I’m of dinosaur age and did 18 year old compulsory military
training (CMT) in 1950s. Initially reluctant on entering, I soon realised
and observed this was great for youngsters, dissolving arrogance in some
entrants but importantly for all, developing skills and building self esteem
and respect for others.
It instilled self esteem and made for better
apprentice citizens and we were physically fit.
Why not reinstate CMT but adapt it to be like an Outward Bound course?
There are a multitude of tasks that trainees
could undertake, tasks which bureaucracies seem unable to cope with. I think of
the inept Department of Conservation and the need to maintain tracks and huts
on public land, combat the invasion of wilding pines which DOC has sat on its
hands over, the waste left after clear felling of pines which could be
collected and cut into firewood for needy families and pensioners and a host of
restoration projects of wetlands and native trees.
Along the way trainees - both male and female
- would be taught firearm skills and safety and respect for firearms, instead
of the phobic fear that politicians and even the prime minster seem to
have.
Teach youngsters trapping of possums and the
utilisation of the resource for meat and fur. Trap predators instead of
government’s current use of aerially spreading toxic, ecosystem poisons.
Teach fishing and bushcraft skills - and more
outdoor related education.
Okay diminish the military aspect today but run it on lines of
Outward Bound’s outdoors training, teaching outdoor and survival skills,
developing skills from carpentry and mechanics to gardening etc., and
especially doing community work for needy older or disabled folk.
Many of today’s youth need help. Indeed there’s a solid case to
have an Outward Bound styled youth training compulsory for male and
female youngsters.
Stifling Discussion
Dumbing down discussion as Police Minister Ginny Anderson and the
Labour/Greens government have done for political expediency reasons, will not
help troubled youth.
It’s irresponsible of government MPs to play political games and
sweep New Zealand’s troubled teenage generation under the carpet.
In
February last year NewstalkZB reported New Zealand had the highest death rate
for teenagers and young people among 19 of the world's developed, wealthy
countries.
“It
also ranks poorly in terms of adolescent suicide, pregnancies and deaths
related to cancer and respiratory illness,” according to British
healthcare think tank Nuffield Trust.
Neuroscience
educator Nathan Wallis told NewstalkZB’s Kerre McIvor that the results were
concerning.
"We've
got this idea that New Zealand is this wonderful, clean, green, beautiful
nation that is a wonderful place to raise children, so this paints a different
picture.”
We
should be encouraging young New Zealanders into the outdoors. But sadly
government priorities and policies don’t give incentive but even spawn
disincentives by way of policies. One impediment to access to the outdoors is
increasing foreign and corporate ownership of New Zealand farms resulting in
locked gates in contrast to once when family farms willingly gave access.
Dying
Rivers
Rivers
that youngsters once swam and fished in, have had flows depleted by irrigation
for corporate dairying. In turn, nitrates and other pollution have fouled water
quality.
Alarmingly
the majority of NZ’s lowland rivers are rated unfit for swimming.
New
Zealanders are not getting outdoors. Young New Zealanders are losing their
connection with the outdoors while youth obesity, mental health and suicide
rates are unacceptably high for a country of just 5 million people.
For
youngsters the outdoors used to be a readily available indispensable
class-room. The sweet success of catching a trout or perhaps a kahawai,
shooting a rabbit, climbing a mountain or canoeing a river were personal
achievements which importantly built self-esteem in youngsters.
Besides
tramping, fishing and hunting encourage observation, analytical reasoning and a
respect for Nature. And often a lesson was that to achieve in the outdoors, you
have to sweat and slog it out. Work ethic.
Egalitarian
In
New Zealand’s egalitarian society, anyone can fish or hunt.
It
was a legacy the first European settlers instilled into the new colony in order
to escape the feudal system of Britain where for example, the best trout
fishing, deerstalking or pheasant shooting is the preserve of the wealthy
minority.
In
effect, in New Zealand the kid down the street may go trout fishing on equal
terms and rights as the city’s top solicitor, doctor, baker and the candlestick
maker or even the Governor General or Prime Minister. Indeed at
least two former Prime Ministers have been keen fishermen. The late Jack
Marshall a National government PM, was a very keen trout fisherman. The much
respected Labour government PM Norman Kirk was a hunter in his younger days and
an ardent fisherman.
New
Zealand could do with a few more practical keen fishing-hunting persons - male
and female - in Parliament.
A
Horizon survey of sporting participation rates in 2012 showed fishing
had more than five times more people participating than rugby. Twenty-six
percent enjoyed fishing while just five percent played rugby.
Yet
in economic terms, recreational fishing stimulates over a billion
dollars a year in economic activity.
Governments’
Ignorance
The
list goes on and on, where government out of ignorance, have let the public and
particularly youngsters down by policies allowing the despoiling of the
outdoors.
The
solution to helping young Kiwis out of their predicament is a recognition of
the priceless value of the outdoors whether it be fishing, hunting, tramping or
other recreation, to youngsters. Youth training is a must.
However from once being an
outdoor-minded society, New Zealanders have become sedentary, stressed,
uncertain and often lost. The youth statistics mirror that.
Today’s
youth are tomorrow’s adult citizens.
Investing
in the well-being of youth makes for a better society in the years ahead.
Chris Hipkins and Ginny Anderson need to heed the dire statistics about New Zealand’s youth and stop their negative political games.
Tony Orman is a past president of the NZ Recreational Fishing Council and past chairman of the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ, as well as an author of over 20 books, many on the outdoors.
8 comments:
The author is confused. National’s boot camps are for 60 (only) serious offenders. Some of them may well be “troubled youths” but as well they are criminals, many with psychological problems. What National is advocating is a form of prison for serious criminals. Nothing wrong with that but the Army should not be running it.
Some of the sedentary life styles Tony speaks of maybe due to the fact that the school camps that used to be extremely popular, shooting air rifles archery tramping and many other outdoor activities no longer exist due to the rules and regulations attached to outdoor activities these days. The consequences for not sticking to the rules or if someone is injured is horrendous for the school involved. My mate took kids from a secondary schools tramping and camping for thirty years then regulations made the principal so gun shy because of these consequences stopped all outdoor activities.
Outward Bound is a great place but the cost is out of reach of many so bring on the boot camps.
Lewis Hore
Good words Tony.
My takeaway from it is,
1. The political atmosphere has moved to a quandary where your logic can not be comprehended.
2. Corporations have to much say in the environment that the public owns.
Corporations own the farms and also the commercial fishing permits that were once family owned.
Hence the high prices for publicly owned resources run by corporations.
The only problem is the idea any political party is interested in solving this issue. The left want the failures to point at and claim they want to help them. The right want the failures to point at and claim they just need to make the right choices.
They both want and need the poor and disadvantaged and will do nothing to help them long term.
Boot camps work/worked for those with the appropriate latent attiude, but many do not now have. The degree of discipline necessary for effect is now impossible. Noone will risk antagonising youth with such brainwashed maladjusted anti colonist convention attitudes and with brothers worse and in gangs. Introducing criminal types to tramping trrcks and huts and honing their physical skills represents a danger to others.
I like all your suggestions but as an educationist focusing on the basics of reading and arithmetic and having fought for those, including being involved in the reading wars for 40 plus years, I absolutely believe NZ principally has to return to the ethics, discipline and teaching methods we used to have up to mid last century. It was largely academia that destroyed NZ education, by foisting trendy new ideologies into teaching. These ideologies ridiculed traditional values and arrogantly insisted what they advocated was superior,modern and progressive.
Now we have to live with the results of this with catastrophic failure in the basics and a broken society.
As was mentioned in a programme on reading TV1 today , half of those in prison have failed to reach competency in reading.
By all means have youth get outdoors but first of all have them achieving in the basics, using time proven methods, which also happen to be further proved now by cognitive science. Further, purge our educational system of progressivism which is responsible for the decline in discipline and ethics as well.
Just be aware that the military you remember from your CMT days is a mere shadow of its former self, and has little to no capacity to run these sorts of activities.
All by design throughout all western democracy. Bigger agenda at play here.
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