Education debate

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33515, 22 April 1974, Page 12

Education debate

Sir,-—lt would seem from the defensive outbursts occasioned by Mr Tait’s talk lin Auckland that there are two ways of gauging literacy lin New Zealand. According

to the standards used by teachers and educationalists there is no illiteracy problem because everything possible is being done, yet according to those in the real world outside the education system, there is an extensive illiteracy problem especially among school leavers entering trade, industry and the universities. Perhaps it is not so much a case of persons in the real world needing to understand education as a case of educationalists needing to understand the communication problems and requirements of the real world. —Yours, etc., R. E. TURNER. April 20, 1974.

Sir, —It is indeed news to me that “all teachers had a sound background in the teaching of reading.” I graduated from the Secondary Division in 1971, having had no such background, sound or otherwise. I was, in fact, disenchanted with much that was taught at Teachers’ College. Likewise “on section” training in the schools was disappointing in that the asking of advice was later written into a teacher’s report as “lack of understanding,” “unsound knowledge,” or even “unwillingness to teach.” I soon learned (as did most other student teachers) to listen respectfully, obey meekly, and learn little, in order to earn a report praising one’s * ‘ c o-operative attitude.” However, I was earlier able, as a then untrained teacher, to teach my children to read by phonics after “look and say” at their school had failed dismally. 1 simply taught them the way I had been taught when I was .four, by a sister who was twelve.—Yours etc., DISENCHANTED T.C. GRADUATE. April 20, 1974.

i Sir,—lt seems to me that many of the outspoken critics of present education are persons with axes to grind — owners of private schools and booksellers to name a few. 1 can speak of one subject, mathematics, having been through secondary school in the mid-19505, and having studied secon-dary-school modern mathematics in the late 1960 s and [early 19705. The standard of (mathematical achievement is much higher now than then in my experience, and persons with some creative aptitude for the subject are unlikely to be repelled as they might well have been by the earlier methods which tended towards unimaginative rote learning, and the production of programmed parrots. One of the attackers of present teaching spoke volumes about earlier standards when he ascribed his alleged prowess

at mental addition to his rote learning of the multiplication tables. — Yours, etc., SQUARE ROOT. April 19, 1974.