Mixing it up

[marsden_online]

For those with an interest in education there's some really good conversations going on at Public Address, from Russell's post on National Standards and Jolisa's accounting of their experience with the American system.

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This quote in the Herald from Paula Bennett about National's approach to tightening up social welfare riles me.

"This may include practical training, attending a basic skills course or attending drug and alcohol rehabilitation," the policy said.

"After that, they will be required to actively look for a job, to go to any job interview they are referred to, and to accept any offer of suitable employment, whether fulltime, part-time, temporary or seasonal.

"If they do not comply with these obligations, they will have their benefit reduced in the first instance, then suspended and then cancelled."

While the evidence is that being in a job increases ones chance of finding another, we all know that
a) giving the impression that you will be looking for another job/are not really interested in the trolly-pushing position you've been sent to interview for results in rejections which result in accusations from WINZ that you're really trying to find work
b) the way to make people really productive and therefore actively grow the economy is to put them in jobs they want to do and enjoy doing. We all know WINZ, especially under National, is focused on turning out cheap labour, right?

This system does not work. Sure there are always a few people that are going to have to be ridden hard, but that shouldn't be the default setting. I haven't had to deal with WINZ since before it was WINZ, but my anecdata from people who do have to indicates it hasn't changed.

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Similarly, this whole shake-up to weed out 'lazy' students

In his statement yesterday Prime Minister John Key said there were "increasingly urgent problems" in tertiary education, pointing to low-quality courses and students who were lazy or studied year after year without going into the workforce.
...
"We will also take a careful look at the policy settings around student support to ensure that taxpayers' generosity is not being exploited by those who refuse to take their tertiary studies seriously or who show little inclination to transition from tertiary training into work."

Funnily enough I know a lot of students, and some of them I do class as slackers & lifestyle students who I think should get some aspirations and a good kick in the ass. But I also know a lot of students who
- after one or two years of mucking around and failing figure out what they want, pull it together and do really well,
- go back to Uni year after year because they've been unable to find work,
- study part time year after year because they can't handle full time (and I applaud the fact that they're doing that),
- are career students because they are looking at a life in Academia (which I suspect John Key doesn't count as 'going into the workforce).
And I think all these groups are going to be penalised unfairly.

There's a whole rant about the education system being set up to act as an assembly line, turning out a drone-like workforce without letting kids & young adults slow down & figure out what they want to do which I'm not going to repeat this time :)

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Finally and completely different, I wouldn't normally talk about internet dating sites but this Christchurch startup (Stuff article) falls into both the 'that's a new take' and 'why didn't someone think of that sooner' categories, and that amuses me. The idea is that since people are pretty crap at writing about themselves, you have to get a friend to write your profile. The url given in the article is actually buggered, try checkoutmyfriend.co.nz, not .com.

Comments

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Hang on -- is this the same Kyle Millar that was haunting the place when I was a Canterbury student in the late '80s?

[marsden-online.livejournal.com]

Yes it is. There's been a long and 'jolly' saga where he has repeatedly remained at Uni by the skin of his teeth, meddled in student politics even when he wasn't meant to be there, and run through the side of a glaziers van at 6am? in the morning trying to avoid the UCSA exec members serving him with a 2 year trespass notice
(they caught up with him at that point. 2 years later he was visibly back & bold as ever)

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Oh for god's sake. He desperately needs a life.

[vizi.livejournal.com]

Yes, AKAIK he is still in the system, despite actually graduating, and a period where he had a trespass order on him. IMO, he is exactly the person Key's policy is aimed at, not PhD students.