Monday 27 August 2018

S.S.S Poll Tax.

During the gold rush of the 19th century in New Zealand, The government thought that too much people were coming into New Zealand, and even though there were people coming from all over the world, they seemed to target Chinese families, they bought in “The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881” which introduced a “poll tax” of £10, which back then was worth nearly around about $1,700, equal to about 10 years of their hard work. And they even lowered the Chinese people being able to enter even more by restricting the number of people coming each boat ride, about 1 person to every 10 tons of cargo. You would think that that was the worst they would see. It wasn’t. In 1896, this was changed to 1 person to 200 tons, and the tax was increased to £100 (nearly $19,000). They finally ended it in the 1930’s and Helen Clark apologized for it in the 12th February 2001.

Thursday 16 August 2018

Social Study Slam. Teachers Strike.

It started at Ali’s cafe, town square, to Damien O’Conner’s office, and all the way back into town. The aim was for a few different reasons. Part of it was for a pay rise for teachers, as they deserve it and more experienced teachers to a less amount of kids. In some schools and classes, there are 60 kids to only 2 teachers. I think that they deserve much more than they have. We are lucky at our school, because the biggest classroom in our school only has about 25-26 students, though now that our classroom teachers are leaving, we couldn’t find a suitable replacement. In my opinion, teachers deserve everything that they striked for.

Monday 13 August 2018

The Vietnam war.

The war went from 1955-1975. During the Vietnam war, only about ⅓ of soldiers in America were hand picked to fight, and about ⅔ volunteered. The average age of soldiers were only 21. Over 3,000 New Zealanders military and civilian people served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. About 3 million people died in this war. the Vietnam War started because of the U.S.’s way of “containment” during the Cold War, which aimed to stop the spread of communism throughout the world. This was the first war that New Zealand did not fight with its traditional ally, England. In the end, it turned out that it was nearly completely useless and no one really won. You can thank the former President John F. Kennedy for that. President Kennedy approves sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. This war was also known as the second Indochina war. The US never really declared war against Vietnam, it should really be called the Vietnam conflict instead of the Vietnam war. During world war 2, there were reportedly 40 days of combat in 4 years, though in the Vietnam war, there were 240 days of combat in one year on average.