Teacher Bashing, Mayor Bashing — In an Election Year Social Media Can’t Be Trusted

by ELV

I’ve been sent screenshots from Auckland group pages this week. Feeds that suddenly have a lot to say about our schools, our teachers, and our people.

If you look at what is happening up north to Mayor Moko Tepania this event is not isolated.

It is not random. And it is not harmless. It is social media being used to shape perception.

FNDC Mayor Moko has been victimised. And I am proud he has stood up to the kind of rhetoric that leans into division, into race, into cheap shots designed to win votes.

It is not accidental that there is a will to make the brown people up north look biased, incompetent, or unable to carry out their roles “correctly”. That narrative has been built before and it is being built again. Make Northland look like it can’t cope. Make Māori leadership look unstable. Repeat it enough — and people start to believe it.

But while I know people like Moko will always find their voice — held by their people, grounded in who they are — something else is happening alongside it. Something a little more covert.

Most people understand that if you want to win an election in Aotearoa, you don’t start in the Far North. You start in Tāmaki Makaurau. That’s where the numbers are; what happens there matters greatly to any political party.

And what I’ve been shown is this.: Teacher and school bashing.

The anonymous post started as a simple question about science in primary schools.

Fair enough.

But what followed was not a balanced discussion. There were plenty of anonymous comments. Broad claims. Teachers not teaching. Schools ignoring the curriculum. Kids “mucking around all day”.

Hidden in the post were the words ‘why isn’t science taught as a regular structured subject?’

We all know Erica invested in science kits, and we all know her plan after structured Literacy mandates and structured maths roll outs is mandate structured science next…

The comment was supported with the usual Erica rhetoric that by the time the children get to year 9 and 10 they have limited scientific knowledge.

A broad claim begins an excuse to pile in and pile on.

In comes the National Standards support comment by another anonymous member 452.

Since National standards were scrapped apparently schools just ignore the curriculum. Followed by hail to bookshops for providing helpful science resource books from the UK and Australia. Followed up by a ‘well done’ for being a vigilant parent and how lucky we are that the next cohort of students won’t have to worry about this as it will all be ‘sorted’ soon. Parents must be vigilant of what teachers are doing in schools.

If that wasn’t enough to make my spider senses tingle, Anonymous member 593 chimes in with the perfect solution to the bashing of teachers and our awful schools. After being fed up with the poor diet of curriculum choices and time wasting teachers they sent their child to a (...wait for it...) Charter School where suddenly they are thriving — no more mucking around!

And then — that same anonymous comment gets lifted and shared by David Seymour as an example of what is wrong with our schools.

Fancy David Seymour finding such promotional gold — already packaged, already emotional, already pointing in exactly the direction he needs.

Just like that.

No context or balance. No acknowledgement that one anonymous comment is not evidence of a system failing.

And this is where it starts to feel the same.

Because just like the mayor bashing, this is about shaping perception. Not through outright lies. But through carefully chosen pieces of “truth” plonked and baited in all the right places.

Let me tell you what these teachers are busy actually doing while they aren’t teaching the right kind of science.

Teachers right now are being hit with a tsunami of change.

New Education Review Office reporting expectations. Structured literacy. Structured maths. Attendance pressure. Wellbeing needs that don’t switch off at 3pm.

And all of it sits inside a five-hour school day.

So yes.

Sometimes science doesn’t get a neat little 30-minute slot.

Because teachers are being asked to deliver an ever-growing list of knowledge, much of it heavily prescribed, within less and less space.

They are making calls every single day about what their learners need most.

They are adapting whilst trying to hold it all together.

That is not laziness. That is not failure. That is survival inside a system that won’t let them breathe long enough to question.

But that reality doesn’t make good political content, does it?

What does?

A single anonymous comment.

Lifted and shared. Used to celebrate the rise of charter schools.

And I’m sorry — but that is gross.

Because it is not honest. It is not fair on teachers. It is not fair on schools. And it is not fair on the people reading those feeds who think they are seeing the full picture.

Any politician — or anyone — using social media like this to shape perception should feel ashamed.

Just like those who have come for Moko should feel ashamed.

Because behind every one of those comments is a real classroom. A real teacher. Kids who are learning, growing, trying — in ways that don’t always fit neatly into a Facebook thread.

So before you believe what you are seeing — especially if you’re sitting in Auckland, being fed these narratives —

pause.

Ask yourself: Why this story? Why now? And who does it serve?

Because this is just influence.

And influence, left unchecked, becomes belief.