NZ Education Minister schneidet Māori -Worte aus zukünftigen Junior -Büchern

Yeah we have a rightwing conservative government in charge. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.

This sucks

Being raised bilingual provides significant intellectual and cognitive benefits, not to mention gives cultural richness to society. It would be advantageous to make the Maori language, our indigenous language, the primary language we learn and communicate in, learning English comes by default as it’s the standard dominant language in the ‚Western‘ world. This is a disturbing political move to embolden racists and inadvertently just making us dumber as a nation.

I see absolutely 0 people have read the article here.

They’re only removing it from year 1 students. The words will still be introduced, just not until Year 2. The thinking is that by introducing Maori words while simultaneously teaching English phonetics (which is the purpose of the books, teaching English phonetics and sounding words out.) Will interfere with the learner’s learning ability. It was also noted that the Maori books used to teach year 1 students how to read and sound out Maori words does not contain any English words.

Here’s a quote from the article as well:

The minister wrote in response: „It’s only in Year 1 decodable books that teach English and it would align with the approach taken in te reo decodables. Te Reo would be introduced immediately after the use of decodable stops which is typically end of Year 1 early Year 2 where students move on to journals.“