The 2020 Level 2 history exam is racist

The below is excerpted from an email sent to the Race Relations’ Commissioner, Meng Foon, sent yesterday, in light of this Tweet (and the thread that follows): Me and my friend just wrote a letter to NCEA about the inclusion of a Lionel Terry poem in the History exam 💅😘 — Cadence Chung (@cadence_chung) November […]

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Autocade turns 11 as the web turns 30

The latest model to appear on Autocade today: the Mazda CX-30. It’s March, which means Autocade has had another birthday. Eleven years ago, I started a car encyclopædia using Mediawiki software, and it’s since grown to 3,600 model entries. The story has been told elsewhere on this blog. What I hadn’t realized till today was […]

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Life is precious

I taught 180 people at tertiary level in 1999–2000.    Gutted that a second has passed away.    Most of them were kids when I taught them.    Lost one to a brain bleed in 2015, just lost another to cancer.    Look after yourselves out there, and live life to the full. Tell those […]

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Travel diary (or, a diary that travels)

A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on Apr 9, 2016 at 10:31pm PDT A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on Apr 10, 2016 at 10:37pm PDT   What a fun project! In September, a class in a Québec school set its pupils a travel diary project. The idea: see how well travelled each […]

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A tribute to Massimo Vignelli

The below ran in Lucire today, though it is equally suited to the readers of this blog. RIT Massimo Vignelli, who passed away on May 27, was a hero of mine. When receiving the news shortly before it hit the media in a big way, from our mutual friend Stanley Moss, this title’s travel editor […]

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In education, everyone deserves a chance

I am a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson, the educational expert. This video has been around for a few years, but it’s well worth another watch.    Everyone has the potential within them—so we need ways of encouraging this for every life, rather than suppress them in favour of just the three Rs.   […]

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The Rongotai years

This came up today at Victoria University where an old client of ours asked about my 2013 campaign. I remembered there was something about education that I wanted to address at the time.    One of the stranger emails during 2013 came from a former classmate of mine at Rongotai College. A brilliant guy at […]

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Volkswagen is a case for critical thinking, not blind following

Here’s an article from Autoblog that combines several of the themes I enjoy writing about: cars, leadership, management and education.    I’ve already hinted at this on my Facebook fan page, where I seem to post some of the pithy things these days. I sometimes try to avoid blogging about the same thing—a lot of […]

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Optimism marks out the Indian decade

Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication I’ve had a wonderful time in Pune and Mumbai, two cities to which I had wanted to go for some years. Like some New Agers say: be careful what you put out into the universe. It can come true.    My main reason for going was to address the […]

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I had perfect scores but no “tiger parents”

Now I see 60 Minutes New Zealand is on the act: how there’s supposedly something “different” about ‘Asians’. (God, I hate that term—I am neither Japanese, Sri Lankan or Kazakh. Prior to Winston Peters being on the scene, I thought I was Chinese, or a Chinese New Zealander.) The report surmised that it’s all about […]

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