Media release
08 October 2010

The Big Swindle & other tall stories

Does expanding tertiary education really lift economic growth? Or have we and our kids been sold a $4 billion pup?

In the November issue of North & South magazine Graham Adams questions the unquestionable: has the billions poured into the tertiary sector actually boosted our productivity or economic performance?

Despite the promise of the great Knowledge Wave, Adams suggests it’s a fraud – creating an economic disaster through unpaid student loans and qualifications of dubious value.

Also in this month’s education special issue, Stacey Anyan finds out how to get it right for your child in her cover story: The Common Sense Guide to Choosing a Secondary School.

And Donna Chisholm asks why so little has been done to lift the achievement of boys in our schools, despite girls outperforming them for the past 30 years.

In an article provocatively headlined Teaching Boys: More Bullrush and Less Bullshit,
Chisholm talks to an internationally recognised expert in boys’ education who says we need the equivalent of the 1970s women’s movement to help bridge the gender gap in the classroom.

In the Line of Fire
Lechelle Timms’ teenage brother was killed in a deer-hunting accident by his girlfriend’s father – yet another fatal shooting in the New Zealand bush where a hunter failed to identify his target.

North & South deputy editor Joanna Wane talks to the 19-year-old, a hunter herself, about how it’s torn her family apart. With a string of coroner’s reports calling for a review of firearms law, should hunters be held to greater account if they fail to ensure it’s not a human being in their sights before they pull the trigger?
And to get the other side of the story, North & South goes pig hunting with Howie Morrison Jnr, presenter of the top-rating Maori Television show Hunting Aotearoa.

Mahé Drysdale: Single Minded
North & South also talks to single-sculls rowing star Mahé Drysdale on the eve of the World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro about what’s given him such an edge in this famously tough sport. It’s a rare in-depth interview with a very private sports champion where writer Margot Butcher investigates Mahé’s magic and finds it’s much more about mind than muscles.

It’s all in the November edition of North & South, on newsstands from October 11.

Ends

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