Posts by Kerry Weston
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Front page of today's Dom - Auckland University psychologist Ian Lambie: "At the end of the day, we've got an inadequate workforce, there's no specialist training in child and adolescent psychology in New Zealand and it's a gap." This is in reference to the mooted boot camps and Judge Andrew Beecroft's assertion that they are failures, historically, and might only work with long-term follow-up and support.
There is no child and adolescent specialist psychologists at all in the Manawatu, (likely spot for boot camps with all the Defence Force hangouts) as I discovered a couple of years ago when I sought help for my son. You aren't told this, of course. The clients are told that they are bad parents, that whatever the problem is, it's all their fault. Like Emma, I had to go hard to get any help at all and the system is unquestionably structured to conserve funds and find excuses not to help.
One day, I heard a NZ adolescent psychologist who practises in Melbourne on the radio, describing what he does and what kind of services are available and how he views adolescence. It was a revelation. I'd never heard such wisdom, hope and blame-free positive rhetoric from a mental health professional - and I'd seen a few by then. Suddenly I knew just what we didn't have.
The lack of a genuine, professional presence in NZ is not just a "gap" it's a cold-hearted, ignorant decision to with-hold essential health care from children and their families.
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Following on from Alastair, today's Dom had a depressing piece from James Lovelock, who now believes it's too late to save the world. Europe will be the new Sahara and the world's population will be down to a billion by 2100. Lovelock believes government efforts are wasted on cutting back carbon emissions and "should instead be focussed on creating safe havens in areas that will escape the worst effects of climate change."
I guess that could be us.
As for the politicians and the job summit - how come it's okay for the commoners to be at the mercy of market forces, but dinosaur car makers, poined-by-their-own-greed banks and uncompetitive whiteware manufacturers who relocated overseas are worthy of bail-outs, yet it's not on to protect NZ jobs - like swazi in Levin? How come all the Free Trade purists overseas keep protecting their own (Euro dairy, US cars) yet it's not OK for us? Who are we to be ideologically pure at a time like this? And is anyone going to front up, like Paul Keating, and say the days of US unquestioned global superiority are over and the big surplus countries - China & India - are now ascendant? And have a wee discussion about what that might mean for us down here at the bottom of the world?
If Lovelock's even half right, there won't be much of a damned world to trade with.
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The great intellectual enhancement and whole love-in wasn't benefit enough?
The love-in was especially groovy - i gotta say, tho, that this thread felt like a baited trap for anyone silly enough to put up au contraire opinions. I simply wasn't informed enough to contribute much. better now - don't like 92a but I'm not seeing a great future for artists yet.
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I've been following this thread & links etc from the start - crikey, do i get a chocolate fish?? - and i would really like to hear from our independent film makers. Their voice has been absent from discussion, yet it is film, more so than music, IMO, that has so much at stake. I've tried to find personal opinions rather than industry group opinion, but no joy.
I heard one young filmmaker on nat radio one day recently (when I was driving so couldn't record details) and he posted his film on the net in the hope that somebody important in Movieland would see it and be impressed and want him for a project. That just sounds like a lotto gamble to me - what's to stop someone overseas copying it, claiming it as their own and using it as a promo reel to hawk around?
I know sweet FA about film production etc, so I'd really like to know what possibilities film makers - like say Duncan Sarkies, Gaylene Preston, Jonathan King - see in using the net and the future of copyright.
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I think it will be very interesting to read reports and personal accounts in about 30 years' time about people's experiences of community care. I wonder how many abuse cases will have piled up and investigations been done into the quality of care provided through private agencies?
Some hard and guilt-laden decisions have to be made in families dealing with family members with serious mental health disorders. In my extended family, we have someone who lives alone, by choice, who is utterly unpredictable and spends a great deal of time walking the streets alone. I won't go into the details other than to say, a better way for the family to cope hasn't been found. Still, we may all come to regret the consequences.
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There's something in the water in Wellington, i tell you ...
Not only did some Dozy Wellingtonians buy trains that were too big for the tunnels - and I'd really like to know how they realised their mistake - but more DW's bought new hospital beds that don't fit through the ward doors.
How could meaningful legislation possibly be constructed in a city that's lost its tape measures??
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Further on the reggio-style education. i read they are physically built around piazzas, so there is a communal area in the centre of the learning environment. It reminded me that when I did my art education in the late 80s, we also had a purpose-built building, designed by John Scott, which was a series of large connecting rooms with a kitchen and dining area at the centre. We had a lot of communal meals and visiting artists to stay, marae style, a lot of learning exchange was done informally. And plenty of outside verandahs, and working space for sculpture etc. Our mentor was Para Matchitt, who had been an education adviser for art in schools, along with several other senior contemporary Maori artists. Para didn't believe in academic education for art - no exams, theory or essays for us - he believed you learnt by osmosis, by working alongside practising artists, absorbing their ways of working, using all your senses make artworks. We met and worked alongside many of our best artists - it was a very hands-on, communal experience.
I found it hard to come to terms with the no-theory thing, but I believe he was right. Now I'm at proper university, I find it very uncreative.
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So what student centred model/s would be practical which educates those non-standard model kids but doesn't require too much parental energy or expense? And still complies with the Education Act.
My son's in the Manawatu Project Pilot, which essentially supplies learning material from Correspondence School, but students are enrolled at a local school and can partake in classroom learning, when and if that works for the student, can join in sport, cultural activities etc. Kieran's enrolled at QEC, and they run a supervised morning session for the Project kids, who can attend if they wish. They don't have to wear uniforms, cut their hair, or any other conformist stuff.
Kieran does some work from booklets, some on computer, uses powerpoint, communicates with his learning advisers by msn & email (he won't talk on the phone). They are not pressured to do full load of subjects either. He's doing maths, English, computing and may pick up art a bit later. Because they don't have to fit into school timetables, he can work when it suits him and pick and choose what units within the subject areas he wants to do - and is advised in his choices by his Learning Advisers.
It took a lot of my energy initially to get him going and organising his work, I found working alongside him (I'm doing uni papers) was useful. He's a lot more self-motivated now, especially as its dawned on him that being out of school hasn't left him behind intellectually.
Apparently, the Project was so successful last year in linking up the lost and alienated students that it has been expanded.
It's not the whole, or even an ideal answer, but it's a jolly good start. I was once told that you can't get a student back into school after a year away from it - wrong. The wrap-around support from the school and TCS made a huge difference - it's very student-centred and dwells on the positives not the negatives.
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I'll exchange Colin Firth for Sawyer, walking out of the sea, shirtless, on last night's re-run of Lost.
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Just had a quick look at Reggio-Emilia stuff - I like. Especially the creative, community and being connected to one's environment through sensory activity ideas.
Something that really bothers me about all the rhetoric around enhancing creativity and better quality thinking is that the politicians, business people & economists etc who rabbit on about it, have a somewhat limited idea about what actually being creative is like and want it, in a kind of neutered state, for the wrong reasons. To harness for product development & the enrichment of whoever pays and controls. No-one seems to get that controls and limits and proscribed expectations are the surefire stiflers of creative energies. Or maybe they just think we're all replaceable anyway, so just bring on another one. And I'm thinking 'creative' in the artist/scientist sense of the word, rather than making products. The world isn't ready for free-thinking collaborators.I think it's totally possible to develop resilience, confidence and self-belief, activate curiosity and creative potential, enhance the sense of communal belonging - all those things that the Reggio system aims for. But I don't think it's possible in the social model we have now. Good grief, when did the powers that be ever want populations that can think for themselves, develop alternative visions, question everything, believe in themselves and each other, and waste time on arty farty fun and nonsense?
Yet, now is possibly the best opportunity for awesomely huge change. Why do nations want to waste trillions propping up a doomed system? Trillions that they could never find for useful things like decent health systems. Crazy.