Student priorities

Posted on May 20, 2012 by chrismiller

Apparently some people are shocked, shocked! that students are still stubbornly taking arts degrees. Philosophy and religious studies more popular than chemistry? Say it ain’t so! Why doesn’t anyone tell these children that no one’s going to hire them?

Interestingly, at the end of the article they quote a psychology major who wants to get into HR but is having a tough time. Personally, if I was hiring for HR, psychology would be right up there in the fields I’d want a potential employee to have qualifications in. It’s hardly the only one like that in the arts, either – I’ve had plenty of people tell me that my Māori Studies/Social Policy degree should do well for me, particularly in the public or charitable sectors, which… is basically where I want to work anyway. Massey classes Emergency Services Management, Development Studies, Geography and Rehabilitation Studies as part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Do we really think those areas aren’t important?

‘Auckland University of Technology vice-chancellor Derek McCormack said arts students learnt vital skills, including essay writing, analysis and communication skills. “What you are learning is not just narrow skills for a job, you’re learning transferable skills for a career, and that requires an ability to access and interpret data.”‘

That paragraph, to me, is important. Because it’s true. Pretty much every career is going to require you to be able to interpret and analyse and to communicate your results. They just… apparently want you to learn that by yourself, outside of school, where there’s no way of showing how well you’ve done at it.

Personally I don’t think the problem is kids with the wrong priorities in picking study. I think the problem is a society with the wrong priorities in what it places value on. Maybe big business needs to take a look at what students find so compelling about the arts before it starts spouting off about what they think kids should be doing with their education.

The value of our oceans

Posted on May 20, 2012 by chrismiller

“One of the largest convictions the southern fisheries have seen.” That’s how Gregory James Fife’s sentence was described by the Southland Times.

Apparently we’re supposed to be impressed at the $20,000 fine he’s been told to pay along with serving 200 hours of community service. I gotta say, I’m not. He was convicted of eight charges of making false records in fishing returns and one of failing to furnish a return. Basically, he was lying about where he’d gotten his quota of blue cod from – and due to the way fish populations are measured, this was giving an inaccurate picture of how much were out there, making the numbers look healthier than they really are. That means that when it came time to review quotas, a higher one may have been placed than the fish populations could actually handle.

Several months ago I saw a set of two maps showing density of fish populations in the worlds oceans at two points in time – one in the past, and one today. The modern fishing industry has had a huge impact. There are species of fish and other marine mammals critically endangered or even extinct that once were incredibly plentiful. This is why we have quotas – they are the lowest possible level of effort we can put into preserving fish stock.

For $20,000 to be one of the largest convictions in the southern fisheries is ridiculous. 200 hours of community service to go with it is a joke. We need to be sending a clear message that messing with this system is not to be tolerated. It’s good that they caught this guy, but the penalty for this sort of crime needs to be higher – preferably high enough to put anyone off even attempting it.

But then, our coastal waters are hideously under-regulated, with ships out there that don’t meet basic safety standards, crews of slaves and a Minister of Labour who doesn’t care, and the possibility of ships carrying yellowcake through our ports that we don’t even have the ability to test the water for should something happen to one of them. Given that we’re an archipelago nation, it’s either tragedy or a joke.

Canada, why?

Posted on May 18, 2012 by chrismiller

Under new legislation in Quebec, if ten or more people are gathered together in a public space, it may be illegal.

Special education bill 78 outlines the exact situations applicable, sort of, by stating that “a person, body or group that is the organiser of a demonstration involving ten people or more to take place in a venue that is accessible to the public” must make their plans known to the police at least eight hours beforehand. While it defines all sorts of other things, it doesn’t define what a demonstration is. Obviously there are problems here. Besides the extreme restrictions on the right to protest, it’s the nature of protests to grow – what if you only intend it to be a few people, but more join? What about spontaneous demonstrations, e.g., in response to a speech? You’re also liable if you join a protest without taking reasonable steps to make sure procedure has been followed, meaning you have to track down the organiser and ask them – I can only assume you’re allowed to take them at their word!

What’s more, you’re also guilty of the offence if, by act or omission, you incite or encourage or induce someone to commit the offence. What does it mean to incite someone to do it by omission? Are you obligated to tell them not to? Are you obligated to inform them of their duty to abide by the bill? It doesn’t say.

As for punishment, for a single person it’s $1-5k. If you’re any kind of important person in a student association, a federation of associations or an association of employees, or if you’re a senior officer or representative of an institution, it goes up to $7-35k. And if you’re actually a group yourself, eg if it’s decided that the bill was breached by “XY Student Association”, it’s $25-125k.

Oh, and you know what else? Institutions (eg universities) must provide information to the Minister of Education when asked for, for the purposes of this Act, or they’ll also be subject to that $25-125k fine. As will any institution who does not report a “situation” (a demonstration that blocks access to classes or similar) to the Minister immediately, or who, if they didn’t do so because a student association was blocking them from doing so, doesn’t cut that student association off from all support and services. Etc etc. There’s a couple of other provisions like that, that involve organisations being forced to stop supporting each other.

How’s that there democracy for you, huh?

Bad education

Posted on May 17, 2012 by chrismiller

A couple of days ago on Twitter I was talking about a Scholastic-Gates survey (the article is also in my Diigo bookmarks and you can go directly to it with this handy link) asking teachers about their work conditions. It’s a US survey, but the results I think are applicable in pretty much any Western country, and with the way National is sniffing at the leavings of the US it’s even more relevant here – especially now we have announcements of larger class sizes and performance-based pay.

So what did it say, for those who don’t feel like reading the whole article? Well, the things the teachers thought were the most important for improving student outcomes were these:

Family involvement and support (84%). High expectations for all students to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies of failure (71%). Fewer students per class (62%). Effective and engaged principals (57%).

Not that this wasn’t just the number of teachers who said yes to each option – this was the number who “very strongly agreed”, meaning the numbers who thought they would help to some degree were even higher. The things ranked as least important were:

A longer school day (6%). Monetary rewards for teachers based on a) the whole school’s performance (8%) or b) individual teacher’s performances (9%). A longer school year (10%).

Almost all the teachers hated standardised tests, with percentages who strongly agreed that they were important often in the single figures, and while they also hated teacher evaluations that were similarly standardised, like checklists or purely by pupil scores, they were quite happy with evaluations that actually looked at what they did in the classroom, talked to them, and were run by professionals.

And what did they say would keep them in the profession? Well, it wasn’t merit pay. It was pretty obvious things to anyone who knows anything about teaching, actually – better support, more non-teaching hours (to do things like planning the curriculum, marking assignments and working with other teachers), more family involvement and more help for students with problems (eg behaviour or disability).

The survey also found that, on average, teachers worked for upwards of ten hours a day (it lists two figures – 10h40m and 11h25m)!

So what can we take from this here in New Zealand? Well, Treasury’s recommendation to apply larger class sizes is obviously going in completely the wrong direction. Even when I was last in high school ten years ago, classes were often higher than 30 students until sixth or seventh form (Years 12-13), about 28-30 when I was in primary school, and from anecdotal evidence they seem to be in about the low thirties now. The recommended ratio will be going up to these figures:

Year 1: 1:15 (teacher:student)
Year 2-3: 1:23
Year 4-10: 1:27.5
Year 11-13: 1:17.5

You have to wonder, if the recommended ratios are so much lower than actual class sizes, what will happen with them increasing? One prediction I’ve seen is that 90% of schools will lose at least one teacher, which is about 1800 jobs gone. Hekia Parata reckons that “the changes were critical in helping to increase productivity.” That’s like the idea that increasing your work day increases productivity – you’re working longer so you’ll do more work, right? Except that’s not true. Past eight hours, you start to lose productivity at an alarming rate, so much so that it would be more productive to cut everyone’s hours back down to 40. There’s an article on that here. There is only one teaching style that works with a large class size, whether it be 35 students or 350 – lectures. I had one teacher who did lectures at high school. They were very occasional and he only did them for the senior students in a class that was mostly full of future uni goers (Classical Studies). He was a truly excellent teacher who was preparing us for the learning style we’d have to adjust to at university because he knew we could handle it.

Do we really want to be subjecting ten year olds to lectures, though? Does anyone really think that would be productive?

Education is not something you can do on a production line. There are at least four main learning styles (audio, kinesthetic, visual diagrams, visual text) and endless combinations and sub-styles. I’m something of a spatial thinker and I tend to a mixture of visual diagrams, text and kinesthetic, while I’m terrible at audio – I can only manage to listen for a few minutes before speech just becomes white noise and I have to actively focus back on what the lecturer is saying. Doing that for an hour is exhausting, which is why even if I do eventually move to Palmerston North I’ll probably remain an extramural student. Teachers rarely had to give me extra attention because I really liked to learn and found my own ways around it, but that’s always going to only be a minority of students. Especially when they’re young, kids need individualised attention so they can, at the very least, learn how to learn.

In the meantime, teachers remain too poorly paid for the work they do. Increased class sizes will make that work harder, and increased qualifications required will mean higher levels of debt by the time they start working – if they can even get through the system with the new student allowance restrictions. This is really not the way forward.

“Awkward”

Posted on May 15, 2012 by chrismiller

A note, first, that this post is going to be discussing domestic abuse and societal attitudes.

On the way into Te Awa o Te Ora where we do our flax weaving today, the radio was tuned to Mai FM. The DJs were discussing an upcoming show in Las Vegas where Chris Brown and Rihanna will both be performing, describing it as “awkward”. What else is “awkward”, apparently, is that Chris Brown has recently released a track with lyrics saying “Don’t [eff] with my old [B-word] / It’s like a bad fur / Every industry [N-word] done had her / Shook the tree like a pumpkin just to smash her / [B-word] is breaking codes, but I’m the password.” After this, Rihanna unfollowed him on Twitter, and he responded by doing the same and tweeting, “Assumptions! I didn’t say any names so if u took offense to it then it’s something you feel guilty about.” (from here.)

They went on to talk about how Rihanna is rumoured to be releasing a track soon with some blistering words directed at him, and how it was probably going to be a really epic zing, because women can hurt men with what they say than men can hurt women [with what they say]. You know, it might just be me, but I’m not sure what she could say that would hurt worse than having to listen to him apparently brag about how he beat and choked her to the point that she passed out, while yelling that he would kill her, in a song that’s probably going to do extremely well and be played on the radio a hell of a lot.

Actually awkward: really fucking clueless cis guys talking about things they really shouldn’t be talking about.

Insurance, investment, insanity

Posted on May 15, 2012 by chrismiller

(I use ‘insanity’ with a touch of irony.)

A press release on Scoop informs the public of the appointment of a Work and Income Board that will oversee the new investment approach to welfare. The focus of it is heavily insurance and liability-focused and the past working histories of the members are… somewhat concerning, from the point of view of someone with a disability. As is this quote:

“Members of the Board have experience in the insurance and finance industries which already use investment approaches to reduce future liability.”

This is the insurance industry that just plain won’t cover anything that will cost too much. Pre-existing health condition? If you can get coverage, it will cost you your firstborn and possibly a limb. Live in Christchurch? You’re lucky if you can get that doesn’t even cover earthquake damage. “Reducing future liability” is handy industry code for “only taking on the most profitable clients”. Their liability is your insurance payouts. Their liability is you getting cancer, or having your house broken into, or someone smashing into your car. And while it’s one thing when a private company operates like that, it’s another thing entirely when the social welfare system does it. They won’t be likely to get away with dumping the least profitable clients in the same way insurance does, but you can bet that whatever they do come up with will be just as bad, because for a service that exists to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable people in society, their liability is you not wanting to starve to death.

Then there’s the breakdown of the six members of the board. The chair is Paula Rebstock, who’s a member of the ACC board, chair of the Insurance and Savings Ombudsman Commission, and was the chair of the Welfare Working Group. Remember that? It was the one that did the report with a whole heap of right wing austerity punish-the-poor based recommendations for “fixing” welfare. Overwhelmingly people and groups who actually give a shit about the poor disagreed entirely with its findings. It was very much a case of “here are the solutions, where are the problems to pair them with?” One other member of the board was also a member of that group, Kathryn McPherson. She’s also a Professor of Rehabilitation and, along with Dr Ian McPherson, consists of half of the medical expertise of the board. Ian McPherson is the CEO of Southern Cross Healthcare and got a medical degree from Otago. The other three board members are all business types.

You know what I don’t see there? Anyone who deals with permanently disabled people. It’s all medical focus, rehabilitation focus, accident focus. Just yesterday in the hansards from the Human Rights Bill 1993 I came across a quote that I was compelled to share on Twitter, something roughly along the lines of, “Someone who is deaf is not sick. Someone who is in a wheelchair is not sick.” That was from December 1992, lauding the decision to give disability status its own category in the anti-discrimination legislation rather than classifying it as a sub-status of health. Many, possibly most though I don’t know the statistics, disabled people cannot be rehabilitated. They’re not sick. They’re not going to regrow limbs, regain their sight, reverse their degenerative condition. The support they need is often very different from the support someone needs who’s broken both legs in a car accident, come down with scarlet fever, etc. Except for those who have degenerative conditions, a lot of it is set up and then simply ongoing maintenance – first making sure their accommodation is suitable and they have the equipment they need (as technology progresses these may of course change), and then just… maintaining.

This board is completely inappropriate for a social welfare system. It makes me glad as hell I’m not on the sickness benefit at the moment.

History repeats itself

Posted on May 14, 2012 by chrismiller

In one of my posts the other day I mentioned asking Tau Henare how he’d vote on marriage equality. I did eventually get a response – first he said it should be pretty obvious, and when I pointed out that if it was I wouldn’t have asked he said to have a look at his other tweets and people should just marry who they want. So I THINK he’s saying he’d vote yes, but on the other hand he also talks a lot about how marriage equality isn’t a big deal.

Anyway, I was curious so I looked up how he’d voted on Civil Unions (he didn’t – he wasn’t in Parliament at the time), and from there tracked back to the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986, where there were quite a few familiar names even twenty years ago. For example, our good friend John Banks voted against both of those things. Next I clicked on him to see how he’d voted on other conscience votes. Of the six listed, he’d been Against on four and not present for two. Interestingly one of the ones he’d voted Against was the 1993 Human Rights Act, and when I looked at the breakdown to that I saw that he was one of only four who’d voted Against (all National MPs), though there seemed to be a remarkably high number listed as not present.

When I mentioned this on Twitter, someone suggested I look up the Hansard to see why. The most likely explanation was, of course, that this was the Act that prohibited discrimination against them icky queers, but I decided to do so anyway. The public Hansards on the Parliament website don’t go back as far as 1993, so I went to the Massey site instead to find an academic database I could log into with my student ID – because hey, this is totally relevant to my Social Policy minor!

After some trial and error I found it. Lots and lots and lots of pages of speech transcripts from MPs debating the bill, beginning in late 1992. And it’s fascinating reading. The sexual orientation provision was definitely not the only controversial part – HIV status also had a lot of furious debate (sadly still relevant today, here’s a nod to the 4 year old in Whangarei) and one of Helen Clark’s speeches mentions some provisions that were mysteriously taken out in the two years since an equivalent bill was introduced in Labour’s final year before the 1990 elections that brought National back into power with a regime some of us remember a little bitterly. These include membership of a trade union and pregnancy.

I quoted some pieces on Twitter, but even among the first few pages I’ve read there’s been some real zingers, like this from Lianne Dalziel:

“We were told last year that the Bill would be in the House before Christmas. The Minister failed to tell us to which Christmas he was referring.”

There’s also a fair bit of calling out of National for not including all the provisions:

“I am concerned that the Bill could have included the wider grounds prohibited for discrimination. I do not believe that the Associate Minister of Health, the Minister of Consumer Affairs, should have been placed in the position that she has been placed in by having to introduce a supplementary order paper. The precedent was set by the former Minister of Justice, Bill Jeffries, when he introduced the wider grounds by which discrimination was prohibited, even though he personally was not going to support each and every one of those grounds.”

Again from Dalziel, though Helen Clark (Deputy Leader of the Opposition, bless!) said much the same thing. And directed at John Banks:

“When the Minister of Police loosely refers to the decent society, he may do well to recall that a decent society is based on tolerance and understanding. Prejudicial comments that have come from the mouth of that Minister have done nothing to engender tolerance and understanding in our community.”

At any rate I’m going to continue to read through these at my leisure. It’s a little sad that twenty years on from when these speeches were made we’re still experiencing similar issues – though of course now it’s not anti-discrimination legislation, it’s marriage equality. One can only hope that that will right itself soon.

Another hit to the wallet

Posted on May 14, 2012 by chrismiller

Word is getting out that a new feature of the 2012 Budget will be a change in the charges of subsidised prescriptions, going from $3 to $5. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic that we get these subsidies – I have one that’s $150 every three months, one of my Twitter friends mentioned that she has one that’s $85 a month – but it’s still an added cost to add to all the other added costs this Budget is bringing, and it’s another one that’s going to predominantly affect the poor. The people who have the most prescriptions to pay for are, generally, the disabled, and the disabled are disproportionately low income with high expenses.

Cheers, John.

Framing the issue

Posted on May 10, 2012 by chrismiller

There’s a lot of talk today about marriage equality. Obama made a speech supporting it, but also supporting state’s rights. David Shearer also supports it, but qualifies that he’d have to look at the wording of the legislation, presumably to make sure no one sneaks in an amendment to make murder legal or something.

Then there’s all the people talking about this, and the people talking about how people are talking about this. It’s the latter that actually annoys me the most.

Obama’s gotten quite a bit of support, and also some people pointing out the irony of a black President supporting state’s rights on a civil rights issue. (Incidentally, Fox’s original headline announced that Obama had declared a war on marriage, then removed that part.) Shearer’s also gotten some support, and also some people questioning his need to qualify his support.

The rhetoric now is that the angry hordes are lambasting Shearer for his wording while no one gives a fuck that John Key is a homophobic tool, or that Obama’s getting a million high fives for a theoretical stance but Shearer’s getting told off for wanting marriage equality in practice.

I’ve made a few comments to various people that haven’t had replies – firstly that it’s a lot more politically dangerous to support marriage equality in the States (though I still think the state’s rights argument is bullshit, it ought to be federal), secondly that anyone who thinks John Key didn’t get much criticism doesn’t know nearly enough gay people, and thirdly, when Tau Henare was saying that it should be a conscience vote and that he’s sure it will happen, I asked him how he’d vote.

Further comments that I haven’t made on Twitter but will now: I have not seen a single person actually angry at Shearer. Not even really annoyed. I’ve seen people pointing out that he shouldn’t need to qualify it, that if he wrote the legislation he wouldn’t need to eyeball it, that presumably he reads all legislation before voting on it and why is marriage equality any different? Apparently in the world of some commentators, this constitutes an angry horde.

Even if that were true, though, here’s something I’ve learned from, you know, being LGBT: people who support you are more likely to listen to your criticism. When I call John Key a homophobic tool, no matter how polite I am about it, I don’t actually expect him to go “Wow, you’re right, I’m going to reverse my position completely!” I’d like him to. I’d love him to, in fact. But it’s just not going to happen. But when I ask Shearer* why he needs to qualify his support by saying he’d need to read the legislation, there’s a much better chance that he’ll think about it and go, “Yeah, that’s true, actually.”

* Not that I, personally, actually get to ask him anything. As party leader I don’t think he’s very active on Twitter and he certainly doesn’t read my blog.

So no, I’m not actually going to give completely proportionate intensity of responses. I’m going to put the effort where it’s most effective. I will be angry about John Key being a homophobic tool, but I’m not going to devote hundreds of lengthy posts to it just so I can justify calling out a left-wing leader on qualifying their support with something so absolutely obvious as “I’d have to read the legislation.”

And anyone who thinks calling out Shearer on this is an expression of uppity queers being uppity seriously needs a reality check.

Culture shock/eugenics

Posted on May 10, 2012 by chrismiller

Yeah, I’m still on this contraception thing. I’ve figured out how to phrase something else that was bugging me about it, helped by reading some other people’s posts, in particular one about the expectations of when one should start a family.

We all know that Māori and Pacific Islanders are disproportionately represented among the poor, right? Like, this isn’t something I need to go and find the stats for? From memory, over half the parents and carers on the DPB are brown. Because I’m not I won’t get too in depth about this – that should be for someone who grew up in that culture – but from everything I’ve learned, in Māori and Pacifika society, children are really important.

Now, National likes to talk about intergenerational reliance on benefits and getting people into work and blah blah. The thing is, when everyone around you is poor and no one in your family has ever been anything but poor, expectations are different. In my family, it was generally accepted that we’d all finish high school and go straight to university. In a poorer family, that doesn’t happen – the financial support isn’t there, the tradition isn’t there, etc. And because of racism, classism and similar societal attitudes, the kids have probably been going to school somewhere where they’re not given career counseling and uni information packets and everything like they are at better schools. It’s quite likely that school has been something you do until you’re old enough not to, and that that’s the message they’ve gotten not only from their friends, but their teachers and other school staff. (Incidentally, the Māori girl I went to the family group conference for hasn’t been at school for the last three years. She’s 15. Yeah.)

Basically, if they weren’t on the benefit, or weren’t relying on others because they didn’t qualify for the benefit despite being unemployed, they’d probably be in shitty jobs that didn’t pay much more than the benefit does anyway.

So, now, National’s saying, well hey, we’ll give you free contraception so you can wait to have kids until you’re off the benefit! And that’s all very well (except in the ways it isn’t), but when exactly is that supposed to be? What, they get a job, they’re earning a whole $50-100 more a week or whatever, then now they can have kids… but because it’s a shitty job they don’t necessarily have the benefits and job security to actually keep it when they need to start taking time off around birth or when they need to deal with sick kids. Yeah, everyone is supposed to get maternity leave and sick days, but they don’t exactly have much recourse if their bosses dick them over. So once they decide to have kids suddenly they’re that much more likely to just end up back on a benefit.

Going back to what I said about kids being important. Low income people aren’t stupid. They know their job prospects suck. They know they’re not going to university. They’re not in the position where it’s better to wait until you’re educated and established before you start a family. So for young women who’ve grown up in a culture where babies are one of the most important things you can do with your life, who know they’re not going to distinguish themselves by becoming CEOs or whatever, having a family is something they can do. And sending such an explicit message that women on benefits are not supposed to have babies is… kind of worrying, with all this context. Because social eugenics isn’t new to New Zealand – we’ve been doing it since white people got here. White families are desirable. Brown families aren’t. We’ve had several different ways of encouraging this, from tax cuts and perks that you could only get by living in a very Anglicised way, to policy that Māori only received a certain percentage of the benefits that Pākehā were entitled to, and of course the notorious land confiscations so it could be parceled up and handed out to homesteaders. Now it’s contraception targeted at a specific group of people that is disproportionately brown and who are extremely unlikely to be able to claw their way out of poverty due to National’s economic management.

Let’s face it – even if it’s not the intention, making sure no one on a benefit has babies means a lot less Māori being born suddenly. It doesn’t actually mean that the would-be parents are instead improving their lives, because under a right-wing government, there’s no where to go but down.