KEY POINTS:
Talking to a sparky class of high-school students this week, I was struck by how well this country is working.
They are in their final year, preparing for both the level 3 NCEA and the Cambridge alternative, and they were scathing of the NCEA. It was at once
too easy and too arbitrary. You could pass by serving up exactly what you had been told but you were liable to be marked down if you did not use standard terms.
Cambridge, I gathered, was more objective in its questions but less formulaic in its marking, and certainly, they said, a tougher test.
I listened in sympathy but left them with an observation. The last time I looked at an NCEA paper in my best subject it would have been too hard for me. It required more raw research than we were taught to do.
I could have told them more. I doubt that many in my final year could have spoken as confidently as them, argued as reasonably, understood so much. The NCEA plainly needs refinements to encourage more than minimal effort but I don't see the smart suffering. I told them their education seemed better than mine.
It struck me later that quite a lot more in their world is better, and I wondered if they have any idea.
At the beginning of each university year, Massey at Albany publishes a light-hearted reminder to lecturers of the life experience of their new students. It would be an interesting exercise if done differently. Massey's "mindset list" merely scans what happened the year the students were born.
For those entering university this year, it said, "Fast Post has always been available, the ozone hole has always been a worry, tens of thousands have always been on surgical waiting lists, there have always been median barriers on Auckland motorways, Japanese imported cars have always been cheap and plentiful".
But nobody awakens to the world at birth, children do not generally tune in to significant developments in their wider world until they are 10, 11, 12, or older.
The interesting thing about students entering university this year is that they were probably not aware of much before 2000. All of the later 20th century is history to them.
Except from hearing or reading, they don't know about: the Cold War, Muldoon, School Certificate, apartheid, Anzus, wharfies, Vietnam, import licensing, local assembly, the Federation of Labour, feminism, the freeze, Roger Douglas, the float, the surtax, socialism, Lange v Douglas, Grey Power, Ruth Richardson, Jenny Shipley, food banks, shroud-wavers, MMP referendums ...
They have never known a Prime Minister other than Helen Clark or a President before Bush. They haven't known an economy in recession, serious unemployment, noticeable inflation, or a world without computers, internet, email, Sky channels, phone text.
They have barely known a world without an intractable war on terror exacerbated by an act of monumental stupidity by the United States. They cannot yet know that this President is an exception to a tradition of restrained and highly responsible use of great power.
Nor can they know that nine years of economic stability, particularly in New Zealand, is scarcely believable to the generation before them.
We who finished education just in time for the turbulence of the 1970s had come to suppose that regular recessions were inescapable in an economy dependant on exports of declining value.
Even when we realised that monetarism could stop inflation and market exposure would correct most of the misalignments of investment in the economy, we nevertheless expected the business cycle to continue to produce periodic slumps.
But here, and everywhere that monetarism has been adopted for economic management, we have seen continuous growth for longer than anyone dared hope.
The Reserve Bank had to counter some inflation with a "soft landing" last year. It was so soft that we hardly noticed. Growth slowed to about 1.5 per cent and now it is powering back to a likely 2.25 per cent for this year with the inflation arrested and full employment maintained.
Monetarism is a fine art resting on forecasts, and mistakes will be made. But overall it is producing worldwide stability, helped by new technology, global integration and the growth of new market economies, especially China.
Locally we worry that the sole monetary lever, the base interest rate, is sending the dollar's exchange rates higher than exporters can bear. But stable economies have highly valued currencies. Their exporters need prestigious brands and sophisticated marketing.
It would help them, no doubt, if tax-favoured real estate was not sucking in so much domestic investment and threatening inflation. Exporters should be asking for an effective capital gains tax on residential property. So should the young if they want to buy a house in the foreseeable future.
But they are entering a better economy than my generation did. I hope they know their recent history; we do not want to repeat it.
