Nobody was complaining about those words. Not the teachers, not the students, not the parents.

I'm a parent, my child is a student.

you experience is based on the fact that your child is suffering from a learning disability. You are demanding that because your child is incapable of dealing with maori words no child of the same age should be exposed those maori words.

My child isn't diagnosed with any learning disability and I'm not demanding anything. I am offering our real world experience.

There are about five kids in my sons class who are really struggling with reading out of a little less than 30 kids. Our school would have been a lower decile school back when that was still a thing.

You are deluded if you think small changes in the first year or so of a reading program is going to stop kids from being exposed to Te Reo in primary schools.

I started making a list of all the ways kids build their Te Reo vocabulary at my sons school and then I decided you probably don't care

For about the fifth time, I do not want to exclude Te Reo from school books, I don’t even believe the minister wants to do that.

This is clearly not true because you are defending and excusing this action. The minister absolutely wants to do it which is why she did it.

That isn't what she has done. The book has moved from the early reader list into the general reading list.

Early readers are the learning resources that take a learner from rote memorizing lists of sight words to being able to start decoding and reading unknown words themselves.

We asked our school to borrow a bunch of early readers to cover our evening reading over last Christmas, which we were a bit nervous asking for. When they figured out were a bit embarrassed asking, the teacher said something to the effect that they don't use most of these that much anymore. The structured literacy approach ( that is fairly new ) means most of the kids only have to work over a couple of books to learn the techniques to decode and sound out words and apply them. She said they usually just use "Pip and Tim" unless the kid is bored of it.

The reading that kids who that aren't specifically struggling do now is more just regular resources from their other subjects than specific reading resources.

You keep accusing me of not wanting Te Reo in school books, this is absolutely false.

My initial post was that we had a bad experience with a specific book. When I boil that down, it was because the book had too many new words.

It's not that it is a bad book. It is the spot it was in the early reading program.

You could make it fit, they would have to:

1. Seed the sight / heart word lists with more Te Reo.
2. Find or have someone write a bunch of early readers that have Te Reo introduced as the new words one by one, just like they do for every other word.

I support both of these things, but I'm not the one making the calls on that.

The child has to be struggling with reading to ever be issued an early reader to take home for homework.

If you are in reading recovery ( ~5 of my sons class ) you make heavy use of the reading resources and will probably go through all of the early readers, in all of the incremental stages.

Me and my son have read either one or two every night for the last year and a half.

It seems like I'm talking with people who are mostly clueless about reading education here and are all here for the rage bait headline.

All good =)

What exactly is it you don't believe?

For about the fifth time, I do not want to exclude Te Reo from school books, I don't even believe the minister wants to do that.

This is what you said:

I am opposed to shaping our educational system to the lowest common denominator of students

This is pretty well the definition of not being inclusive.

I don't think there are that many piece of shit humans in this world, I can't recall ever seeing one on the NZ lemmy instance including you. I think the only thing I have said is that you could be a bit more inclusive, it's not that bigger deal, most people aren't.

As far as I can tell, the books are still part of the curriculum, they are just pushing them slightly up until after the early readers are done with.

I don't know who you think wants to exclude a whole culture, especially one that seems so vibrant and strong right now, sounds nutty to me.

I was just contrasting how well all the folks treat my boy at school in general, dealing with his little weirdnesses and idiosyncracies ( having to wear ear muffs for his auditory issues in Kapa Haka etc. ) with BallpeenHammers "Tough luck if you can't keep up, we won't cater to the lowest common denominator".

It doesn't have to be black and white, X wins or Y wins, alot of stuff can get handled well in a primary school education.

Perhaps I didn't explain why I could understand why they might do this well enough. The subject line of the post starts with "Racist" to explain what is going on. My initial reply was trying to chuck another data point in that there could be other reasons than racism.

As far as I can tell they aren't banning anything. The books will all still be stocked and can be used in the classroom whenever. The only thing they are doing is pulling them from the early readers list.

I don't know what your background is, you could be a teacher aide that works with kids on a regular basis and all of this stuff is your day to day grind, but I'll try and explain it as I know from dealing with the reading system.

When they start teaching kids to learn to read, they make them learn a bunch of lists of 'sight' words that they can read without really needing to decode or understand them properly.

When they have built up enough individual words they start getting them to read sentences that chain together these sight words, they start out like "Girl looks at cat".

Once they have built up enough of a vocabulary they introduce books called early readers that have multiple sentences and usually they will try and chuck a new word into each story. These build up over time as they move up through the levels.

In parallel with this the structured literacy approach is for them to start learning to read the words one letter at a time, read the individual sounds of each letter out and verbally 'blend' them into the sound of each word. After the first couple of years alot of kids should be able to do this well enough to figure out new words, english, Te Reo, perhaps other languages.

As far as I can recall, there is no Te Reo in any of the sight word lists. I suggested elsewhere that probably there should be.

The reason I was filled with dread every time "At the Marae" was in our book bag was that there was a disproportionate number of new words, compared with our usual one or two in a book where we could try ( and often fail ) to blend the words together or if my kid was frustrated or feeling lazy he might just guess what would fit in the context of the sentence.

This is something that applies to anyone who is struggling with reading, this is a good chunk of most classes, it's not specific to any particular special needs group.

If there was a bunch of books that introduced Te Reo one or two words at a time and built it up like the magenta readers, it would be fine.

What they look to be choosing to do is to move the Te Reo until after the child can decode the words and blend them themselves. For most kids this is when they are in year 2 or so.

I would have figured the three Linuses would have been like:

1. Enthusiastic loud mouthed young Linus arguing with Tannenbaum.

2. Aggressive Linus with no filter at all slapping maintainers upside the head.

3. Aggressive Elder Linus with a personal insult filter applied still slapping maintainers upside the head.

Firstly, I did not say that you objected to my child participating in Kapa Haka.

Secondly, you are the one attacking me for things I did not say.

Thirdly, who is having a tantrum here? I thought the NZ lemmy instance here was pretty chill and I am just sharing our experience with education in this area. It's taking up a big chunk of our lives right now and my partner and I have had to learn alot more and put in a ton more work than the average parent to get our child achieving basic levels of reading and maths.

Fourth, I do not want the education system to eliminate all the words my kid has trouble with either, and I did not say that.

Fifth, inferring my child is the low point in a lowest common denominator is absolutely awful and you should be ashamed. This is where my comment about inclusiveness came from.

Modern education is so much better about scaling things to fit a wide range of capabilities without excluding the corner case kids than it was when I was growing up.

Sixth, again I never said I wanted any words pulled from the curriculum.

If I understand the news story correctly, the book is still in the curriculum, they just arent using it as an early reader, so it wont be issued to be read at home in the first year or two as home work. It will be after that point, this seems alright to me.

I like Te Reo diction and pronunciation being taught at primary school level. I didn't get exposed to it until about fifth form in college.

I didn't ask for that anywhere. I just wanted to post our experience that illustrates that there were other possibilities for them changing the curriculum than than that the minister is a raging racist ( even if they are ).