RODNEY HIDE interviews ELIZABETH RATA
- Administrator
- Apr 8, 2023
- 1 min read
This is a must-listen for parents and grandparents of school-age children. Rata says we must abandon the term 'learners' and revert to 'teachers' and explains her reasoning. Children are also spending too much time on 'projects' and self-directed inquiry before they have the tools to understand what they read. She strongly encourages parents to visit schools and find out what their children are learning in order to bring about change.
They also discuss 'tribalism' and the 'Kura Kaupapa' movement seen through Rata's intimate lens.
Listen here
I have worked in the education sector for 50 years. Was a secondary teacher, principal, worked for ERO briefly and for the MOE. After retirement in 2015, I returned to the classroom and have taught maths for the last 8 years. I am retired again now and preface my comments to illustrate that I am fully aware of the realities of education and teaching in classrooms of the 1970 - 2000 era and now since 2015. It is very different today, and urgently in need of change.
This is a superb interview. It allowed Professor Elizabeth Rata all the time she needed to make the most coherent, pertinent, insightful and relevant comments I have ever heard regarding NZ education, it…
Surely children should be given a solid understanding and grounding of reading writing/typing and arithmetic, alongside computer skills. This should be followed by a good overview at 12 years of age, of physics, chemistry, biology, media, history and geography prior, to any form of streaming at 14 years of age, once they have identified their natural talents. Then with in depth help from a vocational guidance specialialist, choose their own subjects and chart the course of their life, fully aware of what and why they have made those choices.
There must be a universal language, that world wide is happening and it just happens to be English. Meanwhile the retarded in NZ seem hell bent on diving off to some other place thousands of years out of date and distant from most to NZ and all the world.
Many ex-islanders realised the fatal and fundamental failings of this tribe lingo and even wrote to Parliament to ban it from being taught in NZ in the latter half of the 1800's and into the 1900's.
These crazy decisions are a big part of the filings of ex-islanders in the education, job prospects etc. How does one make the best of ones life with such a huge handicap from the start?
Simple order of things...
- The iron age around 1300 years ago
- The bronze age around 4,000 years ago
- The Wheel was invented around 6,000+ years ago
- The bow and arrow perhaps some 70,000 years ago
- The stone age started about 3.3 million years ago...
That takes you back to what the tribal villages had achieved, hence a reflection of the language development also. Arguably, the ex-islanders dropped off by the Chinese (seven ship) in NZ around 1421AD had not attained even the start of the Stone age. All the retarded, backward, pre-historic features are all that there is to contribute to anything. Historically, perhaps interesting to some, it is up to those who wish to…