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Speaker 1: I wish I had the Minister's positivity around teaching. As

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Speaker 1: you will have heard, we are short of teachers. We

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Speaker 1: aren't training as many teachers, so that will require more

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Speaker 1: and more of them to be brought into the country.

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Speaker 1: The Minister suggested, I think optimistically that it was about

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Speaker 1: more than pay, It was about resource and support, which

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Speaker 1: I'm sure is true. The question is whether it solves anything,

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Speaker 1: does anything? I mean, does anything solve anything anymore? Is

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Speaker 1: teaching simply a profession, like so many professions, that is

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Speaker 1: no longer what it was, and therefore why would you

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Speaker 1: be one? Kids are snots, and if they aren't not,

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Speaker 1: schools are riddle with social issues that no teachers should

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Speaker 1: have to deal with, and yet they do. Teachers are

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Speaker 1: social workers more than they are teachers. And even with

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Speaker 1: all the holidays, numbers don't lie. They aren't enrolling the

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Speaker 1: way they used to. Now the trouble is, at the

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Speaker 1: same time teacher numbers are dropping, the number of kids isn't.

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Speaker 1: It's expected to peak next year, so the gap widens

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Speaker 1: in bringing teachers, and you face a twofold issue. I

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Speaker 1: would have thought, one, you've got to find teachers in

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Speaker 1: a world where everyone is looking for teachers. And two,

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Speaker 1: even if you find them, they've got to want to

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Speaker 1: move here and teach here. Is New Zealand really a

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Speaker 1: magnet the way it used to be. I could reassure you,

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Speaker 1: I guess, by suggesting the teachers I had, so we're

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Speaker 1: going back forty fifty years were virtually all ordinary, all

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Speaker 1: of them, even with age and some maturity. I look

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Speaker 1: back at the ones I can remember, not a single

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Speaker 1: one was exceptional or brilliant or even really that good.

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Speaker 1: They were average. They were average in an average school

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Speaker 1: that turned out average kids. Is it possible the great

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Speaker 1: teachers are, and indeed always have been, the exception, the

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Speaker 1: ones with the calling, the ones who had driven the

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Speaker 1: rest of merely okay, which doesn't, of course solve the problem.

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Speaker 1: We have a lot to do with it, of course,

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Speaker 1: as a society. It's a mess these days, held back,

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Speaker 1: held down by any number of anxieties and concerns in

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Speaker 1: attitude's division and anger and frustration, a sense of last

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Speaker 1: and bewilderment and upheaval that occupies pretty much everywhere we

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Speaker 1: go these days globally. And so we send our offspring,

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Speaker 1: that's if we send them at all. Are to get

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Speaker 1: shaped by this miracle worker that we pay average money to.

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Speaker 1: In what may be a leaky building with minimal resource,

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Speaker 1: we are setting it all up for failure. It's complex,

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Speaker 1: of course it is. But if the Minister's right and

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Speaker 1: she can turn it, she deserves a medal, if not beatification.

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Speaker 1: For more from The mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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Speaker 1: News Talks at B from six am weekdays, or follow

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