Posts by Paul Williams
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Yes Warratahs - iconic Wellington band around for ever, obviously pre-dating the more recent trend to promote Kiwi national identity through culture otherwise they would have been the Pohutukawas, not a mispelling of a similar Australian tree.
I remember them well now - their hit Hands of My Heart springs immediately to mind. How quickly I've forgotten!
(Incidentally - for those who have been out of the country for a while - the last Labour government was responsible for both the conscious promotion of national identity through arts and culture and the buying back into public ownership of the Interislander ferries. They belong to us now.)
I left in 2002 - this strategy had begun but possibly hadn't yet had the full impact. I have a good friend who sends me stuff I'd not otherwise hear and I used to stream bFM often now I tend to listen to TripleJ if I'm not listening to ABC news. I still lament however, that NZFirst didn't really push Youth Radio when Deb Morris was Minister. I suspect she did her best but.
It's fantastic to know that the government's push of NZ talent is working though. Wellington still seems to have lots of good live venues - something sadly lacking in Sydney I should note - and the NZ bands touring Australia are consistently good.
Thanks again for the reminder of the Warratahs... I've realised a gap in my collection though as they don't even feature on Nature's Best!
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outside old St Pauls have been stunning. For some reason the best pohutukawa displays come out just as Wellington has emptied out for the holidays. But Scorching Bay on Boxing Day was glorious - blue sky,white sand, aqua sea full of swimmers, magnificent scarlet trees among the green along the hills, pleasantly hot sun, lots of families picnicing.
Sniff! Pictures please Hilary?
Then the white ferry came round the point and you could almost hear the Warratahs singing.
The Wa(r)ratahs?
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Sydney's hot, hotter today (Boxing Day) than Christmas Day and so the Test is particularly popular. My wife's family are over from NZ which is great for all, particularly my youngest who's entirely spoiled - this Christmas she's 3 and a 1/2 so the Christmas experience is particularly intense.
I miss the Pohutukawa, tui and other fauna. I have wonderful memories of Pohutukawa blooms all across Mount Victoria, Wellington. I miss my family in Auckland too. It gets simultaneously harder and easier to be away from home - more and more friends in Sydney have young families like us and provide a strong sense of community.
Although we'd love to get away, the thought of Sydney less a good proportion of the usual population is appealing. We'll go to Moonlight Cinema, the Zoo and some further way parks and not have to content with huge traffic delays.
Merry Christmas and NY's too all. PublicAddress is a regular and much loved part of my connections with Aotearoa and beyond and I hope all who read/comment here enjoy whatever break they manage. Particular thanks to Russell for creating and sustaining a vibrant, friendly and incredibly informative space.
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Testing in schools. Any teacher worth a damn tests the appropriate kids regularly to spot weaknesses in their teaching.
Ben, agreed. What if the testing is so pervasive that it crowds out the enjoyment of learning? A structured classroom is essential, a curriculum too, but how would we feel if our kids came home devoid of enthusiasm and bored because their interests were relegated by the all consuming need to do another practice test? Realistically, this bill will reward teachers and schools that elevate test results above all other considerations.
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When I mentioned to her the success of the herceptin lobby, she said it had already been noted and was very much being taken into account.
That's the thing about this situation, there's no doubt in my mind that funding longer/more Herceptin has real merit, but I'm not a clincian and I don't know the competing interests. What price populism then? Cancer sufferers should like Key, but not diabetics?
I recall the working over that Cunliffe got when he said the buck stopped with him, does it now with Key?
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We'd love to send our little freethinker to a more kid-centred school, if only a) we could afford it and b) I wasn't heavily swayed by Sandra Tsing Loh's eloquent argument that the only thing that can save public schools is an army of pissed off, mouthy, professional-class parents who are mad as hell and won't take it any more.
Great links, thanks. Quite a force of nature!
You might be interested to know that over 50 percent of secondary school students are enrolled in private schools in NSW. Clearly they didn't follow her prescription, or rather they're still on the upswing where public subsidies for schools fees make them affordable for a while (like the frog slowing cooking in the saucepan).
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Bart said:
Cynical nasty answer is, the business round table wants standard exam grades so they can exclude people from the workforce based on those grades.
I don't know what the NZBR want, but BusinessNZ is a strong supporter of NCEA. I can't recall NZBR saying much about assessment recently, Norman LaRocque (who used to be their adviser) was big on vouchers, but I can't recall his views about assessment. I can't see the point in excluding lots of folk, until recently there was a major skill shortage so having 'competent' workers was pretty important.
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It's so dull, so pointless! So trivialising, so excruciating, and so entirely unrelated to how kids think, how they learn, how they are engaged, what they need to know, what they want to know.
Jolisa, I'm really saddened by the story you've just recounted. I despair of the testing obession for all the reasons you've just listed. There's more than enough of it in NSW, but fortunately not as much as you've just described.
The testing is displacing teaching; the creative, spontaneous stuff that flows from working out a kid's interests and constructing learning opportunities around them. It's why Steiner schools are so popular, despite being quite structured in their own ways. The centrality of curriculum and assessment have ceased to be proxy measures and become absolute ones - standard, normative benchmarks that kids must meet at specific ages.
I fear National will disappoint their supporters. I agree we ought to be worried about the "significant minority of kids" who leave school without NCEA 1, but I note the MoE BIM focused on improved and more innovative teaching, not more testing.
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MMP flexibility ... here's the latest twist.
The Bail Amendment Bill has passed its first reading. The Labour opposition voted in favour (not that unusual), but - here's the thing - the Maori Party voted against.
The Associate Minister of Corrections is co-leader of the Maori Party. So Dr Pita Sharples is responsible for - and must publicly support - government policy on prisons, but is opposed to the government's policy on who has to be in them.
It's Winston's China FTA contortions, all over again.
Couldn't be, could it? Surely then, the sky must be falling?
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Having now read the Education Amendment bill, I can guess at least one reason for urgency; it avoids hearing the Education Department's advice. It is of course the Minister's perogative to introduce policy/legislation, but to introduce policy/legislation absent any official advice is generally risky.
It's clear that National have tapped into a rich vein of concern about educational standards. I don't understand why there's such malcontent, it seems out of all proportion to school performance as measured by international studies, but I doubt this bill will achieve much. I suspect in a year's time few people will have been issued fines, fewer still will have paid them and the performance of the 'tail' will still be lagging. I wonder then what National's supporters will say?
This is the change the country voted for?