Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

Apparently just a third of students going into secondary school are numerate. As rightly pointed out by University of Auckland maths lecturer Peter Hughes in today’s Herald, the problem we have is that “it had become acceptable to admit failure at high school mathematics as simply not being good at the subject”.

In fact, in my experience, some people wear this as a badge of pride. Some people say that they are bad at maths, but it’s ok, they will just do law, or social science or other disciplines that do not require maths.  I don’t believe that we should put science and maths on a pedestal as objects (subjects?) of worship at the expense of a well-rounded education. For example, learning foreign languages would most certainly enhance your quality of life. But the fact  remains that living well requires numeracy skills.

Students entering secondary school should be able to answer the questions here, according to Hughes. I just took this test and had to sweat a little to figure out the answers. This test reminds me of the one I took the last time I applied for a job. I reckon a lot of people out there won’t be able to do this within 5 minutes.

Use your brain (and not a calculator) to tackle these sums and see if your numeracy sizes up.

1: 69.9 x 60.08 is closest to:
A 4000
B 4200
C 4400
D 4600

2: The cost of 0.267kg of cheese is $7.95. Which calculation is needed to find the cost of 1kg of cheese?
A 7.95 ÷ 0.267
B 0.267 + 7.95
C 0.267 x 7.95
D 7.95 – 0.267

3: 79.8 ÷ 0.092 is closest to:
A 80
B 800
C 8000
D 80,000

4: Which has the largest answer? (Don’t do any calculations)
A 218 x 217
B 216 x 218
C 217 x 219
D 216 x 217

5: The percentage profit of $500,909 on sales of $1,998,976 is nearest to:
A 10%
B 15%
C 20%
D 25%

Scroll down for answers

V

V

V

V

V

1B, 2A, 3B, 4C, 5D

How did you do?

New Zealand Herald headline today “Imaginary friends boost language skills”

In a study in the latest issue of the journal Child Development, Otago University associate professor Elaine Reese, and former student Gabriel Trionfi, of Clark University in the United States, investigated the language skills of 48 boys and girls aged 5-1/2, of whom 23 had imaginary friends.

They found that the 13 girls and 10 boys who had engaged in imaginary companion play had more advanced narrative skills than children who had not.

“Because children’s storytelling skills are a strong predictor of their later reading skill, these differences may even have positive spinoffs for children’s academic performance,” Prof Reese said.

OK, so having imaginary friends is one way of developing your language skills. If you’re all grown up and not that keen with having imaginary friends, then come along to one of Euroasia’s language classes where you can practice speaking with some real people, and make some real friends in the process.

I was surprised to read this in the Herald week that Kiwis are ranked third fattest in the OECD. The article goes on to say:

The obesity rate among adults in New Zealand in 2007 was 26.5 per cent. This compared with figures reported the previous year by the United States at 34.3 per cent and Mexico at 30 per cent.

“Given the time lag between the onset of obesity and related health problems (such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and asthma), the growing prevalence of obesity in most OECD countries, including New Zealand, may well lead to higher healthcare costs in the future,” the report said.

The Green Party’s health spokeswoman, Sue Kedgley, said the OECD report “highlights the stupidity of the Government’s move to slash funding for public health initiatives aimed at preventing obesity”.

The article goes on to list a number of initiatives that the government has cut in this year’s budget.

I decided to look further into this as I just couldn’t believe that we given how healthy and fit ordinary Kiwis are, that the obesity rate would be so high. The majority of Kiwis I know are active and outdoorsy.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this Ministry of Social Development report which breaks down obesity levels by age and ethnicity.

I think this chart paints the picture well:

The 2008 Social Report concludes:

There are large differences in the prevalence of obesity by ethnicity. Among the population aged 15 years and over in 2006/2007, Pacific peoples (65 percent) and Māori (43 percent) had significantly higher age-standardised obesity rates than the total population in this age group, while Asians (12 percent) had a significantly lower rate.

This is shocking. Two-thirds of Pacific Islanders obese! Islanders are 3 times more likely than the average Kiwi and more than 5 times more likely than an Asian to be obese. Almost half of Maori are obese.

The obesity rate of European/Other was (23 percent). For Māori, there was no significant change from 1997 to 2006/2007 in the prevalence of obesity, adjusted for age, either for men or for women. Between 2002/2003 and 2006/2007, only Asians had a statistically significant increase in obesity.

And why the heck are Asians getting fatter? Although “only” 12% of Asians are obese (half the national average), this has doubled in the last decade. I wonder why the Herald didn’t cover this angle. I’m sure like me, most Kiwis won’t believe that as a nation, New Zealand is so high up the “fatty rankings”. Could it be that it’s not very PC to say that a small number of people skew the rankings dramatically?

That reminds me, I haven’t gone to the gym for a week…

In spite of the scary stories told in “Horror tales from Chinese tourists” in today’s Business Herald, we must not lose sight of the potential of the Chinese tourism market. It was reported that Tourism Holdings will decide in the next month whether to keep pursuing the Chinese market. Graeme West of Tourism Holdings says “We can’t be out there everywhere – we have to target where we think we can get the biggest bang for our buck. The market is there. But do we want the yield the market is providing?”

It makes commercial sense to target the market generating the highest returns. But I’m afraid that many tourism providers may be short-sighted in the same way that many language schools in the early 2000s were. Back then, the Chinese started to go overseas in huge numbers and many new language schools were opened here in a free-for-all. In the end, Chinese students stopped coming for a variety of reasons. One reason is the negative publicity that arose from adverse media reports. Cowboys in the market also did a lot of damage, by short-changing students. The Chinese began to be seen as a new goldmine, and scores of students had bad experiences with shoddy schools, greedy homestay parents, and unethical tourism providers. Understandably, ripped off students won’t have good things to say about the New Zealand experience.

Many schools had to close down, and we have significant excess capacity to this day. Does that mean that China is a bad market to target? No. We’re just getting punished for our short-sighted view of the market. There’s a sense of deja-vu with what’s happening in the tourism sector now. We can certainly learn from the experiences of the language school sector.

Chinese outbound departures more than doubled in the last five years, from 16.6 million people in 2002 to 40.9 million people in 2007. The number of affluent Chinese has increased dramatically, which bodes well for tourism. The China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and loosening visa restrictions are making it easier than ever for Chinese citizens to travel here.

The 2007 Neilsen China Outbound Travel Monitor Report indicated that Europe is the top dream destination for Chinese travellers, followed by Australia and New Zealand. Surely, at a time when the desire to visit New Zealand is so high, we need to be intensifying efforts to target this market, not cutting back. Rob Finlayson, manager at Tourism Holdings Limited (who looks after Rotorua’s Rainbow Springs, Kiwi Encounter and Hukafall Jet boating), was quoted as saying “All they do is the Agridome and Te Puia.” He says even if he cut his prices in half they still would not attract Chinese visitors because “at the end of the day they only have to include two paid attractions”.

Similar to various tourism providers, a number of domestic retailers are also responding in the same way. The word is there’s no reason to focus on the needs of Chinese clients because there aren’t many that buy. It begs the question: do you not have many Chinese/Asian clients because there aren’t many around, or simply because you’re not set up to deal with Chinese/Asian clients?

I don’t know how we manage to conveniently forget that 1 in 5 residents are of Asian descent in the Auckland region.

Why is it that Chinese visitors have the lowest satisfaction levels (according to Tourism NZ data) of all those who visit this country? We need to talk to our clients to find out. But can we realistically do that if none of us actually understand the language spoken by our clients, let alone their culture?

Understanding the target market and taking a long term view of the value of the Chinese market is critical to success. We need to interpret our observations through the eyes of the Chinese. Let’s not allow our perspectives to be so coloured by our cultural baggage that we fail to capitalise on significant opportunities.

Yes, it must be election time again. And once again it’s time to pick on the Asians.

Why is it that it’s always Asians and Arabs that get picked on? How come no one’s calling for Pacific Islanders to be sent home? Is it because they are bigger and hence more likely to win a fist-fight?

I expect comments like those made by New Zealand First Deputy Leader Peter Brown to increase in frequency as the general election approaches.  Of course migrants need to integrate. It goes without saying. Why else would they come to this faraway land and leave their friends and family behind if they had no desire whatsoever to integrate? In any case, effective settlement does not depend on immigrants adopting a new set of values and behaviours and ditching their own.

It must be a 2-way process. Most migrants are not interested in building “Asian mini-societies”. I think those who do have no choice, having been rejected by the host community. Browsing through the Herald reader responses to Peter Brown’s comments, I think I can safely say that the sad fact is a significant number of locals believe Asian migrants should drop everything they believe in and adopt “Kiwi” ways of life – whatever that means. I have come to the conclusion that when locals say you have to “be Kiwi”, in reality the message is “be like me”. One respondent said “with the influx of immigrants from different ethnic groups, our culture and values are changing. It seems, so as to not offend these newcomers, our public Christmas celebrations have been watered down!” Another: “Silly that we let so many people into this country that can speak little if any English at all”.

The fact is most migrants can speak English, and can speak it well, some even better than locals. If we measure the desire to integrate on the basis of language ability, my guess is 90% of migrants speak good enough English for most jobs. However, 90% of born-and-bred Kiwis speak only one language well, ie English. So who’s not really wanting to integrate here? Of course you would argue that this is an English-speaking country, but doesn’t the fact that most Kiwis can’t speak any other language and have little desire to do so a sad indictment?

I feel a little uncomfortable writing this, seeing I have many good friends who are of New Zealand European or Maori descent, and I can’t say that they have ever told me to be more Kiwi in a derogatory way. OK maybe sometimes, when I express my dislike for vegemite or weetbix.  It would be most unfair for me to tar all Kiwis with the same brush, in the same way that those people who have responded on the Herald website have concluded about Asian migrants.

Many Asian migrants are sick and tired of all this rubbish. They don’t want to be treated in this manner anymore. Especially not in the new New Zealand, where 1 in 4 residents was born overseas.

This could explain why Asians and other immigrants are swinging to National in this election at twice the rate of any other group, according to a Herald survey. Of 38 “Asians and others” asked, 21 said they voted Labour last time, and only 8 are staying with the party this year. Whether this is fair, I don’t know.

But I’ll be Kiwi now and just call it like I see it.