this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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Nobody is claiming everybody learns the same way. What we are saying is that our educational system should be structured to help the vast majority of the students and not crippled in a way to help the extremely small minority.
Like it or not your child will be exposed to Maori words and names. Hell if your town name isn't a Maori word there are streets and neighbourhoods that are.
This racist government and this racist MP want to erase Maori identity and want to shelter children from Maori words because they see Maoridom as a form of evil to be avoided or destroyed.
My kid does Kapa Haka. He performed at Hutt Fest a couple of months ago. He learns the words by copying the folks around him rather than reading them.
His Te Reo vocabulary isn't terrible, he just can't read it well.
Cool. Once again I am opposed to shaping our educational system to the lowest common denominator of students.
Mate come on, it's out of line to call somebody's child the "lowest common denominator".
She said her child has a learning disability. should we really take away textbooks and readers from all students which her child is unable to understand?
Do you think that's a smart thing to do? Do you think that's a moral thing to do?
I didn't suggest we should take away textbooks. I didn't suggest I think it's a smart thing to do. I didn't suggest I think it's a moral thing to do.
I think it's rude to call somebody's child the "lowest common denominator" after being told that they have learning disabilities. That's what I said to you.
Sorry if the truth is triggering. There are children who suffer from all kinds of disabilities. Some suffer from dyslexia, some have vision problems, some have hearing problems, some suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, some have ADD etc. We should never ever strip words from books or slow down the education of every other child in order to accomodate these students. They can be offered other programs to help them catch up.
And yes like it or not those students are the lowest common denominator. That's just reality. Reality shouldn't be rude to state.
Holy crap, I'm glad the awesome folks that lead his Kapa Haka group are more inclusive than you are.
I mean, your son needs special help; the most obvious response would be to give him that help, not shape the education system around him.
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 ).
What did I say which indicated to you that I objected to your child participating in the Kapa Haka or that I am against inclusion?
It seems like you also need to be educated since you seem to lash out like a child and attack people for things they never said. It's not fitting for an adult to throw a tantrum like this.
I do not want the education system to eliminate all words your child has problems with from books and other educational materials. Our educational system should not be aimed at the lowest common denominator student.
If anything I think you are kind of sick for insisting that no student be exposed to words which your child can't deal with.
Wow, do you have to be so aggressive with your communication?
Because the OP accused me of being a piece of shit human being who is opposed to inclusion and diversity.
How should I have reacted to such an insult?
What they said was they were glad the people involved on the kapa haka group were more inclusive than you.
You then flew off the handle at the minor slight. They then joined you afterwards.
You were doing great with the argument that the curriculum shouldn't be shaped by outliers. Simple, factual and not attacking the person - just debating the point constructively.
This appears to be a reading and comprehension issue (possibly complex dyslexia if there's an autism diagnosis that early on in the kids life?), you perhaps could have stuck with that? I dunno, you do your thing. I'm just pointing out how needlessly rude you were.
No they made a specific insult and said I was against inclusion of children with disabilities in kapa haka groups.
I feel no need to be polite to people who hurl unwarranted insults at me and accuse me of being a bigot.
No that all happened after you questioned their education and called them sick.
Edit: read from here https://sh.itjust.works/comment/20376613
I called her sick because she wants to deny students books with maori words in them because her child has a learning disability.
I never said kids with disabilities of any kind should be excluded from any kapa haka group or anything else, she made that accusation out of the blue.
And look in your defence, they DID have a clumsily worded anecdote that was only tangentially related (and it took AGES to reveal the additional challenge these books created for their kid, was what they were getting at - I understand that).
I guess what I'm getting at is: attack their point - not the personality.
Needless to say, I'm over it...
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.
Which is a weird thing to say because I never said anybody should be excluded from anything. It was you that wants to exclude maori words from school books.
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:
This is pretty well the definition of not being inclusive.
You are asking for exclusion. Yon can't aim for the lowest denominator and ALSO to everyone else. This si what people are entry to explain. You are asking not for inclusion, but for privilege to by switched to YOUR CHILD instead of the others.
Yes they should be included, not by removing others.
I'm pretty sure here problem isn't your kid by now though.
Cheers.
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.
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.
You should look up the meaning of that word.
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:
I support both of these things, but I'm not the one making the calls on that.
Yea so has prevented those students from being exposed to maori words.
And again for no reason. Nobody was complaining about those words. Not the teachers, not the students, not the parents. The only reason she did this is because she is racist and she wants to throw a bone to the racists who vote for her party.
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. I am saying this is not just immoral and foolish but it's downright evil. We should not deny every student of educational materials that you child is unable to cope with.
I'm a parent, my child is a student.
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
Did you file a complaint with the school that they were exposing your developmentally disabled child to maori words?
you said your child was developmentally disabled.
Are they struggling with reading or struggling with only reading maori words?
That's the intent. The racist minister knows she isn't going to really be able to ban maori words from schools in her first go. She and her party has a long term vision to accomplish this goal and she is taking a small first step in the process.
I don't care about you or your child. I vehemently reject any effort to dumb down educational materials for every kid because your kids (or five of them if you are not lying) are struggling. Struggling kids should be put in special education classes so they can catch up. Under no circumstances should we slow down the learning of the 25 students to please you.
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.
You said you were against this action and then say you support it so like I said maybe you are the one that needs education.
Why should we ban these books from the classrooms? So far the only reason you gave was that your son who has a learning disability is unable to deal with them. You are in fact saying all books in classrooms should be aimed at children who have learning disabilities.
And again you lashed out at me and accused me of being a bigot who doesn't want inclusion and diversity in schools for no reason.
Get your claims straight.
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.
Here is the problem with your justification for this act.
It was working fine before. Nobody was complaining. The teachers were fine with it, the students were fine with it.
The reason for the change is almost certainly racism and hatred of all things Maori which is in line with everything else this government is doing.
Seems to me you were trying to set them up so you could say got'em! with this comment, failed, and said it anyways.
The irony is you're asking to EXCLUDE an entire culture because things are not inclusive enough for you.
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.