Posts by Gordon Dryden
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Russell: Thanks for including the link to the full report of the "Inter-Party Working Group for School Choice".
While a regular reader of your blog, I last week joined for the first time in your discussion-segment on "national standards" on education.
Could I, too — like a few others — make a plea for all contributors not to make blanket judgments based on others' party affiliations (for the record I have not been a party member for more than 25 years), but (as Russell has suggested) on looking for good ideas that might add to a better future—wherever those ideas may come from.
In education, for example, I suggest that needed improvements have been held back for decades because of dogmatic, fixed points of view:
1. Phonics versus "whole language" (Auckland university leaders divided for years) when any common-sense view sees clearly that each are part of totality fluency in English).
2. "Bulk funding" (a terrible title) of individual schools versus centralised government funding (I've even forgotten the original term). New Zealand has brilliant public schools which have opted for either method.
3. The "Tomorrow's Schools" model (abolish the Dept of Ed and all education boards, and replace with 2700 individual school boards of trustees) versus the old centralised model. I suggest the "Tomorrow's Schools" program unleashed (in both private and public schools) an incredible burst of new, effective ideas and programs from our most innovative principals, teaches and students (many of whose boards opted for "bulk-funding"; only they called it "democracy": ie, the boards—elected by parents, teachers and, in the case of high schools, students—decided on both their "charter for excellence" and the allocation of funds to achieve their jointly-conceived local program). As the "Tomorrow's Schools" decentralisation program coincided with advent of the Internet, Web, instant digital communication and interactive technology, we then missed out, initially, on a national ICT program (to link all schools together on an interactive sharing network). But within seven years common sense prevailed and, after a two-day think tank of our brightest leaders in ICT (information communications and technology) our brilliant ICT Cluster program emerged. In it, our most innovative schools (n this field) have taken responsibility for retraining up to ten others. Now more than 80 percent of schools have been through that retraining. And New Zealand (especially in primary school lICT) leads the world in this. In other words, by putting together the best from different initiatives we ended up with something great. (By the way: the catch cry against "bulk funding" was: it would encourage schools to employ only less experience teachers to cut down on salaries. I personally found the opposite: not that such public schools paid much higher salaries, but they spent a lot more of their funds on teacher retraining — what the "industry" prefers to call "professional development".
4. And so on to the "school choice" issue — and the associated debate about "gifted and talented" students, "vouchers by another name" and the associated issues involving "national standards".
Now I know that spending the last twenty years investigating and sharing "best practice" ideas (and seeing them working in practice) doesn't necessarily make my conclusions any more valuable than anyone else.
But let me share a few of those conclusions:
1. The United States has the best research universities in the world — and the "total eco-system" between each of those, associated research institutes, highly innovative students and professors an venture capital-funders has made a major contribution towards innovation. (Stanford, Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, Silicon Valley's VC industry and great professor-student relationships, is only one example. Significantly, silicon Valley's gdp per person is by far the highest in America: US $80,000). So perhaps we should investigate carefully why eight of the top ten research universities in the world (by peer judgment) are in the US (the other two, Oxford and Cambridge) are of course in the UK and what makes them so great. (High government research spending is a major factor. So is funding from the not-for-profit foundations set up by US billionaires. Again this dichotomy that links together seemingly opposite state-control versus "the danger of big business" arguments.)
2. On the other hand, I have found many (I personally think most) of the public elementary schools in the US are way below the best in the rest n the world, including here. There are many reasons for this. Those include both the way the US state and district education systems are structured, the narrow vested-interest approach of the school unions (and others in schooling: the US public school system has more non-teachers than teachers, each with their own tenured interests), and the entire country being mesmerised by their version of "standardised testing", "national standards" and thus "teaching to the narrow multiple choice tests" as the core of many of their school systems.
3. Now let's cross to the country that, in many respects, can most be compared to New Zealand, except for climate and geography: Finland. Population: a little over 5 million, compared with our 4.2 million. Slightly bigger than New Zealand. For the best part of a century, from the mid-1870s, its main source of wealth was forestry (still two-thirds of Finland is in forest), as New Zealand developed grasslands farming - and later did very well off it (thanks to world-leading research, the development of our agricultural universities of Massey and Lincoln, our Research Institutes, like Ruakura and surrounding Massey; and industries that were either cooperatively owned, privately owned or owned by public companies. Now shoot back to Finland briefly: on world rankings (for 15-year-olds, designed to test the application of real-world knowledge), their public school students come out number 1 in reading, math and sciences. We're close in behind. But in Finland, one company (Nokia) has, in the past 20 years, changed from being known as a producer of toilet paper and gumboots (and stultified by its domination by neighbouring USSR) to the world's biggest mobile phone producer (40 percent of the fastest-growing world market in history). Its annual turnover in New Zealand dollars (nearly all in exports): $81 billion — compared New Zealand's $40 billion in exports.
Now, in the continuing debates on "educational standards" "educational systems, wouldn't it be a great idea for New Zealand to study BOTH the reasons for Finland's (and Nokia's) dramatic success and Silicon Valley's (including, in both cases, the different educational contributions)?
To take just one issue raised by the "Inner-Party Working Group for School Choice" (I'v e read it, of course, re-read it several times): the issue of "vouchers" and "gifted and talented" students.
Firstly, my own research (and visits to many countries, schools and industries) convinced me that (unless born with a damaged brain) nearly everyone has a potential "talent" to be a high "talented" in something.
For the record, I think New Zealand relatively large country (as big as japan and similarly elongated), with its small population in often geographically isolated small villages (East Coast and Northland among the examples) make the ideas of switching schools generally difficult.
I also know (and not just believe), from what the best New Zealand primary schools are doing everyday, that the new interactive technologies form one major catalyst to reinvent schooling more than anything since the European development of the printed book 550 years ago. (And it took 200 years before that printing breakthrough eventually led to the invention of the "modern schoolroom", with textbooks, slate, blackboard, chalk and a teacher lecturing students sitting at desks in rows. Why the 200-year delay? Because the "tenured cartel" controlling education — ie the Roman Catholic Church—resisted.)
New Zealand (because of its ICT cluster success) is ideally placed (in my view) to use its existing best results as the catalyst to reinvent education — and I would like that concept to be openly part of the "new debate" that is needed here: including the debate about what standards should we aim for, and how to achieve them.
In case you think this a diversion (apologies to your TLNT — Too Long - No Time readers; but some issues, as in Russell's great blogs, do take time to tease out), let me explain briefly. Many of New Zealand's great drivers in the "Tomorrow's School" innovation, chose to opt for organising their primary schools around four "school-wide" inquiry topics to investigate each. In many ways that is similar to the International Baccalaureate Primary Years curriculum, except that students at each grade level tackle six global themes a year: so that their "basics"are in fact the basics of the world and the universe: "Great inventions", "Planets of the Universe", "The Human Body", "The Human brain" "Water and oceans" etc. And the IB PY Program is ideal (as in New Zealand) for students, working in ICT teams, to use BOTH the new ICT skills AND their own individual talents to use 21st-century tools to explore all those "basics", to record them, analyse them, synthesise them into new possibilities, check those (it's called science: the scientific methods, in case we have forgotten), and come up with new ways to change their world for the better.
In this way (as I have learned from every year I have worked in television, as an example) each of us with different talents (whether gifts or not can be debated) thus learns to work in multi-talented teams. And, in those teams, it's amazing what we learn by working with people who have other talents. So we both grow.
(The teams at Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films and Richard Taylor's Weta Workshop do that every day.*)Having said that, the best thing about the US educational system (apart from its research universities) is, I suggest, its "college sporting scholarship" programs. (I hesitate to call them "talent vouchers"). Under those programs, students who are highly talented in different sports (golf, tennis, basketball, football, track and field) win scholarships to some of the best universities. And there, as well as working with individual sports coaches, they learn the other needed skills of motivation, goal-setting, time-management, public relations and everything else needed to succeed.
The only pity: those "scholarships" don't always extend to all other "talents", such as music, drama and art.
So why not consider "the concept" rather than the particular label?
And debate all those concepts in an open-minded test not but of alternative possibilities; but about how we might synthesise the best into even better answers to the great challenges the world now faces.
Otherwise, I have the feeling that New Zealand's current talkback-"celebrity-obsessed" culture will continue to be a debate between narrow alternatives (GST versus income tax cuts when the economic debate is, or should be, on much bigger total economic alternatives: like how did one Nordic toilet paper company in an education-based, egalitarian country come from nowhere 20 years ago and show us how to lead the world in a dominant new industry.)
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* Now what would happen here if we studied how to apply the best of Silicon Valley, Nokia/Finland, Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and New Zealand's ICT school clusters to the "synthesis" New Zealand needs? No? Well, I am entitled to dream, am I not?
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Russell: The Sunday Star-Times is advertising for an Editor. Now there's a suggestion for you.
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Thanks, Jackie, Chris, Haydn, Henry and Sacha
MY FAVOURITE STANDARDS STORY
In China to qualify for university, students have to sit an entrance exam and achieve at least a 70 percent pass mark in all core subjects.
A few years, Chinese student Jack Ma was brilliant in speaking English. He achieved that partly by buying a $2 transistor radio and listening to English-language broadcasts. And partly by studying "Crazy English", a method devised by another Chinese student, Li Yang, to become near tops in his college-entrance English exam. (You can check out Crazy English through Google and Wikipedia. It's a cross between group karaoke, a Billy Graham revivalist meeting and an Anthony Robbbins motivational course. But it actually works, especially in Asian societies where many students prefer to act together in unison. )
So no problem with Jack's English exams: way above standard.
But in mathematics? Appalling. First-year exam results: 1 percent.
So Jack Ma spent the next year guiding English-language tourists around his home city, for small-change income, while swatting up on his maths. Next maths exam: 19 percent.
Same pattern the third year, with two big exceptions:
1. A visiting Australian family appreciated his English-language guiding so much they invited him to spend a free summer holiday with them at home. The cultural differences inspired him to specialise in global activities, using his English skills as a base.
2. Back in China, he studied all the exam-math questions from recent years and spent hours each day memorising the main answers. Result: at last he achieved the "national standard" and passed his college entrance exams with a maths mark of 79 percent. (Studying first-year book-keeping at "night school" in Dunedin many years ago, I did something similar, passed easily — and a year later couldn't remember which was the credit and which the debit side of a financial report.)
Jack then soared through college (in his favourite subjects) , majoring in English, earned a job teaching the subject at a Chinese university for seceral, and then (as China was now opening up to the outside world) set up a Chinese-English translation and interpreting service.
In the mid 1990s he accompanied a Chinese trade mission to North America, and for the first time discovered the Internet. (He had hardly seen a personal computer before that, let alone the Web).
Asking how it worked, he was told to type any word into "an internet search engine". He typed in "beer". (This IS a true story.) And up came a definition of beer, its history and several leading brands. But none from China.
Why not? "Try typing in 'China beer'," said his guide. But when he did that the answer came up: "No data." And the same came up for many inquiries about Chinese products.
Like New Zealand schools, China had no "national standards" for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Jack would have passed them easily.
So back in China, after much trial and error, he set up the alibaba.com e-commerce site to sell, in English, the produced of 32 million small manufacturers to the Western world. It is now by far the world's biggest e-commerce site. And, for a guy who failed to achieve "national standards" in maths and thus accounting, he invented several ways to check and guarantee the credit-worthiness of buyers and sellers.
Then, about the same time that Sam Morgan was setting up Trade Me in New Zealand (and later selling it for $750 million), Jack Ma set up Taobao.com—to rival, in China, the soaring success of eBay. Taobao is now by far the biggest customer-to-customer e-commerce auction and trading site in China; as Alibaba is thre world's biggest business-to-business global exchange site.
So then Jack Ma looked at other Internet sales models: Amazon, Dell, Yahoo and then Google. Only one problem: China in the late 1990s was way behind "developed countries in the use credit cards. So Jack Ma invented his own Chinese alternative: AliPay.
In 2007, Jack Ma and his team combined Alibaba, Taobao and PayPal into the Alibaba Group, and floated the holding company on the Hongkong Stock Exchange.
His numbers apparently added up.
17 percent of the company was sold that day to public shareholders, and raised US $1.5 billion at the issued price of US1.74 a share. It was the second-biggest stock-market "float" in history—second only to Google's $1.6 billion.
By the end of the day, Alibaba shares were trading at over $US5.
And that valued the Alibaba Group at US $26 billion.
Jack Mad had surpassed all "international standards", by turning his talent and passion into a global success.
And he was now one of China's richest leaders.
"ALIBAB A: The inside story behind Jack Ma and the creation of the world's biggest online market place", by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery, Collins Business, 2009
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Whoops! Forgot to give the web address of Thomas Jefferso Institute in Mexico (Instituto Thomas Jefferson):
www.itj.edu.mx
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The ASCD (Association of Supervision Curriculum and Development) in the US provides a daily online summary of educational innovations as reported around the world:
ASCD Worldwide Edition SmartBrief <ascdww@smartbrief.com>Today's edition has an interesting online story and videoclips on how children in some developing countries are now learning English through both mobile phones (Bangladesh) and low-cost laptops (Brazil and Uruguay):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8508040.stm
And for those interested in learning to be fluent in two languages BEFORE starting primary school, I've been fortunate to have a four-year association with the Thomas Jefferson Institute in Mexico. Their early childhood development program is one of the best I have found anywhere. Each of their three schools, in different cities, but linked by closed-circuit videotape, has a team of excellent educational psychologists (very practical, not BS). They work in with parents, teachers and students to provide personalised learning programs to build on obvious strengths and overcome any weaknesses — from early childhood on. All 3,600 students (from aged three to senior high school) speak English and Spanish fluently. And in each classroom, half the discussion/teaching each day is in English and half in Spanish. But, to make sure that all school-age students are fluent in both, four-and five-year-olds in the early child-development centres (note: NOT "daycare" centres) are "totally immersed in English" during school hours.
Their new website (www.itj.edu.mx) is unfortunately mostly in Mexican (English coming), but well worth watching for those interested in designing interactive educational sites. If you open their "Vision 2015 'wheel'" on the left hand side of their home page by clicking on "modelo educativo" (educational model) in the bottom panel, you'll open an interesting interactive graphic illustrating their "2015 vision for holistic educational goals" for all their students.
Their senior school each year produces a Broadway musical to professional standards. And about three years ago they chose to do "Wicked" before it had been translated into Spanish. So their students translated it. That not only included the obvious simple prose translations, but then making sure that all relevant sentence endings rhymed in Spanish.
Not bad "English standards", huh?
I've tossed this information in because, in most educational debates around the world (including New Zealand) arguments seem to revolve around "either-or" (either "Phonics" is the only way to learn English, or "whole language"; either pre-school learning is most important or school is); while "and" often provides a much better alternative ("phonics and whole language together" as great English-learning "tools", as Dr Seuss's rhymes have proven for years).
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OK, gang. You've hooked me in again, away from the initial interest in "national standards":
1. Shakespeare's vocabulary: who knows.? Bill Bryson, one of my great role models for simplicity in writing, in his wonderful book "The Mother Tongue and how it got that way", quotes many sources to show how they claim Shakespeare's written vocabulary ranged from 17, 677 words to 30,000. But, as Sacha says (or implies): the guy's genius was in how many words and phrases he actually invented.
I wonder how many of those made-up words would pass the new standards literacy test? (In my abortive one year at Christchurch West High, in one "science" test: I was asked to define "tissue". In the bodily sense, I couldn't remember, so defined "a tissue of lies". I don't think I passed.
2. No replies to far to my belief that our literacy rate does not depend on tests AFTER you get to school, but what happens BEFORE kids get to school - so we are defining the wrong problem, and therefore the wrong solution.
3. Am I correct in presuming that many of you, at least in the "standards debate", are locked into views that you'd find hard to change? Such as vouchers and "bulk funding" (which I seem cropping back up into the debate)? If you agree that each of us has a different learning style and (hopefully) has a talent to be great at something, why not favour granting vouchers to allow you to c your dream and apply your talents ) whether they be in sport, music, journalism art or whatever? And (for the life of me) I have never been able to justify opposition too "bulk funding: (a horrible new Zealand phrase) which really can mean (in my view) the democratic right of communities to run their own education system .
4. And for those of you in favour of short-word writing, here's my favourite:
From The Economist, October 9, 2004
English
OUT WITH THE LONG"Short words are best," said Winston Churchill, "and old words when short are the best of all."
And not for the first time, he was right: short words are best.
Plain they might be, but that is their strength.
They are clear, sharp and to the point.
You can get your tongue around them. You can spell them.
Eye, brain and mouth work as one to meet them as friends, not foes. For that is what they are. They do all that you want of them, and they do it well.
On a good day, when all is right with the world, they are one more cause for cheer. On a bad day, when the head aches, you can get to grips with them, grasp their drift and take hold of what they mean. And thus they make you want to read on, not turn the page.
And, yes, you may say, that all sounds fine. But from time to time good prose needs a change of pace — a burst of speed, a touch of the brake, a slow sweep, a spring, a bound, a stop. Some might say a shaft of light and then a dim glow, some warp as well as weft, both fire and ice, a roll on the drum as much as a toot on the flute.
Call it what you will. The point is that to get a range of step, stride and gait means you have to use some long words, some short and some, well, just run of the mill, those whose place is in the mid range.
What's more, though you may find you can write with just short words for a while, in the end don't you have to give in and reach for one of those terms which, like it or not, is made up of bits, more bits and yet more bits, and that adds up to a word which is long?
Then there is the ban on new words, or at least a puff for the old. Why? Time has moved on. The tongues of yore need help if they are to serve the way we live now.
And, come to that, are you sure that the Greeks and Gauls and scribes of Rome were as great as they are cracked up to be? Singe my white head, they could make long words as well as any Hun or Yank or French homme de lettres who plies his trade these days.
Well, yes, some of those old folks' words were on the long side, but long ones were no means the rule. And though the tongue in which you read this stole words from here and there, and still does, at the start, if there was one, its words were short.
Huh, you may say, those first "words" were no more than grunts. Yet soon they grew to be grunts with a gist, and time has shown that, add to the length of your words as you may, it is hard to beat a good grunt with a good gist.
That is why short words, when old, are still the tops. Tough as boots or soft as silk, sharp as steel or blunt as toast, these are old, short words to fit each need.
You want to make love, have a chat, ask the way, thank your stars, curse your luck or swear, sold and rail? Just pluck an old, short word at will. If you doubt that, look at what can be done with not much: "To be or not to be?" "And God said, Let their be light, and there was light," "We are such stuff as dreams are made on," "The year's at the spring/And day's at the norm . . ./ The lark's on the wing;/ The snail's on the thorn."
It can be done, you see, if you but try, and you can write well, and say what you want to say, with short words.
And you may not need a lot of them: some words add just length to your prose. That piece of string, the one whose length you all the time have to guess, is no less fine if it is short than if it is long; on its own, its length is not good, not bad, just the sum of its two halves.
So it is with words. The worth of each lies in the ends to which it is put. Tie your string well, or ill, and its lengths count for naught.
Make your point well with short words, and you will have no use for long ones. Make it not so well and you will be glad that you kept them crisp.
And so, by God, will those who have to read you.
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The first injunction of the first page of the Economist style book is to follow the six rules set out in George Orwell's Politics and The English Language:
• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
4. Now, for short-word lovers here's my favourite editorial from The Economist, on the benefit of writing in simple English. See how many English words you can find in it over one syllable:From The Economist, October 9, 2004
English
OUT WITH THE LONG"Short words are best," said Winston Churchill, "and old words when short are the best of all."
And not for the first time, he was right: short words are best.
Plain they might be, but that is their strength.
They are clear, sharp and to the point.
You can get your tongue around them. You can spell them.
Eye, brain and mouth work as one to meet them as friends, not foes. For that is what they are. They do all that you want of them, and they do it well.
On a good day, when all is right with the world, they are one more cause for cheer. On a bad day, when the head aches, you can get to grips with them, grasp their drift and take hold of what they mean. And thus they make you want to read on, not turn the page.
And, yes, you may say, that all sounds fine. But from time to time good prose needs a change of pace — a burst of speed, a touch of the brake, a slow sweep, a spring, a bound, a stop. Some might say a shaft of light and then a dim glow, some warp as well as weft, both fire and ice, a roll on the drum as much as a toot on the flute.
Call it what you will. The point is that to get a range of step, stride and gait means you have to use some long words, some short and some, well, just run of the mill, those whose place is in the mid range.
What's more, though you may find you can write with just short words for a while, in the end don't you have to give in and reach for one of those terms which, like it or not, is made up of bits, more bits and yet more bits, and that adds up to a word which is long?
Then there is the ban on new words, or at least a puff for the old. Why? Time has moved on. The tongues of yore need help if they are to serve the way we live now.
And, come to that, are you sure that the Greeks and Gauls and scribes of Rome were as great as they are cracked up to be? Singe my white head, they could make long words as well as any Hun or Yank or French homme de lettres who plies his trade these days.
Well, yes, some of those old folks' words were on the long side, but long ones were no means the rule. And though the tongue in which you read this stole words from here and there, and still does, at the start, if there was one, its words were short.
Huh, you may say, those first "words" were no more than grunts. Yet soon they grew to be grunts with a gist, and time has shown that, add to the length of your words as you may, it is hard to beat a good grunt with a good gist.
That is why short words, when old, are still the tops. Tough as boots or soft as silk, sharp as steel or blunt as toast, these are old, short words to fit each need.
You want to make love, have a chat, ask the way, thank your stars, curse your luck or swear, sold and rail? Just pluck an old, short word at will. If you doubt that, look at what can be done with not much: "To be or not to be?" "And God said, Let their be light, and there was light," "We are such stuff as dreams are made on," "The year's at the spring/And day's at the norm . . ./ The lark's on the wing;/ The snail's on the thorn."
It can be done, you see, if you but try, and you can write well, and say what you want to say, with short words.
And you may not need a lot of them: some words add just length to your prose. That piece of string, the one whose length you all the time have to guess, is no less fine if it is short than if it is long; on its own, its length is not good, not bad, just the sum of its two halves.
So it is with words. The worth of each lies in the ends to which it is put. Tie your string well, or ill, and its lengths count for naught.
Make your point well with short words, and you will have no use for long ones. Make it not so well and you will be glad that you kept them crisp.
And so, by God, will those who have to read you.
_____________
The first injunction of the first page of the Economist style book is to follow the six rules set out in George Orwell's Politics and The English Language:
• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
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Recordi's comment: Islander, I really don't want to be part of any earnest hustling, but there is some truth to Gordon's 2000 word statement. . . . His research back in 1990 [?] established a core lexicon of 2000 words that made up 87% of Academic texts, through analysis of corpus in the Universities. Of course the need is for more, and this is well understood and acknowledged, but to start a programme, where vocabulary is then added as a part of the tertiary curriculum, between 3000-4000 is deemed adequate. In my experience this was the case, as many of our students achieved degree status in a reasonable time frame.
Gordon adds: The European Community research indicates very similar. The fact that 2000 words make up 87 or 90% of most spoken English, Spanish, French, Italian or German should not be taken as 100%. The other 10% will vary, depending on the specific usage. (ie, tourists visiting England and finding their way around London and English customs, will use different words in the other 10% than, say, a primary school child studying New Zealand geography or the Treaty of Waitangi).
Also, in English, the extensive use of prefixes (un-, non-, dis- etc) and suffixes (-ing, -ed, -ment) greatly increases the 2000 most-used words.
And I am not advocating the mere rote learning of "word lists": the key is obviously to be immersed in the "embedding" of these and other relevant words into the language. (All Swedish children are fluent in English because 60% of all Swedish TV programs are English or American with Swedish sub-titles so the embedding is natural.)
Incidentally, I was surprised when I first learned that James A Michener's books use a total vocabulary of around 33,000 words, while Shakespeare's plays use around 16,000 words. Without research, I would have guessed the reverse.
Also, as one whose joined in your discussions for the first time, apologies if I've come through as an "earnest hustler". I happen to spend much of my time researching some of these issues (at some great international schools), and sharing them in consulting work; and, in answer to some specific questions yesterday, offered to send out some free book chapters in which examples of the answers are given in more detail. Obviously different answers are grouped in different chapters.
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Overnight I re-read the biography of Dr Seuss and the incredible way in which "Beginner Books" became, as a series, the world's biggest-selling collection of children's books.
In the process they played an incredible part in helping parents of pre-school youngsters not only develop a love of reading but to actually teach young children to love the joy of reading.
When Seuss's publisher challenged him to write a book with only 50 words, Geisel responded with "Green Eggs and Ham". It went on to become the biggest-selling early-childhood book of all time.
To me that raises a big question:
If "national literacy standards" in primary school is not the answer, what is the question?
The question, I suggest, is simple: what do we need to do to make sure that all New Zealand children can learn to read, and love reading, BEFORE starting school?
And the answer lies in the works of Seuss, Montessori and those parent pioneers who, during the second world war, set up New Zealand's parent-run Play Centre Movement.
With that, I'll bow out of the current "school-standards" online debate,, and start concentrating on the real answer.
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"2000 words make up most of spoken English" - WHERE?
When them European Economic Community was formed, it surveyed the most-common words in all its main languages. That is where the 2000-most-common-spoken words statistics emerged.
That's why the most-used European second-language programmes (including English) are based around embedding those 2000 words into their most-useful phrases and expressions.
I'm sure you can find out the other sources on Google. I'd hate to be accused trying to sell a book where I'v e quoted them. Now settle back and have a fun alcohol-free night:-)
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Cecilia asks:
if the Montessori method is so good, why isn't everyone using it?
Simple answer: Most early-childhood development programs include elements of Montessori, in New Zealand elements of "PlayCentre" and many more, including some of the NZ methods of Sylvia Ash to-Warner and Beeby.
Sweden's great early childhood development has a core of all.
England has a few excellent "Montessori Farm Schools".
Montessori methods are "out of patent" and out of copyright. And there are also several "Montessori methods" around the world.
With all her excellent innovations (in the early 1900s) Montessori herself held some strong Roman Catholic religious views (typical of her native Italy) which some others find restrictive and dogmatic.
I personally have find her greatest insight to be: "Create a great multi-sensory environment for learning, and children themselves will become confident, competent self-directed learners" (my interpretation). ie: They won't need teachers.
It's also called common sense.
I am sure that the Italian Government has printed her face on money because she is regarded as a great Italian innovator.
Now I am sure it is time to move on to a different subject, and me to step back out of sight:-)