The Wananga Golf Course
February 27th, 2005 at 4:18 pm by David FarrarToday’s revelation is that Te Wananga O Aotearoa paid half a million dollars to build a driving range and putting green at Te Awamutu Golf Course.
It is important that people do not think that this is necessarily wrong doing by the wananga. The Government has set the criteria which allows courses like golf to be funded out of the education budget. The system is fundamentally flawed, and we need a Government which will focus on standards, not just allow funding of any course because the forms are filled out legibly.
No tag for this post.
February 27th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Well NZQA website lists 9 Golf providers
( but No TWoA courses, are they not audited ??)
Certificate in Golf (level 3) – (The Masters College Limited)
Certificate in Golf – Level I – (New Zealand Physical Training College Limited)
Certificate in Golf – Level II – (New Zealand Physical Training College Limited)
Certificate in Golf Management (part of BBusMgt) – (Christchurch College of Education)
Certificate on Golf Studies (level 3) – (Saint Kentigern College)
Diploma in Golf (level 5) – (New Zealand Physical Training College Limited)
Diploma in Golf (level 5) – (P.G.A. Golf College)
Diploma in Golf (level 6) – (The Masters College Limited)
English and Golf Course (level 2) – (New Zealand Physical Training College Limited)
Data as at 22 February 2005
Certificate in GolF Studies at ST Kenitgern College.
Vote:And we thought these private schools were about getting good NCEA passes , not personal development, ( more likely both).
Some of the others offer ESOL and Golf ???
February 27th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
That’s not the half of it. As long as you can come up with unit standards, any old shit can be a course. Thus my taxes are wasted (and in my view, students’ own money and efforts) on pseudoscience and bullshit such as homeopathy, iridology and aromatherapy. At least golf is an actual practice of some value which produces a measurable benefit in terms of the golfer’s health, possibly a career, and the spectators’ enjoyment, whereas dispensing distilled water to the sick is at best harmless but potentially fatal, whether the practitioner is NZQA certified or not. It rips my knickers that bullshit acquires a patina of respectability for the gullible in this way.
Vote:February 27th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
Stephen, surely what the course is is not the point. I, for instance, use homeopathy. I found homeopathic arnica invaluable for when my litte one broke his arm last month. But I still don’t want my taxes going towards funding anyone’s education.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 7:54 am
Yes it does matter, looke. You may have found arnica invaluable, but it was the placebo effect at work – nothing else. Not only is there no science behind homeopathy, but when actually tested in double blind trials, it has never done better or worse than simply leaving things to get better by themselves. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but there you are.
In the meanwhile, by defining standards and treating crap like, I don’t know, astrology (nothing stops one from developing unit standards for astrology) as though it were on a par with, say, chemistry, gives the impression to anyone but those familiar with the education system that these fields are equally worthy of study, whereas in fact one is science and the other is bullshit.
Notice that the Goverment, while acknowledging the need for investigation into financial impropriety, is skirting round the issue of what was actually taught.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 9:11 am
Stephen, Couldn’t have said it any better (the last sentence at leaast) – Non-university Tertiary providers have got to stick to the knitting – Helping people get usable trade qualifications that end in careers.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 10:00 am
Careers for the economy that used to exist over the last 20 years , not for the one that will happen on the next 20 years.
Vote:Golf will be bigger than say Creative Dance.
THis is the system we now have , create whatever course you like , get it acredited, and if the students come with their ‘vouchers’ saying the state will pay there is nothing you can do about it.
Will happen for primary/secondary and in health if national/act gets in government
February 28th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Why should education be restricted to reading, writing and arithmetic, or leading to a career. Shouldn’t we be looking at broader criteria and provide assistance if it benefits society as many education institutes are? What a boring narrow minded bunch of critics….
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 11:50 am
You dont understand vouchers at all. You seem to believe all the US Teachrs union BS about it creating very low standards and no accountability. Complete bullshit. In secondary and primary it is the parents that will decide what school gets their voucher, not the students of (as seems to be the case with the wanaga) the teachers and school officials.
Parents are a far better judge about what their child should learn than the government, teachers, unionist and the assorted “we know best” hippies.
Vouchers will create accountablility in that a poorly run school offering bullshit courses and with blatant corruption will not survive. People will stop sending their kids there.
Why is it that the opponents of vouchers try to use the arguments FOR vouchers against them?
Act and National might not have better oversight of which courses get accredited but they could hardly do any worse than Labour.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
I thought that most schools in NZ spent a lot of their money teaching kids to play rugby.
If you think that public money should not be spent on sport education, then presumably we can expect several million dollars from making the grammar schools of Auckland sell their playing fields for building.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Stop being a patronising so and so, Stephen. You weren’t present, I doubt you’ve even tried the stuff, so really have no idea what you are talking about.
I certainly get that not everyone thinks there is anything to homeopathy.
I’m a skeptic as well, and am always really surprised when it works. Being a skeptic doesn’t stop me from trying alternatives.
Homeopathic arnica is one of those substances that can be tested very easily for effectiveness on bruising. I dare you to try it.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
My Dad used arnica for ages and swore by it. Remember the Dad from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? He swore blind that Windex cured skin irritations.
As I understand it the idea behind homeopathy is that the body reacts more to “medicines” the more they are diluted. The levels of dilution however get to extraordinary levels (think one litre of milk in 5 times the amount of water on the entire planet, that sort of extraordinary). One theory was that water had a memory of what it contained, so it didnt matter how much was in their, the mere fact it was in there at some stage means the water will remember it and act as a cure all.
This seems to be quackery to be perfectly honest. The other tenet of homeopathy ihas to do with the “medicines” that are diluted. The theory is that you can cure an ailment by giving the patient a diluted form of something which would replicate the symptoms. For example, if you are constantly sneezing the homeopathic remedy might include some pollen or pepper.
Some dork of a French scientist claimed to have proven the Water Memory hypothesis several years back. He and his team had several successful trials of their experiment, though when the Skeptics Society challenged them to reproduce the results again, but under their supervision, the team wasnt able do so. And they tried more than once.
Homeopathy is quackery plain and simple. The placebo effect is well documented though not fully explained and has propped up homeopathy for years. The problem with the placebo effect is that it doesnt work unless you beleive it will, so true skeptics are fucked.
BTW I was told by a homeopath that the homeopathic remedy for bad bruising takes a week or two to take effect.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
I am a skeptic, don’t have much time for things like astrology, golf, religion or homeopathy etc but have found arneca to work on my kids – so I use it on them.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Did it clear them up? Do they still trouble you on cold mornings?
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Homeopathy works for me, I’ve tried several of the tissue salts over the years and always found relief.I couldnt care less whether its the placebo effect or not if it works its okay. I don’t believe the taxpayer should be subsidising training or the Goverment setting standards how-ever.Anyway how do the skeptics know that the effects of drugs and conventional medicines are not also due to the placebo effect when bychance they do work.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
If you were really a skeptic, you would know that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”. I do not need to have been present to know that one case is not proof of efficacy, when there are multiple possible causes (placebo, natural healing process, other treatments you haven’t mentioned).
I’m really sorry you find this patronising, but this is what science tells us. How else can I put it?
“Being a skeptic doesn’t stop me from trying alternatives.”
Absolutely, but it should make you cautious about attributing causation. If you can’t accept that post hoc, propter hoc is a fallacy then you need to hand in your skeptic credentials.
baxter, it’s called a “double-blind trial” – an experiment where there is a control group who receives nothing as well as the real group, and no one, including the experimenters, know who got what until afterwards. There is room to be very doubtful about whether all such experiments are well-conducted, so preferably they should be repeated independantly multiple times. We are entitled to be skeptical about any individual claim from the doctors too, but if the ducks are in a row as far as experiment design, conduct and repeatability go, their claims are a hell of a lot stronger than “this ought to work, and look! my bruise is gone!”
As noted above by another poster, homeopathy can’t even get past the most basic hurdle of a repeatable double blind trial, whereas most conventional techniques can – so I’m quite happy giving conventional techniques the benefit of the doubt, while discarding other techniques that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
But if you guys want to pay through the nose for distilled water, it’s your look out.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
PS: when my daughter was little and bumped herself, we would always rub on special Placebo Cream (a little cold cream from a tube). It worked a treat. Show me a double blind trial comparing cold cream and arnica with a neutral cream base and then I might be persuaded. Don’t forget to publish — it will be the first proof ever.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Stephen, the fact that you would fool your daughter into thinking you were helping her tells me quite a lot about you. Patronising and pompous.
I used “patronising” because:
1. You’ve never used homeopathic arnica at all.
2. You assume the placebo effect.
3. You call for no added information to ask how I arrived at the conclusion that homeopathic arnica works.
4. You consider that I am incapable of measuring an effect that I was witness to on a number of occasions.
Pompous because :
1. You assume, and therefore presume to know.
Let me guess, you consider yourself to be a scientist?
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
I repeat, I don’t need to use arnica to have an opinion about it. The repeated failure of homeopaths to provide a demonstration of their theories, and the ludicrous nature of said theories given what we know through experiment, is enough. Not everything requires personal experience to form a valid opinion.
Please do provide more information if you have it. I don’t understand why you’re holding back.
I make no claims about your observational powers. If you can provide credible evidence, go right ahead. I don’t agree that anecdotes from personal experience are credible evidence though, which is probably where we are parting company. My only claim is that your statements thus far are not credible evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. I’m not saying that your account is untrue, just that it doesn’t prove anything.
I do think the placebo effect is a lot more likely. A rub, some attention and time makes a lot of things, and that’s a real effect; I just want to know how you can be sure that it’s the arnica that was the cause.
I *did* assume that what you meant was “I tried arnica, and then the bruise went away”, which is not the same thing as saying that the arnica worked.
Your assumptions about me are quite wrong. I think I was helping my daughter: the means was a little parental magic. I am not a scientist, and I don’t claim to be one. I do try to be consistent in what I believe though, and I definitely try not to agree merely for politeness’ sake in areas where debate is appropriate — like the comment section of a blog.
Pompous — fair cop. And thoroughly enjoying it, too.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
Actually, looke, I’ve been busy Googling, and it seems there is an arnica remedy which is not homeopathic (ie not diluted squillions of times until it doesn’t exist) but contains both actual arnica, and some other interesting things like calendula. If that’s what you meant, then I am prepared to believe it may work, through normal action of interesting chemicals, and I take it back about the placebo, ’cause we’ve been talking at cross purposes.
But, then we’re not talking homeopathy any more, but herbalism, which does actually have both a reasonable explanation and a track record of successful trials for certain remedies, even if the practitioners are still tangled up in the doctrine of signatures or whatever.
Vote:February 28th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
If something is not readily explainable, it doesn’t automatically become the placebo effect.
There were MANY scientific studies proving beyond a shadow of a doubt smoking did not cause cancer and was in fact good for you. There are some excellent studies both proving and disproving vaccines (and I currently give the edge based on evidence to those disproving it, but the pro-vaccine lobby wins for sheer clout and marketing muscle). I don’t think we can rely on scientists and sceptics to sort this one out.
Sharks can detect a single drop of blood out of hundreds of thousands of litres of water. As that one drop dilutes itself into that huge volume, it retains enough of itself to remain detectable.
It’s probably easier to get your head around that concept than a molecular memory, but there is a lot more to that than we truly understand at this stage.
But as for the Golf (remember the golf?) This appears to be yet another case of spending without thinking. 500K for 25 students!
And some are trying to effectively argue that the money was well spent, that any course is a good course, that other places teach golf etc etc. This is tax payer funds folks, and the money appears to be spent without proper oversight.
Some-one told me the government collects 80 BILLION dollars of tax money per year, and I am trying to find out the exact breakdown of what they spend it on. I suspect that, if these figures are anywhere near true, we have to all start wondering why the money isn’t getting to the key areas, instead of having to read crap in the paper that Wananga is returning $8 out of every $1 invested. They are claiming 1.8 BILLION return on investment.
Now that’s statistics so far away from the truth that even a homeopath would say was too far diluted to be real.
Vote:March 1st, 2005 at 7:56 am
Two comments there, Tyrone.
1. Course startup costs frequently are large, so that would explain the half mill – it isn’t necessarily a case of 500,000 for 25 students, it might be 500,000 for 25 students and the facilities for all who follow them. Having said that, I’m concerned about the utility of the course to students, particularly when everyone has one (kind of the same way I worry about the legions of unemployable sound engineers and graphic designers we turn out in this country).
2. There isn’t anything to explain, in this case.
Vote:March 1st, 2005 at 10:44 am
“but there is a lot more to that than we truly understand at this stage”, there is also alot more to gravity than we understand, but the basics still remain true, stuff falls. The shark example is a little flawed in that the drop of blood within a couple million litres is tiny compared to less than a drop within several billion.
Vote: