much like Maori

But is there stuff like this…

For sure. (Although bear in mind that a percentage of people leaving high school would have trouble reading a newspaper, and a majority cannot calculate a weekly wage based on an annual salary).

If that. Furthermore, the one person I know of with whom I went to school who's been published in the sciences, in an international field, was the…

People finishing high school should know the basics of academic writing, the fundamental principles common to all branches of academia, so that they are prepared to begin their studies. Whether they…

That seems to be common across East Asia, or at least variations on that argument. One version common in China is "Why teach the local dialect? The kids need good Putonghua and English." That extends to the teaching of minority languages, and…

Do any chemists reckon you could cleave off the extra benzene rings from Pukateine and get 1-3-benzodioxole?

There's a fallacy in education policy that, because most policy-makers have postgraduate qualifications, everything should be geared to the needs of the tiny minority that will go…

I have no problem with working to save/update Maori. But I have a problem with doing it at the expense of science. There really is no need to teach science in Maori, you can…

Please. I tried to find recent stuff but got bogged down by companies selling language training.

That's a very dated paper, Bart. My wife has studied child language acquisition, and more recent research shows a significantly increased language learning ability which disappears by age 11 (I would offer…

My school, in the 80s, introduced a programme called Taha Maori. The bits of it I can remember include a few songs – Ma is White, Karangatia Ra, E…

For other languages, you might like Duolingo, though Chinese or Japanese for English…

Or they take a lot of essay-heavy arts courses; I can't speak about other subjects, but taking history…

We want critical problem solvers, who will choose the right tools to attack said problems. Those may or may not be coding tools.

My point on current state of 'learn to code' is summed up thusly:

https://twitter.com/DesignUXUI/status/490179377099845632/photo/1

Schools represent our communities and the wider society that we call NZ. We are fortunate that communities still have so much ability to choose and shape how their schools function. The fact that in some cases, the responses and…

Capitals, please. Ethnic groups have them.

awesome story (9m clip):
http://www.maoritelevision.com/news/national/native-affairs-tona-whakakai-marihi

And you are a great thinker, sir. Sorry didn't get…

yes

Basically, young children are able to “acquire” a language – i.e., to pick up the patterns of…

This was 1973, the height of the "punch a pom a day" campaign. I very quickly lost much of my pommie accent, and my acquired NZ accent was heavily influenced by Te Reo....spoken…

That's a whole different meaning of "language" though. I agree it's important and sadly missing…

My experience was pretty much the same as Lucy Stewart's, through to Form 2 (mandatory Maori & Japanese at intermediate level, don't remember any Japanese). I decided to do German, and later Spanish, at high…

True — but making an effort to start the day with "good morning", end it with "good night" and filling…

Hey, cool. That's one of my daughter's favourites, and she's picking up a few Spanish words and phrases from Dora and Go, Diego, Go! I don't think I have the bandwidth to watch it out here, but when we get back down to Beijing I'll see how she…

Absolutely. Ooh, the excuses I've heard... Then one of my classmates at Otago was 69 or 70 when we graduated, she did a double major…

Gwarn say it like it is meant to be said. If you can do this in public you will have conquered the mouthfeelfail and brainpredjublunderism.

Experience suggests a hell of a lot of people are in the same boat. Generalisation alert: The Chinese school system teaches the kind of hyper-emotional writing…

Yup. It's one thing to do science, it's another thing to communicate it, to other scientists and to the general public.

It's fine at early stages but the sciences are almost their own language and as you progress learning the exact meaning of a word in the field…

I had the same problem in Norway, and telling people in Norwegian that I didn't understand and asking them to speak English did not help,…

That's a bit unnecessary, Craig. The world is full of languages and you're never going to learn any more than a handful of them, no matter how hard you try. We've always had lingua francas, and always will, for precisely that reason. It's…

I have to give some credit to the NZ Herald for its coverage of Maori Language Week, including running Maori translations of some articles during the Week. Meanwhile in the Dominion Post – only a few…

Whoa there ! That sounds like Boomer talk to me !

Let's not get too carried away with the Jock Phillips version of post-war social history. You know, the one in which anyone unlucky enough to be born before the saintly Boomers arrived is cast…

What I am eternally grateful is being part of an organisation, Ngati Tumataenga (The NZ Army), that embraces…

Everyone remembers the cuss…

So Chinese and German children shouldn't learn science until their English skills are up to understanding books and lessons in Natures Own Language?

Besides, education is holistic. Learning science (or any subject) isn't just about enabling those…

http://youtu.be/GQ2-1hbfRSc

I hope the next generations of kiwis didn't get to an age when they regret not being…

The problem for adults is that usually they attempt to learn the second language at the same time as doing many other things and hence apply themselves less intensely to the task.…

The primary school I attended, despite being called a Maori school, had no teaching of te reo at all. The Maori children were discouraged from learning or speaking their own language. Unfortunately.

In the mid-eighties, she was teaching in a small rural school on the…

Pffft In Palmerston North the wind kept it cold any time of year.