“Swimming in the Cesspool – An American Teacher’s Nightmare Encounter with New Zealand Secondary Education”

Gregg Smith: Swimming in the Cesspool

Thinking about emigrating and teaching high school students in New Zealand? Before you do take a look at an interview on Sunday with American teacher, Gregg Smith,  the video may be found here on TVNZ.

Gregg Smith is an extremely talented ex-USA airforce officer who once worked at the Pentagon and whose life took a turn for the worse when he decided to emigrate to New Zealand to re-train as a teacher and teach at Dannevirke High School (see Streeview below) in the Hawkes Bay region, North Island.

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During his time at the school he was subjected to a fercious hate campaign, falsely accused and bullied by students who were intent on sending him back to America. Unfortunately the bullying went on outside the classroom too, Mr Smith was heckled in the street and death threats were made against him.

“Alan Vester, chairman of the Secondary Principals’ Council and Edgewater College principal, told TV ONE’s Breakfast this morning that the claims about him being a paedophile were concerning. Vester said in most schools there would be a lot of back-up for a teacher in this kind of situation. He said Smith received some support from colleagues but the school should have acted to stop it. ” source

Since his ordeal in 2006 Gregg has decided to write a book about his experiences which was published at the end of last year.

About the Author

Former teacher, engineer, computer analyst, Pentagon gopher, Air Force officer, United Nations inmate . . . What can I say in 3900 characters that would even begin to describe me? Just read the book! Things in my life had gone relatively well until I decided to go to New Zealand and train as a secondary school math and physics teacher. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for what greeted me in New Zealand schools: verbal abuse, sexual harassment, assault, indifferent students, violence, xenophobia, and an animosity toward education that I’d never imagined existed anywhere on earth. As one of my colleagues described it, “We’re just like Jesus Christ — we come here for no purpose but to do good and to help make their lives better and all they can think to do is to crucify us.”<\p> I’d think it unbelievable if I hadn’t lived through every nightmarish minute of it myself. The reality was actually worse — trust me

Through writing his book Gregg hopes to bring out into the open the many issues present within New Zealand’s high schools and bring them to a ”higher ground” The book “Swimming in the cesspool – An American Teacher’s Nightmare Encounter with New Zealand Secondary Education” is described as

“This book is the true story of an immigrant teacher’s experiences with the New Zealand secondary education system. Beginning with a detailed history of the author’s life prior to training as a teacher, the book weaves a tale through the intricacies of applying to and attending teacher training in New Zealand, finding a job as a teacher, struggling to teach students aggressively opposed to learning, and dealing with the various bureaucratic organisations that surround New Zealand schools.

While much of the introductory material is light-hearted, the narrative evolves into a serious discussion of issues surrounding secondary education in New Zealand. The horrors confronting some teachers are described in full detail, with extensive documentation. The book brings the full impact of the problems home by giving the reader an intimate look at the effects of the abusive and destructive work environment that eventually lead to the author’s walking away from his teaching career in order to preserve his mental and emotional health.

This story is a must-read for anyone associated with education, particularly in New Zealand. It raises serious questions about the demands we place on teachers. Ultimately, it questions the purpose and effectiveness of the education system as a whole, while exposing systematic failures at all levels. This story makes compelling, if frightening, reading. You may never put your child in a public school again.”

How much of a problem is violence against teachers in New Zealand’s schools?

In March 2010 New Zealand newspaper  the Dominion Post used the Official Information Act to obtain data on the number of school staff that received ACC funded treatment  for injuries sustained following an attack at school and put that together with Ministry of Education figures for 2008, to reveal that at least 777 teachers were assaulted whilst at work during 2008/9 (that’s without the figures for non-treatment assaults during 2009):

The TVNZ interview is the subject of a heated debate on the forum at Expatexposed.com, which we recommend you read if you have school age children. One poster describing a section of the video thus:

It destroyed my life … all I ever wanted to do was teach kids maths.”

Interviewer : Was being an American a factor?

Mr Smith says that he had multiple instances of his kids saying “we’re going to send that yankee Cnut back to America, it seemed to be a campaign they had, they seemed to take pleasure in the fact they were going to send me back to the United States.”

At some point two of his ex students say something very revealing.

“he could have felt like an outsider because we are so tight-knit”.

“but then we are very friendly as well, and quite welcoming” Lol!

They say he didn’t have the same personality as us (not me, or her). Like the whole town possess one big homogenous personality, and any deviance from it is threatening to the group dynamic.
This was before they started the town-wide pedophile campaign to discredit him, and ruin his life…

One of his students wrote on the board, “G Smith is a pedophile”, then he was shouted at in the street “THERE GOES THE PEDOPHILE”. Then one of his colleagues warned him that there were rumours in the town he was a pedophile.

Those kids have the ethics and morals of swamp rats.

Unfucking believable. Any American still thinking of teaching in NZ?

**** dannevirke!

Another contributor to Expatexposed.com provided the following link to a review of Greggs Book, which may be purchased on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Cesspool-Gregg-Smith/dp/1447883268

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Swimming in the Cesspool

by Gregg Smith
Veritas Books

reviewed by Carol Davala

“I never expected to be ATTACKED for trying to make someone’s life richer by sharing my knowledge of mathematics with him, yet that’s exactly what I encountered in Dannevirke.”

Gregg Smith never failed at anything. He attended the US Air Force Academy, earned degrees in mathematics and engineering, lived and worked in seven different countries, and even conquered the art of clowning. But his textbook style work subtitled “An American Teacher’s Nightmare Encounter with New Zealand Secondary Education,” reveals the shocking tale of Smith’s mid-life career change, wherein ultimately the author’s ensuing teaching experience at Dannevirke High School could be classified as a catastrophic failure with a capital F.

Anyone who has attempted to bring order to a classroom of unruly students, can surely relate to Smith’s plight. The author’s candid story brings to mind the docu-drama “Dangerous Minds,” wherein an ex-marine struggles to connect with the inner city youth she’s been hired to teach. Unfortunately in Smith’s case there is no triumphant Hollywood ending. In vivid detail Smith recounts the verbal abuse, physical assaults, sexual harassment, and mob-like intimidation he suffered at the hands of students, parents, and the Dannevirke community. The incidents took such a major toll on his health and psyche, that after eighteen months he resigned.

Smith is understandably bitter about his experience. While his lengthy treatise includes documents, letters, recollections, and actual ”greenies” (the forms he had to submit for disciplinary infractions), that back up his claims, the sheer volume of information speaks to his mounting frustrations. Amidst all the bureaucracy, red tape, and inconsistencies that go along with handling problematic students, Smith’s experience takes on a kind of “Alice in Wonderland” dimension, complete with the element of Mad Hatter madness. With personal anecdotes and witty sarcasm woven into his writing, he attempts to balance and rebut a harrowing situation gone way beyond his control.

Swimming in the Cesspool is Smith’s effort to make public the truth about his own personal experience at Dannevirke High School. As the saying goes “the truth will set you free.” Hopefully Smith’s truth will serve as an enlightening resource to help bring secondary education in New Zealand to a higher ground.”

You may also be interested in:

• The NZ Human Rights Commission has identified significant human rights issues in relation to violence in New Zealand Schools.
• A pre-school in West Auckland was forced to give a teacher glowing references even though she was accused of abusing young children in her care. Because of the age of the children, and their reliability as witnesses, police decided to only give her a formal caution and not prosecute the woman. As part of her terms of severence the head teacher is not allowed to reveal anything about the woman’s abusive behaviour, both the name of the school and the teacher have been banned from pulication.
•  Thinking about teaching in New Zealand? from our Migrant Tales series

 

• New Zealand Attraction” A discussion thread on Dave’s ESL Cafe
• Another Teacher Stabbed in NZ Classroom - Steve Hose stabbed at Te Puke High School in the Western Bay of Plenty
• Two More Teachers Assaulted In Tauranga – two teachers at Tauranga Girl’s College were assaulted by a female pupil within a 24 hour period
• NZ Teachers Need More Power to Protect Themselves
• Bullying to Blame For Te Puke Teacher Stabbing
• Kids in New Zealand – The Village Lets Them Down
• “Poor” NZ Among Lowest In OECD For Education Spending
• NZ Scores Second Worst in the World For Bullying in Schools
• Bullying Rife In NZ Hospitals
• Quarter Of Kiwis, Fifth Of NZ Police Officers Bullied At Work

Read all blogs tagged:

Assaults on teachers

Bullying in schools

American immigrants

NZ’s Culture of brutality

Migrants Tale – An Insiders View of the Tertiary Education Sector in New Zealand

Continuing in our popular series of Migrants Tales, first hand accounts of the migrant experience of New Zealand taken from places around the net.

For more Migrants Tales please click on the link in the header above.

This account was first published on the forum at Expatexposed.com, a not for profit emigration forum, with a community of people who are free to discus their experiences of New Zealand without fear of censorship or moderation

This is one migrant’s experience; his opinion about the quality of New Zealand’s tertiary education sector, as told from the view point of an educator. It was written in response to this question

New Zealand is pushing itself as a quality destination for international students again because the Canterbury rebuild offered a lot of career opportunities.

Just wondering, for those of you who’ve had experience with the New Zealand tertiary education system, what were your impressions of it? If you were given another choice, would you still choose to study in New Zealand?

Response

Well, it depends a lot on what you study. If you’re interested in study in the arts, humanities, or law, forget it. The arts and humanities are under constant threat, MUCH more so than elsewhere in the world.

I did my degrees in the US and EU, and I’ve taught in higher education in the US and NZ, and let me tell you: In terms of rigor the US and Europe blow New Zealand (AND Australia) completely out of the water.

The degrees here are three years in duration, followed by an “honours” year. The “honours” year is comparable to what I did in the third year of my B.A. at a less-than-renowned regional American university.

Essentially, there are several factors that bring NZ education down:

1. Staff are constantly under threat of losing their jobs in NZ if students complain. This is not possible in the US or EU because professors have actual lifetime appointments and cannot be fired for exercising academic freedom. Part of that academic freedom is the freedom to EVALUATE students, which means giving them grades they might not like, and standing by them. Department heads/administrators are VERY unlikely to go over an instructor’s head and change a grade for a student, which is the norm in NZ. An A+ in NZ is 100-85%. A+ in the US or EU, however, does not exist. It would be considered better than perfect, and no one is perfect. You also have to remember that teaching staff are encouraged to pass along international students without much fuss, even when they’ve been caught plagiarizing repeatedly. Grade inflation is rampant, and employers overseas are catching on to it. The NZ bachelors degree just doesn’t really mean anything to anyone.

2. The universities don’t allow the teaching staff the freedom to structure their courses and assignments in a way that allows them to ensure that their students know what they need to know. The administrations regulate how “hard” assignments are allowed to be and how many assignments an instructor is allowed to give. Instructors also can’t assign too much reading, and everything — EVERYTHING — is taught from a course reader and Power Point. In the third year of my American BA, I was reading up to 8 COMPLETE NOVELS per WEEK for 5-6 different upper-level courses. Unheard of in New Zealand. An English major in NZ *might* read 2-3 novels PER SEMESTER.

3. If you do a BA in NZ, and then want to do an MA/PhD overseas, you’ll be at a distinct disadvantage because you will have absolutely no real background in the subject you want to study. You also will have no training in academic writing, and you won’t have any of the necessary research skills. If you do a MA in NZ and want to do a PhD overseas, same story. The BA(Hons) in NZ is basically half of what I did in my 3rd and 4th years as a regular undergrad in the US. The rigor of “Hons” coursework is ANYTHING but postgraduate-level. It’s American/European third-year level, just with less of it.

Basically, New Zealand has a heavily corporatized structure of tertiary education. This should come as no surprise: the tertiary sector is a massive cash cow for the government. International students tend to bear the brunt of budget shortfalls in the form of massive fee hikes. In return, students can effectively BUY their degrees.

For some of the internationally-regulated professions, such as medicine (but not law), it could be a viable option. Or if you’re interested in studying some of the niche areas, such as Antarctic Studies or forestry, New Zealand is a good place to be.

So if you want a VERY easy BA degree with “honours,” and don’t want to have to put much time or effort into becoming proficient at anything, then New Zealand is the place to be. You’ll pay dearly for it as an international student, but you’re essentially guaranteed a degree regardless of your performance or ability.

New Zealand A Great Place To Raise Kids?

This cartoon in today’s NZ Herald says it all

A brighter future for all in New Zealand?

The Herald has run a series of articles about the effects of poverty. If you’re thinking about emigrating from a first world country please try to read a few.

Here’s the links to some of them.

Dr says he sees effects of poverty on kids every day

Divided Auckland: Overcrowding a hotbed for infections

Divided Auckland: Schools reaching out to most vulnerable

Divided Auckland: More become tenants in own city

Editorial: Opportunity – key to a more equal society

Bridging Auckland’s wealth gap

Minimum wage rises by 50 cents

Julie Helson: We need help in our own backyard

For more of our  blogs about poverty click here

Another Mob Attack In A NZ School

After the Ombudsman’s shocking report into vicious assaults at Hutt Valley High School was released yesterday there are reports of another serious assault in a New Zealand school and inadequate sanctions taken against alleged offenders.

The culture of violence in New Zealand’s schools is widespread, some would even say endemic.

If you are emigrating to New Zealand with children, or are sending your children to New Zealand for an education you may wish to research the culture of violence and bullying in schools there.

Yesterday a report was released into violent offending at Hutt Valley High School, read HVHS Report. Ombudsmen Want Compulsory Anti-Bullying Programmes In NZ Schools (click on highlighted text to read)

The ombudsman’s report identified fear among teachers and lack of supervision, the school trying to minimise the seriousness of the assaults, the normalisation of a culture of violence, highlighted failings by a number of external organisations and called for anti-bullying programmes to be made mandatory in all New Zealand schools. The school was also criticised for  trying to protect their reputation with international students (who pay high fees) and not taking appropriate action against the offenders.

Today we have another shocking report of a high school and the news that the alleged offenders are back at school despite an ongoing investigation

A 14-year-old boy was dragged into a classroom by five older pupils, manhandled, assaulted and indecently touched in a mob bullying attack at Porirua’s Aotea College, authorities allege.

The five alleged offenders, aged 16 and 17, were stood down for three days for gross misconduct but are now back at school – along with their alleged victim, acting principal John Huston confirmed.

The lunchtime attack happened on August 18 in an unoccupied computer suite. It was investigated by detectives and  has now been passed to Youth Aid investigators, who will decide whether to lay charges… source

It’s appalling that alleged offenders were not suspended until the investigation was completed and are now back at school with their alleged victim.

New Zealander parents reacted angrily to the news, this is a sample of what they’ve been saying this morning on the Trademe message boards

• State schools arent allowed to teach morals anymore so what does society expect? This idea of doing away with any moral standards was originally welcomed by radical teachers in the 1970s because it fitted their agendas at the time, but the tiger has turned and their successors are now the victims. It goes to show that no ideology is perfect, and their academic forebears who dreamt of a socialist nirvana must have had sleepless nights when communism imploded almost overnight.

• Why has this degenerated into stupid ramblings of the few… A school (including the BOT) and it’s employees has again failed to provide a safe and conducive environment to learning. Thugs should not be allowed back to school until the decision surrounding any charges has been made.

• In the early 1990’s the New Zealand Foundation for Character Education Inc. recognised that something had gone wrong at the heart of New Zealand society. Since the 1960’s there had been a 400% increase in violent crime, a quadrupling of the teenage suicide rate, an extraordinary rise in sexual crimes and child abuse and an astronomical increase in school suspensions.
  Indeed, Ministry of Education figures provided in answers to 2004 Parliamentary Questions revealed that despite the expenditure of millions, at least from the primary schools’ perspective, there has been no improvement.Since 2000 primary schools suspensions and stand downs increased 31%, alcohol consumption 25%, physical assaults on staff 40%, assaults on other students 33%, sexual misconduct 21% and sexual harassment 83%.These are not teenagers or even intermediate school students but eight, nine and ten year olds. Of the 2,560 removals from primary school in 2003, 658 (13.8 %*) were for continual disobedience, 729 (33.3 %*) for physical assault on students, 147 (40 %*) for assaults on staff, 91 (37 %*) for verbal assaults on students and 310 (55.6 %*) for verbal assaults on staff.

• Perhaps National should have been doing something about these violent abusive behaviour problems at our schools, before tackling national standards.
  And no “Labour had 9 years” comebacks, it didn’t happen, get over it and live in today with the present government that you think are so good at everything … they must be the obvious choice to “fix” every problem in the country …yeah right ;D

• Perhaps this should not be a political football… perhaps it requures the concerted efforts of all our elected representitives to find a soilution not for the next 3 years but for the next generation… hate it when people turn child abuse or bullying into some sort of them and us campaign… these kids are the future of our country and no one has all the answers, and that definately includes the politicians and the sooner the left/right faction comes to understand this the better, as we may actually make progress towards providing a safe and secure environment in which children can grow and thrive in…

• We need to get real… There is a difference between bullying, assault and sexual assault – and we need to treat the latter as what they are…

• Bullying is words and taunts, exclusion all the emotional stuff as soon as it becomes physical there is a huge difference.At 16 and 17 these are young adults.The attackers are nothing but thugs seperate them throw them in jail for a week or 2 and see how they like it when they are on the receiving end.The problem we have in this country is that the lil shites know they can get away with it.Now its not just our justice system thats protecting criminals rather than victims but our school systems are well.

HVHS Report. Ombudsmen Want Compulsory Anti-Bullying Programmes In NZ Schools

February 2009 we wrote about a large scale brawl at Hutt Valley High School and a series of disturbing serious assaults at the school which resulted in parents calling for an investigation by the Human Rights Commissioner  into human rights abuses at the Wellington school.

We wrote in Gang fight at Hutt Valley High School

“…An article on the Asia Pacific Forum.net website recently highlighted human rights abuses and bullying at the school, whereby in 2007 boys were dragged onto the school field and violated by their classmates.

Concerned parents reported the incident to the Human Rights Commissioner and calls were made for a national inquiry into pupil safety and school violence:

“The Human Rights Commission is to investigate schools’ anti-bullying policies to see whether children’s rights to safety are being protected. The move follows calls for a national inquiry by parents of bullying victims at Hutt Valley High School. The investigation is linked to a study by the children’s commissioner into pupil safety and school violence.

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan agreed to analyse children’s human rights concerns after meeting Hutt Valley parents. Her report will focus on the right to safety and security of the person, the right to education and the rights of victims”.

It will consider how human rights are addressed by schools’ anti-bullying policies and make recommendations in situations in which policies are not protecting children.

The Government unveiled anti-bullying initiatives this year after a spate of school violence. Documents issued under the Official Information Act show Education Minister Chris Carter called for urgent action amid fears that schools were not treating bullying as a priority.

Last December nine Hutt Valley High School boys were dragged to the ground and violated by a pack of six classmates.
The victims’ parents wrote to the Human Rights Commission alleging a “systematic failure” by state agencies responsible for protecting children. They asked for a national inquiry into violence and human rights abuses in schools.

The commission has agreed to assist Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro’s school safety investigation, which is due to be issued in February.

The Hutt Valley parents’ spokesman welcomed the investigations, saying playground violence was “a much broader issue than one school … We’re talking about child abuse”.

Now, over four years later, the Ombudsmen’s office finally released their report into the human rights abuses at Hutt Valley High School.

It identified fear among teachers and lack of supervision, the school trying to minimise the seriousness of the assaults, the normalisation of a culture of violence, highlighted failings by a number of external organisations and called for anti-bullying programmes to be made mandatory in all New Zealand schools:

Ombudsmen want compulsory anti-bullying programmes in school Tuesday, 6 September 2011, 2:45 pm Press Release: Office of the Ombudsmen

Office of the Ombudsmen
Te Tari-o-NgāKaitiaki Mana Tangata

Media release

Ombudsmen want compulsory anti-bullying programmes in schools

The Ombudsmen’s Office is calling for anti-bullying programmes to be mandatory in all schools in the wake of its investigation into serious assaults at Hutt Valley High School.

And the Office also wants to see victims gaining a voice in school disciplinary processes and greater guidance for school discipline.

The report by Ombudsman David McGee was today tabled in Parliament following his investigation into complaints arising from a series of violent incidents that occurred at Hutt Valley High School in December 2007. The complaints were made by a group of parents against the school, Child Youth and Family and the Education Review Office.

In the report, David McGee says the serious assaults that occurred at the school in late 2007 were part of a “systemic problem of violence”, which the school had recognised but had not addressed satisfactorily.

“They were not referred to the Police or CYF for investigation, they were not adequately punished, and the school took it upon itself to interpret medical information in favour of the perpetrators. Victims’ parents were not told by the school that their children had been assaulted.”

There was a lack of student supervision outside of class time, with teachers not performing scheduled duty, some for fear of their own safety, he says.

A complaint against the Education Review Office that it had failed to properly assess the safety of the school was upheld. A complaint against Child Youth and Family was also upheld for its failure to manage a conflict of interest held by one of its staff who was also chair of the school’s board of trustees.

David McGee says that while the school understated the seriousness of the 2007 assaults, it had since been very proactive in addressing bullying and violence at the school. These steps had included introducing anti-bullying programmes and setting up a safety advisory group which included student representatives.

In his report, David McGee recommended school national administration guidelines be amended to make anti-bullying programmes compulsory in all schools, rather than it being simply a recommendation from ERO.

“I also consider the present disciplinary procedures could be improved by requiring principals and Boards of Trustees to consider the views of victims when making decisions on discipline, when the infringement at issue is bullying or violence.”

Victims could be given the opportunity to either provide a written victim impact statement or to attend board suspension hearings, he said.

David McGee also recommended the Ministry of Education provide schools with more specific guidance on the levels of punishment appropriate for various actions.

“This is because the situation at Hutt Valley High School demonstrates that the lack of appropriate sanctions can contribute to, and risk normalisation of, a culture of violence.”

While a rigid national template for school discipline would have little merit, the current “entirely discretionary” system risked producing arbitrary disciplinary decisions both within and between schools, he said.

The Ombudsman’s full report is available online at www.ombudsmen.parliament.nz

ENDS (source)

Among the complaints laid before the ombudsman was the following, 11th on the list:

“The BOT’s decisions on communications to parents put concerns about the financial implications of bad publicity on international student enrolments and other less important matters ahead of the harm done to victims. The Board did so by making statements that minimised the seriousness of what happened and saying the School had acted reasonably and responsibly in the handling of the incidents.”

The ombudsman upheld the complaint, saying in his report:

Having studied all the materials and talked to the School I am of the view that the School did minimise the seriousness of the incidents, and that that was symptomatic of a culture that had developed whereby incidents of violence were understated. Whether the financial implications of bad publicity factored into the BOT’s decision making about this as suggested by the complainants it is impossible to say.

Examples of School minimising incidents

As discussed above, the School minimised the seriousness of the assaults from the outset by imposing inappropriately lenient punishments on the perpetrators, as well as failing to notify the parents of the victims.

Additionally, the incidents appeared to be underplayed in subsequent comments made by the then Acting Principal and then BOT Chair to the media. Specifically, in a 16 January 2008 media report the then Acting Principal is quoted as having stated that “it wasn’t an assault where somebody had blood spilt” and the then BOT Chair is quoted as stating she had “understood the assaults were minor, so they were not referred to the Board for disciplinary action”.

The School also minimised the seriousness of the incidents in its initial attitude to external agency involvement. The MOE records surrounding the incident suggest that the then Acting Principal initially queried the need for the MOE to become involved in the matter. The papers also suggest that the School was reluctant to cooperate with the Police in the initial stages of the Police investigation.

Although the School subsequently cooperated with both the Police and the MOE, its refusal in the new year to accept a Police offer to provide a Police presence on the school grounds again suggests that the seriousness of the incidents was not acknowledged by the School.

School’s attitude to incidents

In my first meeting with the School management it was suggested that the assaults were not particularly serious given that a decision was made to deal with the perpetrators by means of a Police Alternate Family Group Conference rather than prosecutions. However the Alternate Family Group Conference was undertaken on the basis that serious crimes had been committed, including multiple counts of assault with a weapon, as well as threatening behaviour, common assault and sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, and that the failure of the perpetrators to meet various conditions would result in the matters being brought before the courts. I do not consider that this means of dealing with the perpetrators indicates that their actions were not viewed as being serious.

A further example of the School seeming to underplay the events was the suggestion it made to me in our first meeting that the Police officer who investigated the offences was on a “crusade”, and out to “make a name for himself”, when in fact his investigations confirmed the information that the School already had before it, that is, that there had been numerous incidents of serious pack assault committed by pupils on pupils on the school grounds. In this regard I note that the Police confirmed to me that the officer who obtained the witness statements was highly regarded for his investigative skills.

Conclusion on Complaint 11

This complaint is sustained.”