Category: Education
Poor test results and falling standards are symptoms that all is not well with the education system. They cast doubt on the radical reforms introduced by the previous Labour Government during its last term in office.
For many years as a practising teacher in New Zealand, I watched the gradual but tangible creep of Maori influence upon the NZ education system. ‘And what is wrong with that?’ the Maori educationists and culturally liberated activists, may cry. ‘Nothing at all’, I would reply, ‘so long as the same opportunity is offered to every other ethnic group in the country’.
After each general election, briefing papers are prepared by public agencies for the incoming government. They provide a snapshot of New Zealand. According to the State Services Commission, New Zealand’s government is bigger than ever before.
The July 3rd discharge without conviction of Korotangi Paki on charges of burglary, theft, and drink driving, on the grounds that he is the son of the Maori King, has caused widespread outrage.
When history is said to repeat itself, it is never for good reasons. George Bernard Shaw captured this when he said: “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”
The Nordic countries have reinvented themselves over the last two decades, and their progress is testimony to the value of proper reform. They faced up to the problems created by governments that had grown too big and entitlement programmes that had grown too generous, to find successful solutions that reduced the size of government and ‘set their entrepreneurs free’.
The New Zealand Labour Party has embraced the politics of diversity wholeheartly and with little self-criticism since the 1970s. This presentation explains the ‘cultural turn of the Left’ and its unintended and damaging consequences.
If history has anything to teach us, it’s that we should never take anything for granted. We need to be vigilant in protecting what’s good about our society. New Zealand has so much to be proud of. We have led the world by ensuring equality of all citizens before the law, introducing universal male and female sufferage, and we’ve largely had great and integrated race relations. So when the Ministry of Education starts demanding that schools give people of one ethnic descent superior rights to all others, the hackles ought to be rising.
The report by Fairfax media that Crown negotiators working for Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson on the Treaty settlement process have picked up million dollar fees shows the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry has become an insatiable gravy train not just for the iwi elite, but also for ex-politicians and the ‘in’ crowd. The 14-strong negotiating team has been paid a total of $5.5 million. Michael Dreaver, an Auckland consultant was the highest earner at $1.5m.
Andre Agassi dropped out of school in the 9th grade to pursue his tennis career. He turned professional at age 16 and went on to become a world champion. But he deeply regretted the fact that he didn’t have a quality education. This belief - that nothing has a greater impact on a child's life than the education they receive - led him to establish a charter school for underprivileged children in a disadvantaged area of his home-town of Las Vegas.
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