Media coverage evoked images of scenes from Hollywood Westerns where townsfolk scuttle in fear when the bad guys ride down the main street. But the school closures didn’t cause much of a public stir, and why would they? Children being denied an education because a criminal gang has invaded their town is no longer regarded as out of the ordinary, still less outrageous. This is New Zealand in 2023, where the dysfunctional and dystopian are now routine.......The full article can be read on the Spectator.com HERE
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Two put of three students who do not achieve proficiency in reading will end up in prison or on welfare, future prison population is estimated by the number of reading failures in 10 year olds and about half the prison population is Maori.
We are now 27th in the PERLS international reading scores and have the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world, but in the middle of last century we were top. Those were, also the days of leaving your house and car unlocked.
I am not insisting our catastrophic basic education failure is the only cause of gang numbers, ram -raids and burglaries but it is certainly a contributor.
Gaynor has called it right, but it starts earlier - in the home. But this ‘colonisation’ nonsense is just that. Individuals born in the last sixty years haven't been 'colonised', and what about those 501's that spent all, other than their birth or first few months/years of life, otherwise living in Australia - where they were arguably the colonisers? And why was this not a prevalent issue from before 1840 to about 1960, through the period when colonisation was at its peak? It’s not colonisation – it’s urbanisation and cultural diffusion, and the fact that Maori, especially more recently have poorer, typically very dysfunctional family existences that have played second-fiddle to tribalism and their inherent “Once were Warriors” warfare mentality. Hence, why they now have the worst truancy levels and readily adopt the black American gang speak etc. It's BS, and it's long overdue time that we dismissed this ‘colonisation’ excuse and purged everyday society of these misfits; stopped incentivising indiscriminate breeding; confiscated all ill-gotten gains; and required people to take more personal responsibility, with overall a much tighter control over welfare. These people need, first and foremost: education, jobs and role models - not te ao Maori, matauranga, and te reo, and most certainly not Harleys. As that old hair shampoo add went, 'it won't happen overnight', but (with the right policies) it (can, must and) will happen.
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