Back To School

Like Rodney Dangerfield, I’m going back to school.
MA in Psychology. Interested in the gap between attitudes and behaviours, and how group dynamics can be harnessed to bring about behaviour change to match attitudes more closely. Longtime readers will recognise this from the Small Group Action series that started here.
More details sometime.

Overseas readers who recall my posts about debate here in NZ on the subject of child discipline and smacking will not have heard that the political side of the issue has been resolved, with a cross-party accord in the house of parliament for a minor amendment to the bill:
To avoid doubt it is affirmed that police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints against parents of any child, or those standing in place of any child, in relation to an offence involving the use of force against a child where the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in pursuing a prosecution.
To say this was an unexpected development is an understatement. There was definite political mileage for the opposition in keeping this debate going. But National leader John Key is clearly playing a longer game, mindful of future cross-party accords that must be found on matters like climate change. Either that or he’s actually acting with integrity. Huh. Cool.

9 thoughts on “Back To School”

  1. I question, why he would not be acting with integrity, after all he did reach a very senior role in the World of banking, and trust me, you don’t make it without a high degree of Integrity, and ethics. I see you are questioning your leftist roots … Huh Cool!.

  2. Yeah, to clarify – the “acting with integrity” line was intended as a joke along the lines of “and no politicians can possibly have integrity haw haw”. I see that as written it comes across as quite harsh, and it was meant to be a silly aside.
    Thanks for the catch JD. I’d like it if I always expressed myself clearly but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon…

  3. “how group dynamics can be harnessed to bring about behaviour change to match attitudes more closely”
    Translation : mind control techniques!
    🙂

  4. Morgue, go get em and good luck with the further education. You are entirely suited to it and will do wonderfully.
    And finally what a sensible, if unnecessary, conclusion to the smacking debate. I think the Greens and the Labour should have learned from this. If it had been framed properly from the start I don’t think it would have been the politicial mess it ended up been….not of course that the media helped at all. I wonder that the Police or a lawyer simply didn’t make it clear all along that the Police have discretion. It would have saved so much heartache.

  5. Oh good God. Morgan Davie: He’s like a Southern Hemisphere Derren Brown, only on a mass scale.
    Flee!
    Cheers
    Malc

  6. Please my apologies, I was being “Fatuous..”, I am as di-illusion ed with the current crop of MP’s in parliament, irrespective of which party they belong too. I find the Green party, not green, the Labour Party, a bunch of Chardonnay Socialists, and the National party … well, lost without a label essentially, and well the rest a bunch of opportunists, hanging on for the parliamentary pension if you ask me.

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