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Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Mike's Minute: Time to restore standards in this country


Ricardo Menendez March and teachers.

Let me join a couple of dots. And the glue for the dots are standards, or lack of them.

If you don’t have standards you end up with teachers who can't pass NCEA Level 1, and you end up with people like March using the F-word in Parliament.

The F-word is not the end of the world, but it is indicative of the modern day outworkings of an institution that, despite whatever your political leanings, had an element of decorum and civility.

Now it's full of thieves, swear words and cowboy hats.

No standards.

When you suggest or infer anyone can teach, what you end up with is what we have got - a system everyone knows and accepts is broken and yet has done nothing about.

Our son was shown around some houses in London last week. The person who showed him was the same age, a young rental agent. They wore a suit and tie and were dressed for the job because in Britain you dress for the job. Because there is expectation. There are standards.

The agents we have dealt with here could be agents, or surfers, or just out of bed. Not all of them, but too many.

No standards.

Look at poor old David MacLeod last week. It was hardly the crime of the century and if the paperwork had been with the Greens he would have been given the week off on full pay and nothing would have happened. In National he got sacked.

Luxon is driven by standards. You set them high and keep them high. It leads to better performance, hard work, and it singles out the aspirants from the can't-be-bothered's.

What holds teaching back, what allows the Genter's, March's and others to behave the way they do, what stops crime dropping, what stops climate protesting kids staying in the classroom, is a lack of standards.

Dropping standards emboldens bad behaviour. It lets intent fall by the wayside and success become a scarce commodity. We hide by being average, ordinary and lazy amongst the crowd because the easy way out will always attract a crowd.

That’s the value of leadership and what happens if you don’t have enough of it. When you're surrounded by it, it's normal.

Otherwise you end up like we have.

So much of this country these days is what a lack of standards looks like.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here Here Mike! I'm with you all the way.
You should see some of the school teachers in my town.
Can't say too much but I'm glad I don't have children at school now.
Even some doctors leave me gasping!

Anonymous said...

Yes, Gerry Brownlie needs to up his game as speaker!

Kiwialan said...

Mike, that's what happens when we get a bunch of unelected foreigners into parliament as list MPs. The incompetent, ignorant, racist gorms should be gone and only elected people there representing us. Kiwialan.

Anonymous said...

Mike, perfectly said. The good news for the left parties is that the only way is up. The bar is soooo low its not funny. Cripes the left parties have a very low level of credibility, due to the low quality of people. Again the only way is up, but these types of people always seem to find a way to stoop lower than what we think is imaginable.

Hazel Modisett said...

Why do we allow foreigners into out parliament in the first place ?
We have kleptomaniac Iranians, ugly Americans & a Mexican rainbow radical that wouldn't last five minutes in his own country. What's next, Somalian pirates, Haitian gang bangers, or how about some good old fashioned Zionist terrorists ?
The Chinese & Indian communities are under represented, lets make way for more of them so we can be forced to speak Mandarin & Hindi...we'd get a lot more holidays & the debating chamber would become more colourful than the white & beige it currently is. How about we invite a few 1000 Japanese in to run our bureaucracy efficiently ? & of course we need more racist thugs from England & Sth Africa to join our Police force & we could load the NZDF up with Russians after they finish playing with their food in the Ukraine.
NZ has truly become an insignificant shithole at the arse end of the world & it's no wonder that all the sane people are leaving...

Anonymous said...

Spot on Mike, it's a race to the bottom, and not just in Parliament.
Someone once said to me of school classrooms behaviour: " If you set the standards low, you will never fail to achieve them..." The Speaker of the House should be much more robust, and earn some respect. Gerry cannot be everyone's friend. The buck stops with him!!