The fine we see out of our windows is fake

by Rebecca Thomas

I don’t usually buy into the Mad Max, end-of-oil, dystopian futures people throw around. I’ve never been one to spiral on that stuff. There’s always been too much right in front of me — kids, classrooms, behaviour, kai, the real mahi — to sit around imagining collapse.

But something about last night made me dwell on what might become, or what is actually coming. Maybe it was the clip my son sent. Maybe it was just having a rare pocket of space to actually think instead of react. Because that’s what we do in schools, isn’t it? We react and respond. We patch things up and keep moving. Keep it going. Keep it normal.

And right now, it does feel normal.

That’s the unsettling part.

Out the window — everything looks fine. Kids are still coming to school. Cars are still moving. Shelves are still stocked. The rhythm of life and business as usual all still intact.

But I keep thinking — what if that “fine” is just a delay?

Steve and I started ELV in the middle of COVID because we couldn’t stand watching educators carry the burden of the pandemic all on their own. There was no playbook during that time, no crisis management to learn from. No time for any of us to prepare for something unknown. Just an expectation that we would pivot overnight and somehow make it work for every child.

And we did. Well, most of us did.

But we also saw what that cost us.

We saw who stayed connected.

And we saw who didn’t.

We saw learning become something that depended on what you had at home — devices, internet, space, support, adult resources, whānau — and if you didn’t have those things, you were already behind before the lesson even started.

We don’t talk enough about that part. In fact we never speak about what we went through and we never reflected on both the successes and failures enough in our rush to ‘get back to normal’. Even now the whole trauma feels like a life time ago.

Instead we talked about our resilience, about innovation. We talked about how quickly schools adapted. But we don’t sit long enough in the truth that it became more inequitable than it already was and even still is.

And then when we came back to school, there was joy. Real joy. Noise and mess. Kids shoulder to shoulder again. Morning tea with adults who understood exactly what you’d just been through without needing to say it.

Then life moved on, as if it always does.

But the impact didn’t.

Our COVID kids are sitting in front of us now — carrying what was lost — while we’re told to make haste, to catch up, to lift achievement. And still, the results are low.

And now — quietly — as we wait for the incoming cyclone, as we hunker down as a nation and brace ourselves again, these same thoughts keep pulling at me.

What if something like that comes again as a result of the oil shock we are about to experience, one that will be felt for a generation not just two years?

It won’t be a lockdown. Nor a government sudden announcement. Just a slow tightening.

Fuel.

Supply.

Movement.

We’re hearing about things happening far away — places like the Strait of Hormuz — and it’s easy to file that under “not here.” It’s easy to just pay the price at the pump and tell ourselves this will pass.

But living in Aotearoa has always meant we sit at the far edge of these things. We are not first country to feel the shock. We are last.

Photo: J.P. Morgan Commodities Research, Kpler

Our distance — that stretch of ocean that separates us — has always acted like a buffer. It slows everything down. It gives the illusion that we are removed, protected, untouched.

And in some ways, that’s true. It is a blessing because it gives us time.

Time to watch.

Time to learn.

Time to see how the rest of the world responds when pressure builds and systems begin to strain.

We saw it with COVID.

It moved across the world before it reached us. We watched it unfold elsewhere — and still, when it arrived, it came fast. This feels similar.

Because what that map showed — what hasn’t quite left me — is that the last of those oil tankers, the final deliveries already on their way, are expected to arrive here around April 20th. Not when it starts. When it ends. Because up until then, everything will still feel like it’s working. 

And then, slowly…it won’t.

Last night, in that clip my son shared — and honestly, I invite you to watch it — something clicked. It laid out my concerns, plainly, how long it actually takes for disruption to reach us.

Not immediate, just delayed.

Weeks where everything still looks like it’s working…until suddenly it isn’t.

You can already see it playing out elsewhere. Parts of Africa — even with their ability to refine their own oil — were mapped to feel that tightening between March 20th and April 1st. Japan followed close behind, their last deliveries arriving around April 1st too.

Different places. Different systems. Same pattern.

The shockwave doesn’t hit all at once. It moves.

And it’s coming for all of us — just slowly.

Which is why it hasn’t escaped us — I’m sure — that something as simple as getting our kids to school relies on a whole system we barely notice.

Fuel in cars.

Buses running.

Food arriving.

Teachers being able to physically get there.

At the moment most of us assume that holds.

But if it doesn’t?

Do we slip — quietly — back into distance learning?

Not because we planned it.

Just because we have to.

And somewhere in the middle of all this sits another tension I can’t ignore.

This push for “world-class”, “internationally benchmarked” systems. As if the answer has always been out there — in the countries with the biggest economies, the strongest data sets, the loudest voices. But those same systems — those same nations — are the ones most deeply tied to the very thing we’re now watching strain.

Oil.

Global dependency.

Long supply chains that stretch and stretch until they don’t.

So what exactly have we been benchmarking ourselves against? Benchmarking ourselves against systems that only work when everything flows? Because it hasn’t been resilience. It hasn’t been self-sufficiency. It hasn’t been knowing how to live well within limits. And it certainly hasn’t been grounded in this place.

Te ao Māori has always held something different and this government tried convincing the country that it is inferior and insignificant next to our international stars. But Whanaungatanga — knowing your people, your place, your responsibilities to each other. Manaakitanga — caring, sharing, ensuring no one is left without. Kaitiakitanga — not just protecting the taiao, but understanding you are part of it, not separate from it. Ways of living that don’t rely on endless extraction. Ways of knowing that don’t assume supply will always arrive.

In Aotearoa we: hunt; grow; preserve; share. Not as hobbies but as ways of being.

And I can’t help but sit in the contrast.

We’ve been steering our system toward something “global”, while quietly stepping away from knowledge that is deeply local, deeply relational, deeply sustainable. And now — as those global systems show their fragility — we’re left asking questions we could have been answering all along.

So I started thinking differently. Not about platforms to rush to once schools shut down and bus services break. I’ve been thinking about what we leave our kids with.

Because these are COVID kids.

They already know what it feels like when things don’t work the way they’re supposed to. When adults who have let them down again and again with choices they had no part in are figuring it out in real time. When their ‘normal’ changes and no one can promise when it will settle again.

The truth is its not something to fix, more something to build from.

If I’m honest, I don’t think the most important learning in that moment will be curriculum coverage. I think it will be the more rleational aspects of learning and life:

How do you cope when things change?

How do you make what you need?

How do you stay steady when systems aren’t?

Bread making. Real bread. Rewana bread. Preserving kai. Growing something, even if it’s small. Fixing things instead of replacing them. Sewing. Creating. Adapting.

All those things we’ve quietly moved away from because the world made it easy not to need them. Those things don’t feel optional anymore.

And underneath all of this is something we already know — because we’ve seen it play out before. Not everyone will feel this the same. They never do. The people with means will buffer it. They’ll have options. And the kids we work with? They’ll feel it first.

So our role doesn’t change. If anything, it sharpens. We teach the kids who don’t have backup plans. We teach the ones who won’t be first in line for whatever is left.

If COVID was a warning shot — and I think it was — then this feels like the part where we actually get to decide what we do with that warning.

Because maybe the fine we see out of our windows…isn’t the full picture.

And maybe the real question isn’t whether anything is coming.

Maybe it’s this: If the world shifts again — quietly, slowly, then all at once — what have we actually taught our kids to stand on?