It's a network, not a brain drain

By JOSIE CLARKE

New Zealand's brain drain is instead a well-placed global network of contacts, says historian Dr James Belich.

The country must identify its strengths and face and eliminate its weaknesses if it is to take up the challenge of becoming a knowledge economy, Dr Belich and judge and Maori leader Mick Brown said as they defined New Zealand as a nation during speeches at the Knowledge Wave conference.

Dr Belich said a characteristic of New Zealand was "cultural over-production", or a tendency to produce more than our share of talent, from opera singers to leaders of the Royal Air Force.

New Zealanders were historically well equipped to be both national and trans-national citizens and he asked if the "brain drain" was instead a well-placed global network ready to help New Zealand.

Judge Brown said he hoped the debate about national self-definition would include issues surrounding constitutional, legal and democratic institutions, the Treaty of Waitangi, the education system and immigration policy.

"I might add our attitude to immigrants, our recognition of the great strengths that they bring, even if only that they are bilingual, which has been very unpopular for the last 150 years."

He suggested a national conversation "of how we want New Zealand to be and what we have to do to achieve those agreed objectives", but warned New Zealanders might have to undergo dramatic attitudinal change to reach their goals.

Our preparedness to undertake such significant change needed to be attempted along with a realistic look at how well we had coped with some of the issues in the past.

He referred to a Royal Commission report on social policy in 1988, which stated that "while you read these lines, thousands of Maori children attending New Zealand schools are being subjected to a 10-year process of schooling that very effectively atrophies their potential growth as people".

He read another quote from the report, which described the majority of teachers at that time as middle class and monocultural, "who know little of things Maori, consider Pakeha culture superior to Maori culture, speak only English and do not consider the Maori language important. Many hold low expectations for Maori children".

Judge Brown concluded: "That report was 13 years ago. We must ask ourselves whether much has changed in the interim."

New Zealand had to produce as many students as possible who were literate, numerate and capable of critical and analytical skills.

Both Judge Brown and Dr Belich referred to the tall poppy syndrome, or "our extraordinary capacity to mock ourselves".

Among the country's other "peculiar characteristics", said Judge Brown, were a tendency to blame and assume the problem had been solved, profound intolerance of diversity, a naive faith in legislative activity as a universal panacea, and a deeply embedded anti-intellectual stance.

He listed other strengths as an emergence of a large number of highly skilled women into the workforce, and a history of innovation. And we had the "magnificent" resource of thousands of brilliant young people.

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