I loved reading and the more I read, the more I read. How can New Zealand kids come out of school not being able to read properly or write or add up and multiply basic figures? Of course, sad to say, bring it up with the education experts, like teachers (many of whom have amazed me over the years with their dedication and their workloads) and it's as if you have desecrated an altar.Īnd, of course, many of the unfortunate kids - who can neither write nor add up nor sling more than a few spoken words together in a sentence and therefore have no easy available vehicle for self-expression - are biding their time in our prisons, learning nothing, fagging their lives away in a fug. They are alarmed that we may be on the point of finding out.īut surely, something has gone terribly wrong.
I can think of only one reason they want to fight it.
Well, how did it get to this? After decades and decades and billions and billions of dollars it turns out about a million New Zealanders don't have the numeracy and literacy skills to make a living or make a go of life.Īnd the learned education experts, the principals, are doing their damnedest to undermine their minister who simply wants to introduce a national standards system so that a parent in Masterton knows how their child is doing in relation to a child in Kerikeri. Mel Brooks learned about writer's block the hard way in his comedy flop The Producers, but the remake in 2005 with Will Ferrell was successful.
