Reading problems

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 12

Reading problems

Sir,—The School Committees Federation remit advocating support for an expansion of Professor Marie Clay’s reading recovery programme is, at least, a public recognition that one-third of our six-year-olds do not learn to read by present classroom methods. However, is the Federation of School Committees aware that already $1.03 million of the taxpayers’ money has gone into the setting up of the reader recovery programme? Do they realise that fi reading recovery” simply incorporates an old method (i.e. phonics) of learning to read which was included in a primary school teacher’s skills a decade or so ago? Is the department aware that many concerned parents take it upon themselves to assist their children’s reading difficulties at home using this approach by which they themselves learned to read? The application of the old style phonetic rules would also do much to improve the abysmal spelling standards of today’s young people. It is the training college graduates who need “recovering” not our six-year-olds. — Yours, etc., MRS MARY CAMERON LEWIS, National president, Speld N.Z. Inc. May 3, 1983.

Nuclear weapons Sir,—John Canham (April 30) races away at numerous tangents starting with the erroneous presumption that only Christians are capable of charitable works. Quoting Christian political bias is entirely unnecessary because since the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, Christianity and politics have been as one. The history of Christianity is “not” confined to moral issues but centuries of savage butchery visited on Christians by Christians predominates. To write that communism is a greater threat to human fulfilment than nuclear weapons is a pathetic example of Christian political bias. Obviously, a nuclear holocaust means the irrevocable extinction of humanity and an uninhabitable placet Your spouts justice, then,

in common with Dr Runcie, tells us, “justifiable violence” may be required to achieve it. Christians advocating “justifiable violence” are obviously those who should fight their ensuing wars. What these fanatics appear to be saying is: “Never.mind nuclear weapons — save the world for justifiable Christian warfare.” — Yours, etc., ARTHUR MAY. April 30, 1983.

Sir,—Christchurch is the ideal candidate to be the first, and possibly only, thermonuclear target. Human subjects have not been exposed to hydrogen bombs, and America, pioneering the use of nuclear weapons to massacre women and children, must regret this lack of data. There are sufficient warheads to cover cities much smaller than Christchurch in addition to all military targets, and we can be confident that some missiles are already aimed at us. New Zealand is ideally situated for nuclear experimentation, being far from other Western populations, and Christchurch has the virtue of being flat, meteorologically stable, and not geographically untidy like Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Having a small, expendable United States air base here, America could gain world sympathy by annihilating us and blaming Russia, with further support by withholding “retaliation”. Our only hope is for an American change of heart towards nuclear disarmament — Yours, etc.,

VARIAN J. WILSON. May 1, 1983.