Literacy levels

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 16

Literacy levels

Sir, —My eye caught the amusing editorial heading, “When teecha carnt spell”. (July 22). Not so amusing is the attitude of the Department of Education which, in requesting that the Canterbury Education Board abandon the use of an English test in its selection procedures, appears to be relegating literacy to a fifth-rate consideration. Whether the department has caught an attack of that peculiar New Zealand disease, inverse snobbery, with its strange belief that bad is beautiful; or, whether the department has committed itself to the development of a third language, New Zealand pidgin, I can only guess. Certainly, if employers, rather than, bemoaning falling standards of literacy, were to conduct their own English proficiency tests as part of their selection procedures, the standard of English taught at schools would soon improve.—Yours, etc., GEOFF LEICESTER. July 22, 1986.

Sir,—With respect to both E. P. Steciurenko (July 23) and the late G. B. Shaw, generations of Japanese schoolchildren, confronted with an orthographic system formidably more difficult than ours, have achieved a level of literacy with few rivals throughout the world. Spelling reform offers no escape from the fact that there is no substitute for competent teaching inspired by the conviction that basic literacy matters. Granted, those are not arguments against spelling reform as such. However, the wide range of national and regional variations in English speech sounds must surely make remote the prospect of a more “phonetic” spelling system recognisable as such throughout the English-speaking world. Current orthodox spelling can be understood (“translated” , into local sound patterns) by all who are. competently taught and who competently learn it — and who may deserve to be spared the burden of having to “learn their letters” all over again. — Yours, etc.,

PETER TUFFLEY. July 23, 1986.

Sir,—When secondary teacher trainees are found lacking ability in spelling, grammar and syntax — the basic tools necessary for written — it is surely time for the Minister of Education to consider a return to more basic education. These

inadequacies have become ap'v parent at a time when the Der

partment of Education is busily implementing policy to include additional programmes in our schools. Surely there is room for additional programmes only when the basics have received sufficient attention. If. our teacher graduates can no longer write and spell accurately, then it is too much to hope that our children will acquire these skills. Under present education policy literacy is obviously an oldfashioned concept. When we parents had the benefit of an enviable education, why should our children be deprived of the same advantage? Perhaps it is time for New Zealand parents to demand much higher standards of our educationalists. — Yours, etc., LARAINE SHARR. July 20, 1986.