‘Expressing angst’

Someone was expressing some angst about the number of foreigners coming to teach here. ‘Expressing angst’ is the politically correct way of saying ‘whinging’, but Kiwis don’t do that – we leave that to the … well.

I’ve always found ‘expressing angst’ to be a useless waste of energy, especially compared with ‘doing something’. We’d not have to import foreign teachers if we had enough of our home grown ones. Many of our own head off to exciting places like India and Russia, many go to places like London where the money’s big, and many go to Akaroa to retire early, or to Nelson where they buy a key-cutting franchise.

We’d not have a teacher shortage if our government paid teachers a salary that allowed them to buy a tank full of petrol, or a week full of groceries.

Another alternative to ‘expressing angst’ is to change the attitude. Rather than feel like we’re being invaded by Brits and South Africans and the occasional Eastern European who’s very good at doing long and difficult sums, we could express joy at the diversity and richness being added to our cultural melting pot.

We were happy when the Dalmatians came – because they brought their red wine recipes. And we were pretty happy when the Brits arrived in Christchurch – with their upside down building plans and their neatly laid out street maps. And Dunno wouldn’t be Dunno were it not for the Scots.

Perhaps the South Africans can help us with winning the World Cup. And maybe the Vietnamese could help us with family values. And the Hungarians could help us with long and difficult sums.

And while we’re at it, let’s have some Pakistanis and Thais and Koreans to help with Kiwi cuisine which could do with some spicing up. And perhaps we could have some Brazilians to help with our women’s beach volleyball. And if that’s not bad enough, let’s have some Americans, some of the pro-democracy, regime-change ones.

I’m a bit antsy though about letting in any Swedish teachers. A Swedish kid gave out birthday party invitations in class recently – to everyone except the boy who’d not invited him to his birthday party and to another boy whom he simply didn’t like. The teacher reported this grotesque display of discrimination to the love-police and now the Swedish parliament is investigating. I believe our quota of ninnies is full so if this ninny Swede applies, sorry, but no.

To all the others, ‘kia ora, gidday and welcome. We’re glad you’re here because if you weren’t, we’d all be having to teach extra lessons’.

— Peter Giddens