Oct 30, 2015 Politics
Name: Len Brown
Subject: Mayor of Auckland
Year: 2010-15
First Semester
Len arrived in class five years ago excited at just about everything. He had big plans, he couldn’t stop grinning and quite frequently it all got so much he would just burst into song.
In his first three-year semester, he made lots of friends, and most of them agreed to support his grand ideas. Len was a confident, outgoing, naturally enthusiastic child. Even when he got bullied by the older boys in the big school, most of his new friends stuck up for him and he refused to let the bullying get him down. Good on you, Len!
Len’s fist-pumping, bouncy personality — and the singing! — can occasionally be irritating in a classroom context, but it’s hard to complain when you’ve got a happy child.
Len completed two big classroom projects in his first semester, and was very proud of them both. The first was a dream for the future called the Auckland Plan, and the second was a complex blueprint for how to achieve it, called the Unitary Plan. Len and his friends put hours of work into both projects, and although, to be honest, they’re not quite as thrilling as Len thinks, they are impressive pieces of work.
Len ended the first semester as the popular and undisputed leader of the class. Well done, Len!
Second Semester
It pains us to report that Len is not having a good second semester. Right at the start, as is widely known, he was caught behaving inappropriately with one of the girls. Then it emerged he had not always spent his pocket money as wisely as he might. Len went into hiding for a whole year and his friends did much of his work for him.
Support for his new project, an underground train set, has sometimes seemed more grudging than heartfelt. The big boys bullied him more and he didn’t know how to stop it. Friends who might have helped didn’t come to his rescue. He wears a brave face, the poor mite, but he is no longer the most popular boy in class and can often be seen eating his lunch alone.
Meanwhile, some of his friends have taken over his first-semester projects and are doing a good job with them. Len should take heart from that. On the whole, the class is confident and thriving, and sometimes they ask Len to join in with their games. But often they don’t.
Summary
Len has been in this class for 5 years now, and it’s a sad fact of life that children who are not popular cannot remain. Especially if they want to be class leader. What’s the point of standing in a corner of the room telling people what they should be doing if everyone else is outside playing? If Len was honest with himself, he’d accept that he needs to find something else to do. We wish him well.
