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Speaker 1: Layton Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to podcasts two hundred and forty six for July ten,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. His name is Anthony and he is
Speaker 2: one of the most interesting and productive interviews that I've done.
Speaker 2: Anthony's worked all over the world, including Sydney, London, Vancouver,
Speaker 2: Budapest and made multiple trips to China. He has degrees
Speaker 2: in science and law. Now, while there's many matters that
Speaker 2: concern him, it is arguably the New Zealand education system
Speaker 2: that concerns him the most and it drew my attention.
Speaker 2: We shall talk with Anthony O'Brien very shortly, but first
Speaker 2: a minor matter about one that involves coincidence, and you know,
Speaker 2: oh how I love coincidences. I got off about six
Speaker 2: o'clock this morning and went downstairs to make a cup
Speaker 2: of tea. Now, usually it's a pot of tea with
Speaker 2: six dilmar tea bags in it, but on this occasion. Well,
Speaker 2: for the last three weeks, since I've been batching, I've
Speaker 2: been making single cups with a single tea bag. And
Speaker 2: it occurred to me a couple of days ago that,
Speaker 2: just pondering things, my mother lessa used to make a
Speaker 2: cup of tea exactly that way, and then she would
Speaker 2: squeeze out the tea bag and keep it and make
Speaker 2: a second cup later. Now this used to bother me
Speaker 2: because she didn't need to do that. It was just
Speaker 2: the way that she was brought up and the position
Speaker 2: that she found herself in life. And so it is
Speaker 2: with many people. So my little problem used to be
Speaker 2: paper towels. I didn't buy them. I thought there are
Speaker 2: a waste of money. They were unnecessary. No paper towels
Speaker 2: at my place. And then the circumstances changed, and with
Speaker 2: it so did my attitude. So now I'd like a
Speaker 2: good roll of paper towels sitting on the stand. And
Speaker 2: this morning I went down and, like I say, made
Speaker 2: a cup of tea, and I looked at the paper towels,
Speaker 2: which are right by the kettle, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to replace them shortly. I better take
Speaker 2: it easy. As I pulled a big sheet off, and
Speaker 2: I must admit that I've been using them, sparing me.
Speaker 2: So with the tea, I went back to bed and
Speaker 2: opened up the computer for the first time and sprawled
Speaker 2: through the mail. There was an email there from Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Tucker of Brownstone Institute Fame. Well, I'd been communicating with
Speaker 2: Jeffrey and talking with him. He was a couple of
Speaker 2: times on the podcast before Brownstone became an event. But
Speaker 2: the headline caught my attention. It was a question saving
Speaker 2: your aluminium pie pans. Yet a friend has stopped buying
Speaker 2: paper towels, not for environmental reasons, he just finds them unaffordable.
Speaker 2: Now curious, writes Jeffrey. I took a closer look. Sure enough,
Speaker 2: in my own buying history, I've documented a seventy percent
Speaker 2: increase in prices over sixteen months. That's seven zero. Others
Speaker 2: are seeing this too, and balking at spending two dollars
Speaker 2: fifty year roll. At these prices, it makes more sense
Speaker 2: to re use cotton kitchen towels for quick cleanups. This
Speaker 2: is a consequence of substitution in light of price changes.
Speaker 2: Examining official data, that is, producer price index or PPI,
Speaker 2: which is more accurate than Consumer Price Index or CPI.
Speaker 2: Examining the official data on wood pulp products, what do
Speaker 2: we find a huge increase in the twenty one to
Speaker 2: twenty three years, followed by a crash, then a small
Speaker 2: increase for an overall increase of fifty percent since twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: That is substantial, he writes, added serious and clearly gets
Speaker 2: passed on to consumer products. The CPI does not reflect that. However,
Speaker 2: we are seeing this ever more people are shifting their consumption,
Speaker 2: regardless of the claims that inflation is gone. We see
Speaker 2: our bills and no otherwise. Therefore, people are substituting meat
Speaker 2: for pasta and rice, and brand name items for store
Speaker 2: brands and generics. The thrift stores are doing a bang
Speaker 2: up business, and people are searching for evermore ways to
Speaker 2: cut costs. This has a powerful impact on a whole generation.
Speaker 2: It affects what we consider to be valuable as versus
Speaker 2: that which we consider trash. I never imagined that I
Speaker 2: would save plastic food containers for storage, but I'm leaning
Speaker 2: this way now. I'm sure you can come up with
Speaker 2: your own examples of how your personal estimation of value
Speaker 2: is changing. And he then goes on with a quick story.
Speaker 2: About twenty years ago, an elderly lady next door died
Speaker 2: and her extended family came to clean out the house.
Speaker 2: They found a room that was oddly filled with containers,
Speaker 2: mostly aluminium pipeans. They were astonished. As we talked, I
Speaker 2: made the case for her seemingly strange habit. She grew
Speaker 2: up in the Great Depression and then faced wartime rationing.
Speaker 2: This is what formed her sense of what was and
Speaker 2: was not valuable. She held on to that for her
Speaker 2: whole life. My mother was much the same. This is
Speaker 2: not eccentric or crazy. It's just evaluation, estimate based on
Speaker 2: an older sense of supply and demand that had not
Speaker 2: been updated in light of changes. To her, it was
Speaker 2: simply unthinkable to throw away a good pipeam. Back during
Speaker 2: World War II, the Office of Price Administration issued coupon
Speaker 2: books for adominium. If you wanted a pan or foil,
Speaker 2: you had to present a coupon before you could get it.
Speaker 2: Such an experience leaves a permanent impression. This lady never
Speaker 2: let go of it. We only think it's a bit
Speaker 2: nutty because during those years adaminium was ubiquitous. Once used,
Speaker 2: it all seemed like trash that always be true, not
Speaker 2: so much. I'm looking now at a one year increase
Speaker 2: in aluminium prices and see that they are up one
Speaker 2: d seventy eight percent. You see, this is the price
Speaker 2: of foil. In other words, the bad old days could
Speaker 2: in fact return. In fact, they have in part returns.
Speaker 2: And we all know it because we all go shopping
Speaker 2: at some stage and we see what we see, what's happened.
Speaker 2: I'm very careful now when I walk walk around the
Speaker 2: supermarket and I look at all the details it's happened.
Speaker 2: I think it comes with semi retirement, by the way,
Speaker 2: but nevertheless it's something that I have come to enjoy doing.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Just to add to the drama, we have a little
Speaker 2: Suzuki parked in the driveway at the moment. Belongs to
Speaker 2: one of my stepdaughters, and she's with her mother and
Speaker 2: her sister in London in Greece. I my dad, but
Speaker 2: I was asked to It's an old model two thousand
Speaker 2: and four I think, and I was asked to turn
Speaker 2: it over a couple of times so the battery wouldn't
Speaker 2: go flat. So I hopped into the car after about
Speaker 2: a week and turned it on. The First thing that
Speaker 2: hit me was that the petrol tank was virtually empty.
Speaker 2: It was into the reserve, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: run the engine on that. I didn't want to drive
Speaker 2: it down to the petrol station. Why because I'd also
Speaker 2: noticed that the two days after she left, its registration expired.
Speaker 2: So you could see what could happen, couldn't you? You run
Speaker 2: out of petrol? Cops come along and say, what's the matter,
Speaker 2: Let's have a look. See that you're driving an unregistered car.
Speaker 2: It's and your and your in lock up for a
Speaker 2: week or something. So in the end I ended up
Speaker 2: going down a few days later and bought a jerry
Speaker 2: Can and then went and put seven eight liters of
Speaker 2: ninety two petrol in it. I did so, I watched
Speaker 2: the price of it, and I put ninety eight in
Speaker 2: my AMG engined car, and I thought, I wonder if
Speaker 2: I could save money by moving down to ninety two
Speaker 2: for a while. Would anybody notice? And then it occurred
Speaker 2: to me that actually going in for service shortly, and
Speaker 2: they might very well notice, and they might get very upset.
Speaker 2: Putting in a petrol of that different ratio would be
Speaker 2: murder for the car with the engine that I've got,
Speaker 2: So I didn't, obviously, and I won't. But the fact
Speaker 2: that it occurred to me that I might do it
Speaker 2: in the first place, and I thought about it was
Speaker 2: another sign of the times. And as Jeffrey Archer says
Speaker 2: to his audience in writing, I'll say to you, we
Speaker 2: all have our examples, and we all know exactly what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about. It's the way that life is, and
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Speaker 2: Farmer Broker Auckland Anthony O'Brien otherwise known to his family
Speaker 2: as Aunt O'Brien or Tony if you like ant, is
Speaker 2: a writer, a thinker, a man who was raised in
Speaker 2: New Zealand with a large family seven kids, where they
Speaker 2: loved to debate everything and taught to play ball. Not
Speaker 2: the man educated in science and law. His career was
Speaker 2: mostly spent outside of New Zealand in trade promotion, manufacturing
Speaker 2: management and TVET education. It's a great pleasure to have
Speaker 2: you on the podcast. I think it's a privilege. Chant oh,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me later, and it's great to
Speaker 2: be here. You came to my attention by a roundabout
Speaker 2: way that I won't go into, and I was actually
Speaker 2: quite thrilled. The part that I want to start with
Speaker 2: because it intrigues me. You did a degree in New
Speaker 2: Zealand in the eighties in the earth sciences, and then
Speaker 2: the following decade you did a law degree at Sydney University.
Speaker 2: Why did you do that?
Speaker 4: Well, Look, in the eighties when I left school, most
Speaker 4: of my friends actually had a plan. I had a
Speaker 4: friend who went on to be a pharmacist and other
Speaker 4: a doctor. I really didn't know what I wanted to do,
Speaker 4: and I also was a little bit impetunious at that point.
Speaker 4: Staying in the way Kettow and going to the local
Speaker 4: university seemed like the most logical thing to do. I
Speaker 4: was actually caretaker at that stage of my father's primary school,
Speaker 4: so I was making some income from that. So I
Speaker 4: put myself through university and started a science degree, and
Speaker 4: I just found earth science or geology the most fascinating
Speaker 4: of the sciences that I did and I had a
Speaker 4: hope of going into that field and going to Australia
Speaker 4: where my brother had already gone ahead of me, and
Speaker 4: he was encouraging me to do that geology study as well.
Speaker 2: So then he went and did law. Why did you
Speaker 2: choose law?
Speaker 4: Well, the funny thing is just let me feel in
Speaker 4: a little bit there. When I went to Australia, it
Speaker 4: was in the mid eighties and there was certainly no
Speaker 4: work in geology in New Zealand. So I went to
Speaker 4: Australia looking to work in the outback. But I loved rugby,
Speaker 4: so I was actually playing for Randwick, trying to get
Speaker 4: into the Randwick Seniors. They were known as the Galloping Greens,
Speaker 4: the best rugby club Australia actually rugby union.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 4: And as much as anything, that was a pursuit that
Speaker 4: I wanted to go after as well. But I was
Speaker 4: a Johnny could have been, to be honest, I was
Speaker 4: never quite going to get to the top. And I
Speaker 4: saw a job at IBM, the computer company in the
Speaker 4: what did they call it, the Commonwealth Enployment Service window.
Speaker 4: I went in and talked to the lady and she said,
Speaker 4: you're too qualified for that, and I said.
Speaker 3: I don't care, it's what I want to do.
Speaker 4: I want to join a good company, but this enables
Speaker 4: me to practice my rugby do a lot of fitness training.
Speaker 4: And I went along and I became a forklift driver
Speaker 4: in the IBM Weirdhouse in Roseberry and Sydney, and frankly,
Speaker 4: having joined IBM, my boss at the time, Jack Black,
Speaker 4: leaned across the table and said, you've got a job
Speaker 4: for life, because I think at that stage IBM had
Speaker 4: never laid anyone off. And then I got promoted from
Speaker 4: there into the city where I became an account administrator.
Speaker 4: So I actually did that with an intention of being
Speaker 4: an IBM for a a long time. And I have
Speaker 4: to say it was a fantastic training ground and credible
Speaker 4: company to work for. But then they went through their
Speaker 4: problems in the early nineties and at that stage it
Speaker 4: kept occurring to me that science wasn't my thing, that
Speaker 4: perhaps law was more what I wanted to do. And
Speaker 4: I actually started a course which is part time. What's
Speaker 4: a course through the Legal Practitioners Admission Board in Sydney, Yes,
Speaker 4: which allowed me to It's actually a diploma in law later,
Speaker 4: not a bachelor's degree, but it's done in conjunction with
Speaker 4: Sydney University.
Speaker 2: Let me just tell you I did twelve months of that, Okay,
Speaker 2: about ten years before you.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well you know that it gives you the right
Speaker 4: to become a solicitor in Australia. And when I started
Speaker 4: that course, just through happenstance and through a friend who
Speaker 4: i'd met as a flatmate, I saw an opportunity to
Speaker 4: go and work for the New Zealand Trade Commissioner in Sydney,
Speaker 4: just to fill in for someone for six weeks.
Speaker 3: Someone had gone off on sick leave.
Speaker 4: After that six weeks and I was studying law at night,
Speaker 4: they offered me the job of locally hired Trade Commissioner
Speaker 4: and that was the start of my career with Trade
Speaker 4: New Zealand. And for the next I think five years,
Speaker 4: I did law every night and did that job every day.
Speaker 4: And it was probably the hardest five years I've ever
Speaker 4: done in my career, to be honest, because it was long,
Speaker 4: long days and nights indeed.
Speaker 2: And from there you went and let me run through
Speaker 2: a list and you tell me if I'm wrong anywhere.
Speaker 2: You became New Zealand Trade Commissioner in Sydney, New Zealand
Speaker 2: Trade Commissioner and a Consul general in Vancouver, followed by
Speaker 2: Senior Trade Commissioner in Europe based in London.
Speaker 3: Correct. The only additional thing is in between.
Speaker 4: Between ninety six and two thousand, I had to come
Speaker 4: back to New Zealand and I became an account manager
Speaker 4: for the marine industry just after we won the America's
Speaker 4: Cup and so I worked with what was known as
Speaker 4: Joint Action Group back then Merrick's and the Auckland Marine
Speaker 4: Industry to assist them developed World one worldwide market. So
Speaker 4: that was my time in New Zealand. I had to
Speaker 4: put in that time in New Zealand to be considered
Speaker 4: to be posted formally as a trade commissioner.
Speaker 3: The local hires were a different thing.
Speaker 4: But then I got posted to Vancouver in two thousand
Speaker 4: as Trade Commissioner in Consul general.
Speaker 2: And you ended up at one point being well working
Speaker 2: for Fletcher's in Hungary.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well that's an interesting story in itself because when I
Speaker 4: left the Senior Trade Commissioner role in London, I was
Speaker 4: working a little bit with Fletcher's. At that stage it
Speaker 4: was Ahi Roothing actually you probably remember that name, and
Speaker 4: Fletcher had bought that company, and the incumbent in Europe
Speaker 4: approached me, knowing that I was thinking about leaving, and said, look,
Speaker 4: we are going to either acquire our competitor or build
Speaker 4: a new manufacturing facility in Europe. Would you be interested
Speaker 4: to lead that burning? So I said yes, I flew
Speaker 4: down to New Zealand interviewed with the CEO.
Speaker 3: Of Fletcher Building at that time and.
Speaker 4: Got the job, and so I began as the sale
Speaker 4: as a marketing manager based in London. We did try
Speaker 4: to acquire the competitor, who we also licensed the Decra
Speaker 4: tile to, which was a company called I Capel out
Speaker 4: of Denmark. That fell through, and then the next step
Speaker 4: was to build a manufacturing facility and that was initially
Speaker 4: going to be in Slovenia, which was very attractive to
Speaker 4: me because my wife is Croatian of heritage, but in
Speaker 4: the end it went to Hungary and off we went
Speaker 4: to Budapest where the factory was built. The Kapex case
Speaker 4: for that was done in two thousand and seven. The
Speaker 4: factory opened the doors in two thousand and eight, just
Speaker 4: as the financial crisis hit. So we then went into
Speaker 4: a very very difficult period and I continued in that
Speaker 4: role for four years as the bottom fell out of
Speaker 4: the market in Eastern Europe. So I gained a very
Speaker 4: challenging time in my career, to be honest, but a
Speaker 4: fascinating time, a time where I learned well.
Speaker 2: I've also got connections in Budapest in Hungary, Okay, and
Speaker 2: I love the place.
Speaker 3: It is a great So.
Speaker 2: Let's bring it. Let's bring it up to the present.
Speaker 2: You came You came back to New Zealand when your
Speaker 2: kids were hitting school age or important school age might
Speaker 2: be the right way to put it correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, I think one of the big issues for
Speaker 4: us in Hungary was our kids were ten, eight and
Speaker 4: six at the time, and we were very conscious of
Speaker 4: the issue of third culture kids. Our kids didn't have
Speaker 4: a home base in Hungary and its language was never
Speaker 4: going to be an easy place for them to actually
Speaker 4: identify with as their home.
Speaker 3: So we brought them home and I.
Speaker 4: Had the opportunity at that stage to come right back home,
Speaker 4: which I wasn't expecting at all. But I came back
Speaker 4: to Hamilton, back to the Way Institute of Technology as
Speaker 4: a business development manager at that point, and yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: A surprising journey for me.
Speaker 4: But I'd lost my father a few years before that,
Speaker 4: just at the same time as the factory opened, actually,
Speaker 4: and just made sense to come home to give the
Speaker 4: kids a base.
Speaker 3: In New Zealand, to give them a New Zealand identity.
Speaker 2: And the New Zealand education because you knew from experience
Speaker 2: how good it was, or at least that's what you thought.
Speaker 2: You're also a board member on the Waycatto Chamber of
Speaker 2: Commerce from twenty thirty to twenty nineteen. I understand. So
Speaker 2: you have been very active. You've lived a life to
Speaker 2: this point at least that many people would be envyous
Speaker 2: of because of the travel and the different experiences involved.
Speaker 2: So you come back to New Zealand and you put
Speaker 2: your kids into school, and now you are apart from
Speaker 2: it in whatever else you might be doing. Having just
Speaker 2: turned sixty last weekend, by the way, you have taken
Speaker 2: up substack writing. And this is what in part caught
Speaker 2: my attention, and you discovered you're writing specifically on kids
Speaker 2: and education at this point, and I don't know where
Speaker 2: you might continue on and go to was your writing,
Speaker 2: but at this particular point of time, you are almost obsessed,
Speaker 2: if I may say, with the education system or the
Speaker 2: lack of education system in this country. How did you
Speaker 2: become well? Can I read this? Let me read this.
Speaker 2: We enrolled our son in a very well regarded country
Speaker 2: school in the Waikato four years after we returned home.
Speaker 2: When my son was then in his second year at
Speaker 2: high school, what I used to know was form four.
Speaker 2: We were shocked when he said one night, we are
Speaker 2: finally doing maths equivalent to what I did in year
Speaker 2: six in Buddapest. Clearly we had not been paying attention.
Speaker 2: I was genuinely shocked and I'm surprised, Why weren't you
Speaker 2: paying more attention? I have to ask, well, that is
Speaker 2: a good question. I mean I just had assumed that
Speaker 2: he was learning more.
Speaker 4: And I think one of the reasons it's difficult to
Speaker 4: discern that is that the reporting in the New Zealand
Speaker 4: education system is so opaque you almost need a degree
Speaker 4: to understand the progress of children. And it wasn't until
Speaker 4: our son told me that that I started to really think, well,
Speaker 4: hold on, what's going on here. It became even more
Speaker 4: apparent with my younger two because they had less time
Speaker 4: in that system in Hungary, in the International British School
Speaker 4: in Hungary, and I began to realize that they didn't
Speaker 4: have any knowledge. They didn't know about things, and so
Speaker 4: that's when I did start to really start to investigate it.
Speaker 4: I was working obviously at the Wacatto Institute of Technology
Speaker 4: at that point and was seeing almost as zealous attachment
Speaker 4: to inquiry based learning. But I then began to realize
Speaker 4: that this was right through the system, and the imparting
Speaker 4: of knowledge to our kids wasn't happening as it had
Speaker 4: happened in Budapest.
Speaker 2: Did you at any stage regret returning home?
Speaker 3: I did it, to be honest.
Speaker 4: I came back to the education system here thinking that
Speaker 4: I could add a lot of value, and I found it.
Speaker 3: I had to button my lip. So that was the
Speaker 3: first thing.
Speaker 4: A lot of the time I think my views, and
Speaker 4: I'm someone who will state their views, but you are
Speaker 4: in a position where you have to sometimes run with
Speaker 4: the narrative or risk risk your job. And I think
Speaker 4: that's a big problem and USI and I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people know that the education system is not
Speaker 4: working that well, but.
Speaker 3: They're scared to speak up.
Speaker 4: It's also a very hard journey to come back to
Speaker 4: your own country after the life we have lived they
Speaker 4: say it's the hardest journey for the expect to come home.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, look, I deeply believe in
Speaker 4: this country. I've worked for a long time for this country,
Speaker 4: and I still believe we can turn this around. And
Speaker 4: so I'm here and I intend to stay here, and
Speaker 4: I intend to keep banging this drum about education, although
Speaker 4: I do want to write about other things as well.
Speaker 3: Last and I've got a fairly eclectic set of interest.
Speaker 2: At the age, at the age of sixty, are you
Speaker 2: still interested in them? Gainful employment?
Speaker 4: That's the big question at the moment. I've set myself
Speaker 4: up as Tony O'Brien consulting. I think some of my.
Speaker 3: Views may make it difficult for me to be employed
Speaker 3: by some groups.
Speaker 4: But I think if people genuinely want to have a
Speaker 4: robust debate about how where we head as a society,
Speaker 4: then you know, I'm very keen to add my two
Speaker 4: pennies worth and support that endeavor.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I look, I'd like to work, but I'm not.
Speaker 4: Likely at this stage to go back into the corporate culture,
Speaker 4: into a corporate in New Zealand, at least overseas, it
Speaker 4: might be a different story.
Speaker 3: My kids have all left home.
Speaker 4: Now my youngest is now at Canterbury University doing engineering,
Speaker 4: and the other tour off at Otaga University, both studying,
Speaker 4: so you know there's an opportunity again now too.
Speaker 2: May I ask what they're studying.
Speaker 4: Well, my son's doing an honors in law alongside a
Speaker 4: BA where he's doing the classic politics for philosophy and economics,
Speaker 4: the old PPE degree that Oxford run and Otager offer that.
Speaker 4: So he's he's doing very well and has just picked
Speaker 4: up an internship with him to Allison for the summer.
Speaker 4: My daughter was a very good dancer, did a year
Speaker 4: at the New Zealand School of Dance, but she's quite
Speaker 4: an academic as well and she's decided that she wants
Speaker 4: to go down that path. So after a year at
Speaker 4: the New Zealand School of Dance, she started this year
Speaker 4: at Otago doing a BA with a major in psychology
Speaker 4: and philosophy.
Speaker 2: Are you concerned about the target?
Speaker 4: I'm concerned about all of our universities, to be honest,
Speaker 4: I think the prevailing view of all the university vice
Speaker 4: chancellors is concerning.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure where they head.
Speaker 4: They've got financial issues, the loss of the international students,
Speaker 4: and we haven't an unlikely to pick up the numbers
Speaker 4: that we had in the past. Is going to be
Speaker 4: difficult for them from a fiscal perspective. But the fact
Speaker 4: that they run with this postmodernist sort of view and
Speaker 4: the identity politics that are being expressed by these universities
Speaker 4: really concerns me because there should be bastions of free speech.
Speaker 4: And you know, I was reading Jonathan Aling's latest or
Speaker 4: one of his latest emails that came out I followed
Speaker 4: the Free Speech Union, and he was commenting on the
Speaker 4: fact that the vice Chancellor of Victoria literally went out
Speaker 4: to his academics and asked for information on Ailing and
Speaker 4: or doctor Michael Johnston, who's of the New Zealand Initiative,
Speaker 4: as examples of their racism, so that he could potentially
Speaker 4: cancel them from the event that was to occur at
Speaker 4: that university. This is an anathema and it's unbelievable that
Speaker 4: that should have happened in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Well, Michael Johnson, of course was at Victoria University before
Speaker 2: he joined the initiative, which is wasn't that long back,
Speaker 2: so that in itself was surprising when you said it.
Speaker 2: The reason I'm interested in it is because my son
Speaker 2: went through and did a course very similar to yours
Speaker 2: with Laura and Art. And if it was now that
Speaker 2: he was wanting to go to a Tiger, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be paying the bills.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, And why why do you feel that way.
Speaker 2: Particularly precisely for the for the for the reasons that
Speaker 2: you gave only only probably extended ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the new, the new the.
Speaker 2: New vice chancellor is I mean seriously, someone someone who
Speaker 2: helped destroy the country financially is now going to run
Speaker 2: a university could.
Speaker 3: Be a break Well.
Speaker 4: This is this is a problem that we've experienced in
Speaker 4: the New Zealand before. There's there's various people being put
Speaker 4: into positions from having been in political power and and
Speaker 4: it isn't an issue where the person has the requisite experience.
Speaker 4: But Grant Robinson is you know, he's a politician, but
Speaker 4: I'm not convinced he has the background or experience to
Speaker 4: be to be a vice chancellor. But it seems latent
Speaker 4: that it. You know, meritocracy is the thing that is
Speaker 4: sadly lacking here. We've seen so many examples in New
Speaker 4: Zealand where people are appointed into positions not because they
Speaker 4: actually are the best person for the role, but because
Speaker 4: they fit some sort of identity characteristic that is required.
Speaker 4: And that may not seem like a major problem initially.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm the first one to sort of
Speaker 4: believe that we do need to have role models from all.
Speaker 3: Areas of our society in various jobs.
Speaker 4: But when it becomes a situation where a person's merit
Speaker 4: is not considered and someone is appointed simply on the
Speaker 4: basis of their identity, You're going to see a situation
Speaker 4: over time where that lack of confidence in so many
Speaker 4: different parts of the country, in so many different institutions,
Speaker 4: starts to lead to poor decision making and starts to
Speaker 4: lead to the failure of their And it's.
Speaker 3: Something that New Zealanders should be really concerned about.
Speaker 4: We have the talent in this country to run the
Speaker 4: place well, but we may not have the right people
Speaker 4: running the place.
Speaker 2: Do we have the talent to run the place well?
Speaker 2: And I asked that question based on the number of
Speaker 2: flights leaving the country full of full of those people.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a real question, you know, that's a really
Speaker 3: good question.
Speaker 4: I think it is a big concern that we educate
Speaker 4: people here. As you say the education system is changing.
Speaker 4: They have the same concerns that you do. But then
Speaker 4: our best and brightest go and where they used to
Speaker 4: come back, I'm not sure they will in the future.
Speaker 4: And I think you interviewed Stephen Jennings at some point
Speaker 4: in an earlier podcast and he was saying similar things.
Speaker 4: I think he was saying similar things about education actually
Speaker 4: that he was really concerned for New Zealand.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure that we will have the capacity
Speaker 3: of New Zealand going forward.
Speaker 2: Well, let me put it this way to you. You
Speaker 2: have the ability and the capacity and the background to
Speaker 2: involve yourself, if if, if you could in the areas
Speaker 2: that you're concerned about and to and to give gift
Speaker 2: your talent and knowledge and history to help develop what
Speaker 2: we might consider a successful contemporary system of education. Except
Speaker 2: you can't because they don't want you.
Speaker 4: Well, that remains to be seen. But I suspect you're right.
Speaker 4: I get the feeling that when I've spoken, I'm not
Speaker 4: speaking in the right narrative. So yeah, they there's a
Speaker 4: danger that people like me start to withdraw. And that's
Speaker 4: how I feel a little bit. It's like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 4: not not going to be heard, so what's the point
Speaker 4: and it's it's it's very disappointing because I do look
Speaker 4: at my experience and I sometimes wonder, what on what's
Speaker 4: going on here? Why is my view someone who's been
Speaker 4: in these roles around the world. I've worked both in
Speaker 4: senior management and in trade promotion for the country. I
Speaker 4: understand how our export sectors work, and yet I understand
Speaker 4: how the education system works.
Speaker 3: I've got a science degree.
Speaker 4: I've got a law qualification, but I'm just not the
Speaker 4: right age or color to be appointed into certain roles.
Speaker 2: Okay, now there's more than that, but I want to
Speaker 2: go back to this is the first article you wrote
Speaker 2: as far as some aware, the problem statement, basically laying
Speaker 2: out your approach to education in New Zealand and where
Speaker 2: you see it faulty and praising some people who deserve
Speaker 2: to be recognized more than they are. And I pick
Speaker 2: it up. Firstly, our teachers are taught to adhere almost
Speaker 2: religiously to what is known as constructivism, even social constructivism,
Speaker 2: which is rolled out under the term Students sent Learning.
Speaker 2: To be sure, constructivism is or as posited by Jean Pierge,
Speaker 2: has its merits, but it needs to be tempered by
Speaker 2: other pedagogical styles. As my father would have said, to
Speaker 2: teach a child, you need to do what it takes,
Speaker 2: and you go on. Erica Stanford, the new Minister of Education,
Speaker 2: has listened and seems to be adopting many of the
Speaker 2: recommendations put by the New Zealand Initiative in this space.
Speaker 2: She's pushing, for example, the use of explicit instruction in
Speaker 2: the form of structured literacy fancy that in helping children
Speaker 2: to read. As she is to be commended, but she
Speaker 2: needs to be supported again. As you've made mention of
Speaker 2: this organization listening to Radio New Zealand, the pushback has
Speaker 2: already started, and you go on to encourage all in
Speaker 2: Sundry to back Erica Stanford and give her support. Have
Speaker 2: you met with her?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I have not. Actually I I did have.
Speaker 4: A teleconference one night prior to the election with some
Speaker 4: people and I think Erica might have been on that call,
Speaker 4: and that was through my association with the Wackado Chamber
Speaker 4: of Commerce, which i'd left by that stage as a director.
Speaker 4: But there are people within the Chamber who think my
Speaker 4: views need to be further heard. But I'd love to
Speaker 4: do so. I'd love to talk to her about this,
Speaker 4: because I think at the end of the day, you
Speaker 4: know there is a place. Jean Pierreet when he said
Speaker 4: children are scientists is right. They are very good. We
Speaker 4: all humans have an inate ability to problem solve. We
Speaker 4: learn how to talk without being sent to school. But
Speaker 4: John Sweller talks about biological secondary information, not primary information,
Speaker 4: but secondary information that we will only learn if we
Speaker 4: go to school, and the idea that we need to
Speaker 4: discover these things for ourselves to that all the best
Speaker 4: learning happens when students discover things. Tends to come from
Speaker 4: almost a counseling view of the world that you have
Speaker 4: insights and we all do. But the fact of the
Speaker 4: matter is you can't discover something if you're ignorant, not
Speaker 4: of the world's knowledge. And a classical traditional education of
Speaker 4: the past, ironically, the sort of education that the people
Speaker 4: who are making the decisions in Wellington today got but
Speaker 4: are now denying to the younger folk, gives people information
Speaker 4: and once you have knowledge, as Ed Hirsch, an American
Speaker 4: educational psychologist, says, knowledge begets knowledge. Another one, Dan Willingham,
Speaker 4: who's a great educational psychologist out of I think Michigan.
Speaker 4: He talks about the fact that teaching knowledge is teaching
Speaker 4: reading because you need knowledge to disambiguate what you might
Speaker 4: be reading and understand it. So you start from the basics,
Speaker 4: you build, and then you start to become creative and
Speaker 4: cit in your thinking once you have knowledge. Critical thinking
Speaker 4: as a skill doesn't make sense. It's not something you
Speaker 4: can teach. It's innate. But once you situate that critical
Speaker 4: thinking in a domain, then you can critically think. It's
Speaker 4: actually hard latent to transfer critical thinking across domains. A
Speaker 4: doctor can critically think about the illness of a patient,
Speaker 4: but if he doesn't know anything about engine, he can
Speaker 4: stand there in the front of his engine and you
Speaker 4: won't have a hope in hell of critically thinking about
Speaker 4: what's wrong with the engine unless he has the knowledge
Speaker 4: of how that engine operates. And yet we in New
Speaker 4: Zealand seem to think that kids are going to go
Speaker 4: to school and sit in front of in a group
Speaker 4: and discover the knowledge because the primary thing seems to
Speaker 4: be engagement. Now, look, engagement is important, there's no question,
Speaker 4: you know, you really do want to engauge kids and learning.
Speaker 4: But look, if I refer to the Machaya's School in
Speaker 4: London and wonderful principal there I can't remember. I think
Speaker 4: Catherine berber Berbersing. You know, she explains that they in
Speaker 4: part knowledge to these inner city London kids, and the
Speaker 4: kids lap it up. They like to be taught. And
Speaker 4: I can't imagine that it's any different in New Zealand
Speaker 4: that children want to learn.
Speaker 2: Have you have you? Have you come across a school
Speaker 2: in Sydney, a Liverpool called the Marsdian Road Primary School No.
Speaker 2: About a month ago, five weeks maybe I interviewed the
Speaker 2: headmaster or mistress if you like. The principal Miniesia Grizzouola
Speaker 2: born in India and she has adopted pretty much the
Speaker 2: same approach as the London school you referenced, and that principle.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether she I don't think she stole
Speaker 2: it from them. She grew up in much of her
Speaker 2: younger life were spent in India and she learned things
Speaker 2: for herself and she has run this school in that
Speaker 2: manner and the school's rankings, the results have gone through
Speaker 2: the roof. I can imagine and guess what. While she's
Speaker 2: still there and an operating, there's concern in the system
Speaker 2: that this might be catching.
Speaker 3: You were why is that latey?
Speaker 4: And why why are people scared of our children understanding
Speaker 4: the knowledge of the world.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we both know the answer, and so
Speaker 2: do I think most people who are listening, and there
Speaker 2: are other there are other alternatives that are preferred. Is
Speaker 2: a simple way to put it. Let me move on
Speaker 2: to because you've written I think eight articles so far
Speaker 2: on the subject. Now, I don't know which ones you
Speaker 2: think are the most important. I will make mention of
Speaker 2: the teaching kids to love reading, but I think I
Speaker 2: think that that that has become fairly fairly obvious. And
Speaker 2: it's the shortest one of all. It's two pages, whereas
Speaker 2: you're writing others like too much Zeal for co construction
Speaker 2: in New Zealand classrooms is nine pages, and there's a
Speaker 2: couple more that are at least that long. So what
Speaker 2: did you Why did you move on? Just give us
Speaker 2: an outline of what you were saying in article number two,
Speaker 2: too Much Zeal.
Speaker 4: Well, this goes back to this issue that we've been
Speaker 4: talking about that I guess a good place to start
Speaker 4: with us is my role at win Tech. I was
Speaker 4: bringing teachers from China down to New Zealand. To show
Speaker 4: them how we teach our polytechnics. And if you think
Speaker 4: about education as being on a continuum, at one end
Speaker 4: a road based learning instruction and didact what we call
Speaker 4: didactic learning, and at the other end being you know,
Speaker 4: discovery or inquiry based learning, which is based on construction
Speaker 4: or in the New Zealand model, social constructivism, a sort
Speaker 4: of a diological approach to teaching. The Chinese were in
Speaker 4: our way up the one end of that system, the
Speaker 4: didactic road based learning, and we very want to criticize
Speaker 4: the Chinese for this, that there's no imagination in their students.
Speaker 4: Bringing these teachers down from China, we were impressing upon
Speaker 4: them the importance of getting students to think for themselves.
Speaker 4: But what I started to see was as these Chinese
Speaker 4: teachers were here, they started to ask questions about but
Speaker 4: you know how these students don't seem to know stuff.
Speaker 4: And eventually I got onto a discussion with some pretty
Speaker 4: senior people in China who took the view that New
Speaker 4: Zealand's gone too far. They they will absolutely introduced some
Speaker 4: inquiry based learning, project based learning into their into their
Speaker 4: education system, and there's a place for it, but to
Speaker 4: do that without first and parting the knowledge just doesn't
Speaker 4: make sense.
Speaker 3: And this is this is where New Zealand it seems
Speaker 3: to have gone wrong.
Speaker 4: It's what what doctor Michael Johnston and others are picking
Speaker 4: up on.
Speaker 3: I think I refer to John Sweller earlier.
Speaker 4: Also, both these gentlemen are talking about the fact that
Speaker 4: you know, the when you learn to discover it all
Speaker 4: yourself is a very very inefficient way to go about it.
Speaker 4: When when you're taught knowledge, when you actually are young
Speaker 4: and you've given that knowledge, it gives you the basis
Speaker 4: to be creative and critical in your thinking in the future.
Speaker 4: And we've just lost that. And I believe we've lost
Speaker 4: it partly because there seems to be an ideology around
Speaker 4: you know, the knowledge that's come from the age of reason,
Speaker 4: the knowledge that's come from the Enlightenment, which ironically is
Speaker 4: the sort of knowledge that has actually enabled modern states.
Speaker 4: Modern liberty has freed women from the chains of servitude,
Speaker 4: allowed them to enter the education system. And yet the
Speaker 4: flood of women into education in the late nineties and
Speaker 4: then their tendency to latch onto postmodernism, which rejects objectivity,
Speaker 4: rejects any sort of objective morality, and rejects the patriarchy
Speaker 4: in the Western system.
Speaker 3: I think this is.
Speaker 4: Where it's sort of the ideology combines with the concept
Speaker 4: of co construction to cancel out any teaching of the
Speaker 4: knowledge of the West. And that's a real problem because
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's Newton or Galileo or Descartes or
Speaker 4: Hume or Adam Smith, these thinkers have changed our world.
Speaker 4: And you know, if you listen to someone like Stephen Pinker,
Speaker 4: he'll talk about the fact that our world is a
Speaker 4: far far better place than it was in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 4: There's far less violence, there's far more opportunity for people,
Speaker 4: and although the West has benefited from that more than most,
Speaker 4: until recently the rest of the world was starting to
Speaker 4: catch up, which Laden goes to in issue around you know,
Speaker 4: globalization that I would like to talk about if we could,
Speaker 4: but because we're heading into a period of deglobalization away
Speaker 4: from free trade, and I know I'm going off on
Speaker 4: a tangent here, but I think it's very dangerous.
Speaker 3: For the world. But look, coming back to this issue
Speaker 3: of too much zeal.
Speaker 4: There's why I'm saying that is anybody who sort of says,
Speaker 4: why don't we get kids to do a bit of
Speaker 4: drilling on the Times table or on history. Why don't
Speaker 4: we impart this information? You tend to sort of get
Speaker 4: looked at as if you're talking some strange sort of language,
Speaker 4: like why would we do that? But I think underneath
Speaker 4: that as an ideology.
Speaker 2: How would you describe that ideology?
Speaker 4: It's definitely coming from a Marxist base. It's kind of
Speaker 4: a Marxism rolled into postmodernism. And you mean you hear
Speaker 4: that the education departments or universities, they're big fans of
Speaker 4: fu Co and a writer and all of these thinkers
Speaker 4: who see everything in terms of power.
Speaker 2: And you mean like the you mean like the Democrat Party.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, the American medical system is beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I can't quite believe we've got a
Speaker 4: situation where, too, you know, geriatric candidates are running for
Speaker 4: power in a country where there's three hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: million people. But certainly the Democrats seem to have lost
Speaker 4: their minds and the Republican Party has lost its.
Speaker 3: Mojo.
Speaker 4: It's been taken over by Trump. For whatever you think
Speaker 4: of Trump, he now owns that party. And I think
Speaker 4: they're in a mess as well, so, yeah, I sound conscious,
Speaker 4: I'm sounding a bit negative on everything, but it is.
Speaker 3: It is a very challenging environment over there.
Speaker 2: I'm not responding to you because I have an idea
Speaker 2: and I will explain it before we conclude the other
Speaker 2: articles that you've written, of those which to you are
Speaker 2: the most relevant for our purposes.
Speaker 3: Oh, look, they're all They're all relevant. I think I
Speaker 3: think that the just very quickly.
Speaker 4: On the modern learning environments or the innovative learning environments,
Speaker 4: that the amount of money that's been spent on this
Speaker 4: country creating barns that are going to be very difficult
Speaker 4: for children to learn in is just astonishing. Going back
Speaker 4: to John Sweller, his theory around cognitive load suggests that
Speaker 4: two really critical things.
Speaker 3: One that our.
Speaker 4: Working memory is limited in its capacity, but if you
Speaker 4: have information loaded into your long term memory, then you
Speaker 4: can easily access that back into your working memory without
Speaker 4: too much cognitive load. Other things that can put cognitive
Speaker 4: load on the working memory.
Speaker 2: Just give us, sorry, just give us a definition of
Speaker 2: cognitive load.
Speaker 4: So so you know, the minds and the mind's an
Speaker 4: amazing thing, and some of these things are sort of
Speaker 4: illustrative of how it works rather than actually how it works.
Speaker 3: But in the you have it. You have a working
Speaker 3: memory where the work.
Speaker 4: Is done, where an executive executive level your brain is operating,
Speaker 4: and then in your long term memory, where we've got
Speaker 4: a lot of memory stored in our brains, that the
Speaker 4: working memory can access that long term memory, so that
Speaker 4: the load he's talking about is in the executive functionary,
Speaker 4: in the executive function in the working memory. When it
Speaker 4: comes to distraction, sorry, when it comes to the modern
Speaker 4: learning environments, one of the problems that they create is
Speaker 4: the noise and the visual distraction of so many children
Speaker 4: in a modern learning environment actually adds to cognitive load,
Speaker 4: which is a problem because it does then overwhelm a child,
Speaker 4: and particularly children with problems like ADHD. They just can't
Speaker 4: handle that environment. And I also suspect the teachers find
Speaker 4: it extremely difficult to handle the environment of being in
Speaker 4: a room with sixty kids all day long, all competing
Speaker 4: for their attention and in a discovery based mode, not
Speaker 4: listening to them, but being told to get on and
Speaker 4: do things and work in groups. So anyway, the point
Speaker 4: there is that there's been a lot of money spent
Speaker 4: building these monolithic structures that align with the discovery based
Speaker 4: learning model, which modern.
Speaker 3: Science says is not a good way of teaching teaching children.
Speaker 4: In the other articles, and particularly my most more recent articles,
Speaker 4: I'm talking about issues that go to social media and
Speaker 4: some of the damage that's been caused. The education industry
Speaker 4: here in New Zealand seems to think that children need
Speaker 4: to learn how to use the technology. Ignore the fact
Speaker 4: that most of us are aware that our kids can
Speaker 4: actually use smartphones and iPads and most software more insuratively
Speaker 4: as digital natives than any of us. I don't need
Speaker 4: more time on these things. They need to be taught
Speaker 4: the basics. So I'm a big fan of Jonathan Height
Speaker 4: in this area books. On his latest book on The
Speaker 4: Anxious Mind, talks about four norms which I wrote about
Speaker 4: us adopting if we could in one of my more
Speaker 4: recent articles, and he's Those four norms that he's talking
Speaker 4: about are no smartphones before high school, no phones at school,
Speaker 4: no social media before sixteen, and more independent and free
Speaker 4: played out in the real world. He cites research that
Speaker 4: shows that the average, not not some teenagers, the average
Speaker 4: teenager in America spends nine hours a day on social media.
Speaker 2: Hard to believe.
Speaker 4: It is hard to believe, but not not when you've
Speaker 4: seen teenagers playing video games and other things at night.
Speaker 4: But if we take that time away from kids and
Speaker 4: redirect them into the real world, we all have to
Speaker 4: make an effort to allow that to happen and put
Speaker 4: the scaffolding around that to allow that happen. And that
Speaker 4: goes back to us, back against the community and and
Speaker 4: you know, not being afraid to put out our kids
Speaker 4: outside and.
Speaker 3: Say go on your bikes go.
Speaker 4: You know, look at look at the number of schools
Speaker 4: around New Zealand where it's a bridlock to get into
Speaker 4: school because every kid is going to school in an suv.
Speaker 3: In case they.
Speaker 4: Get you abducted on the streets. Well, is that is
Speaker 4: that really going to happen? And if it is, why
Speaker 4: is it happening? You know, have we lost our communal
Speaker 4: values that we can't look out for each other's kids.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's more than that. I think there's
Speaker 2: the danger of traffic that deserves a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of parents, plus the fact that some of them
Speaker 2: I don't I have no idea on I can't put
Speaker 2: a figure on it. But some of them live quite
Speaker 2: a distance away from schools where where in this day
Speaker 2: and age. Going back to the traffic scenario, it really,
Speaker 2: it really is unnerving.
Speaker 4: Look, I don't doubt that I and I sound somewhat disingenuous,
Speaker 4: even to myself, because I'm guilty of this helicopter parenting myself.
Speaker 4: And you know, and but we somehow need to convince
Speaker 4: ourselves that and start with the small things. There's a
Speaker 4: there's an organization that I refer to in one of
Speaker 4: those articles called Let Grow in the United States, and
Speaker 4: they are starting to just encourage parents to do the
Speaker 4: smallest things to get their kids to be a little
Speaker 4: bit more independent and take take trips, go into the
Speaker 4: shop themselves, those sort of things, just just to build
Speaker 4: that independence and agency. Otherwise, you know, it may be
Speaker 4: that our kids will get killed or injured on the roads.
Speaker 4: But there's a there's a growing suicide problem in New Zealand,
Speaker 4: which is the tip of a mental health problem which
Speaker 4: is which is growing rapidly. That our kids have anxiety
Speaker 4: and depression because they've been taught by parents that the
Speaker 4: world's not safe, that they aren't competent to go out
Speaker 4: into the world.
Speaker 3: And we all, we all.
Speaker 4: Just need to be a little bit more optimistic about
Speaker 4: our ability, our kid's ability to cope in the world
Speaker 4: and let them go and scrape their knees. I'm not
Speaker 4: I'm not disagreeing with you about you know, the roads
Speaker 4: we need. We the traffic does move fast, and so
Speaker 4: you have to be sensible. But there are opportunities for
Speaker 4: us as a society to collectively ensure that our children
Speaker 4: get more free and independent play.
Speaker 2: And I agree with you completely by the way, falling
Speaker 2: off swings and breaking your arm or something which one
Speaker 2: of mine did is a lesson in life exactly. And
Speaker 2: it's not pleasant to break your arm, not that I'd know,
Speaker 2: but by the same token, that's how you learn through experience,
Speaker 2: and you can transfer that learning breaking your army by
Speaker 2: being silly on a swing to other things as well.
Speaker 2: There's something that you you mentioned that's that's triggered off
Speaker 2: a question I had when when I was reading and
Speaker 2: I have read pretty much all of the articles that
Speaker 2: you've written so far. Are our boys failing school or
Speaker 2: are the schools fading our boys? Now, before you jump in,
Speaker 2: the question that I that I have is the boys
Speaker 2: are supposed to be the ones who are falling behind.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to social media and the influence
Speaker 2: that it has. The influence is far greater on girls
Speaker 2: negatively on that it is on boys. And I can't yes,
Speaker 2: I can remember the figures girls. There's a big growth
Speaker 2: in girls having psychological problems, and the figure I was
Speaker 2: thinking of was thirty percent, and the boys, by comparison.
Speaker 4: Are.
Speaker 3: Twelve Yeah, twelve percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right when it comes to when it comes
Speaker 4: to social media.
Speaker 3: Girls are really vulnerable.
Speaker 4: And you know, there's there's a growing body of evidence
Speaker 4: that suggests that the you know, the negative impacts of
Speaker 4: a constant requirement for validation, the constant exposure to what
Speaker 4: other people are doing in the world leads to kids,
Speaker 4: and particularly girls, become becoming a little bit more neurotic
Speaker 4: about what's going on and worried that they're not going
Speaker 4: to cut it. They're also, you know, prone to being
Speaker 4: cyber bullied. So in that respect, yeah, there is a
Speaker 4: problem for girls, and that's that's a good reason to
Speaker 4: ban social media for people under sixteen.
Speaker 2: Two things I want to sorry, yeah, no, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Two things I want to string together. The collapse of morality,
Speaker 2: that's a question for you. And sex in teaching because
Speaker 2: the two the two are very closely logged in together.
Speaker 2: Have we had a collapse of morality do you think
Speaker 2: in Western society?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think we have. And I think one
Speaker 4: of the issues that that's a real problem for our
Speaker 4: society is and it's one of the issues that kind
Speaker 4: of counters the Age of Enlightenment. If you are a
Speaker 4: religious person. The Age of Enlightenment really taught us all
Speaker 4: to be skeptical, to think of ourselves as universal people,
Speaker 4: but also to obviously, you know, question God. You know,
Speaker 4: as Nietzsche's premasy said, we've killed God. And as people
Speaker 4: have come away from religion as their sort of arbiter,
Speaker 4: a God is their arbituter of their lives. In following
Speaker 4: the prestrict of the structures of a religion, everyone's been
Speaker 4: searching for a new set of ethics.
Speaker 3: And you know, there are the new atheists like.
Speaker 4: Dawkins and others, and various ethicists around the world Peter
Speaker 4: Singer out of Australia who are pointing to a new
Speaker 4: set of ethics, but they're very hard for people to
Speaker 4: latch onto, and it's much easier for people to latch
Speaker 4: onto the new religion of postmodernism more than the new
Speaker 4: religion of you know, really a name. Stuff like that
Speaker 4: comes across on TikTok so. I think people are a
Speaker 4: little lost there. It does seem to be a movement
Speaker 4: back towards religion.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what the answer is.
Speaker 4: Later, and I was brought up as a Catholic, I
Speaker 4: very much became agnostic and almost an atheist, and now
Speaker 4: I don't know where I am.
Speaker 3: To be honest, I always find.
Speaker 4: It impossible to reject the possibility of a god. But
Speaker 4: as a society, we have such a plurality of thinking
Speaker 4: on this that it's difficult to get and shared values
Speaker 4: around what the ethics and society should be. Albeit that
Speaker 4: if we went back to the basics, I think nearly
Speaker 4: every society does agree on something that looks close to
Speaker 4: the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 2: I think that's a rather wise summation. Actually, sex and teaching.
Speaker 2: Is there a place in schools for sex education?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I absolutely think there's a place in schools for
Speaker 4: sex education. You know, the world changed, what is it,
Speaker 4: you know, in the sixties when when women finally got
Speaker 4: control of their fertility. It's probably the biggest sociological change
Speaker 4: in the history of humans of humankind. There's no doubt
Speaker 4: that you know, we should put our heads in the
Speaker 4: sand and ignore the sexual revolution.
Speaker 3: And I think in the.
Speaker 4: Modern day world we need to be clear that the
Speaker 4: world is operating differently. So kids do need to be aware,
Speaker 4: particularly young girls, They do need to be aware of
Speaker 4: their sexuality. They need to understand contraception, they need to
Speaker 4: understand the basics. The problem I have is there seems
Speaker 4: to be a growing push to do that at a
Speaker 4: younger and younger age, and it just seems insane to
Speaker 4: me to be teaching kids before puberty, at a very
Speaker 4: young age, about all sorts of sexual practices that you
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't have known about until we were quite mature.
Speaker 2: Well, I can give you a reason for it. It's
Speaker 2: very simple. Whose are being run by introduced and run
Speaker 2: by devians? Well, you may well be right, and and
Speaker 2: they're getting away with it, specifically in the States. Look,
Speaker 2: I've I lied a long time ago that what happens
Speaker 2: in America it used to be starting in California, but
Speaker 2: now that it can come from anywhere almost. But what
Speaker 2: happens in America finds its way into the rest of
Speaker 2: the world, particularly the Western world. Countries and you can
Speaker 2: see it in advance, and of more recent times it's
Speaker 2: become something of a surprise to me at the speed
Speaker 2: at which it moves. Now I'm about to give you
Speaker 2: an example of what I'm talking about, and it is
Speaker 2: something that stunned me over the weekend. In the weekend
Speaker 2: Australian a woman who is qualified to cover this sort
Speaker 2: of thing about a situation in Wales of all places,
Speaker 2: where boys have been asking teachers in class, how do
Speaker 2: we conduct choking during sex? And the answer is pornography. Essentially,
Speaker 2: they're seeing it in pornography. She even indicates in the
Speaker 2: article that the girls themselves are if not believing there,
Speaker 2: then they're they're in motion to accepting that this is
Speaker 2: part of it, and the boys are believing that the
Speaker 2: girls wanted m hm m it did head. No, it
Speaker 2: does my head. And I think you know, and this
Speaker 2: is clearly down to pornography. This is clearly down to
Speaker 2: there seems to be.
Speaker 4: I think it's well known that, you know, as as
Speaker 4: people use pornography more and more, they have a tendency
Speaker 4: to go to more and more extremes, and of course,
Speaker 4: like any of these algorithms that it's operating on a
Speaker 4: on a app or on the internet. The algorithm, algorithm
Speaker 4: is designed to tatilate and trigger you more and more.
Speaker 3: And the same is true of porn.
Speaker 4: So where once porn might have shown a beautiful expression
Speaker 4: of love. And you know, I'm not totally condemnatrip. I
Speaker 4: don't condemn pornography entirely, but it certainly should.
Speaker 3: Be used by adults.
Speaker 4: But where where people are being shown more and more
Speaker 4: extreme porn, and especially at very young ages, of course,
Speaker 4: they're going to start to normalize that's what you do.
Speaker 4: And and choking is an extremely dangerous thing to do,
Speaker 4: and the fact that our young children even know about
Speaker 4: it is just astonished.
Speaker 2: One question you mentioned was a boy asked the teacher,
Speaker 2: how do I bring my girlfriend round after she's passed out?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god, exact there.
Speaker 2: It's astonishing, but not really surprising when you think about it,
Speaker 2: especially on the back of your explanation A mo bit ago.
Speaker 3: No, well exactly. And this is the great irony of
Speaker 3: all of this is.
Speaker 4: We're trying to keep our children safe in the natural environment,
Speaker 4: and we expose them to these sort of things online.
Speaker 4: We have This is where height is right. We need
Speaker 4: to get kids off this stuff until they've got a
Speaker 4: level of maturity that they can understand what's happening here.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're seeing the same thing with the hookup
Speaker 4: culture in in young people there, you know, and I'm
Speaker 4: sure that girls ultimately understand that this is not good
Speaker 4: for them. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that,
Speaker 4: you know, the top twenty percent of boys get to
Speaker 4: pick from all the girls because the girls want to
Speaker 4: be with the nicest looking, most sporty boy. If there's
Speaker 4: a belief that those girls have and they you know,
Speaker 4: the girls genuinely want love, but the boys will just
Speaker 4: keep moving on and they're eventually going to be left
Speaker 4: feeling neglected, sad because they've participated in a culture that
Speaker 4: is just so shallow. And we need to get back
Speaker 4: to a situation where you know, they have a word
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 3: These days, you know that you meet in the wild
Speaker 3: so many boys.
Speaker 4: I've talked to boys at universities who can't find a
Speaker 4: girlfriend because the girls say, well, if I wanted to
Speaker 4: have sex, I just go on tender you know, so
Speaker 4: back off. So, you know, even just to chat up
Speaker 4: a girl as a young man these days is problematic.
Speaker 4: Where does that leave our young men. They're both kind
Speaker 4: of over feminized by their education and then presented with
Speaker 4: an impossibly difficult task of finding a partner.
Speaker 3: It's not good.
Speaker 2: Give me a brief on the feminization of education.
Speaker 3: Well, like, it's always a difficult one to go into.
Speaker 4: And I would say at the outset that it's you know,
Speaker 4: in danger of being accused of a being a misogynist.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think I've always believed that there's a.
Speaker 4: Balance between the sexes, between the masculine and the feminine.
Speaker 3: There are two biological sexes.
Speaker 4: By the way, later maybe there may be more fluidity
Speaker 4: and gender, but there are just two biological sexes.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a fellow traveler.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And at the end of the day, our schools have
Speaker 4: become flooded with particularly primary schools, with women and women
Speaker 4: both teaching and in leadership roles, and women quite rightly
Speaker 4: are the cares in society when when you know, women
Speaker 4: evolved to look after young children, to nurture those children,
Speaker 4: and there's a stage in every mother's life where she
Speaker 4: has to start to back away from that naturing and
Speaker 4: allow the child to explore and grow. And that's and
Speaker 4: that's why men in fathers are so important. They play
Speaker 4: a different role. They push their kids, they encourage them
Speaker 4: to get out and compete. I'm not saying women don't,
Speaker 4: but there's there's more tendency to nurture and to discuss
Speaker 4: from women.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: That is what is happening in our schools. We're seeing
Speaker 4: more and more leaders and teachers in the schools men.
Speaker 4: Men are scared to go into primary schools these days
Speaker 4: for reasons we both know, and and so there's this
Speaker 4: over nurturing of children and an over an emphasis on
Speaker 4: cooperation and discussion and a whole lot of things that
Speaker 4: actually leads the boys feeling like they have to sit
Speaker 4: down on the carpet with the girls and do nothing,
Speaker 4: which they'll happily do if you give them an iPhone
Speaker 4: or some sort of smart device that they can just
Speaker 4: get absorbed in. But we're losing that balance between the
Speaker 4: masculine and feminine that should be there, and the only
Speaker 4: way we can resolve that, by the way, is to
Speaker 4: get more men back into the teaching profession, particularly at
Speaker 4: the primary school level.
Speaker 2: Which lead leads to another subject, really not one that
Speaker 2: you've covered as horis I'm aware at this point, but
Speaker 2: co ed or single sex school's best.
Speaker 3: That's a hard one.
Speaker 4: I went to a single sex school, Saint John's College
Speaker 4: in Hamilton. I must say, having come from a full
Speaker 4: country school to a place where there were no girls,
Speaker 4: I found it very discombobular at the start. And actually,
Speaker 4: I'd have to say I think I suffered a psychological
Speaker 4: deficit at the end of that time because I really
Speaker 4: didn't know how to approach approach girls when I went
Speaker 4: to university. So look, I know these evidence that suggests
Speaker 4: that that single sex schools are better for education.
Speaker 3: My view is.
Speaker 4: Keeping the two sexes together through school is the better,
Speaker 4: the better way, because I think that that period of
Speaker 4: puberty is such a great time for socialization between the
Speaker 4: two sexes and to understand each other.
Speaker 2: That's just my opinion. I know this will have but
Speaker 2: I was interested in your opinion. I experienced both, and
Speaker 2: I could argue either way to be honest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: All right. So I mentioned that I had a suggestion
Speaker 2: to make to you, And now it would appear to
Speaker 2: be the time you mentioned globalization and you mentioned American politics,
Speaker 2: and I think there is another podcast on both those
Speaker 2: topics for us to cover sometime in the not too
Speaker 2: distant future.
Speaker 4: You say, I'd love to do that. I'm fascinated in it.
Speaker 4: I think we're in danger of the world economy contracting
Speaker 4: Judah deglobalization, and New Zealand's in a particularly.
Speaker 3: Vulnerable situation in that regard.
Speaker 4: I mean that kind of hitches back to education as well,
Speaker 4: because we have to have a highly educated, innovative society
Speaker 4: in New Zealand And with such a small country, such
Speaker 4: a long way from anywhere, that we need the benefits
Speaker 4: of free trade to do well in the world. And
Speaker 4: you know, I've got lots of thoughts on that from
Speaker 4: my years in trade development.
Speaker 3: But I'd love to love to have a deeper discussion
Speaker 3: on those topics.
Speaker 2: And we might we might make it a trifector and
Speaker 2: throw media into it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Look, just on that note, and as you talked about it,
Speaker 4: I did listen to your podcasts with Oliver Hartwich, and
Speaker 4: I think Oliver is a very good thinker. I love
Speaker 4: some of this thinking about how New Zealand might become
Speaker 4: a little bit more Swiss in its democracy. That's not
Speaker 4: an easy leak to make. The one thing he did
Speaker 4: touch on and I was cheering alongside, was foreign direct investment.
Speaker 4: New Zealand needs to understand that it doesn't really matter
Speaker 4: that much where the money comes from.
Speaker 3: We need capital.
Speaker 4: Our firms in New Zealand have consistently been undercapitalized, so
Speaker 4: we need the factors of production and obviously human smart
Speaker 4: humans is a big part of that education, but capital
Speaker 4: is another thing. And we've done a really bad job
Speaker 4: over the years of trying to protect the economy from
Speaker 4: foreign direct investment while trying to open up other economies
Speaker 4: to our products. We need to we need to be
Speaker 4: a little bit more balanced about that. And he did
Speaker 4: site Ireland, which is a country of my ancestry, and
Speaker 4: you know that have the advantage of being situated in
Speaker 4: the middle of Europe, on the edge of Europe. But
Speaker 4: they've done a fantastic job of attracting foreign direct investment
Speaker 4: and in the education system and they're moving, you know,
Speaker 4: well ahead of others as a knowledge economy, and I
Speaker 4: think New Zealand needs to do something similar.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never been attracted to Ireland in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form until Oliver made those comments, and by
Speaker 2: the end of it, I was ready to pack up
Speaker 2: the house and leave.
Speaker 3: Well, they got great crack over there.
Speaker 4: You know, they love to talk, but they're good thinkers,
Speaker 4: and you know they've been placed in a difficult situation
Speaker 4: because of Brexit. I might add Laton that you know,
Speaker 4: Island is a place that actually demonstrates for me that
Speaker 4: we have to look to the future, forget about the
Speaker 4: past and all the injustices and everything that's gone on
Speaker 4: in the world where we could have a grievance. It's
Speaker 4: so important that a society pulls together and comes together
Speaker 4: around under a vision and a goal. And thank god
Speaker 4: Island has done that. They've moved on from the troubles,
Speaker 4: although you know it really worries me that the Brexit
Speaker 4: thing might stir that up again. But New Zealand has
Speaker 4: to be very careful on this front. We need to
Speaker 4: understand that we're all New Zealanders wherever we came from,
Speaker 4: and we need a common set of values and some
Speaker 4: national pride in being New Zealand as not being in
Speaker 4: our groups, whatever they may be, but being New Zealand's
Speaker 4: first and foremost and proud of our country. And as
Speaker 4: people would say, all throwing the walker in the same direction.
Speaker 2: Would you allow a walker from anywhere in the world
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 4: In that's a hard question. I'm not a stag again.
Speaker 2: I was going to say hold the thought because we
Speaker 2: can throw that in with the other lot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: building now your work. What is the best way for
Speaker 2: people to find it?
Speaker 3: Well, look, I'm still building that up at the moment.
Speaker 4: But if they go on to substack, look up substack
Speaker 4: and look for intology. I've also been posting my work
Speaker 4: to LinkedIn and Twitter. I've got a little bit of
Speaker 4: work to do there late in getting that a bit
Speaker 4: more in shape.
Speaker 3: I don't use Instagram. I don't like that platform.
Speaker 4: But if they simply look me up on substack, they'll
Speaker 4: find antology.
Speaker 2: Antology on substack, yes, not anthology, antology a n T antology.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And I encourage everyone to do it and spread it around.
Speaker 2: It's it's very deserving of your attention. And I want
Speaker 2: to thank you Tony.
Speaker 4: Well, no, thank you for giving me this time and
Speaker 4: in this platform. It's not often someone like me gets
Speaker 4: the chance to have a discussion like this later and
Speaker 4: it's been it's been really pleasurable, So thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Well, we shall meet again in the not too distant
Speaker 2: future at a time and date to be arranged.
Speaker 3: Perfect I look forward to it. Likewise, Thanks Laydon.
Speaker 2: Thank you Tony. Now, it was only last week that
Speaker 2: I was referring to the wonderful benefits of wet and forget,
Speaker 2: mass mold, lichen, black fungi, and l g remover.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Coincidentally, I received a couple of days later a text
Speaker 2: from a friend of mine who I've made mention of before,
Speaker 2: who lives in Sydney. He's an academic, and he said,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, I'm in Poughkeepski in New York,
Speaker 2: visiting my best friend. And he told me that he
Speaker 2: had a muss problem on his roof. So I asked
Speaker 2: him what he was using, now, being a man who
Speaker 2: believes in communication efficiency, and that was all. But there
Speaker 2: was an accompanying picture of a container of wet and
Speaker 2: forget and a scrubber broom and something else behind that
Speaker 2: I can't quite see. So I have a word of
Speaker 2: advice for your friend, and that is, make sure he
Speaker 2: reads the instructions and applies it properly. Don't need to
Speaker 2: scrub it. The rain will take care of it. Does
Speaker 2: rain in Poughkeepski. I presume don't forget that you can
Speaker 2: get wet and forget products in many, many places in
Speaker 2: all of the twenty one standalone stores nationwide. In New
Speaker 2: Zealand on the phone at eight hundred and three zero
Speaker 2: three thousand wetinforget dot co dot NZ in Australia and
Speaker 2: in England, and particularly in Poughkeepski in New York, as
Speaker 2: well as the rest of America. Layton Smith now into
Speaker 2: the mail room for two forty six. Actually it's more
Speaker 2: of a male box, isn't it? Much smaller and not
Speaker 2: nearly as much fun. Missus producer aka Carolyn will be
Speaker 2: back next week and we're all looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: So feedback on last week with James Bovard two forty
Speaker 2: five was very entertaining interview. I'd say that he was
Speaker 2: spot on with his analysis, in line with all the
Speaker 2: alternative news that I listened to. I could not, for
Speaker 2: the life of me his humorous delivery on such dire topics,
Speaker 2: but I thank him. Cheers from Rod from Colin. I
Speaker 2: was disappointed that James Bouvard did not pick up on
Speaker 2: your opinion of Donald Trump. All the years that you
Speaker 2: have been interviewing people has given you the ability to
Speaker 2: be a very good judge of personality. I think having
Speaker 2: followed you for some time. I agree with what you said,
Speaker 2: as I feel Trump is an orator with a strong
Speaker 2: extraversion of personality that makes him very articulate and expressive.
Speaker 2: The thing is behind this persona as usual, is a
Speaker 2: very intelligent mind. Therefore he has the qualities of a
Speaker 2: good leader. It's a pity the Democrats are able to
Speaker 2: bend so many rules to discredit him. Maybe they might
Speaker 2: be able to bend another rule and parachute Michelle Obama
Speaker 2: into the contest. Goodness me, I hope not, says Colin
Speaker 2: is asking and answering his own question and from breat
Speaker 2: I am behind in your quality podcasts. Well, that's I suppose,
Speaker 2: one way of putting it. It was nice to hear
Speaker 2: epigenetics and sell consciousness make an appearance. Human biology is
Speaker 2: far more complex and interesting than we understand. Wisdom and
Speaker 2: knowledge are two different things. We're doing things without the
Speaker 2: wisdom and thinking ourselves clever than were cleverer than we are.
Speaker 2: We in fact know so very little and understand even less.
Speaker 2: Ghost in the Genes was a documentary now many years old,
Speaker 2: that introduced epigenetics. Epigenetics is in fact a very large
Speaker 2: field with many tangents. Yet more branches off it into
Speaker 2: other areas to explore all interwoven, including our very spirituality,
Speaker 2: human consciousness, quantum nature revolution. With a shift lift in consciousness,
Speaker 2: amazing things could start to happen alas we have chosen
Speaker 2: to devolve or decline as a nation rather than evolve
Speaker 2: our consciousness. Enjoy everything you do. Was that a comment
Speaker 2: or an instruction?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure?
Speaker 2: Do I have time for this? Yes? Or thoroughly enjoyed
Speaker 2: this episode? Later in great banter and insight between the
Speaker 2: two of you, just one glaring omission a presidential candidate
Speaker 2: not mentioned even once, one who mainstream media have elected
Speaker 2: to ignore, much to my surprise. You are you, who
Speaker 2: I do not consider to be mainstream in the slightest
Speaker 2: have ignored to my knowledge so far. Rfk JR. Robert
Speaker 2: Kennedy is most certainly in this presidential running, and running
Speaker 2: as an independent should not preclude him from the debate
Speaker 2: nor from the media's consideration. He is a threat to
Speaker 2: the hegemonic status quo in America, all the more reason
Speaker 2: to be tuning in. CNN did not allow him on
Speaker 2: the debate floor, so he answered all of the questions
Speaker 2: on a stream on Twitter much more eloquent than the
Speaker 2: other two. Also, I might add the states that Biden
Speaker 2: is in makes you wonder who was actually running the show.
Speaker 2: It is certainly not him, but I think we have
Speaker 2: the answer to that now. Thanks Hank, appreciate it, and
Speaker 2: I might address your Rah Kennedy comment to another time
Speaker 2: that takes us out for podcasts two hundred and forty six.
Speaker 2: We shall be back next week with missus producer in
Speaker 2: tow and in the meantime if you'd like to correspond
Speaker 2: Latent at Newstalks AB dot co dot nz or Carolyn
Speaker 2: with a y at NEUSTORGSB dot co dot nz. As always,
Speaker 2: thank you for listening and we shall talk soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from Newstalks B Listen live on
Speaker 1: air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
Speaker 1: you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.