[Tia Maria]

Which languages are commonly taught in NZ schools?

Obviously, French, (followed by German and Spanish), are the main ones in the UK, but I wandered whether, being a bit further away from everything, the Kiwis were into learning foreign languages as much.

Also at what ages do they commonly start teaching them? Do they mainly leave it till secondary level, as most do in the UK? I've always felt this was too late, as younger children really do have a natural ability to speak new languages.

Let me know if you have any info.

Cheers

[kiwidebs]

I studied French and German at High School in NZ. I think it's changed alot since 'my day' though. I know the High School I used to go to now does Japanese, Spanish, French and German.

Debs

[Tia Maria]

I guess the French and German are linked to the fact that there are so many immigrants from Europe. Japanese does seem a more logical choice considering its geographical location.

Anyone got kids in school in NZ at the moment? Is it just the High schools, or do primarary schools do languages also?

Cheers

[Voice]

Anyone got kids in school in NZ at the moment? Is it just the High schools, or do primarary schools do languages also? Cheers

I have two children in High Schools in Gisborne, as far as I am aware the only language taught in primary school is Te Reo Māori (and in kōhanga reo (Māori pre-school) of course) Otherwise languages are only taught in High schools, my daughter tells me they can do French, Japanese, Spanish and Te Reo. Both of our children had done French from the age of 4 years in the UK and although our son gave it up willingly(!) our daughter wants to carry on and so has been put into year 12 French despite being a year 9 student.

I've found the schools here to be very helpful and they also teach English as a foreign language to international (non-English speaking) students.

[Tia Maria]

Its a pity they don't teach at languages at primary, (or primarary as I previously posted), level. My son has also started learning Spanish at 4, and loves it, it comes just as easily to him as learning English. I think by the time you reach 11, it is so much harder, and in my case impossible!

Oh well he'll just have to learn to ski instead!

[foolsgold99]

I have two children in High Schools in Gisborne, as far as I am aware the only language taught in primary school is Te Reo Māori (and in kōhanga reo (Māori pre-school) of course) Otherwise languages are only taught in High school.

Is Maori compulsary in primary schools?? Seems pointless to waste kids time for a language that ain't going to deliver any ecomonic benefit to them or the country. We should face the realities of the new century and teach our kids to speak mandarin and catonese.

[Voice]

Is Maori compulsary in primary schools?? Seems pointless to waste kids time for a language that ain't going to deliver any ecomonic benefit to them or the country. We should face the realities of the new century and teach our kids to speak mandarin and catonese.

Not sure if it's compulsary. I think you'll find however that in some areas of NZ (and on the East Coast in particular) that Maori is spoken quite widely and delivers enormous benefits, cultural, social and economic, to disregard it would be shortsighted and (IMO) arrogant in the extreme.

[Singel]

........We should face the realities of the new century and teach our kids to speak mandarin and catonese.
I do agree with this :yes especially China is now the economic superpower. NZ is one of the first few countries to sign a free trade with China. In my present job, I have to liaise with our overseas customers in mandarin and cantonese because majority of our export businesses come from China.

NZ economy is much too small, it is this reality that we have to face and prepare the next generation for the global economic competitiveness/challenges. I understand a lot of young americans and europeans have flock to China to study the language and culture; seeing this as a head start of their careers.

[Voice]

I see what you are saying, but it assumes that everyone works in the business field, and they don't! I really can't see that Cantonese would be of much use in the fishing or forrestry industry for instance. It's horses for courses and there's room for both. Rural industry is also of vital importance to NZ.

[foolsgold99]

It's a hard subject, in Scotland where I grew up, there were people advocating the teaching of Gaelic (local language) in the schools, alongside English. It's still spoken in some areas of the west coast and the islands. I do see the point of it for cultural reasons, but with the world economy being so competitive now and in the future, I think langauges that deliver an economic benefit are more worthy of state funding.

The problem with this, and Maori I'd guess is that it's effectively a dead language, kept alive with state funding. In Scotland (& Ireland), everyone speaks English and some Gaelic. I'd guess in NZ, there is no one that only speaks Maori and not English.

I'd suggest these things should be left to the non state sector (private clubs /churchs / iwi etc.) where people who want them can get them

[Carol]

There are many schools in New Zealand with Maori Immersion Units attached to the where there is no English spoken at ALL in the buildings.

My own personal stance on this - as a mother and primary school teacher is:
There is a hell of a lot more to life than money and business.
If we only taught what was to be beneficial to the business sector I'd have a very sad class of 8 year olds.


As far as teaching other languages in primary schools is concerned - yes I agree - it is advantageous to teach children as young as possible.
But....


With an already very crowded curriculum, even more demands on teachers to learn a new language to deliver to primary kids is just out of the question as far as I'm concerned.
I'd be out of there like a shot, waving a warm goodbye to teaching.

That said - our school does offer a french and spanish programme - with the help of two parents who speak fluent in each of them - but only to gifted and talented kids.
It would be nice to offer it to others but the mums have more to do with their time than work free of charge full time.

Japanese is offered in most secondary schools along with Te Reo Maori and French.

[Voice]

I hear what you're saying Foolsgold, but there really are areas of NZ in which Maori is the predominant language taught and spoken, particularly up the rural East Cape of North Island (Ruatoria etc). Gisborne serves these communities and we have iwi based healthcare services in town. My husband is a GP here and often meets people who speak only Maori (admittedly the elder whānau members) But the language is not dead here, in fact it's alive and totally relevent to everyday life, Gisborne having over 50% Maori population.

One of the biggest industries NZ has is tourism, and the cultural history, language and differences are instrumental in maintaining that. I'd hate for NZ to turn into some sort of hideous Maori Disneyland in which the culture (and language) is affected and rolled out only for 'show.' It isn't, people out here live it every day and it's one of the reasons that we chose Gisborne to settle in.

I can see (and support to some extent) the arguments against state funding for Maori language teaching at the expense of other (equally relevent) languages though. In an ideal world there'd be funding for both, but I don't think we can write off a whole language and culture as unimportant either.

And now hubby and I are both off to our Te Reo evening class - Yes really!!

[GeorgeM]

Whilst I hear what people are saying about there being more to life than money and business etc, most of us do need to be able to get a job to earn some dosh to live. Having achieved this in a very basic form most of us then hope to do a bit better and to get a more comfortable lifestyle. It may be fashionable to slag this off, but the slagging is often done by people who would be, by most peoples' definition, comfortable.

By focusing in schools on what is in global terms an totally irrelevant language you are depriving kids of many more opportunities to earn that higher standard of living later on in life than you would be providing. Maori might be important in Gisborne or Kawerau or Whangarei, but it isn't important at all in 95%+ of the NZ economy. And even in the small pockets where a working knowledge of Maori is useful it is still far easier to get by with no or poor Maori than it is with no or poor English.

If the choice is between learning Maori rather than Cantonese / Japanese / Korean / Arabic then for pakeha kids in a pakeha area there is no question as to what would be the most useful. In Christchurch it would be far more useful for someone to be able to read an asian language than Maori - if only in terms of being able to read notices in many shops etc that are in asian languages or to be able to speak to foreign tourists who speak little English (or Maori) etc. And if the choice is Maori or no languages at all then kids would probably benefit more from additional time devoted to English grammar or maths.

As far as total immersion schooling for Maori children - this can only serve to stop them progressing since often their English language skills are held back as all their subjects are taken in Maori. Outside of a very small proportion of a very small country where is this a benefit? Billions of people in the world strive to get a good handle on the English language as the primary medium of communication on the planet. A small number of activists, for political reasons, seek to prevent their youngsters from having the benefit of fluency in this world language as their mother tongue. This is fine if you're happy to see these kids turn into the next generation of forestry workers in the remoter parts of the country, but it certainly doesn't help to get them on an equal footing with their pakeha (or asian or indian or arabic) contemporaries.

Many of the openings for maori speakers have been artificially created over the last couple of decades by the social engineering brigade. You can sense that the wheel is about to turn full circle on this and that good maori language skills won't be the key to advancement that they have been in the recent past. Then the benefits of providing kids with an education via the medium of Maori will be even more quesitonable.

[Voice]

Thanks George, I understand a bit better what's being said now, and I agree that in an ideal world there'd be opportunity to learn a wider variety of languages in schools, and I can appreciate the benefits that would bring. My view is simply that, however marginal it may be, Maori language and culture is important too.

I guess there's always the option for people who are motivated and keen enough to learn alternative languages (including Te Reo) outside of school (just as we are) and for parents to seek out tutoring if they would prefer their children to learn languages from an earlier age. Though I'm aware that state funded courses would be more helpful.

[GeorgeM]

Maori language and culture is important, but we need to beware it being made too important for political ends.

Maori make up only a small fraction of NZers. The official figures say 15%, but this includes those who are only a small proportion maori. As far as Statistics NZ is concerned if you have 1 maori greatgrandparent and the rest of your whakapapa is Pakeha they you're maori. If you take a more reasonable definition of maori as being those who are more maori than anything else then this reduces maoridom to a tiny fraction of the population, and the position of the language and culture should be commensurate. Unfortunately counting the numbers this way hasn't suited powerful interests, so we get the skewed figures.

There is a limited amount of cash available for spending on education, so reserving a disproportionate amount for the promotion of all things maori only reduces the amount left for more general purposes.

The maori language-ites, and the marae set do not even make up a majority of maori, but they have a voice and influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Poor urban maori would be far better off if money channeled into maori projects were channelled into project for the socially disadvantaged regardless of race.

The biggest shame in NZ at the moment is the manner in which the majority of maori are used as a political football by politicians left and right, pakeha and maori.

[T-R3xx]

The biggest shame in NZ at the moment is the manner in which the majority of maori are used as a political football by politicians left and right, pakeha and maori.

Hmmm...why does that ring a bell here in the US...

[GeorgeM]

Interestingly there is an article in The Press today on txting and the Maori language:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3471980a6009,00.htm

[sweetpea]

And if the choice is Maori or no languages at all then kids would probably benefit more from additional time devoted to English grammar or maths.

Setting aside the Maori debate as a whole -- since I don't think we'll see eye to eye any time soon -- I have to take issue with the idea that having kids spend extra time on math or English grammar is better than learning Maori or any other second language, whether of worldwide importance or not.

Learning another language's vocabulary, grammar and syntax provides additional insight into English. You become more aware of the structure of English, the sound of English, and its peculiar areas of agility and inadequacy. Studies have shown that students who study a foreign language have higher scores in English than students who spent the same time studying other subjects. Further, in the hands of a good teacher, language learning can offer a window to another culture and another way of thinking about the world.

I'd rather have kids learning Maori or Uzbek or Lithuanian than spending still more time diagramming English sentences.



(Yep, I came this close to majoring in a foreign language) :)

[GeorgeM]

Many youths appear to leave school these days with very little insight into their own language - I'm not convinced that trying to teach them another language whilst this is the case is a good move. Let's get the basics right first.

In many places it is only those who are performing well who have the opportunity to learn foreign languages, so it is not surprising that studies show that those who learn foreign languages also perform better at their own language. In the schools I went to none of the lower ability classes took foreign languages but I don't think that this has anything to do with their poor level of attainment in English - this resulted from their lower general academic ability.

At school I did French, German and Latin and agree that studying each of these added to my understanding of how languages in general work and as a consequnce enhanced my understanding of my mother tongue. But this was in addition to having a traditional grounding in english grammar rather than instead of it. It provided the icing on the cake, but there had to be some cake there in the first place to ice! I think many kids today have to make do with a muffin! Or a rather small (but very prettily decorated) iced bun!

IMO one of the problems with educashun these days is the obsession with width over depth - we don't teach principles sufficiently because we want to give kids a smattering of everything. I've just been looking through my Yr 11 daughter's NCEA French and can't believe how low the standard is - the range of tenses in use is probably fewer than we were using by Yr 9 after only 3 years study.

[Carol]

[QUOTE=GeorgeM]
I think many kids today have to make do with a muffin! Or a rather small (but very prettily decorated) iced bun!

[QUOTE]


Teaching today is certainly a thankless task.... you are damned if you do and damned if you dont.
On the one hand we have a huge curriculum we are expected to cover.
(Which by the way is about to be thrown on the rubbish heap in favour of hte next fashionable documents aptly named "essences")

On the other hand we have people saying we aren't teaching enough of the basics.
(Not too sure about that though - I suspect the 3 hours a day I spend teaching Maths and English have to count for something!)

There is no way on earth I am going to be able to teach my primary kids all the facts and knowledge they are going to need to know to get them through college.
WHat I need to be able to teach them is how to find out those facts and how to learn the knowledge they need at particular points in their life.
THey also need to be able to see the point in learning what they do - and how to get to be better at what they do - their "next steps".

[GeorgeM]

Teaching today is certainly a thankless task.... you are damned if you do and damned if you dont.
I think most of us would agree with that statement.

It's the politicians and the bureaucrats who are really to blame - the politicians will do anything that they think will look or sound good when they come asking for votes next time round, and the bureaucrats will do anything that the politicians tell them.

Hence the monstrosity of the NCEA standards definitions.

My OH is a teacher and I can't believe the level of mumbo-jumbo that has been put out covering minute aspects of each subject. And the amount of paperwork the ministry wants as evidence that the courses that are being taught match up to their Kafka-esque ramblings.

All on top of creating resources, and planning lessons, and marking work, and attending meetings with other teachers to plan the future of the subject.

However did the world survive when teachers were just left to teach? Probably ended up with kids leaving school with too many skills and insufficient cultural awareness...

[Tia Maria]

I hadn't checked this thread for awhile, I was quite pleased to see it has set off such a debate!

Carol - I wandered how you found the NZ curriculum did differ from the UK? Is there anything they offer that UK primary schools don't?

I feel that although it sounds like they offer a different emphasis on, academic, or a broader education, they both seem to reach a good educational standard. I think maybe the problems appear when children transfer between the two different education systems. My eldest has only done a term in the UK, so I don't envisage any problems going to NZ. However, I do wander if we are required to return in a few years, whether it will be hard for him to adapt back into the UK education system.

[Carol]

Carol - I wandered how you found the NZ curriculum did differ from the UK? Is there anything they offer that UK primary schools don't?



I was really disappointed to get here in 1996 to find the onset of "Curriculum Documents" just like we had ditched in the UK that same year.
Sir Ron Dearing saw to that....god bless the man.

I just couldnt believe that anopther country was going down the same path we had just travelled without learning from all of the mistakes that the UK made.

We have been stuck with it for nearly ten years now - and like I said earlier it is about to be all ditched too now for something else.

One thing I DID find refreshing here was the inclusion of "Essential Skills" eg Work and Study skills, Communication, Problem Solving etc etc.
However - I really dont think enough emphasis was put upon them - and apparantly they are about to be thrown on the scrap heap too now.
:no

It may come as some surprise to some on here - to know that when I first came I found the general kiwikids day ridiculously structured compared to what I was used to in the UK.
The skills I had - as far as integrated days were concerned - are still there in the back of my mind - and are now being drawn upon as it is gradually realised that primary kids should be integrating their subjects as much as possible.
OH YEAH - maybe I'm about to become an expert! (Yeah right!)

The biggest changes for me were:
The terribly backward system of teaching handwriting here - and unfortunately it still is! (as compared to the UK)

And
The intense way of testing reading they have here - commonly known as running records. THey have their place - but for me personally it's not on the pedastal they have put them on along with their founder Marie Clay.
There are better - more efficient methods.

Oh yes - and how far behind the kids were in Maths generally.
Still believe that to be true - but only because a greater emphasis is put on language work in the early years. Which has to be a plus!

All in all...... pros and cons.....just like everything else.


ANd I STILL miss school dinners!
:(

[Cardy]

Hello can anybody give me names of high schools in NZ that teach german please. the kids dont mind learning Maori and chinese but they really like german.
thanks Paul :nice1