Apparently eN-Zed’s education has fallen into disgrace or despair or disrepair. You see, eN-Zed used to be among the medal winners in reading, writing and maths, but now we languish among the USA, UK and Australia (aka the bottom of the barrel). That’s how bad things have become (not gotten).
Fish & chips wrapped in last week’s newspaper. The moment the Ministry of Misery made that a bad thing is the sign post on the State Highway of eN-Zed history when things started to go badly.
“I’d like two fish and a scoop please”. They were the good old days. You said those magic words and you watched and waited. You saw the fish dredged through the batter and then dropped into the hubbly bubbly fryer. Then you saw the scoop of thickly-cut fries (thickly, not thick) being scooped and dropped into their cauldron of boiling fat. And then you read the poster on the wall with pictures of different fish because this stuff could come up in quizzes at any time, like ‘How many tentacles does a squid have?’
And then your number was called, you leapt to your lucky feet and wee ha, you tucked that newspaper parcel under your arm and off out into the world you went. Until you didn’t. Until that sorry day when the Ministry of Hate decreed that two fish and a scoop weren’t allowed to be wrapped in newspaper anymore. And because eN-Zedders are a politeish, compliantish bumch they just said, “oh righto”.
But the thing is, that newspaper was eN-Zed’s comparative advantage. It’s what kept us up in the medal winners on the PISA rankings. Good teachers and a sensible curriculum did too, but that newspaper wrapper was the cherry on top of the custard square, sort of.
That newspaper boosted literacy. And numeracy. There’s algebra in 2 fish and a scoop. If 2F + C = $3.00, how much is C and how much is F? And if someone else got 2 paua patties and a scoop you have simultaneous equations or two straight, but intersecting lines with gradients… and when you finish the algebra, you also had last week’s news. And unlike reading Stuff.con.nz, by reading The Southland Times, you got to read big words in their correct context and you saw punctuation used correctly.
And if you were lucky, which you were because other than winning the Bonus Bonds or the Golden Kiwi, having a toasty-hot parcel of two fish and a scoop was about as lucky as a really lucky eN-Zedder could ever be,… if you were lucky, you got the page with the crossword on it.
Oh and don’t get me started on the polystyrene containers that takeaways come in now. If we had a Green Party, they’d have rallied the masses about the environmental damage that polystyrene containers do, i.e. way worse than single use shopping bags. But oh well… Marama and Chloe aren’t bothered about the environment and that’s why fish and chips used to be wrapped in sustainably goodo newspaper but now they’re in polystyrene and that’s why Oamaru’s wee blue penguins don’t dance like in Happy Feet. And it’s also why eN-Zed’s education system looks like America’s.
So anyway, let’s hope Chris, David and Winston will MEGA, you know, Make eN-Zed Good Again, by bringing back newspapers as wrappers for our ‘2 effin C’.
eN-Zed 