http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/what-can-the-u-s-learn-from-radicalization-in-the-french-speaking-world

Interesting. Thanks j.a.m.

Just to add some detail, for what it’s worth, the figure for California is 27%, or 10.2 million of the population of about 37 million. For the five boroughs of New York City, it’s 37% of 8.5 million.

Here’s an interesting new survey from Pew. It’s interactive so you can play with it for ages: http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/05/17/global-migrant-stocks/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=42752ae919-Weekly_May_19_20165_19_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-42752ae919-399888901

It shows, for example, that in 2015 1,040,000 of NZ’s population (c. 4.5 million) was born overseas. 46,630,000 of the US’s population (total c. 319 million) was born overseas.

You’ve mi-read my comment about no-go zones. There are none in NZ.

I can see your point about ethnic diversity, and I agree with what you said. The other study, which I can’t find, was focused much more on ethnic diversity. It had Singapore or Hong Kong as #1, and those European nations well below the US. It divided countries into 6 groupings. NZ was about middle of the 2nd grouping and the US was near the top of the 3rd. In that study, Norway was well down the 5th.

The main reason NZ came in so much higher than the US is because our population is more homogenized. Suburbs and schools are much more mixed together, though there are areas that are higher in some ethnicities than others. Also, mixed-ethnicity marriages and therefore children are common here. When my family gets together, it’s like a mini United Nations, and we’re not unusual.

Yeah, I’m worried about charter schools too. (Just the fact that it’s ACT that are the most passionate about them is enough to make me pause.) I think there may be some place for what those schools purport to provide, but I think it should be done within the state system.

At my high school (Gisborne Girls’ High School) in the late 70s/early 80s there were some girls that didn’t go through the same system as the rest of us. I don’t know what criteria was used for choosing them, but they all had some form of trouble in their backgrounds. At the end of the fourth form (year 10 now) instead of going onto School Certificate they went into a separate class and were taught by the same teacher for all subjects. It was quite a small class and they all got individual attention in things like learning and study skills as well as some year 11 subject material. After that year they joined the new School Certificate year. That was no big deal because in those days anyone who didn’t pass School Cert became a 2nd year 5th (former), or repeated some 5th form subjects while doing some 6th form subjects, and there were many 2nd year 6ths too. At our school at least, no-one looked down on those kids. (Quite apart from anything else in those days it was a pretty rough school and they were in the majority.)

Up the East Coast in Ruatoria the high school there (Ngata College) had a creche and pregnant girls kept coming to school because teenage pregnancy was at such a high rate up there.

Anyway, the point is they were taught by a properly qualified teacher. Many teachers have skills that enable them to deal with the more difficult to manage kids, and they can be trained too (the teachers I mean, not the kids!). I personally think that’s a better idea than some of options Charter Schools present. There are always people thinking things like, “You just have to get tough with them, teach them some discipline,” which may work for a small number, but more often does more harm than good.

And I agree about the public funding of religious education part of your comment too.

I responded “Every wave of immigrants to the US has been accused of violence and criminality. Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Eastern Eoropeans, Hispanics, all in there turn have been castigated for holding on to their native language and values and failing to Americanize. But all have done so in time. People can’t abandon the cultures they grew up in overnight. It usually takes several generations. There is much wrong with the US, but we are far more diverse than any European country, and though there are certainly tensions, often whipped up by nihilists like Trump, Europe might learn from us also.”

I think it is this notion of diversity, the incorporation of different ethnicities into a nation, that is relevant here. By this measure, the US and NZ are diverse. Norway and most European countries are not. Britain for example is 87% white, 3% black, 4% asian, 2% mixed, 4% other. That’s why I laugh when they claim that immigrants are threatening the British way of life. This is small potatoes compared with what the Brits did to the cultures of the countries they invaded and subjected to British rule. Perhaps a small dose of payback.

Tell me more about the “no-go” zones in NZ. Are non-Muslims not allowed to enter these areas? Police? I know there are areas in every US city where it is not safe to venture, especially at night, but these areas are still policed and subject to the American legal jurisdiction.

I wonder though, Heather, whether the same standards will apply to charter schools. Just like in the States, one of the main groups interested are evangelical religious sects like Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church. And they aren’t starting schools because they want to teach the standard curriculum, are they. To make it worse, when the enabling legislation was passed, the requirement for teachers to have a teaching qualification was dropped for charter schools (while at the same time, the degree level required for state school teachers was increased – WTF?). I’ve told the story of meeting the head of the Dawkins Foundation from the US. The reason he came out here was to give warning talks around the country about charter schools as a method to provide back door public funding for religious education and I fear that’s what is now happening here.

Diversity is a lot more than the racial divisions you have named. There’s an International Diversity Index – NZ is currently 2nd on that index behind Norway. The US is 9th, which is higher than they’ve ever been, and I suspect a positive influence of the Obama administration. http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/global_diversity_rankings_2012.pdf

Here’s another one from The Economist. This one ranks NZ 3rd and the US 14th:
http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/eb/DiversityandInclusion.pdf

There’s one that’s better than both of these that I found a few months ago, and I’ve never been able to find again, which annoys me. I’ll post it if I find it.

I don’t think having a Sikh teacher, as long as he’s teaching to the curriculum, is a problem. I don’t think someone should be able to teach in a burqa (covers face except eyes) or niqab (covers face including eyes) though. It normalizes Sikh people etc for kids. Our Ministry of Education monitors education standards in schools quite closely, and a school wouldn’t be able to get away with teaching Creationism alongside evolutionary theory, for example. Schools can be, and are, shut down for not meeting standards. Our society is full of people wearing religious garb of all types, and kids tend to fear what’s different. If they get to know the people wearing that garb, it will help them to accept difference. As you know, fear leads to prejudice.

We still have Christian religious instruction in many schools here. That is a big problem and I agree religious education is indoctrination – I thought that before I came across Dawkins’ views on the topic. There has been a move for a while to stop this, and there are a lot less schools doing it than when I was a kid. An old Ministry report that recommended against it has recently surfaced and there is going to have to be some explaining to do as to why its recommendation (to stop RE) wasn’t followed.