NZ Society

increasing non-attendance in schools over the last 10-15 years

From a Reddit thread, TW dramatic visions of malcontents

"Parents simply didn't believe you could close schools for months and then go back to insisting that every day of school was essential."

If those parents are anything like me they're seeing that the social contract has been broken, it's dog eat dog, money over everything, and we're one more toilet paper shortage away from societal collapse.

One of my sons is a poster child for the problem....

* Repeated absences. Often I wasn't even told he was absent.

* Desperately, curl up naked on a icy cold winter bathroom floor rather than climb in shower and go to school, level of unhappy.

* Totally lost in many subjects, but got no help from a high decile school.

* Still can't count his change.

If I had a do over, I wouldn't have sent him to school at all.

All it did was permanently damage him, especially his self esteem, and my relationship with him and taught him nothing.

I now have absolutely totally zero respect for the NZ education system.

If you fit nicely in their box like my other children did. Sort of OK. Not good, but at least they got a little bit out of it.

If you don't.

It is literally soul destroying, for way less than zero benefit.

We go on and on and on and on about mental health and youth suicide.... but when it comes to facing the source and fixing the education system.... we're all talk and zero do.

Sure we hand out psychiatric medicine like lollies.... but address the dysfunction in society....

Nah Escitalopram is much cheaper.

Giving up your energy, joy, and libido to better handle being forced to do shit you don't want to do has never felt like a very good deal.

I wagged 3 months of 6th form in the 90’s and still passed in the top 10% of the class, that’s how memorisation focused it was back then, and I hear little has changed.

It’s antiquated knowledge that in no way prepares kids for the real world imho. In many ways it’s a complete hindrance.

 

It now takes both parents working full time to be able to afford a relatively modest life.

Our children are being raised by strangers, and yet no one seems to think this is a problem.

We won't have anything to teach men who to process emotions but we'll spend a ton (and not enough ironically) about what to do when a man has bashed you, his partner.

They still need an education, and it's bizarre to suggest they don't

No one suggested that. That's your little addition, without which you would have no response to make.

Ah I see you're one of those people that can only handle one-point replies, otherwise you just pick the most convenient point and reply to that

... 

Not at all surprising. My daughter was a high achiever at primary and intermediate but hates high school. She says that the teachers don't respect the kids, so the kids don't respect the teachers, and that what they are learning doesn't feel relevant.

What Would You Need A Brain For

From a Reddit thread about NZ's right wing coalition wanting to cash in the environment

Just a reminder about the Tui Oil Field.

• The government received about $600 Million is royalties over the roughly 15 years that the field was operational.
• The Operator Tamarind Resources NZ went bust owing creditors $190 Million
• The government stepped up and paid $443 Million+ to decommission the abandoned wells
• A "startup" Matahio brought the permits to operate the field, but just happens to have the same CEO, CFO and backers as Tamarind

So tell me Mr. Jones how does operations like this benefit our environment and communities? 

Jones says: "Some people argue against minerals extraction, but gladly rely on the conveniences of modern society that are enabled by those resources"

Is this really the level we're on? The idea we should simply do the bad thing on purpose KNOWING that it's bad... just to spite people the govt percieves as hypocritical??

ACT's Resources spokesperson Simon Court says: "A high-wage economy depends on affordable and reliable energy. In other words, we need to drill, baby, drill."

I've noticed that the way this government talks about mining is almost sexual, They can't hide their lust and glee for those RICH ENDOWMENTS, that land OVERFLOWING with minerals, just WAITING to be DRILLED, baby. Like 🤮🤮🤮

From Russia Waft Twats

Also somewhere in a world news thread:

there's a reason there were so many economic ties with russia when the war started. basically for the last 30 years, the west has basically been trying to hug russia into international cooperation, and while a fair number of us thought we were succeeding for a while, they were mostly just biding their time while they got their tentacles into our ....let's say more easily influenced parties.