So the Ministry of Education Will Not Reprint a Book Because It Contains Some Māori Words?
I was planning to take some time off from writing articles but then this article by Lynda Knight arrived in my email. It appears that someone/some organisation has been lobbying the Ministry of Education over a junior school reader that (shock, horror) has a number of Māori words in it.
Anyone care to guess who may have been behind this? I guess it’s nice to know that everything is going so well in the country and in education that the government/Ministry of Education have the time to focus on minutiae like this.
This paragraph was in a letter that was included with a distribution of some Big Books (meant for whole class reading lessons) that arrived in schools last week.
“The small student reader version of At the Marae will not be reprinted. The Ministry has made this decision due to the high number of words that appear in the text in te reo Māori. Te reo Māori vowel sounds are different than English making this book less appropriate for students to practice decoding words containing grapheme-phoneme correspondences that have already been taught.”
Lynda has written a short punchy article in response. I will highlight sections, however I recommend you read it for yourself.
‘It’s not quite book burning but still a sad sign of where we might be heading as an education system. Children love seeing themselves, their home contexts, languages and familiar experiences reflected in their readers. This increases their engagement. Engagement increases achievement.’
Having a student reader versions of a Big Book is an important and very valuable part of the learning to read process, as children are able to practice skills on their own. Not in this case. I’d also suggest that most teachers these days are competent in their pronunciation of simple te reo Māori so that the children will learn these words in context.
Lynda then writes the following – I’ve highlighted the first sentence due to its importance as it explains the current focus from the Ministry, in response to government policy rather than educational best practice.
‘If the Ministry wasn’t solely promoting such a reductionist, one-size-fits-all approach to reading then the presence of more phonetic, consistently pronounced, non-English words would not be a ‘problem’. Students would use their prior knowledge of kupu Māori and their knowledge of the context of the story – for many this would be a context that reflects their cultural capital..’
The Ministry have been hooked into the phonics first approach to reading (an article for another time) and clearly their concern is that the different vowel sounds in te reo Māori will interfere with that.
And then she writes:
‘And is this indicative of government priorities across a range of classroom materials? Last year we saw te reo Māori training for teachers cut to fund white-washed maths workbooks from overseas.’
Her conclusion:
‘How is this culturally sustaining pedagogy? How is this moving us ‘Beyond Whiteness’? As Dr Ann Milne says in her recently released book: ‘Whiteness is not just about colour-its a mindset that impacts everything from discipline practices to curriculum choices’
We are walking backwards into the sixties and seventies with each stroke of the twink.’
I disagree a bit here with her last comment – I think we are being taken backwards to the days when Maori was forbidden in schools.
When did we as a country vote for a blatantly racist and anti-Māori education policy?
Us white people need to wake up to the fact that Maori are not going to go away or stop using Te REO .Maori are the fastest growing population in NZ followed by ASIANS .What is the next step from this government forced sterilization ?
NZ is no longer a colony of Britain and was never Dutch so it may well be time to change the name back to Aotearoa which is what the inhabitants called it before the tourists began stealing it .
Aotearoa was never and has never been the name for all of New Zealand.
It was a made up name in the 1800s for the north island.
Yes it was and yet ironically the Maori language was here long before the English language.
Many on the right neglect to state this fact.
‘Aotearoa was never and has never been the name for all of New Zealand.’
The question here is censorship by one group.
Is Germany the name Germans call their country? Is France the name French people call theirs? Spain? China? Did the Britons have a name for the whole British Isles?
Aotearoa? ‘It was a made up name in the 1800s for the north island.’
Well what then is ‘New Zealand” ?
What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and if people wish to call this country Aotearoa, New Zealand, Godzone according to their preference does it matter?
Personally I think ‘The long white cloud’ describes our mountainous, seagirt nation better than ‘ New version of some flat as a fucking pancake, featureless, ordure covered, stretch of land criss-crossed by stagnant waterways bordering a shallow, sewage filled sea’.
And your authoritative reference for that claim is?
Try actually looking at the first word of the paragraph, Allan.
and New Zealand was made up by a passing dutch explorer who never even set foot on land here .
Its modern meaning is the whole of the country, and that is likely to continue to be true. Why not look at the present and future, rather than to the past?
Except searching In the Parliamentary Papers section of Papers Past shows the Crown using it for the whole of Aotearoa as the Maori had rejected the name New Zealand.
That’s from 1860, which is about as far back as Papers Past goes.
So where did you learn your history from? Dr Seuss? Tross Publishing? Hobson’s Pledge?
Are you comfortable being utterly ignorant about your own country and pulling your own pants down in public?
All of my very white grand kids have a good grasp of the Maori culture and Te Reo one even being the top Maori studies student in his school last year .Of coarse the rest of the 5th generation land stealing farmers kids took exception to his success and made his life a bit difficult at times but he has risen above and was top student overall for the school year in all subjects .
Good on him, Gordon. He doesn’t need the approval of pakeha to succeed. He’s shown he’s a free-thinker, whereas they are stuck in their farm mud, likely to go nowhere. They need to get over themselves.
So you refer to your neighbours etc kids as “5th generation land stealing farmers kids” yeah?
My bet is that you don’t say that to their parents faces . .
well it their parents that have made them racist .Children are not born racist are they ?.One of the white land stealers kids told a Maori boy that white people fucked Maori over in the 1800s and this government is going to do it again .Where do you think an 11 year old got that hate from .I can assure you it was not taught at the primary school .
Looks like we voted for a “blatantly racist and anti-Maori education policy” just last year. And we certainly got one, very quickly.
and New Zealand was made up by a passing dutch explorer who never even set foot on land here .
Poor Nga Pakeha, I actually feel sorry for them having to put up being labelled a “colonist white supremacist racist” when there probably many who don’t hold these views & should definitely condemn these violent acts like Gordon or Martyn & co strongly advocate for inclusion of Maori rights not exclusion
When did we as a country vote for a blatantly racist and anti-Māori education policy?
October 2023 is the answer to that question.
ACT the racist separatist party.
Racist bollocks. Little kids can competently learn English and Maori vowels.
Just last week I experienced a five year old correct my maori pronunciation! Completely charming.
100% agree this is nothing to do with vowel its all a political stunt which will damage many kiwi kids of all colours for a long time .
In a report I was involved with producing recently, it was suggested we remove Māori words from the glossary as the definitions may not be represent the full context of those words, which was fair enough. However the simplest solution was to remove those words from body of the document, so there was no need to give meaning to words that some readers may not be familiar with. The use of Te Reo added a cultural dynamic that was a little sad to lose.
So you capitulated and released a less impresive document to suit the few .
Kids are like sponges. They seem to be able to soak up any number of languages when they’re little. So that’s a pissed poor excuse for a start. It used to be that we waited 5 or 10 years before following disastrous US experiments and stuff.
Just another example of the education system narrowing down to easily marked yes/no answers or multiple choice rather than questions that require thought and intelligence. Should suit Gordan’s grandson’s classmates well.
No doubt Willow-Jean Prime will be all over this issue
The brain works better if it is pushed to learn thinks. Many in Europe learn multiple languages at once and are plenty in them.
Maori is one of our official languages and it’s use in everyday life should be encouraged. I do not understand why so many of my Right leaning friends are against the acceptance of thinks Maori.
Whoa I sense an epiphany coming on stay with the vibe Trev
Thank you for your honesty Trevor.
The issue (missed by most of you) is that small readers in the title are being discontinued but the large books used for groups are not. So cut out the colonial apocalyptic scaremongering and perhaps consider whether it matters at all if the group reading takes place.
Ennius and his right wing perspective and his colonial apocalyptic scaremongering .
Parrot
Dodo
Speaking of culture…
the right are very righteous…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-looking-at-fresh-complaint-against-former-act-party-president-tim-jago/BA6Z2ZPT3NDSXCXVYCCVYS6PBQ/
Knowledge rich curriculum anyone,would be nice if only it could be understood by humans not AI
Let’s have ‘real education’ like in Europe where all kids learn 3 languages at school and are expected to be fluent in a 2nd language by age 12.
Kiwis go overseas and are thought to be drongos because most can only speak English.
The browning of NZ will ensure Zelda thought patterns become extinct and the sooner the better.
I agree
Easier said than done Joseph. There has to be some point to learning the languages. In Switzerland for example there is. If you’re from Bern and don’t speak French, a business trip to Geneva will be awkward.In New Zealand there’s no need to speak Māori. If there were, it wouldn’t be endangered.
Let’s have ‘real education’ like in Europe where all kids learn 3 languages at school and are expected to be fluent in a 2nd language by age 12.
Kiwis go overseas and are thought to be drongos because most can only speak English.
The browning of NZ will ensure Zelda thought patterns become extinct and the sooner the better.
Next we will be going back to a ban on kids speaking Te REO in school and giving them six of the best if they do .My dad was in school then and always getting the bash .His parents always said dont do it you are part white so you must follow the white way thats the law .
Education is too important to be left in the hands of politicians .It should be set up like the reserve bank as a no go area for unskilled people like Stanford and Seymour .The changing every three years is bloody stupidity .
I agree 100%
Yes, Gordon. The amateurs making these huge changes are not competent to play around with education.
Children have been experimented with enough.
Parents are nervous and are easy prey for outfits like Crimson. In the old days it was the Encyclopaedia Britannica salespeople door-knocking on Sunday afternoons.
Netenyatu Gaza, did i mispell that inhumain crimminal . Yet, how our words, understood,outside a grammer, this itself is past time going as our children!s brains proggress oops, prog. eH! how our care is learned in many difrent forms,. what english word for Eperanto.
I’m in Canada working, and you know what they do with their kids here – send them to full immersion French schools. How has such has such unbelievably racist ideology become part of the political apparatus in NZ? Who the fuck are we?? Who the fuck are these fucking clowns that are sullying our parliament and culture??
Aren’t schools suppose to be places of learning and education, isn’t it about broadening student knowledge and understanding? So how does deleting a book that uses English text/letters in presenting Māori words not broaden children’s learning of one of several phonetic pronunciations of English vowels/ consonants/diphthongs/vowel blends etc? Written Māori words are represented by the sounds that those words/letters make to the learner in the symbols of his/her own language. The long history of mispronunciation of written Māori text is either because of unfamiliarity/ignorance of the various vowel sounds that exist in the hybrid English language of this country or just plain racism. I feel the fear from the racist minority of the emergence and easy daily usage of a Kiwi hybrid english/Māori modern language. A modern kiwi language that obviously reflects and promotes this hybridisation of our Aotearoa.