Marlene strikes again
January 29th, 2011 at 3:01 pm by David FarrarReaders may recall Marlene Campbell. She is one of the ringleaders in the Principals Federation campaign against national standards, and got national publicity for calling Anne Tolley Minister Hitler.
Well she’s at it again, with Whale supplying this e-mail:
The Sewell she refers to is is Karen Sewell, who has been Secretary of Education since 2006.
What I can’t work out is whether Marlene includes herseld in the group description of logical thinking human beings. Her e-mail and previous utterances would suggest logical thinking is to her, what pork is to a Bar Mtizvah.
Marlene is of course a public servant, paid for by the taxpayer. She is in fact effectively employed by the Secretary of Education.
Related posts:
- A taxpayer funded union
- Principal compares Minister to Hitler
- All resistance must be crushed
- An apology to everyone but the Minister
January 29th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
State funded education is all about indoctrination. Its rife with Marxists like Marlene, who all need to be fired. The schools need to be defunded. Centralised management in Wellington also needs to be dismantled. There is no point in it any more. It is just a leftist farce, and is where Marxists exert their maximum political influence.
Central controlled state education has to be defunded and dismantled. State schools have to be replaced by privately owned schools run by individuals and not employees of the teacher’s unions. Teaching children and indoctrinating them with Marxist principles are two counter objectives and cannot ever compatibly exist in the same system. A person cannot dispense education at the same time as they espouse the principles of the teacher’s union.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
In an ideal world, you could substitute “was” for “is” …
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Anybody who uses Papyrus as their default e-mail font can’t be considered a logical thinker…
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Cue bc AKA Bill Courtney?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Shorter redbaiter:
We should deny teachers the right to free association, deny the poor the right to an education and generally just slip in to becoming an authoritarian oligarchy.
Who’s with me!?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Comrade Marlene has a very touching way to finish her letters. For that alone, she deserves to be sacked.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Does she have funny little buns on each side her hairdo Manolo?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
mansolo – no sense of humour? is that why you’re “mansolo”?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Magic Bullet: Even shorter RB.
“We should allow teachers to earn the adulation of their employers (parents) and much higher wages by freeing them from the shackles of mind control(commies).”
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
um – that wasn’t shorter, and nor was it correct. A privatised system would just kill social mobility, and increase the work-load for most teachers, whilst providing less remuneration.
It’s a totally stupid idea.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Only if you are a untalented,little commie loser like you MB.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
“It’s a totally stupid idea.”
That’s why I don’t bother with Kiwiblog much anymore. Its just rife with dumb doctrinal communists like you who offer frequent low grade opinion but no arguments of substance.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
He has to get clearance from teacher control central before he puts forward an argument Red.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
well folks, I believe this toxic woman is working towards a Labour List position. She has the credentials
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
You mean she is an ugly lesbian jaba?
Who’d have thought!
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
ok redbaiter, here you go.
“: Intergenerational earnings mobility varies significantly across countries; Education is a major contributor to intergenerational income mobility and educational differences tend to persist across generations; Evidence of intergenerational immobility extends to other outcomes; Early and sustained investment in children and families can help.”
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/oecelsaab/52-en.htm
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
In fact – look at any number of scholarly studies on the subject. They all indicate that privatisation is a stupid idea.
http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?q=oecd+social+mobility+education&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Salford School gets good reviews from the Education Review Office. But, then, ERO is well and truly captured by teachers and the ERO reviewers are themselves often failed teachers. ERO is the hen guarding the fox den.
Marlene appears to be breaching two of the three principles of the SSC Code of conduct for public servants:
Principle 1 – Public servants should fulfil their lawful obligations to the Government with professionalism and integrity – FAIL
Principle 3 – Public servants should not bring the Public Service into disrepute through their private activities – FAIL
I assume that, in a galaxy far, far way, Papyrus is the default font.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Education is important. Thus we should not let Marlene near our kids. Spends her time doing anything other than teaching them obviously.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Redbaiter: frequent low grade opinion but no arguments of substance.
Ok, how about some arguments of substance. You suggest sacking all teachers, defunding all schools and dismantling all administration.
What time of year would you do this?
Vote:How long do you think it would take for a private alternative to be up and running?
What if private communist organisations set up schools and attract most pupils?
January 29th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
“What if private communist organisations” .
An oxymoron Petey.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
As crown entities, surely schools are subject to the Official Information Act. Given that she is making these comments on behalf of the school, using her official email, anyone care to OIA the board for all her correspondence on National Standards to find out what other nasty little secrets she has?
And following her apology after calling Tolley Hitler (to her community – NOT to Tolley) can we expect the board to say “enough is enough”?
And given she is a member of the executive of the Principals’ Fed, can we also expect them to expel her?
My money is on them quietly ignoring it, just like last time.
The parents and children at this school deserve to know the truth about what this “leader” is up to. They also deserve better.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
she can’t even spell fuck
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Fire the bloody lot of them and invite them to reapply for their jobs (non unionised). That will soon sort out the real teachers from the rubbish. It’s not hard!
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
‘Vituperous bitch’ comes to mind as an apt description.
If the Salford School BOT (her employer) has any gumption it will, at the least, formally censure her for her the language she has used, comments which also, to an extent, reflect badly on the school.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
“formally censure ”
You sound like part of the problem PM.
What happened to “fire the poisonous bitch”?
[DPF: Please don't descend to her level and use abusive terms against people]
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Sad when “teachers” can’t even spell their own names eh jaba?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
not wrong Johnboy .. we all know that teachers (not all by the way) do lean towards the Labour party, mainly due to the union, but this display of anti Govt diatribe is outrageous .. time to go luv, the real word awaits you
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Christ, enough of this unholy alliance of teachers, unions and politics. When’s the last time you heard a unionist talk about teaching children OTHER than in the context of better pay and conditions? Unions have no reason to actually care about the quality of education, only to pretend they do as an excuse for paying all teachers even more. Caring about education per se isn’t what gets union bills paid.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
So you are on as a founder member of the “Sack the useless Teachers” lobby group then ben.
Glad to have you aboard. Time to make a stand.
Are you listening Mrs. Tolley?
Go for it girl.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
An 03-217 xxxx phone number. Where is Salford? And don’t say the north west of England.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Redbaiter (12,929) Says:
January 29th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
.That’s why I don’t bother with Kiwiblog much anymore……………
TFFT ……..Every cloud has its silver lining,
Nobody will do anything about this email, presumably its a email to an associate and its been leaked, .. shes just naive if she thinks anything electronic is secure, anyway any credibility she thought she had has been destroyed by her own hand, nice one Marlene
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Whether or not this wretched woman is one of the leaders of her “professional body”…….read cloth cap trade union…… is a red herring. I’d hate to live in a country that went down the path of disallowing unions & interfering with citizens rights to associate with whom they wish. I’d point out that if education was privatised there would still be unions.
What is salient is that she & her comrades are civil servants. They are paid to teach, not to decide what should be taught. Because they are teachers & probably a little thicker than most they need to be reminded on a regular basis that they are employees, no more & no less.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
I know it’s not a formal letter, but I’d like to think that a teacher would use proper grammar and punctuation reflexively. How can we expect children to write properly if their teachers produce stream-of-consciousness gibberish with random capitalization, excessive use of ellipses, missing question marks, missing words, absent possessive apostrophes, and written use of “like” spoken slang?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Anyone over 12 years old should be fired for using that font in work emails. And also caned. In public.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Please delete my post of 5.37.
Vote:Salford school is alongside Salford Street in Invercargill; the suburb of Hargest.
January 29th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Quite frankly she needs to be fired, for the good of her students and to set an example about appropriate professional behaviour.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Hi Johnboy. Sorry, but I am not bc as you suggested. I have only posted under my full name. As for Marlene’s comments, the only observation I can make is that the date on the e-mail, 12 October last year, hardly makes this “new” news. I presume she made this comment well before the Minister Hitler one, which I believe was early November? Good to see Whale Oil and Kiwiblog haven’t got anything of substance to blog about today.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
No worries Bill. I read your letter to the Dompost the other day and put 2 and 2 together and obviously came up with 5.
Besides you can spell and bc can’t.
“Good to see Whale Oil and Kiwiblog haven’t got anything of substance to blog about today.”
Tut tut. Not trying to defend the indefensible again are you?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Bloody hell.
I won’t be at all surprised now if we find this woman teaching classes in Klingon for Beginners.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
“but this display of anti Govt diatribe is outrageous ”
What fascist rubbish. Teachers are entitled to express our political views like every other citizen in this country. Obviously there is a time and a place when a teacher’s personal political views should be espoused.
“SSC Code of conduct for public servants”
Teachers are not public servants and are not covered by the State Sector Act. We are bound by the Teachers’ Council’s Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers. The Code includes for broad endings, including commitment to learners, commitment to parents/guardians and family/whanau, commitment to society, and commitment to the profession.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:11 pm
No commitment to excellence I see Red Sam.
What a surprise.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
I am told that she is a perfect bitch. However someone else confirmed that she is far from perfect.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Don’t use that “B” word Guy you will get told off.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
That’d be the same Teacher’s Council that supports name suppression even when Teachers are kiddy fiddlers and rapists. Yeah they have lots of credibility.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Fire her. Why do teachers get such a free hand to act unprofessionally?
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Just a correction DPF: I know you used the word “effectively” and I suspect you are deliberately (to use your headline) “Fomenting Happy Mischief” but the BOT of the school she works at is her employer not Karen Sewell.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
magic bullet said…
A privatised system would just kill social mobility,
Is it a right or a privilege? Which one? If it is the former it is bogus. If it is the latter, then that’s how society should be. You have to earn it, rather than be handed or given to you by coercively taking from others.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Red Sam @ 6.57
I’ll concede your point, but only on a technicality – her immediate ‘employer’ is the BoT and not the SSC via the MoE. However, the New Zealand Teachers Council (a Crown entity) is covered by the SSC’s Standards of Integrity and Conduct.
Schools (BOT + ‘employees’ like Marlene) are subject to the Official Information Act. And they must also comply with the Public Records Act 2005. So, if anyone submits an OIA to Salford School’s BOT requesting all documents (including emails) relating to National Standards, I fully expect to see all of Marlene’s email correspondence divulged in response to an OIA. Afterall, she is using the school’s email system (@salford.school.nz) to conduct her illiterate, incoherent union business, which to my mind is a breach of appropriate use IT policies anyway. If she has deleted any emails, then she / employer has potentially committed an offence under the Public Records Act (a $5000 fine for each instance): she is disposing of public records without approval (of course, deleted email can be recovered from backup).
Marlene is clearly stupid: who would use a corporate system to conduct private business when those records are discoverable under the OIA and may also be public records? Marlene has, amongst others, ethics issues – she cannot separate private from public.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Magic bullet said…
deny the poor the right to an education and generally just slip in to becoming an authoritarian oligarchy.
I did miss that one.
I’ll re-paste my question from my previous message.
Is there a right to education? If you say, yes, then tell me what that right is based on?
You need some serious re-education on what rights is. Here is the challenge for you. Try and define rights with no contradiction? I bet that you have a hard task of trying to come up with one. A right to education? That’s a contradiction. A right to eat healthy food? There’s also a contradiction there. A right to drink in a non-smoking bar? You can find a contradiction in there too because the right belongs to the owner and not the customer but his/her rights is being violated by the state in mandating it. The so called rights that advocates of today are trying to impose on society are bogus. How about consumer rights ? There is no such thing. How about your right to enjoy historic building being protected? This is nonsense as such building is not owned by the state/local-council but by a private citizen and the rights belong to him/her and not society or community. Well, I can count many more but there’s no space to list them all here.
How about you start with this short summary from Not PC blog on rights:
Cue Card Libertarianism — Rights
If you want to educate yourself more, then go on to the following page, because Not PC has a series of short articles that will enlighten yourself.
Peter Cresswell’s Cue Card Libertarianism Bookmarks
Remember that reality doesn’t contradict itself, only whims and wishful thinking do and that’s how socialists operate.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Falafulu Fisi:
I see what you’re saying and enjoy Peter Cresswell’s succinct summations. And while I’m one of those who’d argue that people have a “right” to shelter in a society which could, if it wished, afford to provide it* I recognise that such things aren’t rights in the proper sense.
But alone amongst such “pseudo rights” is, surely, education in that the benefits which accrue from an individual becoming educated flow through to society in myriad ways: they are better able to work and create wealth, they are better able to participate in our democracy (the fact that the teacher unions are determined to inculcate socialist voting in them all is, for the purpose of this argument, moot), they are sometimes able to make discoveries that enrich humankind as a whole, and so on.
As such I think it deserves a category of its own, as both a private and a public good. A bit like some aspects of health – paying to innoculate the guy next to you might be irritating, but not nearly as irritating as the malaria he’d spread through the populace if we didn’t.
* Note I’m talking basic shelter, not a house with cable TV and air conditioning. And only if they have a legitimate reason for their homelessness. And, if that reason can be nullified by their taking action (such as an addiction) they take, and continue taking, action to address it.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Pete George said: “What if private communist organisations set up schools and attract most pupils?”
Well Pete, putting aside the absurdity of a private communist organisation, if parents were exercising a free choice, then we’d have to respect it.
What I object to is a PUBLIC communist organisation attracting the most pupils by FORCE, as happens now.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
“Is there a right to education? If you say, yes, then tell me what that right is based on?”
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Vote:January 29th, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Nope, the UN is not the source of human rights.
If the UN voted to make access to free space travel a right, it wouldnt make it one.
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 12:21 am
Anyone who uses language like that in a letter likely to be publically aired shouldn’t be the principle of a school.
Vote:I don’t know if there is a right to education but it makes sense for a society to educate its people .. a matter of self interest.
January 30th, 2011 at 8:01 am
It was supposed to sound absurd – but not as absurd as thinking that totally private education would raise overall education standards. It would raise some standards, but it’s not the top end of education that needs the most improvement, its the bottom end. Lack of education is a major factor in unemployment, crime, poor health, these things drag us all down and privatising all education would if anything make that worse.
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Lack of education is a major factor in unemployment, crime, poor health, these things drag us all down and privatizing all education would if anything make that worse.
Really?
In that case, do you think we need more principals like Marlene?
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 9:30 am
P.G, you’re spouting the tired old socialist mantra: public is good, private is bad.
Vote:Give me the facts to back your statement up, please.
January 30th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
All too easy Manolo – one word in fact: Finland!!
Finland is #1 in the PISA rankings. How does it do it? From an article:
“Education is valued very highly in Finnish society,” Maenpaa (an ambassador) said. “We have invested in a high quality basic education that we try to provide to all students, whether they are doing well or not so well at school. It is not so much that we are encouraging the top students. We are supporting even the weaker ones.”
According to Finland’s Education Ministry, 6 per cent of gross domestic product goes to education. The country provides free education.
“We have compulsory primary school for nine years. All schools and all universities are financed by local and central governments, which means by our taxes. Books for the compulsory basic education are also free. We have school meals in order to ensure that students have sufficient energy to study,” she said.
The ambassador said there were also a very small number of private schools in Finland that also received government subsidies.
“Providing free education is valued very highly in Finland because it is human investment and a factor for equality between people. It is also considered the main gateway for upward mobility in society. Even if you are not born rich, through education you can climb your way up in society,” Maenpaa said.
Facts about the Finnish education system:
Dropouts during compulsory primary education, less than 0.5 per cent.
Class repetition, only 2 per cent.
Small between school differences.
190 school days per year, 4 to 7 hours per day.
Moderate amounts of homework, no private lessons after school.
Finnish students work fewer hours per week. Students from some Asian countries also get high PISA results, but as a result of high student workloads.
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Man, why do you commies always seek out anomalous examples to try and prove the norm? Finland is the 10th richest country in the world on a per capita basis because Nokia phones have about 35% of the global market. Lose that and they’re fucked. As they’re starting to be. Over the past 10 years governments have grown stingier and stingier, with pensions rising only three percent in real terms since 1993, 10 times more slowly than wages. And unemployment has climbed to more than eight percent.
FYI- Finland, like other Nordic socialist paradises, has a shockingly high suicide rate- 29.9 people per 100,000 for those aged 35-44 (more than twice the rate for the corresponding U.S. population).
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
What are you banging on about, Redbaiter? Being #1, means of course Finland are not the “norm”! They have made a decision to invest highly in education and it is paying off.
Vote:And what has all the other stuff you have mentioned got to do with it? Besides, we have a similar unemployment rate and our suicide rate is nothing to skite about either.
January 30th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
She seems to be improving, only five basic English mistakes in a seven line email:
“what the” – question with no question mark.
Vote:“We” – shouldn’t be capitalised – an ellipsis is not a new sentence.
“WARNING” – what follows should be in quotes or otherwise separated from the rest of the sentence with a hyphen.
“human beings health” – missing apostrophe.
“This letter”- sentence desperately needs some punctuation. Also poor style and illogical thinking with the retarded mixed metaphor – is she playing baseball or tennis?
January 30th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
BC @3:29pm
Vote:I’m not sure if there is evidence that Finland’s investment is “paying off”. Finland beats NZ in both suicide rate
http://fathersforlife.org/health/who_suicide_rates.htm#Table_B
and death by alcohol
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alcohol/by-country/
I think the evidence simply shows that Finland has had more money to spend!
January 30th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
So what’s that got to do with anything Thomas?
Suicide rates and alcoholism has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Finland is #1 on the PISA rankings. (Unless you can show that there is a direct and absolute correlation betwwen educational attainment and suicide and/or alcohol related deaths, which would be unlikely).
I would suggest that their climate (cold, extended winter) would be the main factor.
Vote:January 30th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
While Marlene’s methods of trying to oppose something such as Nat Standards are quite extreme, she shouldn’t be ridiculed for fighting something she believes in…
Vote:January 31st, 2011 at 11:55 am
I loved her sentence construction, LIKE BIG TIME. Maybe I have been away too long and that is how Kiwis speak now but I would expect a higher standard from a senior educator. Although it would explain all the kids who can’t read or write …
Kudos for posting her personal contact details. I might like text her.
Vote: