Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Yeah. That could be read as 'exposing crimes that were committed against police officers', or 'her courageous battle against police officers, which exposed abhorrent crimes'. One suspects the second, but media releases that don't make sense shouldn't get picked up.
What makes Kelly Te Heuheu a 'Sensible Sentencing Trust Maori Crime issues specialist' I wonder. Is that a real job with qualifications, or just a name tag that justifies bagging on Maori criminals?
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I do take your point, but its a pretty big mistake to confuse historiography with science or the fashion industry.
Ah yup. Cause I didn't pick that point up while doing my two history degrees :) 'Scuse me while I go next door to tell a couple of professors that they should stop all research if anyone has written about it before.
Historiography's all good, and a comparison of Sinclair's work with something more recent like King, Belich, or Erik Olssen's forthcoming history of NZ (to which I've had the great 'joy' of helping prepare a small part of the data) would make an interesting course as part of an honours degree or a research essay about the changing nature of national histories and the discipline. That's different from using it for plain teaching. Sinclair's book was massive in its time, but it's still largely a product of the late 50s, even if you look at a later edition. Historical ideas have moved on a whole heap since then.
And Herodutus' primary sources are lost to time. You can't go back and rewrite his work very easily, as for some parts of it at least he's the only source, or one of a couple of competing sources. You can re-write a history of New Zealand, because the material that Sinclair used is all still available and could be re-analysed, as historians have done.
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And blunders don't seem to be taken to seriously, I'v e never had any negative press over mine... yet.
Man. What internet did you hook up to? I need some of that.
And, why does firefox underline 'internet' in red? since when did internet need capitals? And if internet does, why does it not indicate that the start of a sentence needs capitals?
Any why is firefox underlined? OK, I know that needs a capital, but pretentious a little? "umm, excuse me, I'm capitalised. Thank you." It doesn't even suggest it with a capital. It suggests 'firebox' and 'fire fox'. But the title of the browser itself says 'Firefox'. The browser that doesn't know its own name?
Umm. Regularly scheduled programme... returning... etc.
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Geebuz I must be getting old now. I'm pretty sure that when I was in 7th form, we did half a year of Tudor and Stuart, and half a year of NZ history. This was so long ago we used Keith Sinclair's History of New Zealand as the set text. Written on rolls of papyrus, it was.
We got 100% tudors and stuarts. Because 7th form is 100% about those stupid exams at the end of the year that don't actually give you anything useful, or let you into university. Bursary, that's what it's called.
But your mix and match sounds better than another school I know which studied mostly tudors and stuarts, but spent about 25% of the year looking at the voyages of discovery. It apparently was 75% the history of mother england, and 25% the history of white folk discovering there really were other parts of the world... but the students didn't actually get to learn about the places, just the discovering of them. The "Land ahoy! And now we've learned all we needed to know about the Pacific..." theory of history.
Man, someone still uses Sinclair? Respect and all that, but that book was published a few years ago. There's been a wee bit of thinking about NZ's history since.
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Anyway, in the world we live in I don't know if beginning to think about the nature of religious sectarianism, and how toxic the results can be when it becomes indistinguishable from politics, is a bad thing. And you get that in spades if you're taught the basics of Tudor and Early Stuart England.
I suspect the tendency of schools to teach the tudor and stuarts option is a hangover from the days when European history was largely all that was taught in the NZ education system. It was a time of learning about 'home' - which isn't what many of us would call England these days.
The 7th form history curriculum was set a long time ago, and it's taking a long time for it to catch up to the idea that NZ history is worth studying, and much more useful for producing good NZers, than Elizabeth, James and Charles. It's difficult for schools to switch because a teacher might have spent two decades teaching it, and doesn't want to have to develop entirely new teaching plans, and schools often don't have money to just run out and buy new resources just because ideas change.
The university I work in has one first year course that covers the period of tudors and stuarts. And about a dozen courses that teach NZ history. For 7th form history, I think about 3/4 do tudor/stuarts, 1/4 do the nz option.
It's not that tudor stuarts england isn't useful as part of an education, but learning it at the expense of, say, the history of the treaty, the NZ wars, colonialism, land sales and confiscations, really is a shame, since quite a few of us on this site have bemoaned how little NZers know about their own past.
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Mr Bailey was an excellent history teacher, but not infallible: he was totally wrong about that whole 'you are going to fail university miserably if you skip seventh form!' rant he gave me. Not that my MA (Hons) - in history! - and I are sitting over here being pathetically bitter about it fifteen years later at the mere mention of his name, or anything like that. Because, you know, that would be immature and lame. ;)
No 7th form history at least gave me nothing useful at all for university, not the least that they taught the Tudors and Stuarts option, as do most NZ 7th form history classes. Not Mr Bailey's fault though, he, I understand would prefer to switch to NZ history.
But 7th form was a good year of high school. And no PE at all! I think 7th form should be renamed 'the social year before you go... have another social year at university'.
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It's not the length ... it's the lack of paragraphing :-)
That's what I was thinking. My 5th form history teacher, Mr Bailey, would have had something serious to say about that.
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Sure my Tuna eating contributes but ya know I've done my bit for the planet by not having children (see second question).
Children are bad for tuna? Only if they're driven out to do deep sea fishing surely.
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Tim Pankhurst (via Steve Price) does indeed make some interesting points.
I liked the fact that the paper published parts of the affidavit. I would have preferred if it had been done after the trial, rather than before. But I like a media that is prepared to run close to the edge and provide information to the public that they think is important. That's the media's job, and they fail us if they don't push the line a little. I'm sure that there would be other things that I'd absolutely want the media to get 'out there' even if it is illegal to do so. Nice to think that, even with all their failings, they're still fulfilling that watchdog role.
It might have been irrelevant given that it was posted on the internet shortly afterwards, but that has certainly had less reach, and may indeed only have happened because the paper got in first.
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That toaster oven I keep hearing about is finally within my perfumed, three-fingered grasp!
Everyone looks at me funny when I talk about the toaster oven. Could there not be some sort of public advertising campaign explaining what this is? No one gets my jokes when I throw that in!
Along with the two shoes tied together over the telephone wires outside the flat.
And a bunch of other things. Perhaps the high school curriculum needs amending.