A week of earthquakes and education
Philip Matthews reviews the news of the week.
Earthquakes elsewhere
Nothing jolts Cantabrians quite like news of someone else’s earthquake, especially when there are similarities with our own experience. A 6.2 earthquake struck central Italy on Wednesday, at 3.30am local time. Being woken by vigorous shaking in the dead of night – who could forget that horror? Within 24 hours, the death toll had soared to 247 and small, historic towns in mountains to the north-east of Rome were in ruins. Only hours later, a deeper 6.8 earthquake hit Myanmar, killing at least four people and damaging 185 ancient Buddhist pagodas in the former capital of Bagan.
New earth
Unless you’ve seen the terrific science-fiction film Interstellar ,or even Melancholia, this is good news. When we are done with this planet, which will be soon, we have a new one to use up. We have called it Proxima b, as it orbits a sun called Proxima Centauri, which as the name would suggest, is relatively near at just 4.25 light years from our sun. Okay, nearish. Current technology would take 70,000 years to get there.
Learnings going forward
We have seen big ideas from Government ministers and MPs lately, ranging from Conservation Minister Maggie Barry’s plan to destroy all predators by 2050 to list MP Nuk Korako’s less ambitious one about airport lost property. The latest is Education Minister Hekia Parata’s brainwave. Schools are, well, old school. How about COOLs? That means a Community of Online Learning. That means that kids can enrol at online providers. ‘‘We already have kids on iPads now,’’ Parata says. ’’Because this is the 21st century we want to make sure kids are digitally fluent and they can take advantage of technology.’’ But that already happens in actual brick and mortar schools now.
Blue sky thinking
More news from the ever-changing world of education. Two South Island universities are in the news over their proposed revisions. Usually this means the University of Canterbury but that institution dodged a bullet. Instead, it was Lincoln University in the gun for being $7 million short and having to think about cutting courses and selling assets. Further south, Otago University is having to consider making up to 20 people redundant from humanities after student numbers fell. It comes within a national picture of the Government pushing science, engineering and technology over the arts.
Our wars
New Zealanders know more about wars fought overseas than wars fought here. Have you ever been to the site of Gate Pa in Tauranga, for example? How many of us could say what happened there and when? Hence this entirely good idea: we will have a national day that commemorates the New Zealand Wars.
Caged heat
Headlines we should never have to see include ‘‘PM on prison rape joke: ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’’’ The context is that the Prime Minister was lured into a cage by radio idiots for a segment ruled ‘‘inappropriate’’ by the Broadcasting Standards Authority but he will not apologise. That’s moral leadership in action.