, then we might consider offering learning and teaching in competitive activities that count as major sports in other countries - chess or 'Go'.

Some of these activities would cost a little money, though most not very much. They would certainly not require any specialised expertise on the part of the Physical Education teachers. The days of an Olympic or Commonwealth Games medal winner being seen as an automatic selection for the Head of a Health and Physical Education department in an educational institution would be long past. Instead, we suggest that parents and others might wish to run sporting, athletic and other activities on what in the United States is called a 'club' basis. Various sports are run on this basis in New Zealand already, and the potential for schools developing sports programmes in partnership with clubs and community groups is acknowledged in the Draft (p. 32).

Such an approach - which is already widely adopted in schools in the United States - would obviate the need for special coaches or equipment and give the importance and centrality of physical activities for health and well-being their proper place in the work of the Health and Physical Education teacher, who could let most of their other concerns - particularly in the realm of values - be taught elsewhere in the curriculum. One thinks here of the marvellous opportunities offered by work in dance, drama, the study of literature devoted to themes in sporting and athletic competitions, and other work as appropriate in history, geography, economics, and the study of religion and culture.

The conclusion seems clear to us. We fully support and would indeed extend educational undertakings of Health and Physical Education teachers in the domain of physical activity, exercise, food and nutrition and the like. We consider that a wide range of sporting or athletic activities should be made available and that it be arranged where practicable on a 'club' basis. While acknowledging the educative needs of the gifted athlete, we would emphasise the educational value of enjoyment in engaging in the playing of a game for the sake of the satisfaction inherent in it, and not only, or primarily, on highly competitive sport with all its various risks, motives and outcomes. Finding the right balance and guarding against undesirable aspects are matters calling upon the commitment, wise judgment and action of a far wider constituency in the community and national life generally than that found in the Health and Physical Education staffroom alone.

Summary and recommendations

• The extension of Health and Physical Education into physical education, exercise, food and nutrition and the like is fully supported. However, it is noted that the advantages of sport can be achieved in a variety of ways and not only in the traditional competitive physical engagements.
• Traditional team games are limited to certain seasons and often involve a tension between producing winning teams and encouraging widespread, enjoyable participation. Excessive stress on competition can be excluding of the less talented and poses physical and other risks.
• A wide range of activities should be encouraged and preferably managed on a 'club' basis involving parents and others.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(17) direct that further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum should place emphasis on the importance of providing a wide range of sporting activities, on the educational value of engaging in sport for its inherent satisfaction, and on the advantages of wide involvement in the management and provision of such activities on a 'club' basis.

CHAPTER 11

THE NEED FOR PARTNERSHIPS

Much has already been said in this submission about the important role of parties outside the school as regards various aspects of education. This chapter considers the ways in which schools, teachers and students can collaborate with, and draw upon the resources available from, a range of partners and stakeholders in the wider community having an interest in, promoting or actually engaged in the educational enterprise. Schools can set up mutually beneficial, supportive and cooperative links that would see a range of partners working together in building the school up as a centre and a leader in community learning for all ages and constituencies.

Although the Draft gives some acknowledgement to the desirability of working with a range of partners and other agencies in the community to achieve its goals, it is nowhere near sufficiently articulated. Yet cooperation and interaction with the family will be at a premium if there is to be any success in the vital educational endeavour of getting young people to acknowledge the need for the avoidance of risk-taking behaviours, many of which have to do with matters of sexuality, gender, culture and class norms, and conventions in matters of values, attitudes and conduct in which such people, groups and constituencies would want to claim a substantial responsibility.

One area of deficiency in this scheme is the possibility of partnerships between schools and the world of work. Business, industry and commerce, including their professional bodies and organisations, could contribute greatly to informed decision making about matters of health, safety and welfare in the work-place, where the most effective learning of such matters often takes place, and where skilled, precise and carefully goal-directed patterns of movement are most naturally and easily acquired. Thus, another lack in the Draft is that of any criterion of relevance to the exigencies of particular environments. The Draft presumes some sort of transfer of training but does not demonstrate it.

This is also the case with many other organisations that have perhaps even more obvious and immediate connection with the work of Health and Physical Education teachers. These include not only medical or health centres, hospitals and convalescent facilities of all kinds, but also a wide range of organisations devoted specifically to physical pursuits, such as sports and athletics clubs, fitness clubs, tramping clubs, mountaineering, golf, chess or bridge clubs, and the like. One also thinks of ballet and dance schools, art galleries and museums, the Scout and Guide movements and so on - all of which have a lively part to play in furthering the aims and goals of the Health and Physical Education curriculum. Such organisations and facilities could do a great deal to provide the sites and locations, the highly expensive specialised equipment and facilities, the coaching and support staff that have made resourcing such activities in schools a matter of considerable difficulty, quite apart from the moral or conceptual problems associated with the practice of sports already considered.

In all such matters, schools could be assisted, supported, maybe even given a lead, by cooperating with such organisations and clubs, which could well be glad to have access to such a source of members for the future and be willing to make provision for them without charge. This might, of course, reduce the ambit of the Health and Physical Education curriculum as it is currently conceived - or even as it is conceived and advocated in the Draft. But, as we have said before, without a demonstration of uniqueness this might be an outcome that some schools, experiencing pressure with respect to resources, would not be unwilling to consider.

Summary and recommendations

• The Draft gives insufficient acknowledgement of the desirability of schools developing a range of partnerships which can greatly assist, through the provision of expertise, facilities and other resources, in furthering the aims and goals of Health and Physical Education.
  
  

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(18) direct that in the further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum guidance should be provided about the range of suitable partnerships, their advantages and the relevance of various environments to the aims and objectives of the curriculum.

CHAPTER 12

THE PLACE OF VALUES

12.1 Introduction

In seeking to redefine curriculum, teaching and learning, the New Zealand government is one of many which locate the educational reform effort in a broad social and economic context. Yet, many countries, in their provision of educational services and institutions, are not formulating educational goals solely in response to the thrust of major economic and social forces and demands. Each country is also making its own statement about values more broadly conceived, and in this respect New Zealand is no different.

Each country is revealing its commitment to a set or system of values in the various schemes of curriculum, approved modes of teaching and learning, and styles of organisation that their governments are constructing for their education and training services. Each country defines its value stance by what it includes and what it omits in its curriculum frameworks and guidelines, and in its selection and provision of particular learning experiences for members of its community. It is clear that the authors of the Draft have taken this point very seriously and that their acknowledgment of it is reflected and articulated in the Draft.

12.2 Acknowledgement of the importance of values

There is an appropriate recognition given in the Draft to the fact that no education system or curriculum framework is value-free. The New Zealand Curriculum Framework is quoted as follows:

[Values] ... are expressed in the ways in which people think and act. No schooling is value free. Values are mostly learned through students' experience of the total environment, rather than through direct instruction (the Draft, p. 22).

The authors of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework accepted ab initio that everything people do in the service and promotion of education is shot through with value considerations of all kinds. This is particularly the case with the curriculum: they make the important point that values exist, are found in and embodied across the whole curriculum. Values are not a separate domain of discourse. Nor are they definable as though they were an autonomous element in the curriculum, as being in some way a distinct subject or area on its own with its own body of theory, cognitive content, typical activities, disciplinary procedures or criteria for success. As Peters (1966) remarked, to be a scientist is ipso facto to be committed to the values implicit in the procedural principles that define the nature of the subject and prescribe the appropriate activities in it. Science is not value free: it is shot through with value elements that help structure and define it (cf. OECD, 1994; Peters, 1966).

Thus it is plain that questions of value in knowledge and the curriculum are not solely restricted to subjects or areas such as the Humanities, the Arts and Religion. Questions of value also underpin and indeed permeate the whole syllabi of other curriculum subjects, such as mathematics, science and technology. They certainly are found pre-eminently in the curriculum area known as Health and Physical Education. Indeed in this last-named curriculum area, as well as any of those associated with the Life Sciences in general, it might with reason be claimed that value questions are of prime importance.

The authors of Draft are to be commended for moving beyond the paralysing and ill-conceived debate about whether or not schools should teach values. They recognise that the real issues to be addressed are, first, the clarification of which values are being taught, whether explicitly or by implication, and, secondly, the development of appropriate means for determining as a community which values should be taught.

As an initial observation, we support the legitimacy of the common sense approach evident in the Draft (p. 11) where it is said that students' learning in the Health and Physical Education curriculum area will emphasise:

• a positive and responsible attitude to their own physical, mental and emotional, social and spiritual well-being;
• respect for the rights of others;
• care and concern for others in their community;
• care and concern for the environment; and
• social justice.

There is certainly a need for discussion about how each of these values, especially the last one, might be developed and implemented within the school environment (some suggestions are offered within the Draft), but the Draft is justified in assuming general agreement amongst New Zealanders that these values are worthy of promotion in schools. Were a significant challenge to be mounted against them, some further warrant might need to be offered, but in the meantime, our pluralist society notwithstanding, it should still be possible to appeal to common sense. The values listed are clearly fundamental to the proper functioning both of any classroom and of society in general.

It is also clear from the Draft that many of the goals it espouses embody values above and beyond the merely economic and social. Very many members of the community would desire to see, for example, an increased presence in the curricula of educating institutions of moral and inter-personal values, such as consideration of others' interests, respect for other people, tolerance of different points of view, inter-cultural understanding, personal sensitivity, individual autonomy, social responsibility, cultural imagination and creativity. This comes out strongly in those parts of the Draft dealing with values and moral concerns.

12.3 The approach to values in the Draft: values as relative and subjective

However, the conception of values and attitudes offered in the Draft provides manifestations of the same aggrandising tendency, coupled with the same overblown attachment to student-centredness, found elsewhere within it. The two axiological theses obtaining in the Draft are both completely consonant with the postmodern orientation adopted by the principal writers. The central notions here are, first, that all values are relative, and, secondly, that one person's or group's values are as good as anyone else's. It is clear that while there is in the Draft a laudable concern for attention to students' growth in the value dimension of human development, such development will take place, in the authors' view, only on the basis of the values that students are themselves held to espouse and their acceptance of the rights of others to hold dissimilar values, which are to be regarded as 'equi-valent' with their own.

The sole function of values education, according to this thesis, is that students learn, most importantly, how to clarify their own values and, then, how to recognise and tolerate the values held by other people. The serious problems with the values clarification approach to values education has already been discussed in our submissions on the two drafts of the Social Studies curriculum (Education Forum, 1995 and 1996). Moreover, there is no notion in the Draft that some values might be highly questionable and can often be socially divisive, personally injurious, or morally opprobrious. There are, for example, activities and behaviour patterns amongst some of the various groups currently making up part of the New Zealand community that might be seen in this light: one thinks, for example, of issues of aggression or the attitude of some communities towards women. One can think of a large number of activities and behaviours which are not universally regarded as commendable models for the edification of, and emulation by, our young people - even if they are to be tolerated at all.

Unfortunately none of this comes out in this document, which seems simply to advocate a kind of laissez-faire approach to matters of personal value and morality while also insisting on upholding some particular values (Irwin, 1996, p. 8). One wonders how the concept of morally laudable conduct involving care and concern for others (sometimes against what such people see as being in their own best interests) or the principles of justice could ever be intelligible, much less applied, on such a thesis. Oddly, though, that is just what students are required to do (see p. 11).

On the view of values espoused in the Draft, there is not much of a role for the teacher. Their function is to note, observe or describe the development of values in their students, and to offer a limited amount of guidance as to how those values might be clarified or tolerated.

12.4 A different and preferred approach to values

12.4.1 The critical importance of habituation

The Draft nowhere acknowledges that the framing and justifying of our value judgments, and of the behaviour patterns flowing from them, are extremely complex, sophisticated and difficult matters - things that moral educators since the time of Aristotle have realised can only be acquired by being encouraged to develop in a conducive atmosphere. Children and young people learn values by having them modelled to them in an environment in which values issues, appraisals and judgments are a central part of people's lives and all their main concerns. Richard Peters (1963), following Aristotle (1934 edn), expressed the point in this metaphor:

The palace of reason can only entered through the courtyard of habit and tradition.

The force of those traditions and the need for such habituation can only be imparted to young learners by those who are already further along the road of moral development than they. Any student of Piagetian or Kohlbergian theories of the development of moral autonomy can see that the role of the mentor in these processes is absolutely indispensable.

This consideration explains why it will not be sufficient for students merely to be "given opportunities to develop the skills they need ... " (p. 5). They will also require a great deal in addition to this: the requisite amounts of factual knowledge; the requisite grounding in the appropriate values; and the studied development of the attitudes and dispositions on the basis of which they will be able to deploy the skills that they need. As Aristotle points out (1934), the house-builder or the harp-player becomes good at that task by being required to exercise it in appropriate circumstances. Aristotle uses the concepts of justice and temperance to put this in a framework of moral and social values, from which the appropriate implications for education and values conduct flow almost self-evidently:

Acts done in conformity with the virtues are not done justly or temperately being in themselves of a certain sort, but only if the agent himself is in a certain state of mind when he performs them: first he must act with knowledge; secondly, he must deliberately choose the act, and choose it for its own sake; and thirdly the act must spring from a fixed and permanent disposition of character ... inasmuch as virtue results from the repeated performance of just and temperate actions ... the agent is just and temperate not when he does these acts merely, but when he does them in the way in which just and temperate men do them. It is correct therefore to say that a man becomes just by doing just actions and temperate by doing temperate actions; and no one can have the remotest chance of becoming good without doing them (Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, iv.3-4, 1105a29-1105b1 and 1105b4-12).

In recent times James Q. Wilson has said the same:

... children do not learn morality by learning maxims or clarifying values. They enhance their natural sentiments by being regularly induced by families, friends and institutions to behave in accord with the most obvious standards of right conduct - fair dealing, reasonable self-control, and personal honesty. A moral life is perfected by practice more than precept; children are not taught so much as habituated (Wilson, 1993, p. 249).

Thus, one becomes a morally autonomous person by being exposed to all the practices and institutions of morality and democracy from the very earliest times, and, by habituation, imitation and direct personal involvement, one actually acquires values and grows into the state of being in which one has a settled disposition to adhere to, exemplify and practise them. This growth takes place by a kind of process of osmosis and a gradually maturing appreciation of the prime value of those activities, practices and institutions in influencing behaviour, helping to determine human affairs and conducing in that way to the promotion of happiness and welfare and the diminution of harm and suffering.

Thus, and contrary to the case presented in the Draft (p. 11), we need to insist that the exploration, clarification and understanding of values are not by themselves necessary or sufficient to achieve the growth in attitudes and values called for in this curriculum. Students need to be exposed to a climate in which particular values and attitudes are at work, and be encouraged to learn, adopt and practise the settled disposition to behave in ways that can be recognised as morally laudable.

The kind of values education which we envisage and advocate for students in our schools requires much more than mere competence or 'skill' at procedures. It requires knowledge, understanding, the exposure to all the opportunities for learning by a kind of osmosis in the appropriate moral climate and environment, the tender oversight, ministrations and care of one already 'on the inside' of this particular form of life (Wittgenstein, 1953) to help young people learn how to behave in ways that are morally laudable. Students must also be provided with many occasions for engaging in moral deliberation, forming moral judgments and practising conduct that conforms with all the social and civil virtues - reticent, bridled, decent, civil, respectful of other people, considerate of their interests and hopeful towards the future (cf. Krygier, 1997).

Such an approach offers and confirms the vital and indispensable role of teachers as values educators. It would be through their modelling, guidance and assistance that students would rapidly realise that learning to recognise and deal with values issues are matters that are fraught with complexity, ambiguity and difficulty. First, students have to learn that very often one value clashes directly with another one, and that the resolution of such clashes, even where it is possible, may only be gained at great cost to one's self and to other people. Secondly, they will learn that the making of value judgments is a difficult matter, requiring a great deal of factual knowledge and the appeal to particular presuppositions of principled behaviour. Thirdly, they will learn that the weighing of all these various considerations in such a way as to issue in conclusions that are prescriptive and generalisable - the common conditions, as Hare (1963; 1981) reminds us, for any value judgment to be objective, action-guiding and seen as normative for people generally, rather than as simply an expression of individual taste or subjective preference - is a matter requiring the expenditure of time, energy and considerable intra- and inter-personal skills and competencies.

Thus we regard value conduct as not merely a matter of cognitive repertoire or individual subjectivity. By contrast, the Draft only emphasises the acquisition of knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes (see p. 13, points one and two); and the notion that the young person's own values will count above all - a point reinforced later in the Draft (p. 25) by the injunction that students "should not be assessed on the beliefs or values they hold". But, why not, if those beliefs are false, mistaken or prejudiced, or the values are morally vicious or injurious to others? Beliefs and values are not always true or commendable; they can be, and often are, wrong.

Moral norms and expectations operate, not only in the home or at school, but also widely in the community - including the physical and political realms as well. That is why, for example, crowds at rugby or boxing matches judge it to be outrageous when a participant, operating at the highest international level of aspiration and achievement, bites the ear of an opponent; in such cases it makes the most obvious sense to say "people ought not to behave in that way". The universal character of values and moral norms is also emphasised when, for example, the New Zealand government expressed, in every possible international forum available to it, its most serious and concerned disapproval of the actions of agents of the French government towards the crew of Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior moored in Auckland harbour. Without the notion of values being matters of inter-personal importance and public prescriptivity, and binding upon all people in a civil and decent society such as New Zealand claims to be, such judgments and such actions would be unintelligible.

We have to reject, therefore, the notion that the students' own values are all-important and not to be subjected to appraisal, evaluation or assessment. We oppose the subjectivist notions espoused in the Draft that privilege and promote the notion of student centrality in framing an educational programme for their understanding and application in the realm of values and beliefs. To the contrary, we want to insist that, in matters of values and moral conduct, a principled approach does not consist in simply 'letting it all hang out', getting clear about those things that matter to me, and listening to and simply tolerating those matters of belief or behaviour that are important to, or practised by, other people. Some things are just 'not on': acts of gang rape, for example, or fraudulently deceiving or stealing from old people, or cruelty to animals. Such are among the things that people generally judge to be 'wrong'.

In such cases we are clear that those who are more mature in such respects have a community responsibility to the welfare of all members of the community, both now and in the future, to point those things out and to try to correct or remove them. Any other notion of the moral duties of teachers - and parents - in this regard is an abdication of responsibility of one of the most important parts of the task of education.

Furthermore, the authors of the Draft have paid no attention to the need, not only for the acquisition of substantial bodies of facts and information, but also for students to be encouraged to develop particular dispositions, qualities and, perhaps above all, feelings and emotions. Nor is there any discussion about how to show students how to recognise the occasions when particular patterns of behaviour are called for or are appropriate, and then to practise them. Indeed one of the major deficiencies in the aims of the Draft, certainly insofar as it pertains to Values Education, is the lack of any stress on the need for activities on the part of students and on the ways in which these must form the basis for settled patterns of conduct.

The government would therefore be well advised to reject the subjectivism and relativism in matters of value which mar the Draft. Instead, teachers could use the material readily available to them to make their teaching of certain activities in the Health and Physical Education curriculum a forum for the development of the sound judgment and rational morality that are hallmarks of the mature individual and the responsible citizen.

12.4.2 Dispositions essential to the educational enterprise

Another useful approach to the issue of values education in schools is to consider the dispositions inherent in the educational enterprise itself, and without which the enterprise will fail to a greater or lesser degree. Such dispositions are not, of course, exclusive to the educational enterprise, but are in fact ones also required for successful engagement in many other aspects of human endeavour. However, in the context of schooling, concentration on what is required for the educational process itself can perhaps avoid or lessen some of the contentions about values inherent in a pluralist society.

The British philosopher Michael Oakeshott asked questions such as these:

How does a pupil learn disinterested curiosity, patience, honesty, exactness, industry, concentration and doubt? How does he acquire a sensibility to small differences and the ability to recognise intellectual elegance? How does he come to inherit the disposition to submit to refutation? How does he not learn merely the love of truth and justice, but learn it in such a way as to escape the reproach of fanaticism? (Oakeshott, 1972).

Antonio Gramsci, a leading member of the Left in Europe between the two world wars, wrote:

In education one is dealing with children in whom one has to inculcate certain habits of diligence, precision, poise (even physical poise), ability to concentrate upon specific subjects, which cannot be acquired without the mechanical repetition of disciplined and methodical acts ... . It is also true that it will always be an effort to learn physical self-discipline and self-control; the pupil has in effect to undergo a psycho-physical training. Many people have to be persuaded that studying too is a job, and a very tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship - involving muscles and nerves as well as intellect. It is a process of adaptation, a habit acquired with effort, tedium and even suffering. If one wishes to produce scholars, one has to start at this point and apply pressure throughout the educational system in order to succeed in creating those thousands or hundreds or even dozens of scholars of the highest quality who are necessary to every great civilisation (Gramsci, 1971).

As Irwin (1997) has pointed out, what these two authorities are saying is very far from the emphases we find in the principles of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, which are more on what schools must do for students - the enabling, empowering and respecting of all students - and not on what is required of students themselves, such as the effort to be exerted, the tedium, suffering and difficulties to be endured, and the honesty, courage and self-discipline to be exhibited. Moreover, for both Oakeshott and Gramsci the child is to be initiated into a pre-existing world and is not, to quote The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, at the "centre of all teaching and learning" (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 6).

This absence of any discussion in the Draft of the dispositions usually thought essential to successful educational endeavour is another astonishing omission for which no warrant is offered. But it is at least consistent with the overblown child-centredness of the Draft, which assumes that the child only needs a suitable environment and, perhaps, the help of a facilitator (hitherto one who teaches or instructs) to achieve at the very highest levels. It seems doubtful, to put it in the mildest way possible, that the great majority of teachers, parents and other educators would agree with this view.

12.4.3 Philosophical and religious commitments as the basis for values

Furthermore, it is vital to recognise the extent to which values are based upon particular philosophical or religious commitments. The affirmation of human dignity and worth, for instance, which many of our values seek to uphold, is based for many people upon the understanding that human beings have been created by God. Others will offer alternative bases for such an affirmation. The point is that values do not float free, and is one that has already been made by Irwin with reference to the discussion on values in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Irwin, 1994, pp. 24-26). Human dignity and the basic worth of every human being are not self-evident features of our human situation. Indeed, as the poet Alexander Pope well recognised, the evidence of the human situation is rather ambiguous. Man [sic] is:

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;

The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

An Essay on Man, Epistle ii

Consider Fulke Greville on a similar theme:

O wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound.

Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick and bidden to be sound.

Mustapha, v.iv

The examination and clarification of values, a task recommended by the Draft, will need to recognise that values are merely a surface manifestation of beliefs and convictions held at a deeper level. What this means, in the long run, is that questions of truth and falsity, right and wrong, cannot be ignored. The belief in the superiority of an Aryan race, which lay at the foundations of Germany's Third Reich, for instance, or the similar belief in the superiority of whites held by many supporting apartheid in South Africa, both issued in systems of values which could not be dismantled unless the underlying beliefs were critiqued and judgments made about the truth or falsity of those beliefs.

It is not the case, of course, that judgments of right and wrong, of truth and falsity, are always a simple matter. The fact of pluralism in contemporary society has quite properly made us cautious about assuming a simple correlation between our particular cultural norm and the true and the good. Students should certainly be exposed to the real difficulties in making such judgments, but it is an abdication of our responsibility as human beings in community to refuse to recognise the categories of right and wrong, of truth and falsity, altogether.

That the Draft proposes extensive discussion of values without any recourse to these fundamental distinctions is a cause of major concern. We are not impressed by the comment from Ian Culpan (Culpan, 1996-97), who is one of the principal writers of the Draft, that the attempt to encourage 'appropriate attitudes' amongst students is a form of moral fascism. That stance itself constitutes the imposition of a particular attitude, but worse, it is an attitude which would leave us powerless to confront the evils of the holocaust, or apartheid, and so on. Culpan's claim is, in any case, undermined on the several pages of the Draft where particular values and attitudes, such as respect for others and for the environment, are clearly and quite properly recommended.

Despite recommending several values itself, the Draft gives no guidance on how it is that some values should be preferred to others. Students will be constantly encouraged to 'analyse', 'examine' and 'evaluate' their values, attitudes and beliefs, but it is impossible to evaluate anything without some measure or standard against which the evaluation is to be made. The Draft, however, has no suggestions to make about which standards should be applied, and does not even appear to recognise that such standards are a conditio sine qua non of the evaluative tasks being recommended. Like the influential values education programme developed in the 1960s by Louis E. Raths, and reflected still in postmodern assumptions about education, the Draft seems to assume that evaluation is simply a skill that can be taught and developed in isolation from any particular framework. But the attempt to evaluate values without any standards of right and wrong, truth and falsity, is like trying to teach measurement without any scale.

We discussed precisely the same need for some standard against which to make evaluative judgments in the context of the notion, promoted in the Draft, of "self-worth" (see Chapter 6 of this submission). In the case of personal values, the applicable scale is one's world-view, or philosophy, or religious faith. The confusion about evaluation is compounded rather than removed when it is proposed that students "should not be assessed on the beliefs or values they hold" (p. 25). As we have already noted, the Draft has correctly made it clear that values are embodied throughout the whole curriculum. It is not therefore surprising that, in spite of the injunction against assessing the beliefs and values of students, proposals for precisely such action abound in the "Learning and Assessment Examples" to be found in the Appendix to the Draft. For example, teachers are to assess or observe students' abilities to "share, care and co-operate in groups" (p. 5), their "responses to ... loss and disappointment" (p. 8), and their "willingness to listen to others and to share ideas" (p. 12). Inevitably the question "against what standard?" arises and cannot be avoided; but it remains unanswered.

The refusal to speak of right and wrong, of truth and falsity, is a cultural habit which can be traced back to Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed the term 'values' is often used to avoid terms like 'virtues' and 'vices', which were commonly employed in earlier times but came to be regarded by some as judgmental and authoritarian (Himmelfarb, 1995). Nietzsche argued that underneath the pretentiousness which employs such categories is the crude will to power. Deferring to Nietzsche, and refusing to exert the power of discernment, many subsequent writers have spoken of personal values but not of truth, of beliefs but not of facts, of an individual's attitudes but not of right and wrong - and of values but not virtues and vices. The promotion of individual autonomy in choice of values may encourage alienation leading to the sorts of attitudes and behaviours (including youth suicide and teenage pregnancy) that are, quite properly, of major concern to our educational authorities (see also Chapter 16 of this submission).

We have capitulated so thoroughly to the rhetoric of individual autonomy that we have forgotten that there is another way of seeing education, one which involves exposure to a tradition of accumulated wisdom and truth. In a paper setting out the theoretical developments influencing the draft curriculum, Gillian Tasker (Tasker, 1996-97), the other principal writer of the Draft, refers approvingly to the postmodern curriculum theory of W. E. Doll who says that "curriculum becomes a process of development rather than a body of knowledge to be covered or learned". Tasker herself explains that the concepts and pedagogy advocated by Doll "are designed to address an ever changing environment, rather than focus on the acquisition of a fixed body of knowledge". This sits awkwardly with her claim that the Draft overcomes the individualistic approaches of past health and physical education curricula, for it is hard to imagine anything more individualistic than the refusal to treat with the utmost seriousness the genuine discoveries and gains to knowledge made by those who have gone before us.

While it is not the place of state schools to insist upon any particular standard deriving from a world view or philosophy or religious faith, the school system must surely be involved in helping students to recognise the need for such a standard, in encouraging them to articulate their commitments clearly, and in supporting them as they consider the implications of those commitments for the range of life situations they will encounter in their school careers. Søren Kierkegaard pointed out long ago (see his book The Present Age) that it is only through commitment to a particular life-view that any basis is given for distinguishing the significant from the insignificant, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the true from the false. Without personal commitment to a particular view all qualitative distinctions are levelled. This is fundamental to any consideration of values, attitudes and beliefs and requires recognition in any curriculum statement purporting to encourage such tasks.

While the Draft urges critical evaluation of values, attitudes and beliefs at many different points, at other points it shies away from such evaluation. In the "Learning and Assessment Examples", for instance, the module on "Constructing Identity and Body Image" (p. 42) includes the recommendation that "students affirm cultural differences in customs, body image, and expectations in physical activity and recreational settings". We wonder if the cultural differences to be affirmed include those evident in the customs and body image of, for example, pornographic magazines, a strip club or peep show, or perhaps those associated with female circumcision as practised by some African peoples. The last practice would certainly require very sensitive handling, especially if it were suspected that female circumcision had been performed upon a girl present in the class. We would not have thought, however, that affirmation of the customs and body image evident in such cultural contexts was the most appropriate response.

12.5 Summary and recommendations

o The Draft correctly acknowledges that value judgments are embodied, explicitly or implicitly, in all aspects of the school curriculum, and not only in Health and Physical Education.

o The approach to values adopted in the Draft is relativist and subjective, leaving values education as primarily concerned with assisting students to clarify their own individual values - an approach that ignores the fact that many values held by students can be wrong and need to be corrected. Moreover, the Draft is confused in both emphasising the importance of some values while at the same time stressing that individuals must clarify and determine their own values.

o The Draft ignores the importance of knowledge in determining values and of understanding education as exposure to a tradition of accumulated wisdom and truth.

o The Draft overlooks the critical need for students to be habituated into moral dispositions and patterns of correct behaviour - by themselves, knowledge, understanding and clarification are inadequate. Nor does the Draft consider the dispositions and moral qualities specific to, and inherent in, successful educational endeavour.

o The Draft fails to recognise and acknowledge that values are based on prior religious, philosophical and other commitments without which there can be no standards against which to evaluate, compare and address tensions between values - and no basis for distinguishing right from wrong.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(19) direct that in further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum officials should:

(a) reject the relativist and subjectivist approach to values adopted in the Draft;

(b) reject the values clarification approach to values education; and

(c) emphasise:

- the importance of substantive knowledge in making value judgments;

- the critical importance of habituation by suitable role models in moral behaviours and attitudes;

- the dispositions and attitudes inherent in successful educational endeavour; and

- the dependence of values on prior philosophical, religious and other commitments.

CHAPTER 13

THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

13.1 Key issues in the Draft

The Draft sets itself the task of giving "clear direction for schools to address critical health and physical education issues" and claims that "when implemented, it will contribute to the well-being of individual students, their school communities and society in general" (p. 5).

The concept of "total well-being", which we discussed in Chapter 6, is, by admission of the authors and as directed by the Policy Advisory Group, central to the draft curriculum. "Total well-being" is defined in the Draft in terms of four critical dimensions:

 physical;

 mental and emotional;

 social; and

 spiritual.

Because the inclusion of the spiritual aspect represents something of a new departure for a state education system, which has long regarded itself as 'secular', we give an extended treatment of it in this chapter. We shall comment further below upon what might be involved in the acknowledgement of a spiritual aspect to human well-being, but it is important, in the first place, to commend the Draft for recognising that the erstwhile exclusion of spirituality from the pedagogical concerns of our state education system represents an improper curtailment of the concept of human well-being.

Renewed attention in our society generally to the spiritual aspects of human well-being is an urgent task. It remains a matter for debate, however, to what extent it will be appropriate for state schools to contribute to this task. In this regard, it is unfortunate that the Draft does not advance us very far. In fact, its failure to recognise the concrete forms which spirituality takes in the major world religions, in particular, leaves the impression that no more than lip service is being paid to the concept.

If spirituality is to be taken seriously, as indeed it should be, then we require a much more robust engagement with what spirituality actually involves within the many and varied religious traditions of the world. It then remains to be discussed whether, and in what ways, schools might be involved in providing education about these various traditions. We would hope that, at the very least, it would be possible to reach agreement that schools should not go out of their way, as has sometimes been the case, to avoid any formal recognition of the place of religion in our society. Beyond that, however, any discussion of spirituality would certainly need to take place in partnership with the various religious traditions, with perhaps the balance of responsibility resting with those traditions themselves.

Reaction to recent comments about spirituality in schools by the prime minister, the Rt. Honourable Jenny Shipley, indicates that the advocacy of state school involvement in matters of spiritual concern will continue to meet with considerable resistance. This must be taken account of in any estimations of what might or might not be possible in schools, particularly, in this instance, as it concerns the implementation of the Health and Physical Education curriculum.

Under the general concept of spiritual well-being the Draft refers frequently to such concepts as values, self-worth, personal belief structures and personal identity (see also Chapter 6 of this submission). It will be important, therefore, for these concepts to receive careful and critical consideration in the light of the claim, made in the Draft (p. 7), that the national curriculum statement identifies the knowledge, understanding and skills necessary to assist the development of total well-being. The credibility of this claim in relation to the area of spiritual well-being will be a particular concern of this chapter.

13.2 Spiritual well-being

The Draft states that the concept of "spiritual well-being" involves "personal belief structures, personal identity, the values that determine the way that we live, and the search for personal meaning" (p. 9). While the emphasis upon the 'personal' here might be interpreted as a bias toward the privatisation of spirituality, some correction of this impression occurs later on in the Draft (at p. 15) where matters of belief, personal identity, attitudes and values are more securely integrated into a public and communal framework.

The evident uncertainty in the Draft about how spirituality might be recognised in the curriculum reflects the general uncertainty in New Zealand society about what place, if any, spirituality has in the curricula of our state school system. Resolution of this issue depends first of all upon some clarification of what spirituality is. It will further involve discussion of whether, and in what way, truth claims of a spiritual nature can be evaluated. It will involve critique of the typically western dichotomy between fact and value which relegates spirituality to the realm of private opinion, and it will require a clear recognition of the ways in which values, beliefs and spiritual commitments already pervade any education system.

13.3 What is spirituality?

The Draft identifies the following constituents of spiritual well-being:

o personal belief structures;

o personal identity;

o the values that determine the way that we live; and

o the search for personal meaning.

While there is no explicit claim that this list is exhaustive, the lack of any theological reference in the description unfortunately renders the understanding of spirituality offered in the Draft a radically inadequate framework for interpreting the world's religions. While it may be argued that the concept of spirituality needs to be broader than is offered by the major world religions, a definition of spirituality which takes so little account of the major religions is severely lacking in credibility. The four parameters offered above concede no recognition at all to the basic insights of the three Semitic religions at least (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) that spirituality has to do essentially, rather than merely incidentally, with the world having been created by God.

In English, Latin (spiritus), Greek (pneuma) and Hebrew (ruach), the word 'spirit' means 'breath' and refers to the life breathed into every living thing by the Creator. The religions of Semitic origin share the basic insight that all life is created and sustained by God and remains dependent upon the breath or spirit of God. Whatever forms the expression of human spirituality may take, and that remains open for discussion, it is unacceptably reductionist to use this term in complete disregard of this basic religious understanding of life's dependence upon, and essential relatedness to, the Creator.

The Maori concept of wairua, translated spirit, and featuring significantly in the Draft (e.g. p. 9) is similarly dependent upon a theological framework. The origin of wairua was said to be Io, the supreme being, and, while the etymology of wairua does not suggest it, wairua is closely associated in Maori thought too with the breath of life endowed upon humanity by the supreme being.

Disregard of the theological basis upon which the concept of spirituality is founded and confirmation of the atheological presuppositions of the Draft is evident in the diagrammatic "Conceptual Framework" for the proposed Health and Physical Education curriculum. In the diagram itself, total well-being is shown to be attained by:

o developing and maintaining personal physical health and physical development;

o developing movement concepts and motor skills;

o enhancing interactions and relationships with others; and

o creating healthy communities and environments.

These four strands of total well-being are supplemented by four further concerns:

o social justice;

o a positive and responsible attitude to [the student's] own and other's well-being;

o respect for the rights of others; and

o care and concern for others in [the student's] community and environment.

While each of these four strands and the four related concerns are legitimate constituents of human well-being, the complete absence of any theological reference in a framework which purports to define total well-being, and yet includes 'spirituality', amounts to a foreclosing of any possible discussion about whether, and in what ways, human beings are related to God. It may be that our society decides that such questions cannot be adequately addressed within a state school curriculum, but if that is the case then the curriculum itself should not presume to encompass all aspects of total well-being.

It is not our opinion that the state education system should refrain from any discussion of theological matters. That question remains open and we shall return to it below. It is certainly the case, however, that the state education system should desist both from supposing that its own expertise is all-embracing, and from implying, as the Draft does, that the question of whether or not total well-being includes theological dimensions has already been settled in the negative.

13.4 What does the Draft envisage?

It needs to be both recognised and stated that the competencies available within the teaching of Health and Physical Education in schools are not sufficient to nurture and develop all aspects of total well-being. Any curriculum statement, therefore, should be much more careful than the Draft to avoid any suggestion that the contribution it may make to personal well-being is comprehensive. In this regard it is reassuring to read the "General Aims" of Health and Physical Education (p. 13). Here it is stated that the aims of the curriculum are to:

1. develop knowledge, understanding, skills, and attitudes for personal health and physical development;

2. develop motor skills through movement, acquire knowledge and understandings about movement, and develop positive attitudes to physical education and physical activity;

3. develop understandings, skills, and attitudes that enhance interaction and relationships with others;

4. participate in creating healthy communities and environments by taking responsible and critical action.

If the four aims stated here are divorced from the earlier presumption that the curriculum gives attention to all aspects of total well-being, then a more modest and more realistic Health and Physical Education programme may be envisaged. It is particularly notable that these aims represent a clear withdrawal from the earlier assertions that spirituality, too, comes within the ambit of the curriculum. If it is indeed the intention of the curriculum to limit its scope in accordance with these aims, should not this be made clear from the outset?

It is certainly appropriate, even essential, that each segment of the school curriculum understands how it may contribute to, and be part of, the development of total well-being, and it is appropriate too that schools should have a vision of how they may contribute to the sustaining of a healthy society. As noted already, however, the Health and Physical Education curriculum needs to be more careful than the Draft to articulate that vision in ways which do not imply omni-competence on behalf of those who will be charged with implementing it.

Having commended the limitation in scope which is evident in the stated aims, we also need to point out that, in spite of the modesty of these aims, the Draft as a whole does not appear to settle upon a clear understanding of what is, and what is not, realistic for teachers to address within the Health and Physical Education curriculum. The Draft repeatedly claims, for instance, that the curriculum will enable students to examine and analyse values, beliefs and societal attitudes, and to trace the effect of these upon well-being. It certainly is important that such things be considered, but is it realistic to suggest that all teachers within the Health and Physical Education programme will be competent to analyse and examine all the values, beliefs and societal attitudes that might have some impact upon well-being? Do the writers of the Draft sufficiently recognise the range and nature of questions that their policies purport to deal with?

We might take as an example beliefs held about prayer. If a child from a Christian home, for instance, tells in class the story of how the family gathers every night to pray that their sick mother might be healed of her cancer, how is it proposed within the scope of the curriculum to 'analyse' and 'examine' this practice? The Draft suggests (p. 53) that "students will ... identify people who can help with health care, e.g., family, school or medical personnel, kaumatua, coach, minister" (emphasis in original). Is it envisaged that a minister might be brought into the class to facilitate the examination and analysis of the family's prayer, or is the identification by the students of other helping agencies something they are left to act upon on their own? We are not concerned to recommend a policy in this instance, but rather to seek clarification of how the Draft's policy statements relating to this scenario might be implemented. The Draft encourages us to ask:

o What knowledge applies in this case?

o What skills are to be developed?

o What understanding is sought?

o Who is competent to deal with these questions?

The Draft promises answers to these questions but fails to deliver. Are the answers and classroom strategies therefore to be left to individual teachers, regardless of whether they have competence in the area of spirituality or not?

In this regard, it is notable that the document Policy Specifications for a National Curriculum Statement in Health and Physical Education prepared by the Policy Advisory Group offers a much clearer and more coherent estimation of the attention to be given to spirituality within the curriculum. While the policy specifications, too, recognise the physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of good health, they also go on to recommend that while "a broad and balanced programme will incorporate all these dimensions ... there will be varying degrees of emphasis for individual elements." The policy specifications themselves show a clear concentration upon the physical, social and intellectual aspects of good health and limit their concern with values to those that have a direct impact on healthy behaviours and positive involvements in physical activity. It is unfortunate that comparable clarity and focus are not evident in the Draft.

13.5 Are state schools competent to teach spirituality?

The Draft advocates learning experiences for students which will "develop health-enhancing practices through an understanding of the physical, mental and emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of their well-being ... ", and claims also, as we have noted above, to identify "the knowledge, understanding, and skills necessary to assist the development of total well-being ... " (p. 7). These two claims taken together constitute an extraordinary proposal which, if taken at face value, could legitimately involve instruction and participation in the Catholic mass, for instance, or in praying the Lord's prayer, or in the devotional fasting of the Islamic month of Ramadan, and so on. All of these practices involve knowledge and skills that are argued by those who engage in them to be important for the development of one's spiritual well-being. Each of them, quite obviously, is located within a particular religious tradition and, arguably, cannot be adequately understood except by those who participate in that religious tradition. To what extent is it appropriate for state schools in general, let alone within the more restricted sphere of Health and Physical Education, to be offering instruction in the knowledge, understanding and skills required to participate in each of these areas, to name but a very few?

These examples should be sufficient to encourage the identification of some limits to what schools might endeavour to include within their considerations of the spiritual aspects of total well-being. Such limits are not clearly indicated in the Draft.

In limiting the scope of state school involvement in spiritual development, it needs to be recognised that spiritual formation takes place within a tradition of faith. That tradition supplies the grammar within which meaningful discourse about spiritual matters can take place. We do not understand the Christian, for instance, who speaks of Jesus as Lord, by imagining that Jesus is like some feudal lord who lords it over his subjects. The concept of lordship in Christian discourse is rather to be understood in terms of the pattern of service that is evident in Jesus' own life and which is exemplified, for example, in his taking a towel and kneeling to wash his disciples' feet. To confess Jesus as Lord, therefore, involves, among other things, assent to, and participation in, that same pattern of service to others that is found in Jesus. Thus it is the tradition of faith that gives meaning to the claim that Jesus is Lord.

This example is given in order to demonstrate the fact that, to some degree at least, meaning is tradition-specific. If spirituality is to become a matter for classroom discussion then we must recognise that a high level of competence is required - probably only possible for one immersed in a particular tradition - in order to 'analyse' and 'examine', as the Draft purports to encourage, the claims of spiritual experience and faith. We must assume that such competence will not be typical of classroom teachers. Even those who claim membership of a particular faith tradition are unlikely to have much understanding of other faiths.

Given the likely deep personal significance for some students of the spiritual heritage to which they belong, an incompetent handling of their deepest convictions and attitudes, far from contributing to their well-being, could very well be damaging to it. Again we ask the question: in the light of the Draft's claim to identify the knowledge, understanding and skills necessary to assist the development of total well-being (p. 7), do the proponents of this curriculum sufficiently understand the levels of competence and kinds of expertise that would be required to fulfil these goals?

It is our view that, while spiritual concerns are essential to the development of total well-being, and while our state education system should, as advocated by the Draft, certainly give due recognition to this, the curriculum itself should give clearer guidance in defining what may be competently handled within the classroom setting. In this regard it is necessary to make a distinction between spiritual formation or development and what is commonly called at tertiary level 'religious studies'. The study of religion within departments of religious studies at tertiary level is characterised by a phenomenological approach to religion. Furthermore, the discipline of religious studies recognises that it is not competent, within the confines of the discipline itself, to pronounce upon the truth or falsity of religious claims or upon the validity or otherwise of various religious practices. It seeks only to describe what these claims and practices are and to build up thereby some, necessarily limited, understanding of the religious tradition itself. How might such an approach be implemented at the lower levels of New Zealand's state education system?

A rather obvious starting point is for schools (and kindergartens) to overcome the absurd and much publicised timidity in dealing with the major religious festivals and holidays. There is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by way of encouraging tolerance, understanding and respect for others, by studying and explaining the origins and contemporary significance for a particular faith of various religious festivals, especially those that are publicly recognised by statutory holidays or which are celebrated by students within a particular class. Christmas and Easter are obvious cases in point, but schools should also be ready to give attention to such other festivals as will more and more be celebrated in New Zealand's increasingly multi-cultural and multi-religious society.

Phenomenological description of these festivals, and even participation in some parts of them, such as eating hot-cross buns, with the crosses still on, or singing Christmas carols, or watching the dragon dance at Chinese New Year, ought to be able to be handled without the least suggestion of proselytising. That not everybody shares the religious commitments or ideological positions undergirding many of the celebrations and significant public events of our society is no reason to shield our children from them. Any attempt to do so breeds that form of intolerance which festers in ignorance, and presumes, quite wrongly, that in every other aspect of our education system we stand on ideologically neutral ground.

We are glad to recognise this sort of approach being taken in the learning and assessment examples attached as an Appendix to the Draft. The learning context dealing with celebrations with food (Appendix, p. 14), for instance, encourages attention to communal festivals and suggests that visitors be invited to the classroom to share customs and beliefs associated with food.

There are other ways too, in which it is not merely desirable but essential for students to be introduced to the claims and practices of religious traditions. The Western cultural heritage of literature and music and art owes a very great deal to Christian faith. It is simply not possible to understand much of the poetry of John Donne or Shakespeare for instance, or the music of J. S. Bach, or the art of Rembrandt without some appreciation of the religious tradition within which their work is set. Similarly, it should not be possible to study European history without consideration of the actions and theological motivations of the Church. Or again, it is an unacceptable curtailment of the facts to deny the importance of their Christian faith in the work of social reformers like William Wilberforce or Kate Shepherd, or in the work of scientists like Newton and Bacon and even Galileo.

Whether or not people wish to assent to the claims of Christian faith, it is quite improper scholarly practice to deny the influence of Christianity upon many aspects of New Zealand's predominantly Western cultural heritage. By the same token, of course, it is equally important that due attention be given to the religious influences upon the life and culture of Maori and Pacific Island people, as well as upon the increasing numbers of other races that comprise contemporary New Zealand society. The Draft itself gives due recognition to this diversity when it claims that "Health education and physical education programmes must be inclusive of Maori, Pakeha, Pacific Islands, and Asian communities and the other diverse groups within New Zealand society, recognising and valuing the experiences, cultural traditions, histories, and languages of all New Zealanders" (p. 19). Again, it should be possible to recognise and study the religious aspects of this diversity without the least hint that students are being pressured to adopt any particular faith for themselves.

It should be recognised that the kinds of attention to religion advocated above take us a long way beyond what would normally be expected within the scope of a Health and Physical Education curriculum. It is questionable, however, how far the proponents of the Draft recognise this. They claim, for instance, that "The exploration, clarification, and understanding of personal attitudes, values, and beliefs and those of others are integral to Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum" (p. 11, emphasis in original). The strategies suggested in our previous paragraphs themselves involve only an elementary "exploration, clarification and understanding of attitudes, values and beliefs". We need to be clear about what scope there will be within the much more limited Health and Physical Education programme to make much progress along this path.

It is certainly possible that some progress will be made. The range of examples of particular learning contexts over the eight levels of achievement do offer a great deal of good material which, when implemented, will certainly contribute to the development of well-being, and they do allow for some limited consideration of values, beliefs and attitudes. Our concern, however, would be that teachers be adequately resourced for this task, both through the provision of good written and audio-visual materials and through the availability of people who are competent to deal with such matters. It is not apparent in the Draft how, or even if, such resourcing will be provided.

13.6 Personal identity and self-worth

As we observed in Chapter 6 of this submission, the strengthening of personal identity and the enhancing of self-worth are frequently stated goals of Health and Physical Education according to the Draft. While there can be little objection to such goals, the Draft does not pay any attention to what might constitute personal identity or self-worth. Without some notion of what personal identity is, how is it going to be possible to strengthen it, and without a similar estimation of what constitutes self-worth, how will it be possible to enhance it? We do not think it is enough in this instance to appeal to some general assumptions about these things. Both Judaism and Christianity, to take just two examples, have very clear notions of what constitutes the personal identity of a Jew and a Christian, respectively, and will have similarly strong views about what may be done to strengthen it. The Jew, for example, understands his or her identity to derive directly from God's liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The annual celebration of the Passover meal is guided by the central tenet, "In every generation let each man [sic] look on himself as if he came forth out of Egypt." The passage from slavery to freedom is a defining moment in Jewish history and remains to this day central to the understanding of Jewish identity. We wonder how far schools will be equipped to strengthen, or even recognise, this key constituent of personal identity in Jewish children.

The Christian child, similarly, belongs to a faith which considers personal identity to be established and sustained by God, and strengthened through one's sharing in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Self-worth, furthermore, is understood to be contingent upon one's being loved by God, and is enhanced whenever any individual recognises that he or she too is embraced by this love and forgiven for the ways in which that love has been scorned. Every celebration of the Eucharist proclaims and celebrates this key constituent of Christian identity.

We mention these two conceptions of personal identity and self-worth, not because they ought to be adopted by schools, but rather to show, first, that the concepts of personal identity and self-worth are philosophically and theologically loaded and, second, to emphasise again that the contribution schools may make to the development of total well-being must be shaped both by an honest recognition of the limits to their own competence and by a clear vision of how their work must be integrated with that of other agencies in our society. The Draft assumes that teachers will have a good sense of what contributes to personal identity and self-worth so that they may then be able to strengthen and enhance them. But we question how competent will teachers be, in fact, to sensitively respond to the notions of identity and worth outlined above. With increasing pluralism in our society comes an increasingly diverse range of views about what constitutes personal identity. In this context the claim made in the Draft that "students will ... analyse and act on attitudes, values, and behaviours that contribute to personal identity and self-worth" (p. 37) is a bold one indeed.

If a more modest goal is, in fact, envisaged, then this ought to be clearly stated, and the operative conceptions of personal identity and self-worth should be offered for critical comment and debate. It will already be clear from Chapters 6 and 12 of this submission that we do not argue that the curriculum should have no concern for values, attitudes and beliefs, nor that it should not be concerned with personal identity and self-worth. What does concern us is that all these notions are intimately bound up with fundamental philosophical or theological commitments, and failure to recognise this conceals the extent to which the philosophical or theological commitments of individual teachers could be imposed upon New Zealand children. It is unavoidably the case that some values will be imposed, some beliefs will be encouraged, some notions of personal identity will be operative. What we call for is a higher degree of openness and transparency about what these are than is evident in the Draft. This will make it possible for the wider community to then become involved in discussion about what they should be.

13.7 Conclusion

There is no question today that New Zealand society is much more diverse - racially, culturally, spiritually and ideologically - than it has ever been. Nothing that we have said in this response to the Draft should be taken to imply an interest in returning to a more monolithic society in which one set of values or religious beliefs is taken as normative for the whole of society and imposed upon children through our education system. At the same time, however, the refusal so far of our education system to recognise and engage with the variety of religious commitments which are present in our society has produced a distorted view of what comprises total well-being. The acknowledgement of this in the Draft, though tentative, is worthy of commendation.

While the state should certainly refrain from becoming an advocate of any single religious position, we should be concerned as a society in general, involving our schools as well, to foster a keen interest in and engagement with the range of religious commitments and spiritual experience of those with whom we live, in New Zealand and beyond. The fact of plurality is no reason to avoid such matters. After all, avoidance is not neutrality but rather conveys the message that spirituality is at best peripheral, or perhaps of no relevance at all to a school's interest in preparing students to cope with and contribute constructively to the modern world.

Educational institutions ought to be places where ideas can be heard and considered, not simply to satisfy ourselves that every group, however small or large, has had a chance to make its contribution, but rather out of hope that the truth will emerge through the plurality of claims. It is true, of course, that educational institutions are not responsible for this task on their own. It is also true that the capacity to deal with some matters is limited by the expertise of teachers, by time available within the curriculum and, most importantly, by the conceptual level of particular age groups. All of these factors should be taken into account when determining the particular ways in which spirituality will receive recognition in the school curriculum. It is our hope that any further curriculum proposals will be both more modest in their scope and more concrete in their detail when such factors are taken into consideration.

13.8 Summary and recommendations

o The Draft acknowledges the proper place of spirituality within the concept of human well-being but fails to engage with what the concept means within different religious traditions.

o The Draft fails to distinguish between spiritual formation and a religious-studies or phenomenological approach to religion.

o The Draft describes total well-being without reference to the understanding of the major religions represented within New Zealand that spirituality involves human dependence on God as creator.

o The Draft fails to address important questions about the competence of schools and teachers to address issues of spirituality and to recognise that for many spiritual formation takes place within a tradition of faith. Incompetent or insensitive handling by teachers of religious questions poses the risk of damaging well-being.

o The Draft fails to recognise that the concepts of "personal identity" and "self-worth" are philosophically and theologically loaded - a fact which also points to more modest ambitions for state schools.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(20) direct officials in their further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum to:

(a) take a more modest approach to a school's ability to foster students' well-being, personal identity and estimates of self-worth, recognising that vital sources of such education and development (including spiritual formation) lie outside the school;

(b) distinguish between spiritual formation or development and a descriptive (phenomenological or 'religious-studies') approach to the understanding of religious traditions;

(c) encourage the descriptive approach to the understanding of the major religions, noting that this can be pursued without any suggestion of proselytising and that an understanding of religions (especially Christianity) is essential to understanding much of our cultural heritage, including literature, music and art;

(d) consider where education on the various aspects of well-being should lie within the total curriculum, noting that some aspects might be a school-wide responsibility and some might be better located in subject areas other than Health and Physical Education; and

(e) consider at what stages of their education students should be exposed to the teachings of the major religious traditions and the concepts involved, the teacher training required, and the classroom resources that should be made available.

CHAPTER 14

THE PROBLEM OF ASSESSMENT

AND EVALUATION

It has long been accepted that the monitoring of student progress and the assessment of student learning must be an indispensable element of any approach to teaching and learning in schools. Anthony Flew puts this well:

If ... anyone is a genuine learner trying to master some piece of possible knowledge, or an authentic teacher trying to bring it about that someone else masters such an item of possible knowledge, then, necessarily, they must be concerned whether, how far, and how well they are succeeding. But they can scarcely claim to be this concerned if they take no steps to discover the answers to these questions. And the most general word for all such attempts is "assessment" (Flew, 1976, p. 89).

Monitoring and assessment are, then, logically necessary components of all attempts to teach students - to check whether they have been able to achieve the desired and planned growth and knowledge and understanding.

Some form of assessment of students' cognitive growth, their gains in knowledge and achievement of mastery of valued skills and competencies, is thus an indispensable and central focus of the educative enterprise. Assessment lies, as Winch and Gingell remark (1996, p. 377), at the heart of teaching, since it functions as a necessary condition for judging success or failure. Winch and Gingell point out that there will also be pressure to ensure that providers of education are accountable to users and providers of resources. The old proverb "He who pays the piper calls the tune" forms a part of the background of considerations in which governments recently have been asking for an account of the success of publicly funded education institutions in reaching the goals that governments and other policy makers set for them, and in which their 'stakeholders' have an interest. Clearly parents, employers and groups in the wider community (and many would also include students here) are among those having such interests.

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework acknowledges all this when it states:

Assessment is an integral part of the curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum builds on the close relationship between learning and assessment. It provides clear learning outcomes against which students' progress can be measured (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 24).

It also addresses the various purposes of assessment which it sees as being school-based:

to improve students' learning and the quality of learning programmes ... providing feedback to parents and students, awarding qualifications at the senior secondary school level, and monitoring overall national educational standards. Assessment also identifies learning needs so that resources can be effectively targeted (ibid., p. 24).

To meet these different purposes a range of assessment procedures is required.

This is good so far as it goes: stakeholders may reasonably expect that such a range of assessment strategies and techniques will be developed, put in place and set in operation, for all the various aims and purposes that policy makers and teachers of the different subjects, disciplines and learning areas have in mind.

But there is an indication of some difficulties in this undertaking. The authors of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 24, footnote 1) concede that some of the outcomes at which they are aiming might be difficult to assess. They cite the moral qualities of tolerance and integrity as examples. To these might be added some of the outcomes at which the authors of this Draft aim: courage, perseverance, sensitivity towards others, managing conflict constructively, the ability to solve problems, and so on. It is widely acknowledged that the development of such personal characteristics is among the prime concerns of educating institutions - and of other individuals, groups and agencies having an educative function in the community. It is also acknowledged, however, that the problem of assessing the growth of such characteristics and virtues in our students is a matter of the greatest difficulty.

The difficulties in matters of assessment and evaluation are acknowledged and accepted widely in the international education community. An expert on such matters in the United Kingdom, and a visitor to New Zealand in 1992, Professor Patricia Broadfoot, has some comments on this matter worthy of serious attention. She argues, for example, that one of the difficulties of ensuring that educational provision reflects broader changes in educational thinking and policy making is that assessment services are simply not keeping abreast of changing educational aims, purposes and goals. She comments:

Until such assessment procedures are available not only will it be impossible to produce valid judgments about the success of the educational enterprise as a whole in terms of its goals, it will also help to guarantee that certain desired educational outcomes will be neglected in the classroom. Thus the challenge facing those charged with the evaluation of education systems is to define, and to find ways of measuring, indicators that adequately reflect the full range of educational goals. Not to do so will result in both the generation of inadequate information about performance and a tendency to ignore some of the problematic teaching objectives (Broadfoot, 1991).

Among the limitations of traditional approaches to assessment, Broadfoot points to their preoccupation with quantitative measurement, their concentration on the easily measurable such as content knowledge, and their neglect of, or inability to make sound and properly informed judgments on, a range of higher level intellectual skills such as critical thinking, effective communication, problem-solving, and learning how to learn, and of course the range of social skills and thinking, moral virtues, and personal qualities that are now so much a part of curriculum concerns. Yet neither The New Zealand Curriculum Framework nor the Draft, while acknowledging such limitations and difficulties, makes any attempt to address them or to give teachers any expert guidance in what to do or how to act in matters which are of such importance yet fraught with problems.

There is indeed a plethora of problems that such assessments must address:

 the setting, in as precise terms as possible, of the appropriate goals and objectives, final and intermediary, to be targeted as outcomes for such educational endeavour;

 the logic of the forms of assessment appropriate to the characteristics being scrutinised;

 the range of appropriate procedures to assess them;

 the problem of the objectivity of any judgments that may be made about such matters;

 the problem of the recalcitrance of such characteristics to assessment by any of the established modes of evaluation;

 the need for research of a particularly sophisticated kind to establish appropriate bases for such assessments;

 the methods, strategies and techniques to be worked out and related to the targeted objectives; and

 the various forms and purposes of the assessments themselves.

The list goes on and on. In working towards solutions, a great deal of scholarly advice, expert opinion and sophisticated professional guidance is available from academics and researchers of the highest international standing and academic repute in the field of evaluation, (see Bloom, 1971, 1981; Scriven, 1980, 1981; Tyler, 1969, or any of the recent issues of the international journals of evaluation and assessment in education).

The Draft, however, does not cite any authorities on these difficult and complex matters. It is relatively short on precisely formulated goals and objectives and coherent and consequential learning activities and outcomes. This holds good not only for those hoped-for learning outcomes that are particularly unamenable to traditional forms of assessment; it also obtains for the matter of assessment generally throughout the Draft.

It is not sufficient to speak of the developments aimed at in a wide-ranging set of areas of educational undertaking, or to suggest that "teachers could assess" this or that skill, learning outcome or whatever. Students, their parents and families, and constituencies in the wider community have a reasonable expectation that students will emerge at the end of their educational encounters with an observable amount of value added. Students and their supporters need to know that at the end of any particular course or programme students will be able to perform certain skills, have acquired certain bodies and kinds of knowledge, and have developed some general dispositions and skills, such as the ability to communicate clearly in speech and writing, to be literate for their subjects in handling the devices of modern information technology, to do research, to be independent minded, critical yet creative, work as part of a team, and so on. Further, students should be able to demonstrate their mastery of the typical subject content and constituent elements, the particular concepts and categories employed, how evidence is assembled and weighed, how truth claims are analysed and judged, what moves are allowed, what considerations make certain moves decisive, and what logical patterns and sequences lead to conclusions, that can then be tested and found plausible and persuasive. Moreover, students and their supporters are entitled to know by what modes, styles and procedures the acquisition of the knowledge and understanding and mastery of the characteristic competencies can be publicly demonstrated and objectively measured.

Sadly, the Draft is deficient in such matters. There is simply insufficient reference to the objectives and outcomes that the epistemology of the subjects might identify as being among their defining characteristics. Moreover, there is far too much reference to general and transferable abilities for one to see the particular contributions that an education in Health and Physical Education will have added to students as a result of their exposure to these specific disciplinary characteristics.

Perhaps this explains why the chapter on evaluation and assessment is so jejune in the Draft. Clearly no one wants a reversion to the old days of ticks and crosses on a checklist, or a set of matrices in which people's learning achievements are to be translated into quantified form and set down. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to suppose that, when teachers of Health and Physical Education are measuring the learning outcomes of their students, they should be able to specify in some detail the means by which, and the criteria according to which, they are going to be able to assess their students' progress in achieving the outcomes they have in mind for them. Moreover, other people - the students' parents, their employers, other members of the community - should be able to recognise, attest to, and respect their learning gains from these criteria and means of assessment. Given this requirement, it is not sufficient simply to say that "Teachers could assess students' abilities ..." without further, more precise delineation and specification of the ways in which those abilities are made manifest and the criteria by which students' gradual acquisition of them is to be observed, evaluated objectively and, finally, certified.

This becomes particularly important when teachers are aiming at developing their students' in vital areas of human interaction, especially in those calling for the development of interpersonal qualities such as sensitivity and awareness and moral virtues, such as sympathising with other people and becoming part of a team. Yet it is in precisely such areas that, while students' development is most valued and important, it is at the same time most notoriously difficult to assess. What therefore needs to be developed in the Health and Physical Education curriculum (or indeed much better in a revision of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework) is a set of procedures which allows teachers to articulate and objectify evaluations of development in the key areas of personal autonomy, interpersonal understanding and awareness, and moral judgment and conduct. Yet proposals for addressing these difficult and problematic issues are quite absent from this document - even though the authors could have made use of the great deal of sound and important work being done internationally on these very issues.

Assessment, the authors of the Draft should have noted, is a key component in the maintenance of standards; at primary and secondary levels the most common type of assessment is for the purpose of evaluating student achievement. Instead, the authors of the Draft seem to agree with the authors of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, who state that:

The primary purpose of school-based assessment is to improve students' learning and the quality of learning programmes (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 24, quoted at p. 25 of the Draft).

In other words, they maintain that the principal function of assessment is 'formative' rather than 'summative' (cf. Scriven, 1981); throughout the rest of this rather exiguous passage on assessment they make no mention of the other purposes - above all, the maintenance of standards, and bench marking achievement across, and in comparison with, a range of other educational environments.

They also urge that:

Teachers should use a range of assessment strategies appropriate to the learning experiences and the context in which the learning occurs (Draft, p. 25).

Given the wide range of learning contexts and aims that they prescribe for students in all the key learning areas, this is timely advice. They could get considerable help from authoritative sources here. Broadfoot, for one, would caution the authors of the Draft that there is a need for new and much more wide-ranging theories, forms and models of assessing and evaluating students' learning gains in the larger and wider domains in which they are now expected to develop assessment test design and validation. The strategies, techniques and instruments of assessment to be developed should emphasise individual learning rather than individual difference and seek to cover and objectify the learning outcomes in a varied set of learning domains. She advises that there should be no:

... attempt to short cut the necessary development work that still needs to take place in designing new assessment approaches ... the issues are both technical and political involving both the generation of suitable techniques and rendering these acceptable for the various social purposes that assessment fulfils (Broadfoot, 1991, p. 27).

It is therefore astonishing that no further comment is made - either within the Draft's discussion of assessment (pp. 24-25) or in its Appendix - on the particular strategies or techniques that teachers themselves might recognise, adopt and employ. This deficiency is even more astounding given the caveat pointed out in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 24, footnote 1) and given the warnings of internationally respected authorities and experts on the difficulty and complexity of assessing the wide range of curriculum outcomes which policy makers and practitioners in education now expect their students to aspire to and achieve.

Broadfoot and others such as Scriven have provided some powerful criticisms of existing practices of assessment, and some thought-provoking insights about new directions for development in evaluation and assessment theory. They have also offered some authoritative recommendations to help guarantee that learning activities, achievements and outcomes remain consistent with the broader educational goals emerging from changes and developments in the thinking and policies of governments, educators, and 'significant others' in the community, such as parents and employers.

It is clear that concentrated attention needs to be given to developing appropriate and effective assessment strategies and techniques, and to ensuring that teachers master them. This will be essential if the positive learning outcomes envisaged for Health and Physical Education are to be realised. Teachers and other assessors will need considerable pre- and in-service training to master and be able to apply the doubtless complex and sophisticated forms of assessment and evaluation that very many of the proposed changes in the curriculum will necessitate. It is unfortunate that this task is not addressed in any responsible, scholarly and professionally illuminating manner in the Draft before us.

Summary and recommendations

o The Draft acknowledges the general importance of assessment in the educational process, but it neither acknowledges the specific difficulties in assessing student progress against the aims and objectives within Health and Physical Education, nor does it offer advice on the assessment strategies that teachers might employ.

o The problem is compounded by the lack of clarity about the particular contributions of Health and Physical Education, and by too much reference to general and transferable abilities.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(21) direct that, in further work on the development of the curriculum, attention be given to the need to define the particular contributions that may be expected from Health and Physical Education, the sequences of student learning outcomes that might be reasonably expected, the strategies and techniques that teachers might employ to assess whether and how well those outcomes have been achieved, and the pre- and in-service training of teachers required in those assessment practices.

CHAPTER 15

THE FINANCIAL AND RESOURCE IMPLICATIONS

Finally, we must come to what many will see as another of the major deficiencies of the Draft: to implement and develop its proposals would draw extensively upon public funds. While a curriculum statement is not expected to include estimates of associated expenditures or justify those expenditures, such matters should have been considered at the formative stages. In this case, it is far from clear from the documents associated with the Draft that the necessary work has been undertaken.

The need for a range of extra resources becomes clear if one simply considers the widely increased ambit of Health and Physical Education proposed in the Draft. Given the likelihood that most current teachers in the field will not be proficient in all these new areas of responsibility, the costs of teacher education and training, never mind developing, implementing, monitoring and assessing the programmes themselves, will be considerable. For, although considerable moves have already taken place to prepare teachers for the new curricula, it is clear from both the Draft itself and what follows from it that far greater preparation and continuing professional development will be needed to achieve the aims and objectives proposed for Health and Physical Education.

Of course, this is without any reference to the further investment in equipment, infrastructure and other resources that the expanded curriculum will require. On the basis of the Draft's proposals, substantial injections of finance will be required to support the necessary extension and additions in both minor, and maybe major, works and ongoing current expenditure on hardware, software, facilities and amenities. While estimating the return on public investment in education is fraught with difficulties, some estimate (however tentative) should be provided to show that additional expenditure in this area is likely to yield higher returns than in other areas of the education sector.

It may be anticipated that hard-pressed ministers, chief executives, school principals, teachers' associations and unions, and teachers themselves would be inclined to view with considerable reserve the implementation of the policy changes called for in the Draft. We judge it as unlikely that, in the current climate, the resources that implementation would require would be easy to find. The question is, then, how are they to be found?

Summary and recommendations

o The proposed curriculum changes would require very substantial additional funds for capital works, equipment, teacher training, and items of school operational expenditure. Yet it is not clear that estimates have been made of the additional funds required, why this area should have priority for public funds, or the likely source of those funds.

It is therefore recommended that the government:

(22) direct that further work on the Health and Physical Education curriculum include estimating the additional funds required, considering the priority that should be given to, and the return expected from, the investment involved, and identifying the likely source of the funds.

CHAPTER 16

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS FOR A MORE RESTRICTED APPROACH

The foregoing considerations, and the reflections arising from them, indicate that, even without further, detailed page-by-page analysis, the most grave reservations must be entertained about the validity and value of much of the educational vision and sense that animates the Draft.

It embodies and exhibits large-scale deficiencies in:

o its approach to its core concepts;

o its underlying epistemology;

o its theories of learning and pedagogy;

o its axiology;

o its treatment of the spiritual dimension;

o its conception of an appropriate curriculum remit;

o its lack of reference to the need for collaboration with an important range of partnerships and other key learning agencies in the community;

o its treatment of vital matters of evaluation and assessment;

o its attention to the need for the substantial expansions in pre- and in-service training and continuing professional development that adoption of its proposals would necessitate; and

o its approach to matters of finance and resources, planning and management.

In our judgment, the errors, omissions and infelicities to be found in and arising from the Draft are very grave. Quite simply, the charge of "inadequate theoretical foundations" that we adapted from Professor O'Connor on the first page of this submission has not been, and will not be, refuted by anything written in the Draft.

Those charged with the revision of the Draft should, in our view, be required to go through the authors' reflections, deliberations and arguments, to read up on a wide range of the appropriate international literature and draw upon a wide range of alternative, less tendentious, points of view. They should then go through the themes raised in the Policy Specifications document again, addressing the need for much more detailed work and definition on a range of vital matters such as those mentioned above. Perhaps assisted and supported by some external adviser, they should then reconceptualise and recast the work, repair the arguments and produce a set of proposals that is less ambitious and is more in line with the subject. Such refashioning would then, in the best Popperian manner, be put up as an hypothesis for further testing. If such testing were to fail to overturn or improve this next hypothesis, then it could be adopted as a provisional programme for policy implementation.

Our own reflections arising from the discussion in earlier chapters of this submission clearly point to a much more constrained remit for Health and Physical Education teachers in New Zealand schools than the one proposed in the Draft. The recommendations at the end of each of the preceding chapters of this submission (except Chapter 1) indicate the direction of our thinking about particular aspects of the further work required.

A much more solid, manageable and certifiable Health and Physical Education curriculum could be achieved if it were reduced in ambition, scope and content. This would considerably reduce the amount of re-training and further professional development that the recommendations of the present Draft would entail. It would help Health and Physical Education teachers strengthen and extend their present levels of professional expertise. It would guide schools in selecting which additional requirements for professional and curriculum development and extensions of equipment and other resources would enhance performance in that field.

We outline now how a much more constrained remit might be constructed. We begin by urging that at least one of the strands of the Health and Physical Education "Conceptual Framework" (p. 8) be taken out: that is, Strand C ("Enhancing Interactions and Relationships with Others"). This is an area in which the whole school should take responsibility, and the elements within it can be allocated to other learning areas.

Secondly, we propose that the following areas be removed from the "Key Areas of Learning" proposed by the authors of the Draft (pp. 27-33): Mental Health; Sexuality Education; and Education through Sport. This would leave the Health and Physical Education curriculum the following as its sole but proper professional area of responsibility: Food and Nutrition (which is largely proper to the Home Economics department); Physical Activity (the proprium of Health and Physical Education teachers); and Outdoor Education (which Health and Physical Education teachers will share with other departments within the school, such as Rural and/or Environmental Studies and other outside agencies, such as Outward Bound initiatives, Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme and the New Zealand Conservation Foundation).

We also propose some pruning of the list of Essential Skills proposed in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993, pp. 17-20) and which are claimed in the Draft (pp. 34-36) to be developed through Health and Physical Education. We believe it is proper to arrogate to Health and Physical Education departments the development of physical skills and, to a considerable extent, self-management and competitive skills, and, to a lesser extent, the social and cooperative skills. We see little need for Health and Physical Education teachers to work at communication, problem-solving, information, numeracy, work and study skills, as students will receive a sufficient and thorough grounding in these skills in other areas of the curriculum, particularly those related to vocational education and training matters.

What we are proposing, therefore, is making Health and Physical Education teachers responsible for only those activities, subject content, learning contexts and areas, and procedures in which they have been trained, gained their qualifications, and built up the experiences that characterise them as competent teachers of Health and Physical Education. These relate only to the effective functioning of physical aspects. Of course Health and Physical Education teachers will have a general commitment to education and all its moral and social concerns: being educators they could not have anything else (cf. Daveney, 1973). But they should not be tested beyond their training, qualifications or experience in areas which require substantially different modes and contents of professional preparation, and success in which requires the activity, not only of the whole school, but also of the educative community at large.

If these proposals were to be adopted, we believe that the implementation of schemes of curriculum development in Health and Physical Education would be much more manageable, much less expensive, much more realistic and, above all, much more true to the mission of the particular and respected place that Health and Physical Education teachers have hitherto occupied in schools.

We appreciate that the expenditure of more time, energy and resources will be needed if such a task is to be undertaken. But we believe that any alternative is unacceptable. The proposals of this Draft will lead to conceptual confusion, muddle, distortion, and additional financial, epistemological and professional burdens. The cost to members of the education profession and - more importantly - to the next generation of New Zealand children and young people is too great.

In the long run, it will cost less and risk doing less damage to go back to the beginning. If the drafters seek to do much less - but do it with much greater specificity - the Health and Physical Education curriculum will actually achieve much more.

In conclusion, we acknowledge that many issues promoted in the Draft, and discussed in this submission, are a response to a justifiable and quite proper concern about such phenomena as the relatively high incidences of youth suicide and teenage pregnancy in New Zealand. We are deeply sympathetic to these concerns. Nonetheless, we are doubtful whether the inclusion of concepts and subjects such as personal identity, self-worth and spirituality (see Chapters 6 and 13), values clarification (see Chapter 12), sexuality (see 9.3) and mental health (see 9.4) within the Health and Physical Education curriculum will, on its own, assist significantly in addressing these problems.

In addressing any matter of concern, the necessary first step is, usually, to establish the probable underlying cause or causes. To ignore this initial step is often to confuse symptoms with causes, and thereby risk adopting 'solutions' which may exacerbate the problem. In fact, some aspects of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework and our curriculum statements, including the Draft, may be reinforcing aspects of New Zealand society which have led, or at least contributed, to disturbing behavioural trends among our young people. Arguably, values relativism (see Chapter 12) undermines the traditional standards of thought and behaviour that have provided a sense of 'right' and 'wrong', including norms of sexual behaviour. Similarly, promoting spirituality without theology can be seen as helping to remove traditional sources of meaning and purpose in life. Of course, simply being 'traditional' does necessarily mean being right. But if the promoters of the Draft reject traditional values and theism as wrong (assuming that anything can be 'wrong' in their postmodern world), then they should at least consider the consequences of their rejection - which may include a normless, purposeless, meaningless and alienating universe.

Summary and recommendations

o The errors and deficiencies in the Draft are very grave and extensive and its theoretical foundations deficient. Work on the curriculum should recommence, taking into account the recommendations made thus far in this submission and aiming overall at a much more restrained curriculum remit.



It is therefore recommended that the government:

(23) direct that further work on the curriculum should involve revisiting what has been undertaken hitherto, drawing on the best of the relevant international literature, and reconceptualising and recasting the work;

(24) direct that the aim should be to produce a much more constrained and manageable remit for Health and Physical Education, and one that is more true to its particular and respected place in the school curriculum, while acknowledging that several aspects of the present Draft belong to the school as a whole and/or to the wider community; and

(25) agree that work on the new Health and Physical Education curriculum should involve:

(a) removing Strand C ("Enhancing Interactions and Relationships with Others") from the present "Conceptual Framework" ;

(b) removing the following from the present "Key Areas of Learning":

- Mental Health,

- Sexuality Education,

- Education through Sport;

(c) leaving the following as the sole but proper professional area of responsibility of the Health and Physical Education curriculum:

- Food and Nutrition,

- Physical Activity,

- Outdoor Education; and

(d) pruning the list of "Essential Skills" claimed in the Draft to be developed through Health and Physical Education.

POSTSCRIPT - A SENSE OF DÉJÀ VU

In bringing this submission to a close, we would point out that at many points in this submission we have found ourselves raising and addressing issues and concerns that have already arisen in previous curriculum proposals, and which we have already discussed at length in previous Education Forum submissions and reports. Certainly the current context, Health and Physical Education, is a new one and raises issues specific to this curriculum area, but nonetheless we have developed a profound sense of déjà vu as we traversed many of the matters raised, explicitly or implicitly, by the Draft.

The following are just some of the major deficiencies that have already been identified in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework and in one or more of the other new curricula, and which have now arisen again in the context of Health and Physical Education:

o the lack of a firm theoretical foundation;

o the abuse of school curricula for the purpose of indoctrination;

o the inadequate and outdated 'needs-based' approach to education;

o the lack of emphasis on knowledge and the mistaken emphasis on skills;

o the exaggerated child-centredness;

o the limited view of the role of the teacher, arising from the notion that the child can make his or her own way with only facilitation;

o the excessively constructivist view of learning;

o relativism on issues of values and culture;

o the lack of any identification and definition of what is unique to the curriculum area in question and therefore the extent of its proper remit;

o the lack of any view about how individual curricula should fit within the curriculum as a whole, with resulting problems of overlap and overload; and

o the lack of adequate consideration of the vital issues of evaluation and assessment.

What is of particular concern here is not that our views and those of others on critical issues have been rejected, but the apparent lack of any engagement by the Ministry of Education with those issues. We simply do not know the reasons for ministry rejection of our views; worse, we do not know whether these critical issues have been considered at all. Nor is there any evidence that critical issues have been identified and analysed, and evaluations of alternative approaches prepared and presented to ministers of education for decision. Indeed, in the cases we know about there is evidence that ministers have not been properly advised of the critical issues to be decided, the possible alternative approaches, and their advantages and disadvantages, and of the reasons why the ministry advice proffered should be followed rather than any of the other approaches available.

Invariably, it seems, the draft curricula and other 'reforms' are put to ministers without prior discussion papers which engage professionally and in depth with what is involved and with the key questions to be determined. This means not only that ministers are not, or not adequately, alerted to key issues and given the opportunity to decide upon them, but also the education sector is served up with one pre-determined package and not given a proper basis on which to make submissions. The submission process is thus largely one in which people are asked to sign up to a particular package of proposals, often dressed up in highly attractive but superficial language of a 'feel-good' variety, and without evaluation or comparison with other 'packages'. Where alternative approaches are offered they are usually of a marginal nature.

John Taylor, a former chairman of the Education Forum, said in a Foreword to a report about the curriculum, assessment and qualifications reforms published by the Forum that:

Before implementing any significant reform it is usually sensible to identify the problems with the current situation, to analyse their causes, and to assess the costs and benefits of the various ways of addressing them. Where there is international experience to draw on it is wise to do so. Some of the current developments have their precursors. However, overall there has been a lack of analytical and research support for these very extensive and interrelated reforms. Certainly there has been consultation but usually only after broad policy directions had been decided ("Foreword" to Irwin, 1994, p. vii).

Sadly, there is no evidence that this comment on desirable aspects of the policy process - hardly new or surprising to the rest of the policy community - has been heeded by the government's education advisors.

It is, therefore, with a deep sense of unease that we make this submission - an unease that comes from the conviction that the submission process is largely a sham (except to the extent that marginal or presentational improvements are suggested), that ministers of education have not been - and will not be - fully and professionally appraised of the fundamental issues raised in this and other submissions, and that the ministry staff concerned have irrevocably determined the curricular path to be followed in all its basic essentials and are not prepared to countenance the possibility that they may be seriously mistaken on fundamental, rather than peripheral, matters. Our unease is deepened by the knowledge that in curriculum matters, and in some other areas requiring specific educational expertise, there are no, or very few, alternative sources of official advice.

We are not, of course, intimate with the official policy process; but what we have seen of it raises rather than dispels concerns. We would welcome evidence that our deep sense of unease is mistaken and the fears expressed here are unfounded. However, no evidence that could reassure us on the points raised above is available to us. If it does not exist, then either the government should withdraw significantly from curriculum determination (which may, in any case, be desirable for reasons other than poor ministry performance) or an investigation into how the ministry's performance in curriculum matters can be raised is called for.

APPENDIX A

Education Forum

The Education Forum has been formed to contribute to education policy through research and debate on the current issues, structures and expectations at all levels of New Zealand education.

The Education Forum believes that New Zealand education requires an approach to learning and achieving which encourages all individuals to reach their full potential, and which will take New Zealand to the leading edge of international performance and achievement.

The Education Forum is an association of individuals who have a common concern for the future direction of New Zealand education. The membership is drawn from primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of education, together with leaders of industry and commerce.

The principles incorporated in the above statements include the following:

- a commitment to excellence and high expectation in all human endeavour, based on a lifelong desire for learning;

- the belief that the community and government should ensure that all young New Zealanders have access to quality education;

- the teaching of values and life skills which will preserve the dignity of the individual and the integrity of the family;

- the acceptance of healthy competition for both individuals and the education sector;

- the encouragement of cooperation, creativity, adaptability and enterprise;

- the encouragement and recognition of personal responsibility, goal setting and achievement in all endeavours, through self-discipline and hard work;

- the acceptance of a compulsory core curriculum in primary and secondary schools;

- the necessity for high standards of assessment of student performance and of accountability of teachers and institutions;

- the promotion of a New Zealand cultural identity;

- the key involvement and responsibility of parents in their children's education;

- the emphasis on the value of parental choice and the self-management of education institutions; and

- the development of closer links between education institutions and industry.

PO Box 38-218, Auckland 1730

Telephone: 09-273-1860 Facsimile: 09-273-1861

APPENDIX B

Members of the Education Forum

Mr John Boyens

Principal

Meadowbank School

Mr John Fleming

Principal

Pt Chevalier School

Mrs Alison Gernhoefer

Principal

Westlake Girls' High School

Dr John Hinchcliff

President

Auckland Institute of Technology

Ms Jan Kerr

Executive Director

Independent Schools Council

Mr Roger Kerr

Executive Director

New Zealand Business Roundtable

Brother Pat Lynch

Executive Director

New Zealand Catholic Education Office

Mr John Morris

Headmaster

Auckland Grammar School

Mr Phil Raffills

Principal

Avondale College

Mr John Taylor

Headmaster

King's College

Auckland

Ms Claudia Wysocki

Headmistress

St Margaret's College

Christchurch

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