Young Men Right, Young Women Left - And Why That Spells Disaster | Michael Johnston

Young men drifting to the Right is the half of the story everyone is reporting. The other half — young women radicalising Left at an even faster rate — is barely discussed. And when politics becomes completely gendered, Michael Johnston warns, it spells disaster. In this episode of Free to Speak, Dane Giroud sits down with Michael Johnston — Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative and leader of its work on education — to take apart what's really driving youth radicalisation on both sides. 

They get into what "left" and "right" even mean to today's young people (and why, by one definition, Te Pāti Māori is the most right-wing party in Parliament), the housing market as the single biggest threat to liberal democracy, why universalism matters, and the case for free speech as the weapon of the powerless. The conversation then turns to Michael's home turf: education. 

How did a 19th century NZ schooling system that was, by the standards of the time, remarkably liberal and knowledge-focused end up where it is now? What did Tomorrow's Schools and the 2007 curriculum actually do? And why — beyond economics — do boys in particular need male mentors and male-only spaces to find out who they are? Dane shares the story of how Raymond Hawthorne opened up Shakespeare for a kid from South Auckland who never expected to read it. 🎙️ Recorded for the Free to Speak podcast — the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. 

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Free to Speak, the New Zealand Free Speech Union podcast. If you enjoy the show, subscribe for uncensored conversations and free speech news from New Zealand and beyond.

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Kiwart everyone and welcome to Free to Speak, the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. My name is Dane Giroux, a council member of the Free Speech Union, and your host. And joining us today is Michael Johnston. Michael Johnston is a senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative and leads their work on education. Michael, good to have you here. Great to be here, Dane. Absolute pleasure, as always, with the Free Speech Union. Nice, nice. So we're going to talk today about the potential radicalization of our young men. Now, when I say radicalization, we'll probably end up pushing back on that because there's a lot of questions I have about the right wing, what constitutes the right wing today. But we are seeing a trend of young men around the 20, well, 18 to even 24 mark, towards right wing parties, at least. So I just want to kick off by I found something insalient. I mean, you know, not the final word on any of these subjects, obviously. But um the the kid that wrote this, I think I know his father. Um it was so he never he never stood a chance. But anyway. Um but what he said here is it's it's quite funny actually. Trump won this group, that's 18 to 24-year-old men by 14%. Young men in the UK and Germany are twice as likely to vote for hard right parties. As sorry?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Twice as likely as young women or twice as likely as older men, or uh well that's all it says.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

It doesn't it doesn't get any more than that. So that's not uh yeah, okay. Carry on that didn't occur to me. I didn't think about it. Yeah, but no, you're right. Um uh very important. Um South Korea up to 30 points, but you know, again, uh as your question is uh 30 points more than who, you know. Um but but then it says, if so, then most young men are heartless.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Oh, really? Okay, that's interesting. I mean, uh even before we get to that kind of qualitative judgment, I I would ask you whether he mentions young women at all and their political trajectory.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

He was worried about young men and what the New Zealand Green Party were gonna do about it. It's a very odd piece. But the Greens are gonna do about it. Okay, not much. Well, there was an encouraging paragraph where he says, you know, the Greens are gonna have to look at some economic solutions to this. And then he says, and they have been with their Titeriti March and and their work with trends uh in rainbow communities. And I thought, well, no, no, they're economic.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

And and how do they expect that to uh get young men on board exactly? Well, but that's a really good question. So so look, uh I I mean I the reason that I ask about whether the author mentioned young women is because the evidence is that while he's right, there is a something of a movement of young men, you know, to the right, and we can indeed get into discussing what that means because you know, what does right wing mean? What does left wing mean? The trend towards radical radicalization is actually much greater with young women to what towards the left than it is towards uh with young men towards the right. And being salient, I I suspect that they either were ignorant of that fact or overlooked it tactically. Well thought that was a great thing. Or maybe Yeah, I mean, because I I guess, you know, position on the political spectrum, if there is a spectrum uh on a single dimension, i is relative to where one stands. And I don't think that salient would be ever accused of being a a right-wing publication.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

No, no. So okay, so we could have reframed this whole interview, couldn't we? And and and maybe we should have, because uh a lot of people are going to be attacking the question from the male point of view.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Well, I think we should discuss it. And and to me, the issue is polarization. It's not it's not as much, you know, which sex is moving in which direction, although the data are pretty clear. And by the way, it's being noticed by what one might call progressive organizations now. Uh the new statesman had a recent podcast on uh how just how low an opinion young women have of young men, uh actually in the United States. Uh and the Brookings Institute, which is probably you'd call it a center-left think tank, uh, that they're also concerned about the uh the position of young men in society. Uh uh what's the guy's name, Reeves, has put out uh quite a lot of work on young men. Richard Reeves. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

So, well that's interesting, isn't it? Because I mean, we if we're in a uh

Voting Trends And A Data Check

SPEAKER_03 5:20

I mean, othering in politics is never a good thing, but if it become if it if it becomes completely gendered, um there's a lot of trouble.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

It's a disaster. We're in a lot of trouble. I think that young people are facing a perfect storm in terms of the relationship between young men and young women. They for one thing, there's the social media echo chambers that people inhabit, and increasingly the sexes are occupying different ones, uh especially young people. Um there is the the issue of young men feeling disenfranchised and and with some good reasons. They're they're behind young w women in education. Uh it's getting on for a ratio of two to one in undergraduate unit university students in favor of women. Uh, and certainly boys are doing less well than girls at school on average. And yet, this is a generation that has grown up hearing a lot about toxic masculinity, the patriarchy, etc. Well, I don't think that they feel male privilege. Perhaps, you know, men like you and I, who who are, you know, north of the half century might might ha have experienced something. Yeah, well, some some of us, some of us slightly further north than others, but um, you know, as we were growing up, things were very different. Uh and and perhaps, you know, uh for our generation, uh there were certain privileges that came with uh having external genitalia. But but now it's um it's very different. In fact, in certainly in the United States, young women are out-earning young young men. Much is still made of the gender pay gap, but it's largely a legacy issue.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Explain the legacy issue.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Well, uh uh well there are two elements to the to the pay gap, actually. One is that in the past, it is true probably that perhaps men of our age were paid more than women. Uh certainly not for the same the very same job, because I'm pretty sure that for most of our lives, if not all of it, it's been illegal to do that. But there are disparities that could be attributed to sexism. Uh but the the lion's share of the gender pay gap is actually caused by women leaving the workforce for a time in greater numbers than men to look after children.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Well, I've known that for a long time, but it's just amazing how a lot of left-wing parties ignore that, pretend that that factor i isn't which and it seems so obvious, even on its surface. You don't really need to even go digging into that one. It's just it's evident, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

That's right. Once you factor that out, there's there's very little difference left between men and women at any age. But you know, women come back into the workforce and they might have lost, you know, say six to ten years uh of promotions and advancement in the workplace. And you know, it takes them a long time. In fact, they never quite catch up. They come close towards the retirement age, but uh it is true that that is a uh an issue for for women who leave the workforce to have children, that they're not going to do as well as men who don't do that, or women who don't do that for that matter. But with younger people, it's a very different picture. It's a very different picture.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

And and is a lot of that because uh people are having less children as well, and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

I mean, well, that this is this is another aspect of the perfect storm. Well, you know, young people are hooking up less uh than they used to. And you know, we could see that as a a good thing, and as much as there are far fewer teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies uh amongst young people, but it's symptomatic of something problematic, which is that we have a falling fertility rate. The world will peak in population perhaps as soon as the 2050s, certainly by 2070, and then there'll be a declining population. Now, again, many people might say that's a good thing because we've overpopulated the planet, we're polluting it, etc. So there would be some benefits that come with it, but economically, what it means is that uh we will have a very uh top-heavy population in terms of age. So back in the 1970s, there were about seven New Zealanders of working age for each retiree. I believe it's now about three to one, and by 2050 or so it will be about two to one. That's not good. And this is why they're talking about national super, right? It's not sustainable to keep pay and not only that, people are living longer. So if you retire at 65, I mean, when I when I was a kid, men would retire at 65 and routinely drop dead within five years, and now they'll kick on for at least 20.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

So that's right. I mean, in South Auckland, like my father and his friends at 30, like I remember these rugged lined men, and they would have been 38.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, exactly. So so things have changed, but we haven't adjusted our parameters to to keep up with that. But we're digressing a bit.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

The the point is that young people, but I mean it's all context though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, it's all related to it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Now we can put also this together with uh John Heidt's work on the the difficulties that young people face in the social media environment, uh, the risk-averse parenting that many of them have been brought up with, leaving them risk-averse and and anxious. So we are seeing a huge spike in anxiety and depression amongst young people, and especially young women, actually. That that's a particular affliction that that they are suffering from. Uh and that leaves people very sensitive to a sense of threat. So, you know, it is a bit of a a witch's brew of of factors. And and and now we've got the AI revolution upon us, which worries me. I mean, this is another thing, right? For young men, the ubiquity of online porn as a ready kind of sexual outlet. So AI is going to put that on steroids too.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah, uh I'm gonna have a talk to Laura McClure, who is wanting to address this, uh, the ACT party um MP who wants to address the whole AI thing and deep fakes. Um, I have noticed on my reel some advertisements for well, I could be giving away my algorithm here, people, but um some advertisements for AI girlfriends, and some of them look pretty damn good. Uh it's they they're gonna look very convincing, yes. They're gonna look extremely convincing, and and that, you know, people could, I mean, financially, it makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

And just client.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Exactly. And if you're and you know, we'll we'll take it out a bit further from the the the issue of sex to towards the issue of friendship in a minute, but just staying with that for a minute, looking ahead 10 years, there are going to be highly realistic sex robots with AI potentially in them. You know, I I I I don't know quite what Laura McClure ha has planned. I'm I'm all for banning deep fakes, but it's a fool's errand to think that you can ban AI porn as such, because it's not gonna happen, folks.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

No, no, it's not gonna happen. In terms of you know, bringing it back to a free speech argument, too, and this is something that I will run into with her. It's like, you know, we've had Photoshop for a long time. Yeah, we've we've been able to deep fake pornographic imagery of people very convincingly for quite a while. Uh I'm sure people would have been doing it, but it's never been the issue. Uh well, people are talking about a lot more now with AI, probably for obvious reasons, but it's not like it didn't exist.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

And having said what I just said about you know banning it, I th I think actually when I think about it, it could be covered by existing obscenity law. Like, you know, putting out deep fakes of of uh a celebrity or something like that on on social media, it's obviously uh a grotesque thing to do and and and probably shouldn't be allowed. But again, it's pretty hard to draw the line between you know how much like the celebrity does it have to look like to be a deep fake versus just something that has a resemblance and you know

The Bigger Shift Among Young Women

SPEAKER_01 14:10

what yeah, but but it's not the public ones that uh the public ones obviously are concerning and would be distressing.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

But what about the private ones? What about people that have a crush on you and have made a private Michael Johnston, and it's a family show, so I won't go too far, that they interact with every night, who's a little bit sexy, who's telling them what they want to hear, but no one ever knows about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

But it's kind of it could be deranging the person that's well, it could be, but I I I I first of all I can't see any law that would be effective against that. And secondly, if they're doing it in private, you know, I I mean I'm not generally in favor of laws where the only victim is the perpetrator.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Yeah, and I guess that we're starting to draw long bows when we say it will definitely affect us in the ubiquity of porn already is doing that.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Whatever that would do is already happening.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

It's it's already happening. It's been happening for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

And it's not going to stop. I uh I mean, and it's it's kind of strange that a libertarian MP would be the one to be kind of pushing this in a way, but well, I I think people have targeted her.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Oh, I see. So I think it's a bit personal. Look, I'll I'll get into it with her, you know. I'll I'll um we'll have this conversation. It's gonna be a good conversation. She's she's wanting to have the conversation. I think she's seems a pretty good MP. Um good young MP. Um, so so going back to this, um, so I want to sort of almost reframe it. I was gonna ask you, um, what do you think it is that is pushing men towards the right? And to answer that, first we have to define what the right is and what they think they're getting. But maybe we should do that with women first. Maybe we should ask what do young what's pushing young women towards the left and what do they think they're getting? Because they're not getting Marxism.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Um Well, I not uh some a lot of them will identify as communists. Where I I I heard about a survey in England recently where uh young women especially would uh rate capitalism very unfavorably and be more disposed to communism. I I suspect they don't really know what it is, but uh yeah, that's what I would think.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

I mean, is this is this deeply considered?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I mean, are they probably not, but it might affect who they vote for nonetheless. Yeah. Um so uh in terms of what the left and right is, you know, uh we could you and I could probably compare opinions and we might conclude that you you're uh uh kind of on the centre left and I'm kind of on the centre right, that that's quite likely. But we what we share, uh, because we're both here on the Free Speech Union podcast, is a uh uh a commitment to liberal values. Uh and so if I'm on the right, I'm on the libertarian right. And this is this is one of the things that or or the liberal right, as it were. And it confuses me when people say that Nazis are right wing, people tend to think they are, uh, and libertarians are also right wing. And I wonder how that can be when libertarians and Nazis have literally nothing in common. Nothing in common at all. They disagree on every single issue.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Well, the idea is because I I think the I've thought about this a bit, like people think that the spectrum is an actual thing you can pick up and hold. It's not, it's an it's an idea which uh seems to have less relevance as the years roll on, to be honest. I don't think there is a spectrum. I don't think we point in one direction or the other. Like I was speaking to a young Marxist, and he was a communist on on the podcast, you know, didn't agree with everything he said, but uh but a lot of it I did agree with because I I do consider myself on the left. He was um quite grumpy at the at the woke. He he he likes to view Marxism as radical democracy at the most grassroots level. So to be very simplistic, and he'd probably push back if he was here, um uh Turk's poultry um uh company down in Foxton there, um, would be run like your rugby club. You know, uh the one of the guys on on the process lines would get voted in to be on the board. Um, you know, another guy who's been there a while might have the trust of people. He becomes a president and or the chief executive. You know what I mean? It's like that's sort of the collect, it's it's real collective.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

And I'm getting this guessing this guy is you know not all that young. Oh, he's about 25. Oh, okay. So he he might be an exception, but I I do think that for older people, when we think of left and right, we think of you know, Labour and National or or you know, a little more extreme, perhaps, you know, Act and the Greens or something like that. Now, actually the Greens I think are an interesting case. Uh because what I think that young people think of as left and right is quite different. So with young men, to the extent that they're being pushed to the so-called right, I think what they're being pushed towards is a kind of quasi-traditionalist view of the relations between men and women, and perhaps a kind of ethno-nationalism. Now, interestingly, by the ethno-nationalist definition, to Party Māori is the most right-wing party in New Zealand because they're they're blood and soil ethnonationalists.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Oh, yeah, completely. I I've been there for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Far right to me, like a far-right party.

unknown 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

And yet it's impossible to imagine them tening teaming up with act. So they I would say would be to the left of them. Yeah, the relative left of them. Yeah. I know it's nuts. And and whereas young women, uh, I think you know that they are more susceptible to what some people would call the woke mind virus. They're they're more likely to be on board with all the identity politics stuff, which I think the traditional left is not. So or not as much. Uh I mean I think the traditional left has been champions of of you know second wave feminism and and uh equal rights for for different ethnic groups, as by the way, uh libertarians are. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

There's a universalism, I think, that needs to be there for it to be called left-wing, in my view. Right. Yeah. If we don't have a universalist take on people, um, then I think when we're not left because we're not because we're not because if it isn't coming back to class, I I I don't think it's a left-wing idea.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Well, you see, that some people would say that's a very old-fashioned idea of what what the left is. And by by the way, I agree with that. And I think libertarians in general would also say we need the universalist approach. In fact, that was what David Seymour was on about with the Treaty Principles Bill. I think he he wanted

Education Gaps And The Pay Gap

SPEAKER_01 21:05

all New Zealanders to be treated equally under the law. So um libertarians at least are in violent agreement with the traditional left in that. Uh, but I think that what happened, possibly because uh communist revolutions around the world conspicuously failed to be ignited by the proletariat, uh the working class as such and in industrialized societies kind of decided that they they they had it reasonably good as it was and didn't and didn't want to overthrow the bourgeois oppressors. If you if you if you look at where communist revolutions were successful, it was always in agrarian, quasi-feudalist societies like China and and um pre-Soviet Russia.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Well, when you say successful, though.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Well, I I mean they they uh they succeeded in overthrowing the the the uh monarchies and taking power.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

were a bit more lawless and reactionary to begin with. I mean the the czarist Russia we were talking about this on on the podcast with young Leslow. Marx Russia would have been the last place he would have wanted his experiment to take place.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Well I mean he really wanted it to be England and Germany I think but um that's right but it wasn't it wasn't happening in England and Germany because the the working class were you know rising up in living standard under capitalism. So why would they want to throw that away?

SPEAKER_03 22:36

It's not a and can can you see uh the English in 1910 bloodletting in the streets and and carrying out pogroms the of Jews that that that slaughter 50,000 people. I just it just certainly happened there.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

I mean of course it was a bit different in Germany as we know after World War I, even before the Nazis came came to power there was a lot of bloodletting in the streets uh between communists and I guess fascists or proto-Nazis or whatever and it included some of the figures that later went on to become part of the Third Reich. So Germany was a different case than England. But of course they'd been gutted by the Treaty of Versailles and and the Weimar Republic was always a weak democracy because it didn't have the deep roots in liberal thinking that the the English democracy had. So those two countries are quite different. But still it was probably never on the cards that Germany was going communist.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

No because I've always hit thought it was flip of a coin at one point.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

But well maybe in the 1920s it is possible yeah but I think that it was such an industrialized society even then that um it's unlikely. Because the these revolutions did take where did they take place r Russia China Korea Cuba these are all agrarian places they were not industrialized when most things happened.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

And that but the industrialization is sort of what Marx needed or what he thought he needed for it to work. That's why I think he was wrong I mean one of the things he was wrong about yeah yeah yeah yeah um so okay so maybe we can tell uh kill um two birds with one stone here then and and and talk uh and approach the the sexes this way um there's nativism on one side potentially there's um identity politics but nativism is like a form of identity politics so we're talking about I agree yeah so so there's identitarianism yeah on both sides I think that's right and why why is I now we we've talked about this before I think on on free kiwis on your podcast and I brought up because you know we're both aging rockers you know we we were both in bands we were but but that was our our identity we we probably at the time we wouldn't have been as political we I music was my identity yeah and guitaring was my identity like for me it was music literature uh science these and identity is a complex thing right it's got all sorts of dimensions but one of the things that identitarianism does is reduce it down to a few categories you know essentialism isn't it that's right uh yeah it's remarkably essentialist and that's one of the things that's always struck me about the kind of trans uh movement if we can call it that somehow it essentialized gender or sex in a way that uh is almost paradoxical because the the idea is that if you were a a boy biologically but you liked dolls and dressing and putting on dresses that somehow made you a girl why why should those things make you a girl if you don't think those things are essentially feminine it seems such an archaic way of in a way it is that's right it's completely that well there was there was one um seminar happening and um one of these live stream things there was a trans person talking and you know they were all on the panel and there were people that were on the other side on another panel and this trans woman just gets out of knitting at one point starts knitting as the panel's going. So they didn't want to knit in that moment. It was a it was a an emblem it was performative it was it was so performative and what it was saying is see I must see how feminine I am yeah I got my knitting out yeah and a panel I mean like it's it's that's so ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Wow and transparent yeah you know like you this is performative here you know but to me the worst aspect of identitarianism is that around race because to me race is the least important literally the most superficial human characteristic because it affects your skin and not much else right yeah and yet it's and and it is frustrating and and tragic because we were just getting to the point I think when it was ceasing to matter what color your skin was in our society. I'm not saying racism had died but it was definitely on the retreat if you compare it with the 1970s and certainly the 1920s right oh and then there's data on this I mean we we we can we can actually say this definitively I mean some people would would would push back on that a lot of the stuff becomes quite anecdotal doesn't it like yeah and I'm not saying I'm not discounting those anecdotes people genuinely experienced racist uh treatment and and that's uh that's awful but on on writ large racism uh was on the retreat and then suddenly people decided on the in the name of anti-racism that they were going to make race all important again yeah and that's the irony like we're in a position now where the far left and and and the far right are not really that dissimilar.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

Well we come back again to to Parti Mari. Yeah yeah um a lot of people hearing this who who would be broadly left wing or would consider themselves left wing would think we were off our minds.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Well they might but I'd invite them to think about it. If you take apart the rhetoric of Toreo Mari about Tanga to Fenoa and you know compare that with some of the white supremacist movements of the 20th century you'll hear a lot of

Fertility Decline And Social Media Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 28:55

resonance because they're they're they're arguing that to be a particular race or a particular ethnicity is confers certain characteristics and you know perhaps superior rights.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

But to push back as a first peoples which they are I mean it would be a little different if there was a a white nationalist group that was saying that that they are New Zealanders that they should have more rights than Maori. Is the is the first persons um status relevant here?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Well I guess there's a couple of things about that f first of all um I don't think anyone should have superior rights whether they're first peoples or not. One of the things that we have to set up and this goes back to your point about universalism if we want to have a liberal democracy then citizens have to be equal. Because if they're not I mean there has been no country in the world that has ever been successful uh when it divided its citizens by race. That's never worked out well and it wouldn't work out well for us and we shouldn't do it. That isn't to say that uh we should not redress wrongs of the past we absolutely should. We had a treaty in 1840 it was violated. There is no doubt that many Iwi lost land to the Crown that uh and it was confiscated unjustly and so on. And there has been a process now for half a century to redress that and I support that. I think it's absolutely right their land was taken and either needs to be given back or they need to be compensated and that's what the treaty process was all about. But having done that and setting that you know not setting that aside but having having dealt with that we are equal citizens in this country we otherwise we're not one country and we can't survive.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

But the other part of this that I would point out is that trans transfer your thinking to England to uh who are the who are the first peoples of England you could say the Celts perhaps but let's go with the Anglo Saxons for now yeah yeah who who themselves are a blend of like 70% of them have Roman ancestry of because everybody everybody is a blend of everything.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Everyone's got Roman ancestry somewhere else right where you and I are both descent descended from Charlemagne. Yeah almost inevitably yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right so my point is that when you if you if you saw a bunch of Anglo Saxon youths in England claiming that they should have superior rights over all these immigrants one would go oh I don't know about that right I would say uh Rawidy White White White would be the first to say I don't like what I'm seeing here.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Right. Maybe I should invite them on the podcast to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Maybe you should but this is this is my point, right? So I think there's a double standard that gets run in this regard. Yes. So yes Mori were the first people in New Zealand and yes they were ill treated at certain times and particularly with the confiscation of land. Yes and and there needs to be a process to redress that because that that is a violation of their property rights collective property rights I would say because they didn't tend to individually own land prior to the 20th century.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

But so so what's pushing them young Mori Wahinian and Tane what would be pushing them towards a party like Tepathi Māori?

SPEAKER_01 32:42

I wonder if it's pushing or whether and this I'm not just talking about them now. I'm talking about everybody. Yep if we don't actively maintain liberal values from generation to generation there's actually an entropy so it's not so much being pushed it's just gravity pulling back towards a a default position which is not liberal and is not democratic. It's tribal and I don't I don't mean that in a in a kind of sense of ethnic tribes. I mean that literally in the sense of groups of people who put up walls against other groups of people.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah and yeah now now now the lefty is going to come out of me here um are are we in what what makes this sort of tribalism appealing where is the alienation coming from I would say it would have to be economic there's a lot of that if if you like growing up in South Auckland my uh cousin was an A-grade butcher at 21 or by about 17 or 18 he had a freehold house in Panmuir when he was 21. Um he was on really good money as an A-grade butcher at Southdown just outside of Utahu Penrose there. Now he's not worried about he wasn't wouldn't have been worried about tribalism and nativism and things he on the house at 21 I mean he was seeing gains you know I think I think you've put your finger on the biggest factor which is the housing market.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

We we uh James and I interviewed Jonathan Sumption Lord Sumption on our podcast a couple of years ago and he made a comment that he thought the housing market and it's the state of uh unaffordable housing was the biggest threat to liberal democracy. Interesting and I reflected on that and I think he's right because the thing is that if young people don't feel as if they can get the security of their own place, they wonder what their stake in society is and everything flows from that property doesn't it like your family.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

You're more likely to have larger families if you have a place for them if you have the the security of having a place of your house and pencil.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I don't think it's the only I don't think it's the only factor in the falling fertility rate, but I think it is a major one that young people want to get a roof over their head and and get some security before they have children. Quite understandable and it's increasingly difficult for them to come that's right it's increasingly difficult for them to do unless unless you're you know in the top probably 20% of earners it's getting increasingly out of reach to even save up that deposit let alone pay off the mortgage see that this is this is why increasingly why the um my my defense of free speech is a little bit different from many other people say that are on the board.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Like I I don't

AI Deepfakes Porn And Free Speech

SPEAKER_03 35:40

have a lot of lofty um you know John Locke and you know all these sorts of idea mil you know people these names in my head as much I don't I I I am thinking about the working class um and the safety of minorities through being able to express air grievances and everything without the majority being able to override or or or deny a voice to minorities.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Yeah but for me if I mean the the government and this goes for national or labor would love to use censorship as much as they can I think if it means that they don't have to be held to account for sure I mean that's that's really and it's why it's why your defense of free speech is is absolutely on the money because it is essentially the the greatest weapon in in the hands that the those who lack power can can wield. Because if you're free to criticize those in authority then you can draw attention to their their failings and in a democracy at least you know you can hope that you'll persuade people to to vote them out. So it's absolutely you're you're right to defend it from that perspective. I I think another good purpose for it is to advance knowledge because by arguing in good faith we get to better ideas. So that's an another good one without having to appeal to the kind of core principle. Although having said that I I think you are the person who I would identify perhaps alongside Ira Glasser as having made the the most noble defense of or noble stand on free speech that I've ever seen and that was when Mohan Dutta put out some publication that was virulently anti-Semitic and and just awful and you tweeted something in it in the heat of the moment that you regretted and then you went back and apologized. And that to me was an incredibly noble act as a Jewish person to uh say actually this vile person has the right the right to say those awful things uh and and I apologize for having you know denied it and I and I mentioned Ira Glaser who was of course the the president of the American Civil Liberties Union who defended the right of the Illinois Nazis to to march through a Jewish district in Chicago. So that that to that to me you know what he did and what you did are that that's principle.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

Well I I'm thank you man I'm I'm really humbled by that uh I've been thinking a bit more about that there are still people online that will try to remind me of the time that I because I tagged in masse university and said are you happy I'm paraphrasing but are you happy having a guy like this working for you? Right and you know instantly I got attacked by the usual suspect saying aha you know you're not a free speech you know and you know I was making very weak sort of defenses for a little bit but then I thought about it and very quickly um uh accepted that I was wrong there. I I did a very long podcast with Rodney Hyde. He gave me two hours and we and it was awesome actually I really appreciated that I got to really talk everything through I released a um statement through the Free Speech Union even though I wasn't on the board at the time I I I I had um stepped down for a year I stepped down uh to focus on the business that was crumbling around me because I was I was volunteering so much so um I wasn't actually a board member at the time but what yeah it's interesting that people still try to attack me on it I wouldn't I wouldn't take back that experience. Well I mean I guess it was educative for you. It gave me a lot and and the other thing it did too is it reminded me that the free speech union is not a political party. See a lot of polit politicians as we know not all of them but a lot of them are going to if they're wrong there like like I was watching a um interview with Chris Hipkins this morning and he got caught out by Ryan Bridge and um and you could just see him going oh how do I get around this how do there was no like yeah okay you got me there was none of that um so a lot of these people are just gonna sort of speak and if they're fluent speakers as many politicians are they'll get there at the end they'll find some sort of defense you know and and and for me it was like I don't I don't need to do that I I'm not a politician I can say and thank goodness for that yeah yeah who'd be a politician not me well well I can say and I said in my piece that look I I was hurt my instinct was to shut the man down it's natural it is it's very natural and that's the that's the point right it comes back to that gravity thing again that it comes back to that gravity thing you know if we don't actively maintain the the values that support liberal democracy free speech and and all the rest we will slip back into tribal thinking and to wanting to declare war on one another yeah well it's it's it's it's easy it's it's lazy it's easy it's all all of those things as well because it's human nature and and and the liberal values are really quite counterintuitive.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

We're certainly capable of that level of kind of noble thinking and and adoption of egalitarianism and affording to our opponents the same rights that we expect for ourselves and we're capable of that but it's not easy it doesn't come natural naturally if we practice it we get better at it but generationally we have to inculcate it in young people which brings us back I guess to the the situation with our youth because we have done a poor job of that in all sorts of ways. We've neglected them in terms of uh allowing them to get involved with technologies that have messed with their minds and their their developments and I'm talking about social media even the internet more generally because they need knowledge and we've had an education system for more than 20 years that's been indifferent to knowledge.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Okay well so let's let's get on to that then because you know education is your um um uh what would you call it your exp area of expertise so education is a solution here yeah I think it's the I if there is a solution it's education yeah and housing and well yeah that's right I mean some economic the the housing and economic side is it has to be addressed and and here I think you know the work of the initiative on the housing market uh is quite important because the argument our economists make is that

Rethinking Left Right And Identity

SPEAKER_03 42:40

by by altering the zoning restrictions on land we can uh you don't even have to do much else because we have ample land to build on if you consider that we're a nation of uh five and a half million people we've got about the same land mass as Japan with 120 million and the UK with what 65 million so we've got oodles of room and yet we have these restrictive zoning uh laws where you're not allowed to expand cities out and you're not allowed to expand them up well why it so why are people holding on to that if they know there's a crisis?

SPEAKER_01 43:14

Because there's NIMBYism so I I mean you would have thought that David Seymour would would have been a supporter of of liberalizing zoning laws but but not in Epsom we can't have high rise in Epsom Oh interesting. You see what I mean? And and then people get worried about the urban rural boundary and all the rest of it. But actually you know our our chief economist Eric would say you've got to do both things you've got to allow expansion out and expansion up and then you allow the market to to to fix the problem which it would uh I mean there are some other things on in terms of b building codes etc but that I think the zoning restrictions the price of land is the is the the number one but but that's the economic side on on on the social and educational side You know, we we need to make sure that young people are equipped with knowledge, with the ability to think for themselves. And I don't think that digital technology has done that any favors. I the idea that young people don't need to know any don't have to have personally held knowledge because they can look it up on Google or ask AI now and so on, that that that means that they never develop the cognitive apparatus that they need to think critically. Because critical thinking needs knowledge. You can't think critically if you don't know anything.

SPEAKER_03 44:33

That's interesting and kind of scary because I would I mean AI is going to ramp that up. It's going to bring us even further away from that, which could mean even more polar polarization, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

It could. It could mean that. I mean, it's unpredictable what AI will do. Yeah. But it's going to be I mean, I I actually see it as a a technology that is far more powerful than the internet was when it first got going. I think it's more powerful potentially than the printing press. Uh it may be on par with literacy itself, or it may even be on par with something like fire in terms of its profound impact on human culture and development. And well, can consider what it if it if it is able to um at least convincingly mimic a human being, and we don't need to get into the extent to which it's really like a human, I don't think it is for all sorts of reasons, but if it can convincingly mimic one and make decisions at least as powerfully as humans and perhaps more, much more in due course, then where is that going to go? We've talked already about the idea of relationships, as it were, with AI friends or girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever. So that's one dimension. What if we decide that actually AI makes better decisions than us, so it should rule us? Or even on a soft level, we just let it do that in our personal lives because it's easier than deciding things for ourselves. We just ask it stuff all the time, and then we don't have to think about it anymore, and we just do what it says. Because it usually works out well when we do. Uh and there are instances in which that could be good. Like it may well turn out that it can diagnose skin cancer better than human doctors. By all means let it do that. But but yeah, you know, where where I would draw the line is where we start where it starts to impact on our agency as as people. We could find ourselves live living in the worst Ray Bradbury short story. Could be Ray Bradbury, could be um William Gibson. Uh very quickly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

So okay, so in education, the move away from well, where did all this start, do you think? Like, where where did our education system, let's let's talk about New Zealand. Yeah, where did it start going wrong? Like, like my personal view is that we we stopped teaching history, I think, in the way we normally had. I think history is actually it might not become apparent to people straight away, but I think it's one of the most important subjects to equally, yeah. And I'm a guy that left school at 14, but history for me is something I'm always interested in. History, it's narrative, yeah. It's about decision making, it's about, you know, you get to analyze it's about human beings and they're and what they're like. What they're like. There some dis terrible decisions have been made in history, and you get to really pull them apart and and understand why. Um it it invites us into culture. Um there's a universal aspect to it too, because you do learn that most societies have to deal with the same issues. Um I I just and it's creative too. I think it's a very, you know, being a historian would be very creative. And and you have to be, there's a responsibility that comes with it too. And the other thing I love about history is there are histories. There's not one.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

And so yeah. I mean, I I'm a scientist by training, but I've I also love history, and I I'm an amateur historian, as it were. I read I read a lot of history, but I I learned about what science really is by studying its history, right? And the more you you study the origins of something, the better you understand the thing. The same goes for for just about anything. You can you can study the history of literature, you can study the history of politics, whatever you're interested in. If you study its history, you will understand the present far better. So I so I agree with that. But you asked where it all started to go wrong, and actually where it started to go wrong, I would say was with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the the um 18th century French philosopher, uh, because he had this conception of human beings as kind of born perfect. We're born into this kind of blessed state of nature, and then what we do with young children is we constantly mess them up ever after ever after, and we distort their their true nature by by putting them in schools and making them do things that they don't want to do. And you know, if we just left them to run free, all would be well. So that was the that was the seed, I think, of of the bad ideas that um that germinated in the 20th century in our education systems. And it's interesting. I I was talking with Professor Elizabeth Rata uh a few weeks ago on the New Zealand Initiative podcast about a uh a history of New Zealand education that she has written. And it was very interesting to look at the 19th century in New Zealand because quite often the the narrative that we get is that it was a terribly racist time and and a sexist time and so on. In some respects it was, but not in education actually. We adopted compulsory education for all pretty pretty early. And there was a heavy emphasis early on making sure that girls got uh an education that was as good as boys, and that Māori also were well educated, and they had things called native schools that were set up in Mori communities. Um and in fact, the those communities wanted their their kids educated in English mostly. I mean, they had Toreo uh as their their first language, and they wanted them to become fluent in English as well. And the picture that emerges from Elizabeth's history is that 19th century and early 20th century education in New Zealand

Race Politics Treaty Redress Universalism

SPEAKER_01 50:35

was actually very liberal, certainly by the standards of the time, but it was very much focused on knowledge, on the things that young people need to learn in order to become not just effective workers and and so on, but proper citizens. So it was an education for citizenship, not just an education for the economy. Uh so what is an education for citizenship? Oh, well, if we think again about what it is to be a a a citizen of a liberal democracy, there's a big responsibility that comes with it. So if you're a medieval peasant, it doesn't really matter if you know anything or not, because you're not going anywhere and you're just going to dig turnips the whole time. So but once you're once you're in a in a in a society that affords you some social mobility where you can do better for yourself if you if you're if you work hard and if you're lucky, let's face it, luck has a role. But if we educate young people well with knowledge and also teach them how to use that knowledge uh to think critically and to you know to think for themselves and to create, because both creativity and and criticality depend on knowledge. There's n neither is worth anything with and they're dangerous, in fact, without knowledge. Uh, but also what it is to be a citizen in a liberal democracy. And for me, that means them, young people being taught about the institutions of a democracy, but more importantly, what the values and dispositions are that you need to adopt in order to be a good citizen in that. And it's things like egalitarianism that all people are uh should be afforded equal dignity and equal rights, that the vote should be universal amongst adults, um, and that you know free speech is a good thing because then we're able to contest ideas and if we're able to listen carefully and understand why other people believe the things they do and see that sometimes they have a valid point, then maybe we can change our minds a little bit, or we can at least be tolerant of the fact that they disagree with us. And again, it trained as a scientist, this this was part of the training that you we argue like crazy, uh and sometimes heatedly, but it's never um acrimonious. It's in it's in service of coming to better ideas. And that to me is actually the core of democracy. The core of democracy democracy rests on everybody being represented and being able to uh vote and so on. Uh it's that contest of ideas that's at the very center for me. A free contest of ideas.

SPEAKER_03 53:19

I I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think the Ann Salmon um uh pushback on that would be that that would be a very Eurocentric view. Is that what you is that what people say?

SPEAKER_01 53:30

I have no idea. I mean it's to me it's a universalist view. I don't really care where it originated. It's a it's a universalist view. And and I would ask her what her alternative would be. If if she wants, if she does she believe that we are all equal in dignity and rights, or does she not? Because if she does, then it doesn't matter where that idea comes from. And if she doesn't, then what's she proposing instead?

SPEAKER_03 53:55

I don't think these people do propose that much instead. Um I I think they'd like Maori knowledge to be present, but uh what happens to young men, young European uh d young men of European descent, I don't think it's very clear. Um that what they're feminized, I guess, in a in a education system that calls them toxic and views them as a bit of a problem.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

So let's continue with the story of the the education system in New Zealand, because one of the things that I said to Elizabeth was, you know, it's surprising that you cast the early education system as being so liberal, because I don't think it was like that in the mid-20th century. And we talked about that a bit, and I remembered my father saying to me, and who was born in 1939, you know, w when by the time he was at school, he was being educated by r returned soldiers a lot of the time. And these guys were a bit messed up by their experience in the war. And they some of them were pretty pretty violent, and and and that in those days, of course, it was perfectly okay to whack kids as much as you wanted in the classroom, and he got strapped every day for making spelling errors. And you know, I mean, his reflection on that was that it just became part of the wallpaper. You didn't even notice anymore. But but certainly I I think that's where a lot of the the uh sense that education in the past was authoritarian came from. I think during the mid-20th century it was like that. And then of course we had the co the the the um counterculture of the 1960s, and a lot of teachers uh adopted that. And I certainly remember, you know, my early uh primary school education in the 1970s, quite a number of teachers who were hippies, and and and so that's where it started to really liberalize, and I would say probably went too far. Probably not at that time. I think I I was lucky to have an education in the 70s and 80s. It was a good education. I learned a lot, and and by and large, my teachers were good. But I think that that liberal ethos just gained steam and eventually got to the point where it was, first of all, order was not kept well in all schools anymore. And now there are some schools that are out of control, there are some that are not, but it's variable. Um, and then we had the Tomorrow's Schools uh venture in the 1990s that made all the schools independent at Crown entities. In hindsight, that was probably not such a good idea because we don't have a school system. We've got a whole lot of isolated schools that are all doing their own thing largely. Uh, and then in 2007, we got the the competency-led curriculum that that describes almost no knowledge. And so we end up with this situation in which kids go to school, but they they it's very hit and miss whether they get taught anything much, uh, or whether they're just left to, you know, in a kind of Rousseauian way, discover things for themselves, which they don't, by and large, they'll discover some things, but they won't discover mathematics or science or history for themselves. They won't learn to read by themselves either, by the way, because unlike oral language, reading does not is not a natural biological function. It's got to be taught and it's it's quite an effort. So I think in a nutshell, that's kind of what happened to education. We we decided that knowledge was no longer necessary and that the teacher wasn't any great authority, and so kids go to school, but whether they learn anything is is a matter of luck.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

No, you know, I've well I've had four children. My my youngest is is quite young, he's just entered school, um, the schooling system. Um, what I found over my um my time, because my children went to a few schools. They were in Auckland, there was a they went to a Jewish school in Wellington to start with, it's now defunct, sadly, and that was really good. Um they they went to Hoon Bay primary for a while. And coming from Utahu, I had this idea, oh, my kids are at a snooty school, it's gonna be amazing. But I found that if the headmaster wasn't great, the school couldn't really save itself.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Dad, right. The the most important thing about a school is who who the the principal

Housing Costs As A Democracy Risk

SPEAKER_01 58:15

is.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

I I I think that's right. Like in in bull school, because my kids went to bull school, wonderful principal there, Mori woman, caring, firm. Everyone in the staff loved her and the kids loved her, even when she was firm. Um, and just a man I only praise. I mean, fantastic school, fantastic school. But I but the the Hearn Bay um principal at the time, I remember going to my going to her and wanting to talk about my son, and she said, Oh, yep, he's a bit quirky, all right. And then just wanted to end the end the meeting. I was like, That's it.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

That's it. I mean a little more than that. You've got a quirky you've got a quirky son.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Yep. Well anyway, I've got a race, and it's like Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Yeah, no, so yeah, so it is very patchy, and and your comment about the pr that principal at Bulls School, you know, that they they loved her even when she was firm. Even when she was firm. They probably loved her because she was firm. Yeah. And I think this especially goes for young men. And you know, th this is gonna be a slightly controversial thing to say, but I think teenage boys especially need male role models, and they don't have enough of them at schools. So of course, you know, the evidence is in that that female teachers are no worse than male teachers at educating boys, or vice versa. The sex of the teacher doesn't matter for the for the for what the kids learn. But I th I think boys do need men to look up to, and obviously, you know, we want men of good character to be looking after them and and teaching them how to be men. I think that's something that's missing at the moment from our culture is the idea that uh it's okay to have a male-only space where perhaps you know young men uh associate with older men who are able to teach them what it is to be a man. And every society has had that. We've had our our rituals of of passage that for young men. You know, for y for young women traditionally it was menarch when they when they f first became fertile. That that's a biological rite of passage, as it were. But there's no kind of line in the sand like that for young men. There are things obviously that happen as they transform from boys to men, but it's not there's no clear line biologically when you're you're no longer a boy and are now a man. And yet, you know, which is why I think that and the the other thing is that if we think about what and here we get into some b some I think we need to be honest about differences between the sexes. And I I think f feminists with with justification have been reluctant to talk about that because they fear that that will be turned into that's why women should stay at home and and and do all the housework kind of thing. But that that isn't what I mean. But we have to be honest about what men and women are like, and they're not they're not just the same on average. There are certainly, you know, women who are more like the average man and vice versa, but there are some differences. And what I think one of those differences is that um men tend to need a reason to band together and and and be mates, right? I mean, not not always. We we have friends just for the hell of it, but one of the things that I've noticed in my life is that I feel most camaraderie with other men when we're involved in a shared mission.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

Right? If we've got something in common that we're fighting for, that that that's that's gold for men as a rule.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

Well, well, I mean, uh uh sports teams for for young men growing up. Most of us were in some sort of sports team. Right. Um and and and that's what we that's what we were getting out of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:59

Yeah. Exactly. And and we've got to make that okay again, for for boys to get together and do boyish things together and not see it as toxically masculine or something like that, but actually what they need to do to form who they are. And to maybe, you know, they get a bit rough with one another from time to time. I'm not condoning violence at all, but I think you know, uh a bit of argy bargy is probably part of the the deal too.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:25

Um I I think it's fine. Again, if you're young, it's about capacity, yeah, and learning your capacity. What can I what can I throw? What can I take?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

I've um I've I've tested myself against this big kid, I've rolled around in the dirt with him for a bit, he got the better of me. I know not to go back and do that again. Maybe the fighting game's not quite for me, which I discovered um until I started shrinking, and then the fighting game was for me. Um, yeah, so all of that. I mean, on mentors, mentors are interesting because when I look back on my life, my father left the house when I was about 13 or 14, and uh, and he wasn't that present when he was there anyway. I got into the arts, which was not a not really an expected path from where I was in South Auckland. A lot of my friends were getting into quite a bit of trouble. I got into music first and then into acting and and um uh stuff like that. But there were male mentors who helped me on that journey, and they really opened up um dimensions of myself I probably didn't even know I had. Like Raymond Hawthorne, who was a very um renowned theater director who passed away only last year, uh he he he got me into Shakespeare. He said, You've

Knowledge Based Schooling And Male Mentors

SPEAKER_03 1:03:55

got a good voice, you could do Shakespeare, he got me to read it. Um I thought I'd never be able to read it, so I wouldn't have ever thought to open it up because I would have thought it's a different language. What's the point? I mean, I may as well read you know, Flaubert in the French. I mean, it's not it's just not gonna work. But I I could understand it, and that sort of encouraged me to go further. And um, and that was fantastic, but it's but but then you know, I had another drama teacher too, who became like a big brother mentor. Once he'd sort of served his purpose, I was ready to move on from him. So we can have three or four important mentors in our lives, male mentors. They're all fathers, they're all Obi-Wans, you know, they're all Merlins, but they're they're opening up, they're saying, Hey, did you realize I see potential? What they're saying is, I see potential in you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

They see something in the young man that he doesn't see in himself, that he doesn't see in himself. And they and and then they invite him into into that space and and to to take take ownership of that and to develop the skill or or whatever it is. And a good mentor, of course, as well, makes it clear that you have to work hard for something. It uh just because you have a you know a talent, you know, that's it that's not enough. You have you have to put in endless effort um to to make something of it. And you know, I think on the other side of things, young women and women in in particular, if we if we look at kind of personality traits, they they tend to be a bit more agreeable than men on average. And so girls at school will just kind of do what they're asked to because they're agreeable. Um and and and so they they won't require a lot of pounding to do their homework or to I mean some do. Um again, I you know, I don't mean to overgeneralize because the uh, you know, there there is a distribution. Yeah, of course. But by and large, you know, the reason that girls do better at school is because they they put in more effort because they they're the teachers asked them to, or their parents have asked them to. Um, and I'm sure there'll be parents of teenage girls who say you you're full of shit. I might be one of them to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

My my daughter was quite problematic. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

Yeah, and they, you know, I'm not saying that young women don't have their their foibles or that they won't uh get stroppy, but by and large, though they're more inclined to do what they're asked to than than young men, who are just much more impulsive and much more inclined to want to go and be hedonistic right now than to put in the hard yards that it takes to make something of yourself. And I you know again this this is probably gonna incur ire but I I think a lot of young men in particular when when they hear a female teacher telling them what to do they hear their mother telling them what to do and they kind of recoil from that. Whereas if they hear an older man and they and if they can tell that man cares about them and can see something in them then just maybe they'll listen.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:57

And and you know and that's and that's fine. We shouldn't fight it. We shouldn't resist it we should we should roll with it. There would be some amazing males out there that have been that probably wouldn't have even thought that teaching was an option for them and they could have contributed so much. It's a real shame and their their four minute quarries and places like that but they probably would have been amazing math teachers and really done well and really inspired young men.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

Yeah. And it's difficult to attract men into teaching and I think there's a bunch of reasons for that. Part of it might be the pay although you know teachers are not paid that badly actually no and um but but also I think there is an effect whereby once you've got to a certain point where some 70% of secondary school teachers are female that the culture of schools changes and I think that affects both the education of boys and also the propensity of men to want to go into teaching because the environment is no longer necessarily quite tuned to the average male.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:00

Yeah yeah hey well Michael this is fantastic and we I I really enjoyed this and we we could have gone we've we've gone over the hours so and a lot of a lot of fun yeah oh great man yeah well um we'll do it again yeah I would love you to be a repeat guest because we'll we'll always get good good stuff out of you and uh it's always great to see you anytime oh anytime anytime my friend and um it would be nice to get you on we've had you on free kiwis we should get you on the New Zealand initiative podcast as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:29

I'll be there with Bellzone.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:30

All right mate fantastic thank you for listening to

Final Thoughts And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

Free to Speak if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and consider sharing the podcast with others. We release new episodes regularly and subscribing is the easiest way to stay up to date. If you have any questions feedback or suggestions you can contact us at podcast at fsu.nz If you want to find out more about the New Zealand Free Speech Union visit fsu.nz