Forecasts About N.Z. Life In 2000

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 16

Forecasts About N.Z. Life In 2000

A glimpse of life in New Zealand in the year 2000 was given by the economic consultant, Dr W. B. Sutch, to a meeting of the Cashmere High School Parent-Teacher Association last evening.

At first Dr Sutch questioned how he could talk about the Dominion’s future wheh the population was gradually leaving, its social services and health system had gone bankrupt, its education system was tottering and the nation’s work force had decreased.

Clearly, he said, something had gone wrong with the country in this decade. But when he looked to the future, and to the year 2000 in particular, he saw a number of quite extraordinary features appearing in New Zealand life. Dr Sutch said. These included more medical work by computer, greater scientific activity in farming, a revised educational system, a considerable amount of time spent in non-paid work, possible full equality for women.

In terms of industrial development, he said, the imagination soared.

Changes in the country’s way of living would be much more rapid than they had been in his lifetime, Dr Sutch said.

New Zealand was expected to have a population of 5 million in the year 2000, but, because its population was so small, it would never be able to have any mass production industry. It would instead have to produce highly skilled people who could produce high quality specialised goods for export. Dr Sutch forecast that by 2000 New Zealand, industrially, would be far in advance of where Denmark and Switzerland were today. Equality of Women

By the end of the century there would probably be equality for women and they would play a tremendous part in the country’s work force at all levels. Too often it was traditional in the Dominion not to think of women as people who would benefit by education. He said that there was no such thing as a “man’s world.” By the year 2000 women would be getting the same education as men and would be competing for the jobs available on an equal footing.

There were dozens of commodities that New Zealand had not even tried to produce, but this development would come, he said.

The key to all this would be the quality of the country’s education which at present was influenced by a lot of old-fashioned ideas. Today, and in the past, many attended school in order to get a certificate in order to get a job. This would not be the position in the year 2000, said Dr Sutch.

Signs Of Change Already there were signs of change, he said. Many teachers were advocating the abolition of the school certificate—something he had been

preaching for years. “So it appears that by 2000 we will have gat rid of the school certificate. I believe that by then we will have come to realise: we need an educated population.”

Dr Sutch said he believed that at that time boys andgirls would get an education for the sake of education and that their specialised job training would follow. The type of broad education subjects he had in mind included English, history, mathematics, general science, social studies and aesthetics. In addition to a broader general education, Dr Sutch advocated an extension of the school leaving age. Attendance at secondary schools would be longer and classes would be smaller.

He also urged that a good primary prescription in preparation for the year 2000 was an active, intelligent participation by everyone in politics.