Letters to the Editor: ‘Let 16-year-olds vote '

A young letter writer thinks 16-year-olds should be able to vote in the general election.

We all take the right to vote for granted, but imagine you wanted to vote but you can’t, even though you work and are a part of society.

Well, that is what 16 and 17-year-olds are faced with.

Many people think 16-year-olds are irresponsible, but most of them have jobs. According to My Health Alberta, by the age of 16, the brain has nearly fully grown and is very mature.

According to the National Institutes of Health, lowering the voting age to 16 would mean more people would get into politics and parliament. That would result in more choices for everyone and a better parliament.

The bigger parties would be more strict on climate change because 16-year-olds care more about climate change.

If we as a country make this change the world will follow us, because we have seen from history that when we make a bold change the world does follow.

I hope you now agree, that 16-year-olds should be able to vote. Most 16-year-olds are responsible and they care about the world that has been left for them. Making this change WILL change the world.

Blake Digby (13)

Napier Intermediate

Why not teach nationally distinctive dances

The haka is stirring but why not a country where schools also teach nationally distinctive dances expressing emotions besides warrior ones?

Not to be too pointy-headed, but there are nine permanent emotions, and we’re now a renowned nation of choir singers and waiata singers (thanks, Tamati Rimene-Sproat for celebrating this, and ‘M-Pop’, in TV’s recent From Hongi to Hangi).

So why not circumstance-appropriate dances? Yes, ihi released is therapeutic, just as all artistically expressed emotions are (thanks, Scotty Morrison for background on haka’s beginnings in TV’s Origins).

Given ancient Greece’s seven music modes expressed these emotions, why not art to express all ours? Poi e, for example. And if we’re becoming proudly more Maori-Kiwified in waiata (as 40, 000 singing ‘Tutira Mai’ at the Women’s Rugby World Cup attested), how about we also become renowned for the art of tolerant debating?

Both major parties agree on compulsory financial literacy, seen as part of much-needed citizens’ skills.

But as Henry Ford once observed: “Thinking is the hardest work there is – which is why so few people do it”, yet we still awaiting policy that makes civics-critical thinking mandatory in schooling. Said often before, but this is also part of a necessary social infrastructure?

Steve Liddle

Napier