Education Today Student Voice 2022/2023 Edition

EDITORIAL

We have never audited how any aspect of our adversarial justice system serves us. We don’t know where it is inquisitorial and where it is adversarial.

We find ourselves accidentally operating two diametrically opposite systems at different levels of justice delivery, contradicting the notion of justice.

We will never know the extent which $150 million spent on the schools of Taitokerau may have obviated much of the need for a $150 million prison at Ngawha to jail young Māori.

When Jacinda Ardern spoke to Education Today in 2017, she said her single greatest fear was being seen as a leader who lacked substance.

Being seen as a ‘show pony’. Her words. These are the fears of a person who plays to the crowd constantly. Every word, move, appearance, political decision, all sheeted home to public perception, creating an impossible profile to maintain, an international leadership myth.

One of these showboats, the global first - the notion of a ‘wellbeing’ budget, I found compelling. Here were people who appeared to know GDP measurements, no matter how ‘healthy’, are a gross distortion of wellbeing. Housing, child poverty, gender wage inequality, education, wealth disparity, just transition for climate change, amenities, health, sport, relaxation, and much more, all to be scrutinised by the world’s first wellbeing budget. Young people, tomorrow’s voters, loved it. Typically, the delivery fell well short of the promises. The delivery, in fact, vanished completely. Let’s blame COVID.

Labour’s critics are frozen in the same mindset, lost in the same wasteland. To be anti is to be pro. Learning nothing, promising everything.

The polarising language in political rhetoric is pointless, and useless. Counter-productive. Worse, it’s unproductive.

None of the current contenders has indicated they are capable of the fundamental first step in governance. Audit. Good old boring old audit. Let some proper bean counters step forward. If you are buying the corner shop, the first thing you do is a stocktake, an audit, the costings for what works, and what doesn’t, what is useful, what wastes space on the shelves. This doesn’t happen in the ballot battle for the Treasury purse-strings. Portfolios are handed about like lollipops, often to people with scant experience of anything and lacking even basic life skills. Recent examples abound. We stagger from election to election in a cycle of delusion. We never look at what we have, what it costs, and what it does. We have never considered how our justice system serves our communities. We have stuck one law onto another since 1840 and called it a justice system.

We have never audited the measures farmers, and growers have taken, themselves, to innovate and alleviate the failures and costs of pastoral farming. Instead, we slammed them with piles of paper and costs, with no measure of the part they play in land use and food supply.

We have never audited how our tax system works. We don’t know who pays what in taxes, particularly at the higher levels, and across charitable, Trust and corporate dodges.

Transport remains a chaos of home, school and work, particularly in Auckland. The car is now an evil on four wheels, while planners trace a bike lane to heaven. Should bicycles pay road tax? Nobody knows.

Should the filth of the Chinese EV battery industry be a factor in internal combustion climate considerations?

Nobody cares. EVs are today’s buzz, the fact they cannot tow anything is ignored.

We never audited waste management and W2E and its potential to generate power and expand rail. We booted incineration out the door on scant and slanted evidence and loaded our rubbish on the Teamsters’ trucks, into landfill, or shipped to fake recycling and hidden rubbish heaps elsewhere.

There is no measurement or forecasts for national food production, food chains and supply, rail versus road transport, costs and benefits of immigration, education delivery, the cost of ministry silos and their false budget reporting and objectives, health, local government, the archaic and arcane rating structures and the true cost of infrastructure.

Nobody knows how the elements of governance interlink and could work in concert. As incredible as it seems, nobody has ever done a good old audit, paused and counted the beans. Indeed, we have never dispassionately considered governance itself and how it serves us – sticking with a borrowed Westminster legislature, toying with an adapted republic, and ignoring a unique marae approach already organically available to us.

Our hope remains with young people like those who write this magazine.

Thank heaven for them. Fresh, fearless, and nothing to lose.

-David Craig.

This magazine exists to help nurture a love of language and its use by young writers. They are encouraged to explore and comment on the world around them. We are not expecting them to specialise in investigative, news, reviews, columns and feature writing, and they tend to develop a style combining several of these, mixing their own opinions with questions asked of teachers and peers.

Education Today’s Student Voice is conducted away from the classroom with the students expected to work with editorial and design practitioners, discuss and choose story ideas as an editorial board, and produce against deadlines. Their scrutiny of the world around them includes an acumen highlighting social maturity beyond their years. They are quickly and equally critical of alarmist headlines and the FOMO security blanket of social media.

Many of the younger writers barely use those mediums, developing their world view from adults around them, teachers, and peers. They question, they have few preconceived notions, and no fear. The objective is developing their language survival kit and the ability to conceptualise and describe the world around them to others, and to themselves. The dynamics in the world they are about to inherit underlines the vital need for their ability to think for themselves, and to share their thoughts to others. We explore diverse concept-building words as part of our sessions – intimidation, ethics, irony and others as we encounter them – in a context of journalism, history, sport, art, politics, personal responsibility and more.

Readers of this edition will see the links these students make between their academic world and the world they face outside the school gate. They will ask the questions and those who go on as journalists will bring a new integrity to the vocation.

The questions are waiting to be asked. There are significant gaps in news and feature coverage of the important events of the day, and perhaps a greater need for free-thinking journalists than ever before.

We are grateful for our partnership with COMET Education and AUT, and the support we have from BNZ with its conference facilities, and the schools involved in each edition.

Education Today has been in schools in hard copy for more than 30 years, and for the past 10 years we have put the education writers to one side in favour of student writing and to help them become agents for change in their education and the society they share.

Education Today and COMET Auckland thank designers Shannen Randell and Leila Bailey-Moore for their invaluable contribution.

We also acknowledge the sponsorship of AUT.

Be assertive

Stand tall. Believe in yourself. Make eye contact. Love your body. Smile more.

How often have we heard these phrases in the media? Or to advertise a product?

There has been a major shift in the promotion of confidence in the media.

Parenting articles now tell parents that it is OK to be imperfect, as long as their kids are self-assured.

Beauty companies and clothing brands started telling us to love ourselves the way we are. Self-care has been advocat ed, and flaws are welcomed.

At first glance, we are living at the pinna cle of societal confidence.

But how great is the culture surrounding confidence really? Is it all superficial?

A significant problem with the culture surrounding confidence to this day is that it is now perceived as an almighty way to solve all your problems.

The majority of the industry built around confidence is a scam. Sure, smiling more often is a nice thing, it is always good to smile, but at the end of the day, smiling more is not going to help a person’s depression or get a person a job.

Buying a new mascara is not going to help someone deal with a stressful situa tion, despite what marketing teams want

CONFIDENCE CULTURE MILKS A CASH COW

you to believe.

This attitude, instead of holding work places, schooling systems, the govern ment and many other exterior subjects accountable for issues that are often sys temic and not the fault of the individual, shames people for their ‘lack of self-es teem’, and calls on them to change their posture and hold eye contact, internalis ing the idea that all your problems will just magically vanish with confidence.

Confidence has been commercialised, as companies use it for marketing.

The promotion of confidence, partic ularly for women, has been heavily disseminated across our society through the media, and younger generations are spending more on methods of self-im provement, such as diet plans, life coach ing, and workout regimens.

Following this trend, many skincare, makeup and diet companies use confi dence to market their products, essen tially stating that if you buy and use our products to look a certain way, you will be guaranteed to have genuine confi dence and become your ideal self.

The corporations that do so create a direct link between confidence and out ward appearance, in a successful attempt to monetize and capitalise on society’s issues with self-esteem.

This link promotes the idea that confi

dence is synonymous with being con ventionally attractive, instead of it being a feeling, and pervades the underlying message, which is that you cannot live your best life unless you meet society’s rigorous and ever-changing beauty standards.

Confidence to the standard portrayed through the media is largely unachiev able for the majority of the population.

Having confidence is illustrated as being extremely wealthy, attractive, happy, intelligent, healthy, with consistently trendy clothes and a great partner.

It is conveyed as a lifestyle, and a hard one to reach. This unattainable poster image of confidence becomes internal ised as something that must be achieved in order to live a happy life.

These portrayals, often juxtaposing their original purpose of encouraging self-confidence, cause harm to a person’s self-worth, as people assess themselves harshly according to this unachievable expectation.

We hear the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ far too often in relation to showing confidence.

While in theory, the mindset may seem like an effective way of gaining and maintaining a sense of self-worth, the reality is that this method only works for conventionally attractive individuals, and

ISOBELLA BAGGALEY wipes the gloss off confidence culture fakery.

is really terrible advice.

If you truly want to be something or do something, it must come from your genuine self.

We should not be promoting the idea that to be confident, one must fake things about themselves to ‘fit in’, as it goes against the whole notion of self-confi dence.

The relatively new idea of self-care also plays into this concept and is connect ed to this universal desire to be more confident.

The notion of ‘self-care’ first became popular in 2016, with a major spike in Google searches and articles written about the topic.

There were so many guides to self-care written, that guides to the guides had to be created.

Nowadays, in lieu of these guides, we have things such as ‘50 self-affirmations to say to yourself in the morning’.

‘Twenty of the best skincare products’ and the ever-growing craze over becom ing ‘That Girl’. Ironically, self-care was originally established by black activists as a form of protest, and a method of dealing with systemic oppression.

The concept was less about self-indul

gence and more about self-preservation, as an act of political warfare.

Today, the only war self-care is waging is one against frown lines with $200 moisturisers.

The media tells people that in order to properly do self-care and feel confident they have to follow a certain routine, and almost every step of this routine is associated with spending money. Lots of money.

And if you do not have this money, tough luck. You are never going to be confident.

The routines encourage things such as buying and using manifestation jour nals, bath bombs, yoga mats and green smoothies – as if they are the solution to the confidence deficit, which ties back into the monetisation of low self-worth.

The ‘That Girl’ craze revolves around waking up at 5 am to do pilates, drinking green juices, eating only organically, and dressing in beige athleisure.

The trend was falsely overwritten to be ing the height of confidence, however, it was nearly impossible for most members of the lower and middle class to partici pate in.

The trend is almost entirely centred on money and consumerism, rather than

learning to love yourself.

These are all clear examples of how the standard of confidence portrayed in the media is largely unattainable.

Confidence is viewed as a personality trait – you either have it, or you don’tand if you don’t, you should strive to gain it.

It’s regarded as a constant state, some thing fundamental to oneself. But the reality is, confidence is not a lifestyle and it is as fickle as all of our other emotions.

It comes from circumstances and chang es from moment to moment. The self-es teem deficit is now a systemic issue that our society faces on a daily basis.

The consistent commercialisation of con fidence, and the pressing of the notion that you can only be truly confident if you are wealthy and meet society’s beau ty standards, has formed this negative culture surrounding the topic.

What the media does not reflect, how ever, is that the way to raise people’s self-esteem is to focus on fixing structur al issues, not by trying out a new eyeliner or smiling more often.

Confidence is about having faith in who you are, not changing yourself to meet an impossible idealistic standard.

‘Buying a new mascara is not going to help some one deal with a stressful situation despite what marketing teams want you to believe.’

‘Confidence is about having faith in who you are, not changing yourself to meet an impossible idealistic standard.’

‘. . . you can only be truly confident if you are wealthy and meet society’s beauty standards, has formed this negative culture surrounding the topic.’

BLENDING AND BUILDING WITH THE WORLD’S BEST

School’s in for NATALIA NOONE-JONES in other parts of the world.

Classrooms across the world can give us lessons on other ways to learn.

Finnish, Norwegian, German and UK schools are some of the best in the world and operate differently to our schools.

There’s something we can learn from these countries and can implement in our education system, to be more suc cessful in teaching students. Some parts of schooling will be more successful than others. I am comparing five countries, in cluding New Zealand to see what parts of education work better than others. I have chosen to look into how schooling works in each of these countries and find some common trends between them all.

NCEA is not working well for Kiwi stu dents. I’m looking to some of the best to find out what we can change. A census in 2018 shows that 18.2 percent of people in New Zealand have no qualifications, 32.4 percent have Level 1, 2 or 3 quali fications and 49.4 percent have higher education. Māori statistics are much worse. 25.3 percent of Māori in NZ have no qualifications, 42.6 percent have level 1, 2 or 3 qualifications and only 32.1 per cent have University Level qualifications. This means Māori are not being educated to the same standard as everyone else in New Zealand.

Norway in particular is credited with having a good education system because they strongly believe everyone should have the same access to education re gardless of socio-economic background. Finland, Norway and German schools have free public schooling for everyone everywhere, including universities. One big problem in our education system

is that universities cost money making it difficult for some of the population to get any higher education. I believe if public universities were free, we would see more balanced statistics between Māori and the rest of the population, and more people would get a better education. At the moment, not everyone has access to a good education, which is something I believe everyone has a right to. Those with an interest in learning and explor ing their areas of interests and making a career out of it may not get the chance solely because of the financial situation of their parents. Money is not the only reason Kiwis aren’t being educated. Even though Norway has free universities, not even one in every third person in Norway has a higher education, and it tends to be children of uneducated families kept out of universities.

Though New Zealand’s higher education rates are good compared to the rest of the OECD, making education free will boost our aim to get more people into universities. High schools don’t seem to be pushing some students enough, while others get left behind. School is a lot of work and a little break every day, five days a week. It can be dragged out, tiring and for some people seem pointless. A new perspective on schooling might be what New Zealand needs.

Schools in Norway run from 8:15am to 1:10pm or 1:15 depending on the age of the pupil. Children start school at the age of 6 and finish at the age of 19, while some students may leave any time after the age of 16, and the last year of their upper secondary (high school) is optional like ours. Public universities are free even for international students, no one will be robbed of being able to follow

their passion because of money. There is no mandatory testing until lower secondary (age 13), which means schools are focused on learning rather than results.

Schools have one lunch and two recess es in a day, even with such short days. Some of our schools only have a total of an hour break in 6 hours of working. Though it seems like schools with such little learning time wouldn’t get much done, the statistics show their program is working with adult literacy at more than 99 percent and school expectancy for a five-year-old at 17.7 years.

In Norway, the student-to-teacher ratio is 11.6 to 1. In Norwegian primary schools, the maximum number of students in a class is 28, and it is 30 for lower second ary (intermediate).

A typical school day in Finland starts between 9 and 9:45 and ends between 2 and 2:45, which is almost the length of a New Zealand school day. Compul sory schooling starts at 7 and ends at 18, meaning 12 years of compulsory schooling. Upper secondary school (high school) comprises three years of mandatory and three years of vocational learning.

Finland’s focus is said to be on giving ev eryone an equal education. Education in Finland reflects its ‘free and relaxed way of life.’ Finland is the third highest in the Education Ranking by Countries in 2021 and it has the highest rate of high school completion in the world.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report says Finland has the best-developed education system in the world.

In Finland 2017, the average class size for a Primary school was 20 students,

and 19 for lower secondary school, lower than the OECD’s average of 21 in primary and 23 in intermediate/ lower second ary. This does not mean the majority of classes are of 20 or 19 students, because just like any other country, it caters for a range of different class sizes.

An average day in German schools starts between 7:30 and 8:15am. The day is made up of 5 or 6 45-minute lessons with a 5-to-10-minute break between each one. There are two 20-minute breaks in the day, and after lunch, around 12-1:30pm, students leave school or stay later to participate in extracurricular activities.

The German education system focuses on the three Rs, similar to New Zealand. Children start school at the age of 6 and full-time schooling is compulsory up to the age of 15, though education usually lasts until the age of 18.

Years 1-4 are spent in primary school, and then Year 5 upwards is when it gets interesting. Students have 4 different types of secondary school they can go to, academic secondary (‘Gymnasium’), com prehensive secondary (‘Gesamtschule’), secondary (‘Realschule’) or secondary general schooling (‘Hauptschule’). Each of these secondary schools is a pathway to some type of further education, and the best fit for the student depends on where they are planning to go after school and what sort of education they want to get – if they prefer to have a wide range of basic knowledge or look into a few subjects in depth.

A regular school day in the UK starts

around 8 or 9am and ends around 3 or 4pm, an average of 5-6 hours, but school hours depend on the school. In 2020, the average class size was 24.5 and in 2018, studies show there were 16.4 students per teacher in English schools.

Schools in England are split into Junior school (Year 1-6) and Senior school (913), Year 7 and 8, in some schools, are added onto Junior school, much like a full primary in New Zealand, in others, Year 7 and 8 are part of Senior school.

Unlike Finland, Norway and New Zea land, English schools do not have an in-between. In Year 10 and 11, students take GCSE exams (General Certificate of Secondary Education).

These results will later contribute to further studies and their University admissions. In Years 12 and 13, students are preparing for university by taking A (Advanced) level examinations. These exams are recognised by all universities in the UK.

The school year in the UK is quite differ ent to ours. Instead of 4 terms, English schools have 6 terms, or in some parts of the country 3. The school year runs from September to July with 3 main holidays, two weeks in Spring and at Christmas time, and 6 weeks in the Summer. There are 3 one-week holidays, in October, mid-February and the end of May.

Each of these schooling systems have a different take on how best to educate their students, whether that’s focusing on inclusiveness, giving a personalised experience or being relaxed and extra

curricular.

In my opinion, it is good to have a varia tion. We also need to think about what is best for the students. We’ve been going by the same system for so many years because it was already here without con sidering if it is beneficial for our students or not.

A one size fits all approach is not going to cut it for most of our students, which is why different types of schools to suit dif ferent learning styles as seen in Germany is something we should consider.

A shorter day and less stressful envi ronment will help students concentrate better and enjoy what they are doing and striving to give everyone access to a good education is important.

New Zealand could have the best of all worlds. We are unique and innovative, so I think a mix of different styles is what will work best for everyone. There is no need to stick to the tradition of 9-3, pass and fail, five working days and as much homework as we can possibly cram in. We need to look at what’s already out there and think up our own way to do it, even if that means throwing out the rule book.

Scrap the system, we need choice in learning style, a less stressful learning environment and to teach what is useful not what is traditional.

At least one thing is clear. We need change.

THE MOST OF MASKS

Why we should be wearing a mask?

Wearing a mask can minimise the spread of the COVID-19 virus, colds, the flu and other sicknesses.

When you sneeze, speak, laugh and cough, droplets are released into the air and go on to furniture and other things in public places. With COVID being around, most people are wearing a mask in shops or in public places. These are places you could catch COVID.

People like to wear masks to keep their families safe. Especially families with young children, elderly people and vul nerable family members.

With COVID being around for so long,

people made masks fashionable for themselves. They have all the colours you can think of, loads of patterns, dif ferent sizes and custom ones too. After talking to a few of my classmates I’ve heard they really don’t like masks because they are uncomfortable. Some find it hard to breathe and others don’t like it hanging from their ears. It can be really annoying to have to wear it out in public or in shops.

Trying to hear people talk with a mask on can be difficult because they might be a quiet person and you won’t hear them very well.

In mask-wearing (when we had to wear

a mask) some people got used to it, but for most people it was hard because they found it uncomfortable. When we had to wear masks at school my friends would complain about wear ing them and take them off when they got the chance.

One girl in my class tried to strap the mask around her head to make it more comfortable. Another girl would wait for the teacher to walk outside and she would sneak her mask off. When she got a chance to go outside, she would pull her mask off straight away even if it was for ten seconds of fresh air.

Do you wear a mask, and why?

MAIA GASCOIGNE makes the case for masks.

COUNTING THE PENNIES

We live in a society in which wealth and resources are highly important, and as years progress, many people are sinking with the weight of these values.

This happens through a lack of financial understanding. We are constantly hearing about how our generation will be the face of the future, but how can this happen when we have little to no knowledge of how to handle our money?

Without financial literacy classes becom ing available in high schools, the money we could have saved to fulfil our dreams will end up in the wallet of Nike’s CEO. The temptation to purchase items is all around us, and we need to know how to resist them.

Consider the things you learn from each of your classes at school. There are a count less number of mathematical equations, and scientific processes, that the majority of students will most likely never need to apply in real-life situations.

It’s all well and good to learn about E = mc2, but there are a lot more positive outcomes from taking financial literacy classes at school.

You can develop the ability to calculate investment rates, understand the risks and rewards that come with certain monetary decisions, and learn to control your spending and saving. Even if you did want to become the future’s next Albert

Einstein, it would certainly help to have some money to kickstart your career. All of the lessons we currently learn at school are important, and we need to start think ing rationally, and realise students need to be equipped with necessary skills for the real world.

Our generation needs to understand how to handle money to prepare for the future. Do you want to see naive high school stu dents blowing their savings on all of the latest gadgets, rather than using them to purchase their first car to drive to school?

This is an extremely likely situation if financial literacy classes aren’t imple mented as an available option in schools. Recent studies conducted by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand have shown $13 billion of total household debt across our country is consumer debt.

Simply put, all of this money is from people buying things they cannot afford. Another study showed that less than 42 percent of people were able to answer half of the German Commerzbank AG survey questions about financial literacy correctly.

Unless changes are made soon, this could have a negative impact on not only people’s mental, physical and financial state, but the declining economy of future generations.

Stress is becoming increasingly common

in today’s society, as more pressure is being placed on people to make change, especially for our generation. With the effects of climate change, social media, busy lives, and many more issues, you cannot deny the negative impact this has on people’s mental well-being. And the number one culprit?

Stress. In 2018 alone, nearly 30 percent of students aged 18-24 claimed they felt medium to high levels of stress on a daily basis, according to those who took the New Zealand Health Survey.

Research by the Commission for Financial Capability shows that 82 percent of Kiwis aged 18-34 are stressed about money. These are extremely high numbers. Know ing how to handle financial situations could dramatically reduce the amount of stress people suffer, which is why lessons should be made an option in schools.

It is clear many advantages can be taken away from this learning and used in everyday life. Even if it isn’t a mandatory course in schools, the option should be there.

Most students cannot learn these things from home, because of the lack of finan cial understanding their parents have, and this has obvious consequences. Serious changes need to be made to en sure we, the face of the future, can live up to our title. Remember this; our genera tion impacts the economy, the future, you.

‘The knowledge gained from financial literacy classes can reduce stress.’

IVY BARRINGTON wants financial literacy taught in our classrooms to equip high school students for the future.

VALUING THE TEEN VOTE

There has been a lot of media coverage about the efforts of some teenage activists to lower the voting age. They argue they should not be excluded from decision-making processes that will dictate their future. We look around and can see the consequences of policy and politics in which we’re not included.

I asked about twenty of the girls who make up my year group a few simple questions to assess just how much they are tracking politics. The first was: ‘Who is the deputy prime minister of New Zealand?’ I got mixed responses. ‘Um, Winston Pe ters?’ Others said Ashley Bloomfield – giv ing him a promotion he probably wouldn’t want. Most just gave me a shrug. The sort of very conscious shrug that is a definite indication that I should change conversa tion topics quickly.

But I was not going to give up just yet.

The second question I asked was: ‘Are you going to vote in 2026?’ To that, there was an almost unanimous answer of ‘No.’

Interesting, I thought. I could chalk it up to the fact that I’m asking fourteen-year-olds about a preference they may not consider for the next four years. But that does not interfere with the fact that my highly unsci entific survey indicates that New Zealand’s prospective voting community doesn’t want any part of ‘all that stuff happening down in Wellington.’

Imagine if they looked at it like this – six votes. Six people. Would they change their mind if they thought six people could tip a scale? That six people could decide the future of a city. That’s a handful of people waiting at a bus

stop. That’s one more person that can fit in the average car. Yet, there is no imagination needed. Picture Hamilton’s Mayoral elec tion in 2016. A hard-fought competition with very different ideologies involved. Six votes between Andrew King and Paula Southgate.

Those six people could have been new voters. It might have been their first major input to the future of their city. If those six people didn’t vote, and a couple more de cided to stay at home or chuck their voting paper into the recycling bin, it would have made a major difference.

Many people who don’t bother to vote, they don’t bother because they think their vote will not count. But here’s the thing –someone will count their vote.

There are three underlying issues I see present in our current society when referring to the current voting approach of adolescents.

The first is the sheer lack of interaction between prospective voters and political candidates and vice versa. Perhaps if stu dents had an equal opportunity to listen to Aotearoa’s political parties’ views on world topics, this common trend of ambivalence would inevitably decrease.

The second issue is, it’s not just the ab sence of information that causes so many young students to be so disinterested in politics, it’s the misinformation and ste reotypes that these New Zealand political parties don’t seem to be able to address. Perhaps they don’t want to.

In an age where social media will serve more as a relevant factor for up-andcoming voters, these deceptions online are going to deter our generation from supporting certain groups and individuals

or perhaps supporting others on an illegit imate basis.

We aren’t often aware of the truth that lies behind what we’re told and it’s sometimes very difficult to find out. Particularly if you don’t care all that much in the first place.

The third issue relates to political literacy and how it is becoming less and less a part of a social setting.

We have glimpsed through protests and assembled movements that this generation can circulate views and ignite change, but we aren’t taught about how our opinions can be articulated through a vote.

It has always been a taboo thing to ask someone who they are voting for, but failing to have simple conversations about world issues is something that is destroy ing this generation’s input into the future of New Zealand.

I am lucky to go to a school where we have been taught about government. But I have to dig out for myself information about what political parties stand to change.

Perhaps if younger people could vote, they would care more. Politicians would likely focus more on the simple concept of ‘vot ing is important. Go and vote.’

I think political parties should invest more time in the younger voting and non-voting demographic and not just with bribes and events that are simply patronising. I believe that people should listen more. Political figures who make themselves known to younger communities could help to end this rising trend of sheer disinterest in politics.

They need to come down from their offices and reach out before internet algorithms make it even harder for them to create balanced debates.

VISION FOR TUITION

School and teenagers. Two things that don’t go together.

Schools. The place of education, the fu ture, and the open mind.

Teenagers. The students will go to any length not to be there. Why? Is it grades, their GPAs or the seating plans? Friends and enemies alike, school is too often considered hell on earth.

We are so quick to blame it on friendships, popularity and perhaps bullying, but why are we not yet considering the method of education itself?

The sole reason school exists is to chal lenge and shape the human brain. Extend it, improve it, develop it. The human brain is a complex construction of neurons and cells, whose construction ideally will eventually allow you to think and process increasingly complex information.

Years of study have been undertaken to understand what the complicated net work, the brain and nervous system are made of. Experts have managed to locate and bring to light the different areas of the human brain and differentiate them from one another, potentially encouraging a more optimized and streamlined method of learning.

Take the Hippocampus, for example, a sec tor in the brain responsible for memory, learning, navigation, and perception of space. It is used most of all for educational purposes, even outside schools. Everybody’s brain is divided into the same sectors, but some are larger than others.

If a person has trouble with learning, for example having dyslexia, ADHD, anxiety, autism, OCD, ADD, or even just a slight variation to their brain structures, their hippocampus will be used differently, maybe even hardwired fundamentally differently. Their way of learning will be different from the average person, ranging from subtle to completely impossible. They could be incredible at math, but find English difficult, or exceptional at drama, but can’t understand other subjects like

science where there is only one correct answer.

It may seem only the less ‘normal’ teens are being targeted by me, but that is not the case. ‘Normal’ teenagers have been proven to find education and learning harder compared to any other age group. Due to hormone levels and changes, mental health in this same group varies greatly. The average person has now, in 2022, been through depression before the age of 20.

Despite the depth or length of this de pressive episode, it is shocking that this now-normal experience is not considered fundamental enough to alter our manner of thinking about schooling.

This is not always to do with school, but hypothetically, let’s say it is.

Think of a 15 or 16-year-old student, at any school. Let’s face it- they’re going through a hard time. Distancing them selves, eating less, unable to pay attention, and finding it hard to get out of bed every morning.

In what way is going to school going to help them? Improve their mood? Schools are loud and full of people. The student has exams approaching, and what hap pens when a student is so low, they physi cally and mentally cannot pay attention?

They don’t know the sums, the equations, the answers to the questions. Eventually, the teacher notices and asks them about it. Tells them they need to pay attention, catch up on the work and pick themselves up or they’ll fail the exam.

The student tries hard to study, improve and simply be better. Tell me, how do they do that when their mind is so preoccupied with the incredibly taxing job of simply growing and changing?

Next comes the stress, the pressure and the anxiety.

Soon enough, grades become the largest problem of all.

Mental health is an increasing issue teenagers in this generation face. The teenage brain is continuously changing and ‘redecorating’.

The education system is, sadly, the oppo site: it’s simple, reductive, unchanging. Totally set in the ways of the students before the next.

Twenty percent of students suffering from depression or anxiety have admitted it’s because of school. This is only the record ed study. In 2021, 90 percent of 2500 teachers, deputies, and principals from intermediate schools said anxiety was the largest concern for students at school.

As a teenage girl, I can tell you the educa tion system isn’t ‘one size fits all’. Students with mental health issues and learning differences process information very differently. And more often than not, the education system does not meet their standards or even help them reach the standards forced upon us.

If something, say math, was being taught the ‘wrong’ way, a student could become frustrated and upset, because their under standing of math is fundamentally not the same as the person sitting beside them. Imagine this insecure young person put ting their hand up to answer a question only for it to be incorrect. Every. Single. Time.

Their grades are low because the way they are being taught the subject is wrong for them. It is no surprise they cannot understand it or achieve it in general. The education system needs to change itself. These teenagers cannot be blamed for being taught incorrectly when they are the only ones in the deal being forced to change.

A proposal?

Schools need to be in touch with their students. If a student is struggling with school, talk to them. Get them to explain what they need from their school. Teachers should get in touch with their parents to discuss the next steps, how could you help the student to understand the subject. What changes could the school make to their education as best as it can? Let’s start by simply being open to change in the first place.

OLIVIA PAULL scrutinises the value of the rigid state education system applied to the fluid teenage life experience.

“The teenage brain is continuously changing and redecorating.”

NURSES CARRY A SYSTEM IN COLLAPSE

‘As the pandemic has made clearer than ever, these are the people we will rely on to keep us alive and functioning as a nation . .

Many women live and work in a badly wounded system of social and gender disorder in critical careers.

New graduate registered nurses in a district health board start on a salary of $54,034 per year. After PAYE, this is $44,052 per year, which is $847 per week, or $21.18 per hour.

The starting salary for a police officer is $61,325, which becomes $49,055 after PAYE, then $943 per week, or $23.58 per hour. They also receive a superannua tion subsidy of $6,245, as well as up to $7,500 in allowances, overtime, and other payments.

To become a registered nurse, one must undergo three years of full-time study, during which they complete level 5, 6, and 7 papers in a tertiary environment, and gain 1,200 hours of practical experience before they must sit the Nursing Council of New Zealand’s State Examination to become registered and practice.

This costs $20,000 before living expenses, not to mention the fact that placement is often unpaid.

To become a police officer, an individual must complete 16 weeks of training at the Royal New Zealand Police College, and a 12-week university distance learning course. During their 16 weeks of training,

they receive an annual salary of $44,980, as well as a superannuation subsidy of $4580, and an insurance subsidy of $280.

They then undertake an ‘on-the-job development programme,’ where they are supervised, supported, and assessed throughout the first two years of their career, though they are paid $61,325 straight out of Police College.

It is worth drawing parallels between the two careers because the responsibilities are somewhat similar. Both jobs serve the public sector, require shift work, and involve challenging, even dangerous situations.

The biggest factor explaining pay dispari ty between the two roles is that nursing is a female-dominated field while policing is a male-dominated field.

This is no coincidence – other male-dom inated positions such as bus drivers and trade apprentices are paid throughout their training.

Midwifery, teaching, and childcare are among similarly under-compensated female-dominated career pathways.

In a country priding itself on being mod ern and progressive, this inequity and bla tant systemic sexism expose our collective truth – and we should be ashamed.

For students, a future in healthcare in

Aotearoa looks increasingly unappealing, and with an ageing population, this is not just a crisis waiting to happen, but one visibly in action.

Any healthcare worker will be able to tell you this. Yet, Prime Minister Ardern has labelled a wage increase for nurses ‘unsustainable’ following nurses strikes, saying that ‘as much as she wishes she could reward everyone who has worked so hard throughout the pandemic, it has cost the country too much to afford to pay nurses more’.

Equity is no reward and the conditions in which nurses labour is what is unsustain able, especially during the cost-of-living crisis we are currently enduring.

As the pandemic has made clearer than ever, these are the people who we will rely on to keep us alive and functioning as a nation.

We owe nurses their own livelihoods in return, at the very least. Our healthcare system is a cornerstone to society, and it needs to be rightly prioritised. We are nothing without our health.

ABBY BUCKTHOUGHT compares two essential career options and asks why there is no equity.

DRONE LEGENDS – A FLIGHT OF ITS OWN

A plane with four propellers – the size of my fist?

The Drone Legends program has been touring the world, after being designed in the USA to teach children a new modern con cept - drones.

To many, drones seem dangerous and uncontrolled, and many have no clue about their actual purpose and their greatness. Drone Legends aims to change this. These prejudices of the drones and the droning community can be damaging to people who either enjoy flying these aircraft or discourage people from using them.

The Drone Legends team quickly shut down the rumours. They introduced us to drones, their abilities, and their uses in the present world.

Creative engineer Dr Craig Hansen introduced us to the drones themselves, DJI’s programmable Tello drone, and began to in struct us on safety measures to help us keep our eyes and ears in their correct places. Mrs Brayshaw stayed with us for the entire

day, helping in running the programme, held in the Tech Block.

We soon began to fly the drones, firstly simple manoeuvres around some structures we made. But then moved on to collecting images and footage of the surrounding area, and we could use these for the next part.

This involved making a website. This was the assignment given to us by Dr Hansen, to create a website using footage we had collected, and show the importance and the promise drones present.

The Drone Legends experience was like no other, from coding and path-flying a drone through a structure or room, to creating a drone of our own. There is no experience I would rather spend the day doing, and my thanks go to Mrs Brayshaw and Dr Han sen, and the Drone Legends NZ program.

I hope to fly again soon.

FINN LLOYD and friends discover a new learning dimension.

Drone discovery with Finn Lloyd.

FLEXING THE AWARENESS MUSCLE

KORI CHURCHILL gives a snap shot of a student with a disabili ty and how it affects his life.

We have all seen and heard about disabilities people have but we don’t see how it really affects the person behind the scenes in their life?

A classmate at my school has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD for short).

After talking to his school caregiver (Angela) I looked at how my classmate’s life is affected.

Having DMD means he has constant muscle degeneration and cannot regrow his muscles as other people can.

This leads to a greater dependence on a wheelchair. DMD is a genetic disorder coming from the mothers’ genes. It is more common in boys and unfortunately, is incurable.

My classmate is affected by a lack of energy, memory loss and

difficult access to certain things. He also spends less time in the classroom than others and has a lack of confidence.

Having DMD limits the activities he can partake in, but luckily some people change the activities to let him participate.

His disability was a struggle to start with and it still discourages him at times, but he is building up resilience to overcome it. He tries to focus on the positive things and always has good friends to help him out.

Initially, the children were curious and generally unsure about his disability, though once they got to know him better, they got used to him and treated him the same.

Through all of this, he has come to terms with his disability and is building up resilience to overcome it.

IF I WAS PRIME MINISTER

If I was Prime Minister I would make sure we do things that helped minimise the damage that climate change and pollu tion are doing to the planet.

First, I would have eco-friendly petrol and I will make it 10 cents per litre so people will want to buy it more than regular petrol.

Second, there will be a box that you can’t see and it will go over pipes and chimneys that send out black and white smoke and it will disinfect all of the chemicals before it enters

the atmosphere.

Third, I will make a huge company which will be called Clean Ocean and there will be special bins everywhere at homes, zoos and parks. Plastic bags will go in the bins then will be taken to my company and they will be made into eco-friendly bags.

Fourth, the crew that I have will work at Clean Ocean. Some of them (if they wanted to) could scuba dive and clean and remove the rubbish in the ocean.

MACKENZIE PEARCE would like the PM’s job.

SIMPLE STEPS SHOW WE CARE

In my school an enviro team goes to a place called Treasure Is land and it has lots of trees our school planted. When we started to work, we saw pieces of plastic on the ground people have thrown on the ground and not in the bin.

We can lower the amount of waste in schools, waste lands and the world. I think we can all agree that we need to stop littering all over the place.

Recycling is good for the environment because instead of putting it in the bin, where it could end up in places like the ocean, you recycle it. Cardboard, plastic bottles, metal and glass are among the things we can recycle. Some people think that instead of recycling they reuse their recyclable items. I think that recycling is a great way to help the environment.

Planting is good for the environment because trees, plants and leaves produce air and oxygen for us to breathe. Plants and some trees produce fruit and vegetables for us to eat and buy.

Flowers can help us too. Flowers can produce nectar for the bees

that can be made into honey, or some nectar gets put into the plants by bees and it makes the fruit grow, flowers, trees, and other plants. I think planting your own garden is a great way to get fruit and vegetables and a way to save your money.

In my family we have a worm farm where we give all our food scraps to and in return they make a natural fertilizer to help our plants grow. Some of these food scraps can be fruit peelings and vegetable peelings as well. The good thing with having a worm farm is that less food goes to waste, instead, feed scraps to the worms and they will gladly eat it over time.

Water saving is good for the environment because if you use too much water, all of it could run out. In 2020 people were told to save water and have quick showers. People started listening and started to save water but now in 2022 people forgot and have long showers or baths. We should save water because water helps us live and keeps us hydrated.

I hope you fix your mistakes if you were doing any of these things wrong and the environment can get better than it was before.

MAIA GASCOIGNE tracks the work we can put into the world around us.

‘Recycling is good for the environment . . .’

‘I think planting your own garden is a great way to get fruit and vegetables . . .’

‘Some people think that instead of recycling they reuse their recyclable items.’

‘We should save water because water helps us live and keeps us hydrated. ‘

TEACHING TO THE TEST

When I imagine my dream class, I think about snuggly seats in a circle, not desks lined up monotonously, facing the front of the room.

I see a teacher sitting with the students in the ring, posing them a question. ‘What makes a human right?’ she asks, and discussion erupts instantaneously. After an enthusiastic and active conver sation on the question, the exchange dies down. During this time, the teacher has remained relatively quiet, other than chiming in with the odd suggestion or clarification. Yet, she now provides a new point, something that stimulates the exchange once again.

Students build off what they have learnt in other classes, relating the current discus sion to other topics.

The mood is relaxed, and the collaborative and inquisitive conversations continue as class finishes and the students file out of the room.

My dream class is a space for open de bates and the free exchange of ideas. My dream class is what it is. A dream.

The sad fact is the majority of lessons students today take are determined by a different goal – ‘teaching to the test’.

‘Teaching to the test’ is when a teacher teaches solely what is going to be found on the exam and avoids teaching informa tion that is not going to be in the exam.

For example, if students were to be tested on fractions, instead of covering a range of knowledge and skills related to the topic so that the students understand what fractions are and how to manipulate them mathematically, a teacher who ‘teaches to the test’ will narrow down their instruc tions – teaching only around questions likely to be found on the exam.

This may not seem like it is such a major problem, but as time progresses and examinations and standardised tests be

come more relied on, it is becoming more common and happens more often than we think.

School has become centered on learning the content to pass an exam, and not about learning important skills. We pri oritise our grades over actually learning useful life lessons, and the possibility of achieving low on an exam discourages students from pursuing alternative forms of education and new information.

Many schools will argue this is not true and that they are working towards raising ‘future leaders’, however, most of the school day is centered on teaching the standardised syllabus and optimising exam results. We are given ‘learning outcomes’ for the lesson, much of which is taken directly from the exam syllabus, along with practice questions and notes in order to spend our time learning how to answer the question perfectly to please the exam marker. We learn exactly what to do to keep the marker happy, instead of learning how to branch out and take risks.

Teachers who ‘teach to the test’ avoid top ics that are not on the exam, deciding the subject is not worth covering, as it will not matter to us. However, exams only sample key elements of a topic and not the mass of knowledge that comes with it.

Exams tend to be viewed as the final point, and more of an isolated event. They are obstacles, something to overcome, rather than something that enhances our learning and understanding of a topic.

Students focus more on remembering mass amounts of information for the short term, cramming it into their head to last them until the exam, and then forgetting everything. Instead of working on remembering information for the long term, students just focus on remembering enough to pass the exam. This leads to all the data that schools, governments and the producers of these exams have been an inaccurate representation of a child’s

learning, as, if you gave the children an exam on the same information a year later, the likelihood is that they will perform far worse, for they have forgotten everything they have learnt.

Most of our curriculum is based on learn ing ‘what we need to know’ to succeed in the upcoming examination, and not open-ended discussion and inquiry. Our learning is driven by a fear of failure, not personal interest and curiosity. This is due to society’s basis of a person’s worth on how many Excellences, Merits, Achieveds’ and Not Achieveds’ they have received.

This obsession to achieve, from both teachers and students, is a large barrier to our learning and our ability to retain knowledge going forward. It leaves little room for schools to focus on anything other than what they deem worthy to be examined on, most of which is something that will either not be useful to us or remembered by us, later in life.

This culture is now an everyday part of schooling life, and this approach reduces our learning to simply test preparation. Many of those behind this curriculum structure may argue that these methods prepare us students for university and the life ahead of us.

This is untrue, as it leaves students unable to adequately prepare for study at uni versity. In short, mass fabricating us into exam whizzes will only lead us to crumble under any given pressure or challenge, as we struggle with being able to think for ourselves without guidance on how to perfectly answer correctly.

‘Teaching to the test’ is not the way we should be learning. Schools need to realise that, while exam scores are often viewed as a reflection of their quality, they are not simply vendors who give out the informa tion required to pass a test, but instead a space where students can develop their abilities to inquire, investigate and ex plore the meaning of what they learn.

‘This teach to test culture is part of schooling life and reduces our learning to exam preparation.’

ISOBELLA BAGGALEY says education needs a wider perspective than a sharp end focused entirely on exams.

The truth about social media

NATALIA NOONE-JONES says social media is failing our communities.

inventions, and in a lot of ways, it was better before social media was made. Socialising is not complicated, so… why does talking to someone online have to involve all these harmful and time-wasting features? Somehow, seeing people in person has fallen ‘out of trend’. We need to get rid of social media altogether so we can get back to enjoying each other’s company like we used to. We are being pushed apart by social media, NOT brought together.

Social media are websites or apps that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking according to the Oxford dictionary. By that definition, social media is not a need. It enables us to do things we couldn’t do before, but it is NOT necessary. Having it is an urge most young people seem to have, but it comes with a high cost for our mental and social lives. Our self-esteem is at an all-time low when we spend our time looking at fake, perfected pic tures of other people’s ‘lives ’

Social media is the perfect environment for cyberbullying and hate comments, and the people using it are young and vulnerable. Social media impacts our social well-being be cause it stops us from being present in the moment with the people around us.

Research shows that teenagers who spend more than 3 hours on social media a day are at a higher risk of getting mental health problems. And another study in 2016 found that greater social media use for teenagers is linked with worse sleep quality and higher levels of anxiety and depres sion. The evidence is everywhere that social media is ruining teenagers’ mental health. On social media, we suddenly have the need for reassurance that everybody else likes what we’re doing or saying or how we look. It affects our be haviour in the real world.

There are 4.62 billion social media users in the world today.

On average these people spend nearly 2 and a half hours on social media every day. As of January 2021 82% of the New Zealand population had social media, and the average time spent per day, thankfully less than the rest of the world, is at 1 hour 53 minutes as of 2019. Still, comparing this to the rest of our usual routines, this is nearly a third of the time we spend at school everyday. If everyday we went to school from 8:40- 3:10 and then came home and spent 2 hours on social media, we’d only have a few more hours of daylight. Social media is taking time away from us. Aren’t there better things to do?

My solution to this social media fixation is to switch off completely and enjoy the extra time we get to spend on hobbies and things that will benefit us. Social media does NOT benefit us. There are so many new findings of how shockingly negative social media really is, all over the world. For example: In the UK… ‘a significant relationship was found between heavy social media use and worse self-esteem’ and body image issues in the UK are made worse for one in three girls because of social media. In the US, 1 in every 3 adults think so cial media is harmful and only 1 in 10 think it has a positive impact on users. In Australia researchers have said ‘increased social media use can intensify the symptoms of depression’. Social media: It’s everywhere. It’s bad.

Social media is a very new thing. Phones, computers, iPads: they haven’t been around for long. In the past, not only did we not have the technological advancements to have social media, the world also didn’t need it. In the old days, the idea of posting, tweeting, liking and commenting online would’ve been ridiculous and it still is if you think about it. Life was a lot simpler before all of these new

I don’t see a future where social media is concerned. It is destroying this whole generation and it WILL affect the gen erations to come. Right now, there is no escape from social media, it’s always in the back of our minds. If we continue on the path we’re on, I wouldn’t be surprised if the world was filled with so many people who can’t function in reality. We’ll have generations of people who don’t know how to do real hard work because they’re stuck in the world of Snapchat and selfies.

People who control social media would control our societies, the influence they have over us is unreal. There are so many people who want to influence the decisions of others, they’ve even been given a pretty tell-tale name: influencers. Now people make a living by being online celebrities and advertis ing products through their undeserved fame.

Though, what is social media useful for? To look at an op posing point of view, social media could be helpful to share and receive information and to express yourself and your opinions. But there are too many flaws. On social media, people are pressured into putting a filter onto anything they share. Everything is made to look better than it really is, and it’s destructive, especially to young people.

Not only that, nobody is safe when they are on social media. Anyone can get to you, and you can’t avoid them like in a re al-life situation. Your online friends are strangers to you, and they can harm you just as much as anybody else you meet online if not more. You don’t know their real age or name and you’ve never seen their real face.

On top of that, social media is a dangerous weapon for spreading this misinformation like never before. Messages on social media are not filtered and nobody is fact-checking the information in posts. This allows anyone to say anything on social media without facing any consequences. I hope that one day people will wake up and realise how much harm so cial media is causing so that we can all have a better chance of a brighter future.

WHEN WORST IS BEST

OLIVIA PAULL sees the anti in social media.

Social media.

A place to connect, and perhaps discon nect, depending on how you’re feeling. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are common in schools and especially with teens. With such a wide variety of con tent, you never know what you’re going to find. It could be cooking tips, comedy or a relatable meme. There’s something for everyone.

Of course, social media has its upsides, but let’s look a bit closer at the side pro tective parents never stop talking about.

The downside. When you read that, your mind immediately goes to cyber-bully ing and sexual content. The prospects most talked about are most threatening in the minds of parents and teachers. Sure, the prospect of sexual or unwanted opinions corrupting their child’s mind is possibly one of a parent’s worst fears, but what about a side parents don’t experience? The content appears simply because one in two teens can relate to

it. Content that appears simply because it can.

Venting and posting about mental health affects teens more than school and friends. And they don’t think about it, because it’s just a video about suicide or a photo of self-harm. Just scroll past. Maybe click the heart because you’re sympathetic. Forget about it.

‘I’m just so sick of it.’ ‘How to lose weight.’ ‘TW, blood and sharp objects.’

Then comes comparison.

‘My mental health is worse than yours because I cry all the time.’ ‘Mine is worse because I don’t eat any thing.’

Teenagers live by comparison. Its popularity, beauty standards. Not a thing about bad mental health is staged for attention. As soon as someone says ‘Mine’s better’ or ‘mine’s worse’ is when

the competition begins. In this case, it’s the race to be heard. To be fixed. To be the worst so you’re the best. Mental health cannot be compared for the sake of happiness. A surprising amount of depression is caused by social media. Whether it’s a bunch of nasty texts or a comment someone can’t shake. Posting and trying to influence people through posting about depres sion isn’t correct and nor is it ‘cool’ or ‘sad’, whatever they want to be.

A vent post should have a warning, a self-harm post shouldn’t have pictures. Emotions shouldn’t be labelled by social media. Fundamentally one in five people feel affected by social media standards, whether it’s summer body types or the reason a person wears long-sleeve tops.

Social media is either a comfort place or an emotional terror. You’re influencing this by anything you post. That post button calls to be pressed.

Think before you click.

BALANCING IN A BUBBLE

JOSH BENOZA says communication is essential to survive COVID.

The fears of lockdowns and the quietness of the streets gave me a lingering fear for my future as a student.

All this, while we continued to study with multiple deadlines due the next day. The living room became my school, my house became my entire world and everything changed in an instant. For months, stu dents just like me became imprisoned in the walls of our homes. Many students suffered due to the radical changes that came with this new environment.

For weeks I kept myself trapped in my bubble, trying to work my way through the hours of schoolwork. I felt lonely when I received no messages from my friends. Thankfully, my experience in lockdown did not lead to me failing my exams, but for some students, this could have been the case.

I believe that communication is essential for us as students or even teachers if another insurmountable barrier such as lockdown comes into place again. For my family, the 1pm news report became a tradition. Honourable Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Former Direc tor-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield and Minister of Health, Chris Hipkins flooded my family’s screens.

For months I was deprived of social interaction, only able to talk to my family. As a student, this significantly impacted my ability to learn. Most notably, during times when there were less regular Zoom lessons.

Yet, I was only able to see my experience of education in lockdown, my experience as a student.

So I asked Mr Martin Willetts, our school’s Middle School Leader and Assis tant Headmaster two questions, to find out about his experience with educating during lockdown.

MR MARTIN WILLETS

Q. What issues did you find as a teacher during the lockdowns and everything else that occured during 2020-2021?

A. The biggest issue was keeping stu dents motivated and maintaining a high standard of work. Communication with parents helped but so many of them were working from home or were essential workers so they weren’t able to check up on their children, especially during school hours. A lot of students handed in good work, so a side effect was that students could do work on their terms and when they wanted during the day which I thought was interesting.

Q. What problems were you faced with when getting through these changes?

A. The fact that we as teachers couldn’t give instant feedback to boys was annoy ing. Also, for a teacher keeping track of all of the emails, zoom meetings, assess ments, classwork, communication with families and their issues and reporting back to school and showing that we are

still making an educational difference to our students. All of these added to stress levels and at times impacted our families and the way we could help them. People seem to forget that teachers and our fami lies were going through this as well.

After this interview, I realised that the education system during lockdown was disruptive, abrupt and chaotic in many ways. In all fairness, New Zealand as a whole was unprepared for COVID-19 as was most of the world. Now, we have seen the way that lockdowns affect our behaviours and how most people deal with them.

How do we improve? There is no clear answer to this question, but there are multiple choices we can make. For my family, we did our best to interact. I talked to my parents more regularly and texted my friends almost daily. Even seeing my science teacher’s face gave me some feeling of being in a classroom. My inter actions with other people helped me get the hang of lockdown learning, and keep track of my busy schedule.

With the experiences we have gained in the past 2 years, it is fair to say that we have no excuses. We have experi enced first-hand the problems that arise through events such as lockdown and we know what we can do to fix them. I believe when the next hurdle faces us, we will know what to do because we have the expertise and knowledge to jump over these issues. We all have a role to rebuild the fractures that COVID left behind.

LOCKDOWN LEARNING

SAACHI PATEL keeps learning in the COVID world.

Lockdown learning has been a part of our lives for almost three years now.

Lockdown has impacted learning for all students. The idea of lockdown was to keep New Zealand safe, but were students getting the education they needed?

Before lockdown, we were assigned resources such as computers and Ipads to take home if students did not have access to devices at home, but smaller issues led to bigger issues.

There were only a few students regularly doing the homework that the teacher had assigned to us. Only a fraction of the class would show up to the Zooms and do the work. The only time other students came into the Rooms was on Fantastic Fun Fri days when we played Kahoots and other fun online games.

Maybe there were reasons students tried avoiding their homework. The homework would either be too challenging or not challenging at all, if it was too challenging the student wouldn’t ask the teacher for easier homework, because she would be scared of getting in trouble. On the other hand, if it was too easy, the child would avoid it and only start doing the homework when the teacher called their parents.

Some students would just randomly start posting out-of-schoolwork such as drawings and artwork and spamming the chat we had with all our classmates and teachers.

Our homework daily was a few maths worksheets, writing a paragraph, reading a story, fitness inside the house (which I avoided) then sometimes there would be art, online art. In my opinion lockdown learning was super boring, the home work would never be challenging and when I asked the teacher questions there wouldn’t be any straight answers.

For some kids though, the work would be too hard and that puts pressure on them to get it done, so the teacher wouldn’t get mad at them.

It wasn’t just the students that had pres sure, it was also the teachers. They would keep getting work piled and piled on them from the ministry and would have to send out new homework every day, then at the end of the day have to mark it.

I interviewed my teacher, Mr Patel to see how the lockdown affected them.

MR PATEL

Q. Did you find it difficult to post new homework for your students, every day?

A. No, because I do that daily at school or online.

Q. Was it easier for you to teach your students online or in real life?

A. In real life because you have instant feedback from your students and they can help find homework for themselves.

Q. How many students in your class would regu larly do the homework that you gave them?

A. I would say about 20 students.

Q. How many students were there in your class?

A. Almost 30.

I also interviewed my two pals, Kori Chur chill and Maia Gascoigne about lockdown learning.

KORI CHURCHILL

Q. Did you find online school hard or easy?

A. I found that online school was eas

ier because I did more schoolwork in real-life school. Online school was really easy because they were just a bunch of super-easy worksheets.

Q. Do you think that you did more learning in lockdown or less?

A. Less because we had a choice of not doing it.

MAIA GASCOIGNE

Q. Did you find online schoolwork hard or easy?

A. Online schoolwork was really easy because I had a lot of year 3’s in my class, so we were given easy worksheets and homework.

Q. Do you think you did more learning in lock down or less?

A. Real school, because it’s a bit more challenging than online websites and worksheets. Some people in my class would just not do the homework. Online school was fun and all, but we didn’t do a lot of learning or activities. Such as groups including gardening groups, maths groups, and writing groups. Although some could go ahead via Zoom, most of these activities did not go ahead. Sports such as basketball, soccer, rugby, and net ball were cancelled. I play for the school’s netball team and I was quite disappointed when it was cancelled, although it was for the greater good to keep us safe. Lock down was to keep us safe from COVID-19, but in doing that we forgot to maintain our learning. COVID-19 is still around some kids are still not going to school, the majority of them probably not doing any work, mucking about in their homes. Lockdown has shown us school is a fun place to be, rather than being at home all day, every day.

A LIFE OF

‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong’.

Our Queen truly devoted her life to our service. Can you imagine spending over 70 years in service to people, many of whom you have never met, yet tirelessly serve? No. No one has, no former king or queen. Not even Empress Victoria served this long.

Your parents, grandparents, great-grand parents and so on have lived through time with one constant – a king or queen to look up to, ask the assistance of, or even stand and fight for.

The monarchy and its head are the only true beacons of hope in an ever-cloudy world. It is the system of government in New Zealand.

It is now headed by the HRH King Charles III with a government operating in his name.

The monarchy is like no other. In the Unit ed States, both the head of government and the head of state are one person. This is a dangerous amount of power to

be vested in one person. This means both the executive and law-making powers are in the hands of one person, and so is the ability to declare war, and ratify that declaration.

In New Zealand, this power is shared between three people, His Majesty, the Prime Minister and Her Excellency the Governor-General, which allows for a much more democratic process.

Another argument republic supporters use is that the monarchy is costing New Zealanders heinous amounts of money. This could not be further from the truth, as the king himself is not paid by New Zealand at all unless he is here, and only the governors-general are paid for by the taxpayer and amounts to a figure of less than a dollar a person per year (under $NZ 5million a year).

In an American presidency-republic, Bill Clinton alone received $US21 million. This means that the king not only allows for a more democratic process in regard to government, but he also allows for more taxpayer money to be allocated to things like healthcare, recreation, and education. Some of this money saved has probably gone towards the healthcare you use, the parks, roads, and waters you see, and the

sport you may play.

Even dating back to Biblical times, the Holy Bible details kings ruling for their people and their God, such as Solomon or David.

This proves even God envisioned that this system would care for his creation. The king is head of state that governs as a person, for his people, and with God as his help, much like these ancient kings.

The king also brings an added benefit – the Commonwealth. This is an inter-na tion, inter-continent, and inter-people organisation, headed by His Majesty. It is made up of Commonwealth realms (na tions with the king as head of state) and Commonwealth members (nations with out His Majesty as their head of state).

There are a raft of benefits coming with being a realm – including strengthened relationships with other realms, and his servitude, to name a few.

The monarchy ensures you have a say, protects that say, and ensures no un savoury types get into power.

I am disgusted by those who disgrace his name.

DISCOVERING YOUR WHAKAPAPA

I have always loved looking into my past, and the people whom were a part of it.

Lockdowns have let me discover times past and revealed so much to me. From the original Women’s Suffrage petition to the Charge of the Light Brigade, and down to the name of the ship my forebears emigrated on, and addresses in towns I’ve never been to, some dedicated days’ worth of research revealed this to me.

And so many people don’t, won’t, or are afraid to find out about their ancestry. Nothing has had such an effect as viewing the highs and lows of my family, and oth ers that they can discover this too.

There are many resources available for people to use, such as government archives, private websites, or tales passed down through the family.

All of these are excellent sources of infor mation about genealogy, though we must always be aware there is always misin formation, mistaken truth, and accidental matches online, and that word of mouth can change. These can be compiled by hand, or some websites or online tools allow one to compile this information au tomatically. One of the beauties of online websites is that they recognize matches

in your information with others and will ask you if this information matches yours. This allows for not only matches you had no clue about but matches that could bring you closer to family. These resourc es and tools are there to assist you in your journey, and many are free to use.

Military records are easy to find, and usually, a google search (to some degree of specificity) will show you photos, articles, or death records of a person. In addition, there are many research institutions that can help you in your journey, such as archives, historical societies, libraries and sometimes RSA’s. My experience with using both online and manual heritage sites has been invaluable. This case can demonstrate this.

Mr. John Doe and his wife Jane, both of Ire land and my 4th Great-Grandparents, are excellent examples of the ease with which one can find their past. By using conven tional methods – even a rudimentary google search – I found out that Jane was a suffragist and signed her name on page 95 of the petition, 24th from the bottom.

I also discovered her husband, John, was one of the noble six hundred in the cavalry charge known today as the Charge of the Light Brigade. He was wounded 18 times

and was taken prisoner by the enemy Russians for a month before being traded back in a prisoner exchange. I found out far more than that, however, this informa tion shows how much detail can be picked up when one puts in the effort.

More websites which I found extremely useful include Past Papers, State Library of NSW, findagrave, Ancestry.com, and NZhistory. It is also useful to remember that if the person was living in another country, use a search engine with that location, as it will narrow down the search results to said area. By using these tools, and applying some effort, you can discov er more about oneself using your past.

The people who make up the rich tapestry that is ancestry will never simply disap pear, rather they wait, beckoning you to come forth and find them. For some, dis covering one’s own ancestry is a matter of pride, for others it is done to convey a sense of belonging and even more it is to discover for their own reasons.

Whatever your mission might be, I implore you to take the time to know about your family and join the people that already have, making connections and finding your family’s roots. One can always explore the past.

LLOYD journeys into his ancestry with modern tools.

PLAYING THE MONEY-GRAB GAME

JOSH BENOZA says gamers are being played through illegal and misleading advertising around their global pastime.

I was introduced to games by my firstgeneration iPad at the tender age of 6.

I ended up spending countless weekends playing endlessly with games we now call classics. Even now, I like to spend a bit of time relishing my old games. Mobile games have been a part of me for many years.

As the industry grew, however, I began to notice the changes that occurred over the years. Over time, mobile games became mass-produced, used only as an easy cash farm. Simplistic, yet quickly boring. I ended up quitting mobile games for a period as I grew tired of the neverending search for an actually well-made game. Today, according to ‘AppBrain’ in 2017, 12% of games on the Google Play store are low quality. This number amounts to over 370,000.

Yet this is not even the main problem. These simple-to-produce games are most ly illegal. All because of one main factor.

Advertising. A majority of small mobile game companies have spent most of their effort on advertisements instead of working to make their games better. This has skyrocketed recently due to the large amounts of money that can be earned from them. Due to this, different factors have collided in a way that actually makes them illegal. Because of this, the mobile game market has seen criticism by players and independent developers alike, as it gives mobile games a bad reputation. Even through the criticism of players like me, nothing has ever been done about them.

What are mobile game advertisements? What is the problem with them, and can we solve this?

Advertisements have been a staple of pro moting products for companies for a long time, with evidence of it appearing even in Thebes, Egypt by a slave owner who was

promoting his weaving shop.

Thousands of years later, way before I was born, the internet began to boom. With the introduction of websites, the first internet advert was bought and posted on a website all the way back in 1994, costing the advertiser $30,000 for 3 months.

Today, we see advertising in many forms, from print, display, and in our case, digi tally. As mobile game companies began to dabble in advertising in the early 2010s, I was introduced to many of the games I play today. As of 2021, the company ‘Technavio’, found that the mobile game market is worth more than the Personal Computer market (PC) and the console market combined.

So what exactly makes today’s games illegal?

It all began in 2017 when users began to notice a brand new genre of games. They emerged and gained traction quickly, and soon, that would change everything. These games were called ‘hyper-causal games’. These games are described as lightweight games with short session lengths and fun game mechanics. They are mainly created due to them being easy to design, create and hook people in for short bursts of time.

Today, hyper-casual gaming has taken mobile game companies by storm. In our case, this storm also left destruction in its path. As of lately, many mobile game de velopers have been completely untruthful about the actual content of their game in order to lie to their audience, the players. Not just that, but sexualised characters have also been a prime part of the ads that pollute the industry today. This includes characters barely having clothing, and things that cannot even be described as more than distressing. In my case, I felt as if these developers lost any sense of mor als, giving into the temptation of profit.

Yet what is even worse is that any child can see them as well. This is due to the fact the games that host these ads include nearly every game on any app store.

These acts are obviously illegal in many countries around the world. Here in New Zealand, it violates the children and young people advertising code of the ASA.

The ASA, (Advertising Standards Associ ation), is responsible for advertising in media for New Zealand. As found on the ASA official website, the code states, ‘Ad vertising must not employ sexual appeal nor include sexual imagery’.

This proves that the actions of these companies are deemed illegal by the government. Although even with this, it might not be enough. These types of advertisements are deemed as not large enough to act upon. Not to mention the rapid increase in these illegal mobile game advertisements that already plague the internet.

As time went on, games evolved to fit the audience, shaping the games we see today. Today, we constantly see companies falling down the rabbit hole. Lost in the pursuit of profit rather than the satisfac tion of the public. I believe that things may change when governments might view this as an actual crime. Someday we may see change.

In the United Kingdom, the British ASA made a ban towards the game compa ny ‘Playrix’, the creator of the popular ‘Scapes’ series. This was a company known for its misleading game advertis ing. Due to this, ‘Playrix’ was forced to ban these advertisements in Britain.

Things seem to be changing. From what I can tell, maybe for the first time, things will finally get better. Though for now, the fight still continues.

CREATIVITY CALMS THE MIND

Creativity. When people think of this word they often think of art or drama.

Why don’t we have more of it? Why don’t we have more of this experience of amaze ment? Not convinced? Here are some reasons.

Why is creativity important? That’s sim ple, it allows students a voice, to express themselves and reveal their passions, thoughts and talent. It also enables iden tity difference which can make the world a better place, which I think we need after these past two years.

How is creativity found/formed in the brain and where? A question you’ve prob ably not thought of is, how does this have anything to do with more creativity? It’s

found in the brain’s right hemisphere and creativity is formed whenever something new is formed by a person, for example, paintings, sculptures, novels even this article, but why am I talking about this?

When you’re doing a creative activity (arts and crafts, painting, sketching) it can put a calming effect on the brain and body.

Some of you may think we should have more creativity, however, for those of you who are not convinced, here is some feed back from my teacher which contain the questions I asked him and his answers.

Q. What is your opinion on creativity?

A. I believe we are all creative in one area in our lives, some in many.

Q. What are your thoughts on creativity?

A. I think creativity is often used as categorisation of adaptation that is not truly created but collected and modified. I believe without creativity in our life, we lose a lot of the joy in living.

Q. Do you think we need more creativity in schools?

A. I do believe we need creativity in schools but whether we need more is hard to answer because some schools in New Zealand encourage it, some don’t and some live in highly creative communities, so they try or do take after it.

I hope you have more creativity or add a bit more to your life.

COVID-19 is an extremely lethal and contagious disease. The first known case of COVID-19 was in Wuhan, China. Way back in December of 2019. The disease quickly travelled across the world lead ing to the COVID-19 Pandemic, which is still active in 2022. Most people that fall sick with COVID-19 will experience vague, tolerable and severe symptoms. Most people that catch COVID-19 will recover without any extra treatment.

Symptoms of COVID-19 are different for every person, but they often include fever, cough, headaches, exhaustion, breathing difficulties and loss of smell and taste. These are some of the most common symptoms of COVID-19. Symptoms can begin between 1 to 14 days after contact. At least 1 out of three people who catch COVID-19 do not show

noticeable symptoms. Most people recover from COVID-19. However, some people continue to encounter a range of symptoms months after they have had COVID-19.

This is a condition known as Long COVID, this condition can live with you for the rest of your life.

The World Health Organisation requires people to thoroughly wash their hands after coughing or sneezing, although not everyone is that fond of this rule. The WHO also recommends that every solitary person wash their hands often, with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If you have gone to the toilet or your hands are visibly dirty then, wash your hands. When water and soap are not available, WHO recommends using

alcohol-based hand sanitiser. When in public, the New Zealand Government still recommends using a face covering, specifically KN95 masks and blue dis posable masks. These two masks are the ones that can protect you the most from COVID-19.

A COVID-19 vaccination is supposed to immunise you against COVID-19 and it certainly does. This vaccine creates a barrier between your immune system and the virus. In New Zealand aged 5 and up can get a minimum of 2 doses and a maximum of 4 doses.

COVID-19 was fun with lockdown, sad with not being able to go outside and so many other emotions along the way. Be sure to wear a mask when in crowded gatherings. Stay safe.

SAACHI PATEL shows how important it is to guard yourself against COVID-19.

CARTOONS by ROMAN

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CARTOONS by ROMAN FREUAN

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