Posts by Geoff Lealand
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I don't quite understand, if 25% leave NZ schools without a minimum NCEA Level 1, why blame should be placed on teachers. Surely, there must be other factors. How does this percentage compare with those who failed the School Cert hurdle?
If you work out the hourly rate of teacher salaries, it would come to diddley-squat. You would need to factor in a 8am to 4pm day for most + preparation + marking + Saturday sports + school productions + pastoral care. Don't bring up 'holidays' as most teachers I know spend much of such breaks in catch-up mode.
There may be more weight to the argument that some academics are paid in excess of their contribution. We have this thing called the 'academic year', which is essentially 2 X 12 weeks (or 24 weeks ) of teaching (not every day, of course); whilst the teacher 'year' runs from late Jan to early December, with considerably shorter non-teaching breaks. Teachers don't get funded to swan off to overseas conferences, nor get much entitlement to sabbatical periods.
This may sound a bit disloyal but I sometimes do get a bit cross with academic colleagues who complain about how 'over worked' they are!
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Fer sure, Craig. There are hundred of thousands and I meet some of them daily.
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The all-encompassing caution of teenage girls these days is, if something is 'dodgy' it is to be avoided. I want to give a lot of space for teens to make their own decisions (to 'self-monitor', so to speak) but, as a parent, you can't help feeling a little ambivalent. It is not so much the dubious advice in Girlfriend I object to, as the relentless drive to buy and consume, and to fit into proscribed notions of what teenage girls should look like.
I have expressed some of this ambivalence in my latest piece for kiwiboomers ("Good karma in Yokohama"--apologies to SJD!), commenting on how my 14 year old daughter returned from our Japan trip with a French maid's outfit.
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role, Rob, role (not 'roll')
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Shortland Street had an interesting plot-line on the modelling business last week, which might be worth a mention (bullying of underlings, the hedonism of 'the talent' etc).
Did anyone read the front page story about 'TV ads ARE louder!' in the Weekend Herald? My thoughts, as I scanned through the remainder of the newspaper, was that it was doing a fair amount of advertising shouting too, with page after page of full-page ads, with editorial content squeezed in there somewhere.
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Just ask your questions. I suspect many of us on this discussion don't really want your snide asides.
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just as a reminder that NZ popular music has a longer history than The Last Big Thing, I have just returned from a talk by Chris Bourke on "Blue Smoke Gets In Your Eyes". It was hellishly interested and will make for a great radio series.
He played the first version (1946) of "Blue Smoke" , recorded by a mobile recording unit in Hawera (my old home town), and was interesting to compare it with the 1948 version, which was a considerable hit in NZ.
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Sartre was probably anticipating the perils of economy class international travel with his "Hell is other people"..Whilst we are on the horrors of such experiences, can anyone tell me why, on the return leg from Narita to Auckland, why you have to go through the security process twice--once at Narita, and then again in transit at Kansai, when the JAL/ANZ stops, for some reason. Why also do those walk-through detectors seem to be differently calibrated ie no problem at Narita but a belt buckle at Kansai set off the alarm--which led to a rather incompetent frisking by two uniforms. It left me just a little enraged!
The airline has been rather unhelpful with this inquiry.
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Well,Mark. There must be some reason why you are here, unless you are some kind of masochist.
The only 'skew' I perceive in Public Address is towards informed debate and intelligent conversation.
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Great work! Like others, I suspect, PA has become an important part of my life. I have even recommended it to a stray MP or two I have come across.
Paul Smith is putting up a story about our Japanese adventures, on kiwiboomers.com, this week (May 15). Take a look if you are interested.