Category: Social Issues
School has always been, and is still, a means to an end. That end is the entry of emerging adults into the world of work – or rather, as is largely the case today, the transition to higher or further education leading on to a career track. Societies spend megabucks on schooling and have a right to expect a return, namely the production of young people with the cognitive skills and attitudes towards study and work that will turn them into productive citizens who will benefit society in return.
The whole thesis that there is a ‘sustainability’ crisis and that it requires urgent global attention, depends on a substructure of belief in such things as global warming, irreplaceable resource depletion ‘footprints’, and gathering problems of poverty and disease. All of these are, to a greater or lesser extent, disputable, and ought to be disputed, if unnecessary and counter-productive action is to be avoided.
Without a doubt, the welcome sound of the New Zealand National Anthem ringing out from the London Olympic Games rekindles that wonderful sense of pride in being a New Zealander. The Games serves to remind us of what a powerful motivating force competition is. It is the very thing that pushes the boundaries of human endurance and effort. How tragic that the guardians of our education system have progressively removed competition from our schools, when striving for success is such an important driver of achievement.
In 1996, the Adult Literacy in New Zealand survey of adults aged 16-65 found 66% of Maori and 41% of non-Maori were below the minimum level of literacy required to “meet the complex demands of everyday life and work.” A 2006 survey's results were no better: it found 43 per cent of adults with some sort of literacy issue, and half the population with numeracy difficulties.
On the afternoon of Monday, 13 June 2006 Auckland Police received a telephone call from a staff member of Kidz First Children’s Hospital, situated adjacent to Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu, advising that hospital staff were treating two seriously injured twin infants. Their names were Christopher Arepa Kahui and Cru Omeka Kahui. Police went immediately to the hospital to investigate the causes and circumstances of the twins’ injuries.
Immense intellectual, or at least mental, efforts have gone and continue to go into denying the obvious, that on the whole family stability is better for children than instability, and that not all forms of family, or perhaps I should say household, life are equal from the point of view of children’s welfare. The terrible saga of the Kahui twins is but another illustration of the obvious.
Poverty advocates are crying foul over the fact that the government is even raising the idea of linking the immunisation of children to benefit receipt, even though it is an established practice that works well in many other countries. This is a discussion that is taking place in the wider context of the government’s initiative to better protect vulnerable children. Requiring beneficiaries to immunise their children – unless they are opposed for conscience reasons - is surely part of their obligation as parents. Those who fail to do so are putting their children at risk.
The NZ Herald recently ran a poll asking whether National was right to use its veto to override Labour MP Sue Moroney's private member's bill to extend Paid Parental Leave (PPL) from 14 weeks to 6 months. After 16,000 votes were submitted, sixty percent of respondents had answered yes.
The reality is that the world is a far better place today than it was 50 years ago or even a few years ago - and it will be better still in the years to come. The technological and internet innovations that we are currently experiencing are only the starting point of a revolution that is now underway and is transforming our lives on a daily basis.
It’s an honour to share some thoughts with you, report on the NZ, Australian and US relationship and put it in a historic, then global and regional context. I do this with some trepidation. I spent the first forty years of my life trying to get into the media and have tried ever since I was appointed trying to keep out of the media.
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