Of munters and their creation

This Herald on Sunday article has publicised what most Aucklanders have known for some time: that top state schools are offering sports scholarships to foreigners to boost their rugby teams. Will Mallard crack down on these white schools like he cracked down on brown wananga? (see Trotsky's article about fairness of that decision). Of course he won't.

As we know secondary school is not about academic achievement it is about sports. These schools are professional, international sports academies that reluctantly have to provide some formal education to continue to recieve state funding. Anyone who went to any of the grammar schools will know how lowly they rate intellectual attainment and how highly they prize their rugby and cricket rankings. The girls-only grammars, I imagine, would not be preoccupied with such pointless field competition - being pedantic and rules-focused they probably prize the conformity aspects of petty tasks and the precise regurgitation of established facts that masquarade as academic rigour.

An imported First XV rugby goon who gets a free entry with all the usual fees waived can burn the entire school down, get caught raping a handicapped kid in the middle of the smouldering ruins of the staff room with a P pipe still in his mouth and get a "stand-down" of one afternoon to be applied in the middle of the holidays so it has no impact on his blessed rugby. A top ranking scholar however who might argue the point over the leniency of that punishment could well find themselves expelled for damaging school pride and intollerable insolence.

Dodgy principals are known to have established their own hostels for international students so they can personally cream cash from this gaping loophole the government endorses. Add junkets overseas (with their spouses, naturally) to recruit students of wealthy parents and we have all the hallmarks of corruption. And nothing is done. Out of zone students are head-hunted for sporting teams and get privileges and exemptions that the in-zone kids cannot. Some can even turn up late to class every day because they have to commute so far. Everyone else gets a detention for it, but since they are either paying or the privilege or are sports heros the rules do not apply to them.

When schools keep drilling students with rigid rules and punishments out of all proportion to their transgression, and then set about creating classes of student to which the rules do not apply is it any wonder that people have such little confidence in their management and the system that condones it? Is it any wonder with that deeply hypocritical culture and atmosphere of immunity that the Taradale boys who raped their "friend" wanted to be policemen?

When we consistently hold sporting munters up as role models and malign, neglect and ignor those displaying intelligence is it any wonder that we have such ingrained anti-intellectualism and retarded cultural institutions. Schools don't just teach students the curriculum they induct them into a society of entrenched injustice, social stratification, administrative malfeasence, underhanded political compromises and cover-ups, arbitrary punishments and pointless routine.

There are no students so ignorant as those who aspire to teach.