Tony Orman: How About an Outward Bound Based Youth Training Scheme?

Kids are in trouble. Just look at the news from commonplace ram raids and other crimes even at times involving youngsters in murders. It doesn’t end there. The jumbled minds of too many of todays kids sadly manifests itself in youngsters taking their own lives. In a word - suicide!

A UNICEF report found New Zealand's youth suicide rate - teenagers between 15 and 19 - to be the highest of a long list of countries. New Zealand’s adolescents are in deep trouble and at times of a tragic kind. 

            

For example New Zealand ranks poorly in terms of adolescent suicide and teenage pregnancies, according to authorities.

            

New Zealand has lost its way and particularly with its younger people. 

            

Because of a mixture of boredom, bewilderment and a feeling of helplessness, youngsters can lash out. Their confidence for the future is often uncertain and self-esteem frequently low.

            

Young people have energies to burn which if not channelled down the right path, have the potential to go awry. Outdoors pursuits like fishing and hunting are healthy outlets for that adolescent energy. Stalking and shooting a rabbit or catching a kahawai, snapper or trout is an achievement and those successes build confidence, self-belief and self esteem to make them better people and better future citizens. Society wins. 

            

Under good tuition, a youngster learns qualities like patience, observation and an appreciation in just being outdoors and a respect for the fish or game that is pursued. A youngster can be taught to fish or hunt wisely, never taking more than is needed and not killing wantonly. And can be taught a firearm is to be respected and handled safely.

            

New Zealand has urbanised rapidly. A youngster growing up in the city may never see the countryside, a trout stream, the mountains or even a farm. 

            

One of the conundrums of modern society is that our economic standard measured by Gross Domestic Product is based on material trends like television and washing machine sales. We are mostly better housed, better fed and better entertained, but given the social media, films and television, too often today “entertained” by poor values. Think in terms of ludicrous reality tv programmes (e.g. Married at First Sight”), violence (professional wrestling and others). The internet enables kids to clock into some sick, depraved stuff.

            

For youngsters when I was a teenager, there was no internet or television. It was  get outside play tennis, kick a rugby ball around or go fishing or hunting. 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 such as to achieve in the outdoors and life, you have to sweat and persevere to reach a goal.

            

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 who can pay the exorbitant access fees. New Zealand’s European pioneers set in place laws that prohibit the charging of access fees to fish or hunt. It’s a reflection of the egalitarian principles the pioneers instilled. Equal opportunity for all regardless of wealth, “class” or ethnic origins.

            

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. A Horizon survey of sporting participation rates a few years back, showed fishing had more than five times more people participating than rugby. Twenty-six percent enjoyed fishing while just five percent played rugby.

            

When it came to “getting off the couch”, 25.5 percent of adult men and 18 percent of women fished while with youth, about 35 percent went fishing.

            

Yet government, society and media gave far more attention to rugby than outdoor recreation such as fishing and hunting. 

            

Again I am not alone in my concern. 

            

The recent reports that New Zealand adolescents ranked very high in OECD countries’ teenage suicide and pregnancies rates, prompted New Zealand’s Neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis to express deep concern.

           

"We've got this idea that New Zealand is this wonderful, clean, green, beautiful nation that is a wonderful place to raise children, so but statistics paint a different picture,” he said.

            

There was a very good model for youth education in Outward Bound in the Marlborough Sounds. Years ago there was compulsory military training (CMT) which worked wonders for 18 year old teenagers. 

            

I know I was a CMT entrant. 

            

But CMT was strangely abolished, inexplicably I understand by the 1970s Labour government led by the charismatic Norman Kirk. The strange aspect was heightened by Kirk’s love of the outdoors and going fishing or as a teenager, hunting.

             

The coalition government is endeavouring to put young offenders through a pilot training scheme. Unfortunately the spiteful mainstream media, smouldering over the loss of taxpayers’ money with the change of government, aim to denigrate and corrupt the concept by using the term “boot camps.”

            

It’s utterly irresponsible in the light of teenage crime and especially teenage suicide statistics, for the media to do so.

            

The government steers away from the term “boot camps”, but faces an uphill battle with the malicious media perverting the public image of the scheme.

            

Forget the military aspect but a Youth Training Programme for teenagers like CMT and focused on the outdoors and developing skills, would be a great investment for tomorrow’s society. Outward Bound should be the model.

 

Tony Orman has spent decades in the outdoors from as a youngster to today, mainly fishing and hunting. He is the author of several books on sport fishing and hunting.