My Education Honours List

by Rebecca Thomas

I will admit it. When I saw the latest honours list I felt uncomfortable.

Perhaps even disappointed. Hey, maybe a little shocked.

As I looked through the names, I found myself wondering what exactly we honour in education these days.

Do we honour influence? Access to Ministerial ears? The ability to shape policy from afar? The power to decide what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts? The ability to mould governments and narratives?

Because if that is the criteria, then perhaps the honours list is exactly right.

But if education is really about children, communities and public service, then I think I have a different honours list that I would like to share tonight.

My honours list begins with the teacher aide who spent twenty years helping children learn to communicate and will never have their name appear in a newspaper.

It includes the principal who sat through Waitangi Tribunal hearings because somebody needed to speak when others remained silent.

It includes those educators who fronted media interviews knowing there would be consequences for speaking honestly.

It includes those who submitted on legislation after long school days when nobody was paying them to do so.

It includes the members of the AEC who have spent countless voluntary hours reading consultation documents, attending meetings, writing submissions, recording podcasts and producing school briefs in their spare time; trying to ensure teachers still have a voice.

It includes educators who exposed things that were easier to ignore. People who asked awkward questions and followed the paper trails when others looked away.

The investigators.

The whistle-blowers.

The people who sat through OIA documents, curriculum drafts and consultation papers because democracy only works when somebody pays attention.

When somebody reads the fine print and attends the long and formal hearing.

When somebody asks the awkward question and just refuses to look away.

My list includes every teacher who stayed after school to ring a whānau.

Every SENCO trying to navigate impossible systems for children who need support. Every caretaker who quietly keeps a school functioning. Every RTLB carrying a caseload too large. Every courageous principal trying to protect staff from the latest initiative while still complying with it. Every classroom teacher who somehow manages to teach reading, mathematics, regulation, grief, friendship, resilience and hope before lunchtime.

Those are the people on my honours list.

The funny thing is they probably wouldn't accept a title. Most would be embarrassed by public recognition they would say they were simply doing their jobs. But that is exactly why I think they deserve it.

Education was never supposed to be about power.

It was supposed to be about service.

I think what unsettled me wasn't the recipients themselves. It was more the reminder of where influence sits in education.

The honours list tells us who society notices.

My list is for the people society relies upon.

Perhaps that is why so many educators looked at the honours list and felt unsettled. Not just because of who was on it. But because of who wasn't.

Because somewhere between the Beehive, the think tanks, the advisory groups, the curriculum rewrites and the policy announcements, we seem to have forgotten who actually carries education every single day.

The people who deserve honours are not the people with the loudest voices. Often they are the people who keep showing up. Year after year. Government after government. Curriculum after curriculum.

Carrying children.

Carrying communities.

Carrying hope and heart with every ounce of passion and dedication our tamariki deserve.

That is an honour.

The honours list released today may celebrate influence.

Mine however, celebrates service.

And if education has taught me anything in nearly three decades, it is that service will always outlast power.

Long after the titles are forgotten, the lives changed will remain.