Leighton is on summer break, so we are highlighting some of his favourite guests from 2024.
One of the best and most interesting interviews we’ve done.
Tony O’Brien was born and raised in New Zealand. His life has followed a fascinating path, working in Australia, Britain, Canada, Hungary and beyond in a variety of capacities.
In his work he "did not have a plan, just took advantage of opportunities as they presented."
He is intelligent, articulate and successful but also modest. We discuss many different aspects of NZ’s current circumstances and issues, starting with education.
You will be encouraged!
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Now welcome to what we call the best of the Laton Smith Podcast. This being the first for the holiday season, and we look at one of the best and most interesting interviews that we've done. Tony O'Brien. He was born and raised in New Zealand. His life followed a fascinating path. He worked in Australia and Britain and Canada, Hungary and beyond in a variety of capacities. In his work, he did not have a plan, just took advantage of opportunities as they presented.
That was a quote.
He is intelligent, articulate and successful, but also modest. We discuss on this particular interview us many different aspects of New Zealand's current circumstances and issues, starting with education. Now. This interview was played on July tenth in Podcasts two forty six and if you like what you're here, you might want to investigate Ant O'Brien on substack. The best way to do it is simply to search for Ant O'Brien or Anthony O'Brien substack and we will play the interview right after a short break. Layton Smith Leverx is an antihistamine made in Switzerland to the highest quality. Leverix relieves hay fever and skin allergies or itchy skin. It's a dual action antihistamine. It has a unique nasal decongestant action. It's fast acting for fast relief, works in under an hour and lasts for over twenty four hours. Leveris is a tiny tablet that unblocks the nose, deals with itchy eyes, and stops sneezing. Levericks is an antihistamine made in Switzerland to the highest quality. So next time you're in need of an effective antihistamine, call into the pharmacy and ask for Leverix l e v Rix Leverix and always read the label. Takes directed and if symptoms persist, see your health professional. Farmer Broker Auckland. Anthony O'Brien otherwise known to his family as Aunt O'Brien or Tony. If you like ant is a writer, a thinker, a man who was raised in New Zealand with a large family seven kids, where they love to debate everything and taught to play ball. Not the man educated in science and law. His career was mostly spent outside of New Zealand in trade promotion, manufacturing management and TVET education. It's a great pleasure to have you on the podcast. I think it's a privilege. Chant Oh, thank you for having me late, and it's great to be here. You came to my attention by a roundabout way that I won't go into, and I was actually quite thrilled. The part that I want to start with because it intrigues me. You did a degree in New Zealand in the eighties in the earth sciences, and then the following decade you did a law degree at Sydney University. Why did you do that?
Well? Look, in the eighties when I left school, most of my friends actually had a plan. I had a friend who went on to be a pharmacist and other adoctor. I really didn't know what I wanted to do, and I also was a little bit impetuious at that point. It's so staying in wait ketto and going to the local university seemed like the most logical thing to do. I was actually care taker that stage of my father's primary school, so I was making some income from that. So I put myself through university and started a science degree, and I just found earth science or geology the most fascinating of the sciences that I did, and I had a hope of going into that field and going to Australia where my brother had already gone ahead of me, and he was encouraging me to do that geology study as well.
So then you went and did law. Why did you choose law?
Well, the funny thing is just let me fill in a little bit there. When I went to Australia, it was in the mid eighties and there was certainly no work in geology in New Zealand. So I went to Australia looking to work in the outback. But I loved I loved rugby, so I was actually playing for Randwick, trying to get into the Ramwick Seniors. They were known as the Galloping Greens, the best rugby club in Australia actually rugby union. This is and as much as anything that was a pursuit that I wanted to go after as well. But I was a Johnny could have been, to be honest, I was never quite going to get to the top. And I saw a job at IBM, the computer company, in the what did they call it, the Commonwealth Enjoyment Service window. I went in and talked to the lady and she said, you're too qualified for that, and I said, I don't care. It's what I want to do. I want to join a good company. But this enables me to practice my rugby do a lot of fitness training. And I went along and I became a forklift driver in the IBM Weirdhouse in Roseberry and Sydney, and frankly, having joined IBM, my boss at the time, Jack Black, leaned across the table and said, you've got a job for life, because I think at that stage IBM had never laid anyone off. And then I got promoted from there into the city where I became an account administrator. So I actually did that with an intention of being an IBM for a long time. And I have to say it was a fantastic training ground and credible company to work for. But then they went through their problems in the early nineties and at that stage it kept occurring to me that science wasn't my thing, that perhaps law was more what I wanted to do.
And I actually started a course which is part time.
What's a course through the Legal Practitioners Admission Board in Sydney, Yes, which allowed me to It's actually a diploma in law later not a bachelor's degree, but it's done in conjunction with Sydney University.
Let me just tell you I did twelve months of that. Okay, about ten years before you.
Okay, Well you know that it gives you the right to become a solicitor in Australia. And when I started that course, just through happenstance and through a friend who i'd met as a flatmate, I saw an opportunity to go and work for the New Zealand Trade Commission in Sydney, just to fill in for someone for six weeks. Someone had gone off on sick leave. After that six weeks and I was studying law at night, they offered me the job of locally hired Trade Commissioner and that was the start of my career with Trade New Zealand. And for the next I think five years, I did law every night and did that job every day and it was probably the hardest five years I've ever done in my career, to be honest, because it was long, long days and nights indeed.
And from there you went, let me run through a list and you tell me if I'm wrong anywhere. You became New Zealand Trade Commissioner in Sydney, New Zealand Trade Commissioner and a Consul general in Vancouver, followed by Senior Trade Commissioner in Europe based in London.
Correct. The only additional thing is in between. Between ninety six and two thousand and eight, I had to come back to New Zealand and I became an account manager for the marine industry just after we won the America's Cup and so I worked with what was known as Joint Action Group back then Merrick's and the Auckland Marine industry to assist them developed World one worldwide market.
So that was my time in New Zealand.
I had to put in that time in New Zealand to be considered to be posted formally as a trade commissioner. The local hires were a different thing. But then I got posted to Vancouver in two thousand as Trade Commissioner and Consul.
General and you ended up at one point being well working for Fletcher's in Hungary.
Yeah. Well, that's an interesting story in itself because when I left the Senior Trade Commissioner role in London, I was working a little bit with Fletcher's. At that stage it was Ahi Roothing actually you probably remember that name, and Fletcher had bought that company, and the incumbent in Europe approached me, knowing that I was thinking about leaving, and said, look, we are going to either acquire our competitor or build a new manufacturing facility in Europe.
Would you be interested to lead that burning?
So I said yes, I flew down to New Zealand interviewed with the CEO.
Of Fletcher Building at that time and.
Got the job, and so I began as a sales and marketing manager based in London. We did try to acquire the competitor who we also licensed the Decra tile to, which was a company called Ikpel out of Denmark. That fell through, and then the next step was to build a manufacturing facility and that was initially going to be in Slovenia, which was very attractive to me because my wife is Croatian of heritage, but in the end, it went to Hungary and off we went to Budapest. The factory was built, the capex case for that was done in two thousand and seven. The factory opened the doors in two thousand and eight, just as the financial crisis hit. So we then went into a very very difficult period and I continued in that role for four years as the bottom fell out of the market in Eastern Europe. So I gained a very challenging time in my career to be honesked, but a fascinating time time where I learned, Well.
I've also got connections in Budapest, in Hungary, okay, and I love the place it is. So let's bring it. Let's bring it up to the present. Came you came back to New Zealand when your kids were hitting school age or important school age might be the right way to put it. Correct.
Yeah. Look, I think one of the big issues for us in Hungary was our kids were ten, eight and six at the time, and we were very conscious of the issue of third culture kids. Our kids didn't have a home base in Hungary and its language was never going to be an easy place for them to actually identify with as as their home. So we bought them home and I had the opportunity at that stage to come right back home, which I wasn't expecting at all. But I came back to Hamilton, back to the Waycattow Institute of Technology as a business development manager at that point, and yeah, it was a surprising journey for me, but I'd lost my father a few years before that, just at the same time as the factory opened, actually, and just made sense to come home to give the kids a base in New Zealand, to give them a New Zealand identity.
And the New Zealand education, because you knew from experience how good it was, or at least that's what you thought. You're also a board member on the Waycatto Chamber of Commerce from twenty thirteen to twenty nineteen. I understand. So you have been very active. You've lived a life to this point at least that many people would be envious of because of the travel and the different experiences involved. So you come back to New Zealand and you put your kids into school, and now you are apart from it in whatever else you might be doing, having just turned sixty last weekend. By the way, you you have taken up substack writing and this this is what in part caught my attention, and you discovered your writing. You're writing specifically on kids and education at this point, and I don't know where you might continue on and go to with your writing. But at this particular point of time, are you almost obsessed, if I may say, with the education system or the lack of education system in this country. How did you how did you become well? Can I read this? Let me let me, let me read this. We enrolled our son in a very well regarded country school in the Waikato four years after we returned home. When my son was then in his second year at high school, what I used to know was form four. We were shocked when he said one night, we are finally doing maths equivalent to what I did in year six in Budapest. Clearly we had not been paying attention. I was genuinely shocked, and I'm surprised. Why weren't you paying more attention? I have to ask, well, that is a good question. I mean, I just had assumed that he was learning more.
And I think one of the reasons it's difficult to discern that is that the reporting in the New Zealand education system is so opaque you almost need a degree to understand the progress of children. And it wasn't until our son told me that that I started to really think, well, hold on what's going on here. It became even more apparent with my younger two because they had had less time in that system in Hungary, in the International British School in Hungary, and I began to realize that they didn't have any knowledge. They didn't know about things and and so that's when I did start to really start to investigate it. I was working obviously at the Waycatto Institute of Technology at that point and was seeing almost as zealous attachment to inquiry based learning. But I then began to realize that this was right through the system and the imparting of knowledge to our kids wasn't happening as it had happened in Buterpest.
Did you at any stage regret returning home?
I did it, to be honest. I came back to the education system here thinking that I could add a lot of value and I found that I had to button my lip.
So that was the first thing.
A lot of the time I think my views and someone who will state their views, but you are in a position where you have to sometimes run with the narrative or risk risk your job. And I think that's a big problem in New Zealand. I think a lot of people know that the education system is not working that well, but they're scared to speak up. It's also a very hard journey to come back to your own country after the life we have lived. They say it's the hardest journey for the expact to come home. But on the other hand, look, I deeply believe in this country. I've worked for a long time for this country, and I still believe we can turn this around. And so I'm here and I intend to stay here, and I intend to keep banging this drum about education, although I do want to write about other things as well. Last and I've got a fairly eclectic set of interests.
At the age, at the age of sixty, are you still interested in the gainful employment?
That's the big question at the moment. I've set myself up as Tony O'Brien consulting. I think some of my views may make it difficult for me to be employed by some groups. But I think if people genuinely want to have a robust debate about how where we head as a society. Then you know I'm very keen to add my two pennies worth and support that endeavor.
So yeah, I look, I'd like to work, but I'm not.
Likely at this stage to go back into the corporate culture, into a corporate in New Zealand. At least overseas it might be a different story. My kids have all left home now. My youngest is now at Canterbury University doing engineering, and the other tour off at Otaga University, both studying, so you know there's an opportunity again now too.
May I ask what they're studying.
Well, my son's doing an honors in law alongside a BA where he's doing the classic politics, philosophy and economics, the old Ppe degree that.
Oxford run and Otarge offer that.
So he's doing very well and has just picked up an internship with Mentor Allison for the summer. My daughter was a very good dancer, did a year at the New Zealand School of Dance, but she's quite an academic as well and she's decided that she wants to go down that path.
So after a year at the New Zealand School of dance.
She started this year at Otago doing a BA with a major in psychology and philosophy. Are you concerned about the target, I'm concerned about all of our universities, to be honest, I think the prevailing view of all the university vice chancellors is concerning. I'm not sure where they head. They've got financial issues. The loss of the international students and we haven't an unlikely to pick up the numbers that we had in the past is going to be difficult for them from a fiscal perspective. But the fact that they run with this postmodernist sort of view and the identity politics that are being expressed by these universities really concerns me because there should be bastions of free speech. And you know, I was reading Jonathan Ailing's latest or one of his latest emails that came out I followed the Free Speech Union, and he was commenting on the fact that the vice chancellor of Victoria literally went out to his academics and asked for information on Ailing and or doctor Michael Johnson, who's of the New Zealand Initiative, as examples of their racism, so that he could potentially cancel them from the event that was to occur at that university. This is an anathema and it's unbelievable that that should have happened in New Zealand.
Well, Michael Johnson, of course was at Victoria University before he joined the initiative, which is wasn't that long back, so that in itself was surprising when you said it. The reason I'm interested in it is because my son went through and did a course fairy similar to yours with law and arts. And if it was now that he was wanting to go to Otigo, I wouldn't be paying the bills.
Wow, okay, And why why do you feel that way.
Particularly precisely for the for the for the reasons that you gave only only probably extended ones. Yeah, I mean the new, the new the new vice chancellor is I mean seriously, someone someone who helped destroy the country financially is now going to run a university can be a break.
Well, this is this is a problem that we've experienced the New Zealand before. There's there's various people being put into positions from having been in political power and and it isn't an issue where the person has the requisite experience, but Grant Robinson is you know, he's a politician, but I'm not convinced he has the background or experience to be to be a vice chancellor. But it seems latent that you know, meritocracy is the thing that is sadly lacking here. We've seen so many examples in New Zealand where people are appointed into positions not because they actually are the best person for the role, but because they fit some sort of identity characteristic that is required. And that may not seem like a major problem initially, and you know, I'm the first one to sort of believe that we do need to have role models from all areas of our society in various jobs. But when it becomes a situation where a person's merit is not considered and someone is appointed simply on the basis of their identity, You're going to see a situation over time where that lack of confidence in so many different parts of the country, in so many different institutions, starts to lead to poor decision making and starts to lead to the failure of the economy. And it's something that New Zealanders should be really concerned about. We have the talent in this country to run the place well, but we may not have the right people running the place.
Do we have the talent to run the place well? And I asked that question based on the number of flights leaving the country full of full of those people.
Well, that's a real question, you know, that's a really good question.
I think it is a big concern that we educate people here. As you say the education system is changing. They have the same concerns that you do. But then our best and brightest go and where they used to come back, I'm not sure they will in the future. And I think you interviewed Stephen Jennings at some point in an earlier podcast and he was saying similar things. I think he was saying similar things about education actually that he was really concerned for New Zealand. So I'm not sure that we will have the capacity of New Zealand going forward.
Well, let me put it this way to you. You have the ability and the capacity and the ground to involve yourself, if if, if you could in the areas that you're concerned about and to and to give gift your talent and knowledge and history to help develop what we might consider a successful contemporary system of education. Except you can't because they don't want you.
Well, that remains to be seen. But I suspect you're right. I get the feeling that when I've spoken, I'm not speaking in the right narrative. So yeah, they there's a danger that people like me start to withdraw. And that's how I feel a little bit. It's like, Okay, I'm not not going to be heard, so what's the point? And it's it's it's very disappointing because I do look at my experience and I sometimes wonder, what on what's going on here? Why is my view someone who's been in these roles around the world. I've worked both in senior management and in trade promotion for the country. I understand how our export sectors work, and yet I understand how the education system works. I've got a science degree at a law qualification, but I'm just not the right age or color to be appointed into certain roles.
Okay, now there's more than that, but I want to go back to this. This is the first article you wrote, as far as some aware, the problem statement, basically laying out your approach to education in New Zealand and where you see it faulty and praising some people who deserve to be recognized more than they are, and I pick it up. Firstly, our teachers are taught to adhere almost religiously to what is known as constructivism, even social constructivism, which is rolled out under the term student centered learning. To be sure, constructivism is or as posited by Jen Pierge, has its merits, but it needs to be tempered by other pedagogical styles. As my father would have said, to teach a child, you need to do what it takes.
And you go on.
Erica Stanford, the new Minister of Education, has listened and seems to be adopting many of the recommendations put by the New Zealand Initiative in this space. She's pushing, for example, the use of explicit instruction in the form of structured literacy. Fancy that in helping children to read, she is to be commended, but she needs to be supported. Again, as you've made mention of this organization listening to Radio New Zealand, the pushback has already started, and you go on to encourage all in Sundry to back Erica Stanford and give her support. Have you met with her?
No? I have not. Actually I did have a teleconference one night prior to the election with some people, and I think Erica might have been on that call, and that was through my association with the Wakado Chamber of Commerce, which i'd left by that stage as a director. But there are people within the Chamber who think my views need to be further heard. But I'd love to do so. I'd love to talk to her about this because I think at the end of the day, you know there is a place. Jean Pierreet when he said children are scientists, is right. They are very good. We all humans have an inate ability to problem solve. We learn how to talk without being sent to school. But John Sweller talks about biological secondary information, not primary information, but secondary information that we will only learn if we go to school, and the idea that we need to discover these things for ourselves to that all the best learning happens when students discover things. Tends to come from almost a counseling view of the world that you have insight and we all do. But the fact of the matter is you can't discover something if you're ignorant, not of the world's knowledge. And a classical traditional education of the past ironically the sort of education that the people who are making the decisions in Willington today.
Got but are now denying to the younger folk.
Gives people information and once you have knowledge, as Ed hirsh An American educational psychologist says, knowledge begets knowledge. Another one, Dan Willingham, who's a great educational psychologist out of I Think Michigan. He talks about the fact that teaching knowledge is teaching reading because you need knowledge to disambiguate what you might be reading and understand it. So you start from the basics, you build, and then you start to become creative and critical in your thinking once you have knowledge. Critical thinking as a skill doesn't make sense. It's not something you can teach. It's innate. But once you situate that critical thinking in a domain, then you can critically think. It's actually hard latent to transfer critical thinking across domains. A doctor can critically think about the illness of a patient, but if he doesn't know anything about engine, he can stand there in the front of his engine and you won't have a hope in hell of critically thinking about what's wrong with the engine unless he has the knowledge of how that engine operates. And yet we in New Zealand seem to think that kids are going to go to school and sit in front of in a group and discover the knowledge because the primary thing seems to be engagement. Now, look, engagement is important, there's no question, you know, you really do want to engage kids in learning. But look, if I refer to the Machays skill in London and wonderful principal there, I can't remember. I think Catherine berber Berbersing. You know, she explains that they in part knowledge to these inner city London kids and the kids lap it up. They like to be taught. And I can't imagine that it's any different in New Zealand that children want to learn.
Have you have you? Have you come across a school in Sydney a Liverpool called the Marsdian Road Primary School No. About a month ago, five weeks maybe I interviewed the headmaster or mistress if you like. The principal Miniesha Grizzoola born in India, and she has adopted pretty much the same approach as the as the London school you referenced, and that principle. I don't know whether she I don't think she stole it from them. She grew up in much of a younger life was spent in India, and she learned things for herself. And she has run this school in that manner, and the school's rankings, the results have gone through the roof. I can imagine and guess what while she's still there and an operating, there's concern in the system that this might be catching.
You were why is that late? And why why are people scared of our children understanding the knowledge of the world.
Well, I think we both know the answer, and so do I think most people who listening, and there are other there are other alternatives that are preferred. As a simple way to put it. Let me move on to because you've written I think eight articles so far on the substeact. Now I don't know which ones you think are the most important. I will make mention of the teaching kids to love reading, but I think I think that that that has become fairly fairly obvious. And it's the shortest one of all. It's it's two pages, whereas you're writing others like too much zeal for co construction in New Zealand classrooms is nine pages, and there's a couple more that are at least that long. So what did you what did you move on? Just give us an outline of what you were saying in article number two, Too Much zeal.
Well, this goes back to this issue that we've been talking about. That's I guess a good place to start with us is my role at win Tech. I was bringing teachers from China down to New Zealand to show them how we teach in our polytechnics. And if you think about education as being on a continuum, at one end a road based learning instruction and didact what we call didactic learning, and at the other end being you know, discovery or inquiry based learning, which is based on construction or in the New Zealand model, social constructivism, a sort of a diological approach to teaching.
The Chinese were in our way up the.
One end of that system, the didactic rope based learning, and we very want to criticize the Chinese for this, that there's no imagination in their students.
Bringing these teachers down from China.
We were impressing upon them the importance of getting students to think for themselves. But what I started to see was as these Chinese teachers were here, they started to ask questions about but you know how these students don't seem to know stuff. And eventually I got onto a discussion with some pretty senior people and who took the view that New Zealand's gone too far. They they will absolutely introduced some inquiry based learning, project based learning into their into their education system, and there's a place for it. But to do that without first and parting the knowledge just doesn't make sense. And this is this is where New Zealand it seems to have gone wrong. It's what what doctor Michael Johnston and others are picking up on. I think I refer to John Sweller earlier. Also, both these gentlemen are talking about the fact that you know, the when you learn to discover it all yourself is a very very inefficient way to go about it.
When when you're taught knowledge, when you actually are young and you've given that knowledge, it gives you the basis to be creative and critical in your thinking in the future. And we've just lost that we and I believe we've lost it partly because they seem to be an ideology around you know, the knowledge that's come from the age of reason, the knowledge that's come from the enlightenment, which ironically is the sort of knowledge that has actually enabled modern states. Modern liberty has freed women from the chains of servitude, allowed them to enter the education system, and yet the flood of women into education in the late nineties and then their tendency to latch onto postmodernism, which rejects objectivity, rejects any sort of objective morality, and rejects the patriarchy in the Western system. I think this is where it's sort of the ideology combines with the concept of co construction to cancel out any teaching of the knowledge of the West. And that's a real problem because you know, whether it's Newton or Galileo or Descartes or Hugh or Adam Smith, these thinkers have changed our world. And you know, if you listen to someone like Stephen Pinker, he will talk about the fact that our world is a far far better place than it was in the seventeenth century.
There's far less violence, there's far more opportunity for people. And although the West has benefited from that more than most, until recently the rest of the world was starting to catch up, which Laiden goes to insure around you know, globalization that I would like to talk about if we could, but because we're heading into a period of deglobalization away from free trade.
And I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but I think it's very dangerous.
For the world. But look, coming back to this issue of too much zeal. There's why I'm saying that is anybody who sort of says, why don't we get kids to do a bit of drilling on the Times table or on history, why don't we impart this information, you tend to sort of get looked at as if you're talking some strange sort of language, like why would we do that? But I think underneath that as an ideology.
How would you describe that ideology?
It's definitely coming from a Marxist base. It's kind of a Marxism rolled into postmodernism. And you mean you hear that the education departments or universities they're big fans of fo Co and a writer and all of these.
Thinkers who see everything in terms of power.
And you mean like the you mean like the Democrat Party.
Yeah, Look, the American political system is beyond my comprehension. To be honest, I can't quite believe we've got a situation where to you know, geriatric candidates are running for power in a country where there's three hundred and fifty million people. But certainly the Democrats seem to have lost their minds and the Republican Party has lost its mojo. It's been taken over by Trump. For whatever you think of Trump, he now owns that party, and I think they're in a mess as well. So yeah, I sound conscious, I'm sounding a bit negative on everything, but it is. It is a very challenging environment over there.
I'm not responding to you because I have an idea and I will explain it before we conclude the other articles that you've written, of those which to you are the most relevant for our purposes, Oh.
Look, they're all They're all relevant. I think.
I think you say that the just very quickly.
On the modern learning environments or the innovative learning environments, that the amount of money that's been spent on this country creating barns that are going to be very difficult for children to learn in is just astonishing. Going back to John Sweller, his theory around cognitive load suggests that two really critical things. One that our working memory is limited in its capacity. But if you have information loaded into your long term memory, then you can easily access that back into your working memory without too much cognitive load. Other things that can put cognitive load on the working memory.
Give us story, just give us a definition of cognitive load.
So you know, the minds and the mind's an amazing thing, and some of these things are sort of illustrative of how it works rather than actually how it works. But in the you have it. You have a working memory where the work is done, where an executive the executive level your brain is operating. And then in your long term memory, where we've got a lot of memory stored in our brains, that the working memory can access that long term memory, so that the load he's talking about is in the executive functionary, in the executive function, in the working memory. When it comes to distraction, sorry, when it comes to the modern learning environments, one of the problems that they create is the noise and the visual distraction of so many children in a modern learning environment actually adds to cognitive load, which is a problem because it does then overwhelm a child, and particularly children with problems like ADHD, they just can't handle that environment. And I also suspect the teachers find it extremely difficult.
To handle the environment of being in a room with.
Sixty kids all day long, all competing for their attention and in a discovery based mode, not listening to them, but being told to get on and do things and work in groups.
So anyway, the point there is is that.
There's been a lot of money spent building these monolithic structures that align with the discovery based learning model, which modern science says is not a good way of teaching teaching children. In the other articles, and particularly my most more recent articles, I'm talking about issues that go to social media and some of the damage that's been caused. The education industry here in New Zealand seems to think that children need to learn how to use the technology. Ignore the fact that most of us are aware that our kids can actually use smartphones and iPads and most software more insuratively as digital natives than any of us. I don't need more time on these things. They need to be taught the basics. So I'm a big fan of Jonathan Height in this area his books. On His latest book on the Anxious Mind talks about four norms which I wrote about us.
Adopting if we could in one of my more recent.
Articles, and he's those four norms that he's talking about are no no smart phones before high school, no phones at school, no social media before sixteen, and more independent and free played out in the real world. He cites research that shows that the average, not not some teenagers, the average teenager in America spends nine hours a day on social media. To believe it is hard to believe, but not not when you've seen teenagers playing video games and other things at night. But if we take that time away from kids and redirect them into the real world, we all have to make an effort to allow that to happen and put the scaffolding around that to allow that happen.
And that that goes.
Back to us acting against the community and and you know, not being afraid to put out kids outside and say go on your bikes. Go. You know, look at look at the number of schools around New Zealand where it's a bridlock to get into school because every kid is going to school in an suv in case they get you abducted on the streets. Well, is that is that really going to happen? And if it is, why is it happening? You know, have we lost our communal values that we can't look out for each other's kids.
Well, I think there's more than that. I think there's the danger of traffic that deserves a lot of a lot of parents. Plus the fact that some of them, I don't I have no idea on I can't put a figure on it, but some of them live quite a distance away from schools. Where where in this day and age. Going back to the traffic scenario, it really, it really is unnerving.
Look, I don't doubt that I and I sound somewhat disingenuous, even to myself, because I'm guilty of this helicopter parenting myself, and you know, and but we somehow need to convince ourselves that and start with the small things. There's a there's an organization that I refer to in one of those articles called let Grow in the United States, and they are starting to just encourage parents to do the smallest things to get their kids to be a little bit more independent and take take trips, go into the shop themselves, those sort of things.
Just just to build that independence and agency.
Otherwise, you know, it may be that our kids will get killed or injured on the roads but there's a there's a growing suicide problem in New Zealand, which is the tip of a mental health problem which is which is growing rapidly. That our kids have anxiety and depression because they've been taught by parents that the world's not safe, that they aren't competent to go out into the world. And we all, we all just need to be a little bit more optimistic about our ability, our kid's ability to cope in the world and let them go and scrape their knees. I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you about you know, the roads we need. We the traffic does move fast, and so you have to be sensible. But there are opportunities for us as a society to collectively ensure that our children get more free and independent play.
And I agree with you completely by the way, falling off swings and breaking your arm or something which one of mine did, is a lesson in life exactly. And it's not pleasant to break your arm, not that I'd know, but by the same token, that's how you learn through experience, and you can transfer that learning breaking your army by being silly on a swing to other things as well. There's something that you mentioned. That's that's triggered off a question I had when for when I was reading and I have read pretty much all of the articles that you've read so far. Are our boys failing school or are the schools failing our boys? Now, before you jump in, the question that I that I have is the boys are supposed to be the ones who are who are falling behind. But when it comes to social media and the influence that it has, the influence is far greater on girls that negatively on that it is on boys. And I can't yes, I can remember the figures girls. There's a big growth in girls having psychological problems and the figure I was thinking of was thirty percent and the boys, by comparison, are.
Twelve Yeah, twelve percent.
Yeah, yeah, that's in the United States. No, you're absolutely right when it comes to when it comes to social media, girls are really vulnerable. And you know, there's there's a growing body of evidence that suggests that the you know, the negative impacts of a constant requirement for validation, the constant exposure to what other people are doing in the world, leads to kids and particularly girls become becoming a little bit more neurotic about what's going on, and worried that they're not going to cut it. They're also you know, prone to being cyber bullied, so in that respect, yeah, there is a problem for girls, and that's that's a good reason to ban social media for people under sixteen.
Two things I want to sorry, yeah, no, go ahead. Two things I want to string together. The collapse of morality. That's a question for you and sex in teaching, because the two, the two are very closely logged in together. Have we had a collapse of morality do you think in Western society?
Yeah, well, I think we have. And I think one of the issues that that's a real problem for our society is and it's one of the issues that kind of counters the Age of Enlightenment. If you are a religious person. The Age of Enlightenment really taught us all to be skeptical, to think of ourselves as universal people, but also to obviously, you know, question God. You know, as nietzsch has premacy said, we've killed God. And as people have come away from religion as their sort of arbiter, a God is their arbitter of their lives. In following the prestrict of the structures of a religion. Everyone's been searching for a new set of ethics. And you know, there are the new atheists like Dawkins and others, and various ethicists around world Peter Singer out of Australia, who are pointing to a new set of ethics, but they're very hard for people to latch onto. And it's much easier for people to latch onto the new religion of postmodernism more than the new religion of you know, really a name. Stuff like that comes across on TikTok so. I think people are a little lost there. It does seem to be a movement back towards religion. I'm not sure what the answer is. Later, and I was brought up as a Catholic, I very much became agnostic and almost an atheist, and now I don't know where I am. To be honest, I always find it impossible to reject the possibility of a god. But as a society, we have such a plurality of thinking on this that it's difficult to get common and shared values around what the ethics and society should be. Albeit that if we went back to the basics, I think nearly every society does agree on something that looks close to the Teen Commandments.
I think that's a rather wise soulation. Actually, sex and teaching. Is there a place in schools for sex education?
Yeah, I absolutely think there's a place in schools for sex education. You know, the world changed, what is it, you know, in the sixties when women finally got control of their fertility. It's probably the biggest sociological change in the history of humans. Of humankind. There's no doubt that, you know, we should put our heads in the sand and ignore the sexual revolution. And I think in the modern day world, we need to be clear that the world is operating differently. So kids do need to be aware, particularly young girls, they do need to be aware of their sexuality. They need to unders stand contraception, they need to understand the basics. The problem I have is there seems to be a growing push to do that at a younger and younger age. And it just seems insane to me to be teaching kids before puberty at a very young age about all sorts of sexual practices that you know, you and I wouldn't have known about until we were quite mature.
Well, I can give you a reason for it. It's very simple. It is are being run by introduced and run by Devians. Well you may well be right, and they're getting away with it specifically in the States. Look, I've I lied a long time ago that what happens in America it used to be starting in California, but now it can come from anywhere almost. But what happens in America finds its way into the rest of the world, particularly the Western world anglic countries, and you can you can see it in advance and more. All recent times, it's become something of a surprise to me at the speed at which it moves. Now I'm about to give you an example of what I'm talking about, and it is something that stunned me over the weekend. In the Weekend Australian, a woman who was qualified to cover this sort of thing about a situation in Wales of all places, where boys have been asking teachers in class, how do we conduct choking during sex? And the answer is pornography. Essentially, they're seeing it in pornography. She even indicates in the article that the girls themselves are if not believing they're then they're they're in motion to accepting that this is part of it. And the boys are believing that the girls what it did my head?
No, it does my head, And I think, you know, and this is clearly down to pornography. This is clearly down to there seems to be I think it's well known that, you know, as people use pornography more and more, they have a tendency to go to more and more extremes. And of course, like any of these algorithms that I'm operating on an app or on the internet, the algorithm, algorithm is designed to tatilate and trigger you more and more. And the same is true of porn. So where once porn might have shown a beautiful expression of love, and you know, I'm not totally condemn I don't condemn pornography entirely, but it certainly should be used by adults. But where people are being shown more and more extreme porn, and especially at very young ages, of course they're going to start to normalize that's what you do.
And and choking is an extremely dangerous.
Thing to do, and the fact that our young children even know about it is just astonishing.
One question you mentioned was a boy asked the teacher, how do I bring my girlfriend around after she's passed out?
Oh my god. There.
It's astonishing, but not really surprising when you think about it, especially on the back of your explanation a moment ago.
No, well exactly. And this is the great irony of all of this is.
We're trying to keep our children safe in the natural environment, and we expose them to these sort of things online we have. This is where Height is right. We need to get kids off this stuff until they've got a level of maturity that they can understand what's happening here. I mean, you're seeing the same thing with the hookup culture in young people there, you know, and I'm sure that girls ultimately understand that this is not good for them. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that, you know, the top twenty percent of boys get to pick from all the girls because the girls want to be with the nicest looking, most sporty boy. If there's a belief that those girls have and they you know, the girls genuinely want love, but the boys will just keep moving on and they're eventually going to be left feeling, you know, neglected, sad because they've participated in a culture that is just so shallow. And we need to get back to a situation where you know, they have a word for it these days, you know that you meet in the wild. So many boys. I've talked to boys at universities who can't find a girlfriend because the girls say, well, if I wanted to have sex, so I just go on tender you know, so back off. So, you know, even just to chat up a girl as a young man these days is problematic. Where does that leave our young men? They're both kind of over feminized by their education and then presented with an impossibly difficult task of finding a partner. It's not good.
Give me a brief on the feminization of education.
Well, well, look, it's always a difficult one to go into.
And I would say at the outset that it's you know, in danger of being accused of being a misogynist. But you know, I think I've always believed that there's a balance between the sexes, between the masculine and the feminine. There are two biological sexes. By the way, later maybe there may be more fluidity and gender, but there are just two biological sexes.
Well, I'm a fellow traveler.
Yeah, And at the end of the day, our schools have become flooded with particularly primary schools with women and women both teaching and in leadership roles, and women quite rightly are the cares in society when when you know, women evolved to look after young children, to nurture those children, and there's a stage in every mother's life where she has to start to back away from that naturing and allow the child to explore and grow. And that's and that's why men in fathers are so important. They play a different role. They push their kids, they encourage them to get out and compete. I'm not saying women don't, but there's there's more tendency to nurture and to discuss from women. Now. That is what is happening in our schools. We're seeing more and more leaders and teachers in the schools. Men. Men are scared to go into primary schools these days for reasons we both know.
And and so there's this over.
Nurturing of children and an over emphasis on cooperation and discussion and a whole lot of things that actually leads the boys feeling like they have to sit down on the carpet with the girls and do nothing, which they'll happily do if you give them an iPhone or some sort of smart device that they can just get absorbed in. But we're losing that balance between the masculine and feminine that should be there. And the only way we can resolve that, by the way, is to get more men back into the teaching profession, particularly at the primary school level.
Which lead leads to another subject. Really not one that you've covered as har as I'm aware at this point, but co ed or single sex schools best.
That's a hard one.
I went to a single sex school, Saint John's College in Hamilton. I must say, having come from a full country school to a place where there were no girls, I found it very discombobulating at the start, and actually I'd have to say I think I suffered a psychological deface it at the end of that time, because I really didn't know how to approach approach girls when I went to university. So look, I know these evidence that suggests that that single sex schools are better for education. My view is keeping the two sexes together through school is the better, the better way, because I think that that period of puberty is such a great time for socialization between the two sexes and to understand each other.
That's just my opinion.
I know others will have.
But I was interested in your opinion. I experienced both, and I could argue either way, to be honest.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, all right.
So I mentioned that I had a suggestion to make to you, And now it would appear to be the time you mentioned globalization and you mentioned American politics, and I think that there is another podcast on both those topics for us to cover sometime in the not too distant future.
You say, I'd love to do that. I'm fascinated in it. I think we're in danger of the world economy contracting Judah deglobalization, and New Zealand's in a particularly vulnerable situation in that regard. I mean that kind of hint, you know, hitches back to education as well, because we have to have a highly educated, innovative society in New Zealand and with such a small country, such a long way from anywhere, that we need the benefits of free trade to do well in the world. And you know, I've got lots of thoughts on that from my years in trade development. But I'd love to love to have a deeper discussion on those topics.
And we might we might make it a trifector and throw media into it as well.
Yeah. Look, just on that note, and as you as you talked about it, I did listen to your podcast with Oliver Hartwich and I think is a very good thinker. I love some of this thinking about how New Zealand might become a little bit more Swiss in its democracy. That's not an easy leak to make. But one thing he did touch on and I was cheering alongside, was foreign direct investment. New Zealand needs to understand that it doesn't really matter that much where the money comes from. We need capital. Our firms in New Zealand have consistently been undercapitalized, so we need we need the factors of production and obviously human smart humans is a big part of that education. But capital is another thing. And we've done a really bad job over the years of trying to protect the economy from foreign direct investment while trying to open up other economies to our products. We need to we need to be a little bit more balanced about that. And he did site Ireland, which is a country of my ancestry, and you know that have the advantage of being situated in the middle of Europe, on the edge of Europe. But they've done fantastic job of attracting foreign direct investment and in their education system and they're moving well ahead of others as a knowledge economy, and I think New Zealand needs to do something similar.
You know, I've never been attracted to Ireland in any way, shape or form until Oliver made those comments, and by the end of it, I was ready to pack up the house and leave.
Well, they got great crack over there.
You know, they love to talk, but they're good thinkers, and you know they've been placed in a.
Difficult situation because of Brexit.
I might add lasion that you know, Island is a place that actually demonstrates for me that we have to look to the future, forget about the past and all the injustices and everything that's gone on in the world where we could have a grievance. It's so important that a society pulls together and comes together around a vision and a goal. And thank god Island has done that. They've moved on from the troubles, although you know, it really worries me that the Brexit thing might stir that up again. But New Zealand has to be very careful on this front. We need to understand that we're all New Zealanders wherever we came from, and we need a common set of values and some national pride in being New Zealanders, not being in our groups, whatever they may be, but being New Zealander's first and foremost and proud of our country. And as people would say, all throwing the walker in the same direction.
Would you allow a walker from anywhere in the world to come in.
That's a hard question. I'm not a say again.
I was going to say, hold the thought, because we can throw that in with the other lot. Yeah, it's building now your work. What is the best way for people to find it?
Well, look, I'm still building that up at the moment. But if they go on to substack, look up substack and look for antology. I've also been posting my work to LinkedIn and Twitter. I've got a little bit of work to do there late and getting that a bit more in shape. I don't use Instagram, don't. I don't like that platform. But if they simply look me up on substack, they'll find antology.
Anthology on substack, yes, not anthology antology a n T antology. Yes, And I encourage everyone to do it and spread it around it's it's very deserving of your attention, and I want to thank you Tony.
Well, thank you for giving me this time and in this platform. It's it's not often someone like me gets the chance to have a discussion like this later and it's been it's been really pleasurable. So thank you very much.
Well, we shall meet again in the not too distant future at a time and date to be arranged perfect.
I look forward to it. Likewise, Thanks Laton.
Thank you Tony. Now I'm doing it a little differently this year. At the end of the replay, I usually have a few words to say, and every year I have to struggle to think up what the appropriate thing is to put in this particular plot. So I've decided to give myself a break and do one that covers all of them. So if you've heard this before, you can turn it off because you've heard it, because it's going to be the same one for each of the seven replays. Now, if this is the first one, then I trust that you're having a wonderful holiday. If you're not on holiday yet, your time will come. Rest assured. I have enjoyed doing these because re listening to them myself, I get more out of them, and I see things, or I should say, I hear things that I might have got slightly wrong or I could have done better, So it's a learning curve as well. Anyway, we will be back for the next one a week from this particular release, unless, of course it's the last one, which is on the twenty ninth of January, and that'll be the end of this replay series. Add on February five, we shall return with fresh content in the meantime at any stage us drop us on notes if you've got comment that you'd like to make later at Newstalks AB dot co dot Enzen and Caroline at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot nz and we shall talk soon.
Thank you for more from News Talks at B Listen live on air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.