SOCIAL SCIENCES

The best way for knowing and learn thoroughly about a country is through social sciences; due to it is a wide science which brings a huge quantity of information from many topics of human being and its social behavior.

As a brief introduction, the term “Social sciences” is only the base of a big tree, which has a lot of branches that involves the study of the human and society behavior. These branches are geography, international relations, political sciences, economics, education, inter alia. Social sciences study the human being and its behavior through time, in the past, in a determinate time or even how the human being will behave in a future time.

Every one of those branches are issues which we will raise through the essay, but due to those topics are very extensive issues, we will tackle a brief review of some of them.

Before of starting, New Zealand is a very young and multiethnic country. Owing to there is a great and growing young population; New Zealand is considered a young country –on comparison to other western countries. It is also considered as a multiethnic country; due to it has a high birth rate of Maori people; moreover, it has a relatively high immigration rate from Asia and Great Britain.

We are going to tackle the society issue from the point of view of the young and student people, and how it is built or formed to the youth.

New Zealand’s society or also known as “The Kiwi Society” –named in this way by foreigners and local people, and in honor to its national icon; the little native bird called “Kiwi”. How this is a young society, New Zealand has invested on its youth by means of scholarships, for example. Although New Zealand has a high rate of public investment –especially on public transport, the living costs are equally high for students and people in general. The living cost in New Zealand, in comparison to Chile, is higher but, cheaper than Europe or US. 

The minimum income to live (not the same than minimum salary) is around $1600 NZD [New Zealand Dollar] –approximately, $627, 297.6 CP [Chilean Pesos] –conversion according to Labolsa.com on Saturday 21, June. But in every city of New Zealand and even between North and Southern Islands, the living cost varies depending on the zone and economic activity.

New Zealand is an active member of the WTO (World Trade Organization) since 1995. The aim of this organization is to help the producers of goods, the exporters and importers to improve their activities. This helps to the economy of New Zealand to grow in a better way.

New Zealand’s economy is particularly based on exportations –it is dependent on international trade, especially with European Union and Australia. “Kiwi Economy” is mainly based on primary industries (agriculture), with a great dependence on international trade and foreign investment. New Zealand could be a great producer of different goods and in great quantity, but it prefers producing a little quantity of goods in a safe market and concentrates its economy on a massive production of exporting goods. Although New Zealand has a market economy, this depends on government as the same manner that depends of the entrepreneurs. Due to the government have many programs for helping to exporters and enterprises, which can become big exporters; with the only one goal of maintain the economy growth. Internal market from New Zealand is not a great consumer of goods and services, society from this nation prefers consuming external goods and only the necessary from internal goods, because of this, New Zealand economy is depending on exportations; nevertheless, thanks to its beautiful landscapes and a lot of touristic attractions, which was gifted, a significant percentage from economy comes from tourism. Whereby, we can say that New Zealand is definitely a country totally dependent on exportations and it is prone to be affected by economic crisis from its main buying countries, Australia and England. 

New Zealand with its multicultural society has known how to capitalize its education system. It has a clear focus on how to improve the education, a matter that is very important for this country. The 10 percent of the government budget is for education, this allows children to study for free. The studying years for children begin from 6 to 16 years old, the system is composed of eight levels of elemental education and then it is divided on high school with two more years. To maintain the good education of Maori children the Educational Review Office gives to the government periodical evaluations of all the educational buildings. In most of the schools children has their classes in English, because the educational system is based on the British system, but there are other schools specialized to Maori children and their classes are given in Maori. As an extra cultural statistic according to this matter, in Chile we have an educational counselor from the embassy of New Zealand; we have a bilateral agreement according to education with New Zealand. Thanks to this in 2008, 524 Chilean students went to New Zealand to study there.

New Zealand has barely an area of 269 km2 –that means three quarters of Japan –it doesn’t have land borders. The south island is the biggest of both islands, it has a quarter of the total Maori population, and it’s divided lengthwise by the Southern Alps. It has 18 picks and the highest pick is Mount Cook or Aoraki with 3.754 meters. We can say that the southern island is the mountainous part of New Zealand.

The Northern Island is less mountainous but is marked by volcanism, the most famous mount is Ruapehu with 2.797 meters and it is an active volcano. The biggest lagoon of New Zealand is in this island and it is called Taupo, this lagoon was created after the biggest eruption in history of the last 70.000 years.

In conclusion, New Zealand has always been a strong nation, it has known how to create a firm society; however, relating to economy it is on thin ice, because New Zealand is very dependent to other countries. Due to it has an economy based on exporting and foreign investment, if some economic crisis affect to some of the countries which buy to or invest on New Zealand, the economy of this nation will be affected and this is not some good for country. On the other hand, New Zealand is a nation, which is worried about the education and his population. It has invested on education through of many scholarships and the society on public transport, and it is a nation, which cares environment too. Furthermore, New Zealand gives many opportunities to foreign people by means of scholarships. New Zealand’s education is well-recognized on the rest of the world and many foreigners studying there. And as a last point, this is a nation, which we would go to study or living there, with a well-constituted society and its geography is similar to Chile; and despite of, it has a living cost higher than Chile and it is located to the edge of the world, it continues being a great country to live for anyone.