To be fair, the study does not actually show a causation but an "association".
Anecdotally, but from personal experience, the best young readers tend to be the ones that enjoy reading the most. Fostering that love of reading is, in my opinion, something that needs to happen at home.
Well, there are two different things here. Some knowledge is well established and doesn't change, or changes very slowly. Reading, writing and mathematics, for example. And later on the core sciences. None of this is affected by changes in technology.
How they interact with the world is changing rapidly, and I'm not entirely convinced our schooling system has this correct. I'm not sure what should change, but I feel like the school is simultaneously lagging behind and forging ahead of societal changes wrought by technology.
This is it right here. A lot of reaction to the changes in learning has not been evidence based. To be fair, many of the changes themselves were not evidence based either. It's easy to sit and say something needs to change, but much harder to show that the changes being made are going to make any difference at all.
Well I certainly agree teachers are undervalued, underpaid and overworked. I was a teacher once upon a time, and the workload has only increased. Couple that with dealing with increasingly difficult parents, students with increased needs while taking support away will naturally lead to things falling through the cracks. There have also been a number of changes to the ECE curriculum that were not entirely evidence based. Recently, our primary school has rolled out a brand new, evidence based, reading strategy which really appears to work well.
TBH I agree with @Splenetic@lemm.ee below - it is a difficult problem with many causes, and any one "cure all" solution will ultimately fail.
Parental involvement goes beyond direct involvement in school learning. It also includes reading and fostering an environment where reading is viewed positively, general life learning for skills like adding and subtracting, and so-on. However, I fully acknowledge that I made somewhat of a blanket statement.
This is, of course, concerning, but I seriously doubt the suggested enforced 3h of learning is going to change things one iota. IMHO, the biggest problem is not how schools are teaching core subjects, but how much learning is happening at home.
I say this with no judgement. Parents are, increasingly I feel, using a tablet to babysit their kids when they are younger, and not monitoring their social media use when they are older. I would also be interested to learn how much reading to your kids has declined. I could be wrong, but I suspect it has been slipping in line with the PISA results.
I think a lot of this comes down to the neoliberal reforms of Rogernomics. Neoliberal capitalism is a failed experiment at this point, that trends towards wealth disparity and concentration of wealth with the elite. We were sold on the dream of a free market helping everyone, but it has not done this.
This isn't unique to NZ, of course. Just look over at the UK and the current Tory government. Massive inflation, cost of living out of control, and a housing shortage.
Without protection for the working class against exploitation the trend will always be towards wealth hoarding. Our current system rewards greed, selfishness and shortsightedness.
How do we address this? Well, Labour was beginning to try with things like raising the minimum wage and FPAs. Nothing much will improve in the next 3 years, however.
What are you talking about, an entire duplicate Maori health authority was formed to prioritise the needs of Maori first, instead of New Zealanders in general.
Te Aka Whai Ora is not "an entire duplicate health authority". It's role is:
Leading change in how the entire health system understands and treats Māori health needs.
Developing strategy and policy which will create better health outcomes for Māori.
Recruiting kaupapa Māori services and other services for Māori communities.
Recruiting other services alongside Te Whatu Ora.
Keeping track of the health system to make sure there are fewer inequities for Māori.
Notice this is not a duolicte of Te Whatu Ora, recieves a fraction of the funding, and is designed specifically to resolve systemic inequalities in the current health system.
Not to mention the duplicate Maori versions of other things due to co-governance, and things like Maori wards which put council seats aside just for Maori and no-one else.
Co-governance models do not have "duplicate Maori versions", they are a collaboration between Iwi and Council. Every time they have been implemented, they have resulted in improved outcomes for everyone compared to the traditional system. Co-governance already exists in a few places, and has only been beneficial.
Finally, there are no duplicate systems as you are suggesting.
We are a multicultural country with far more than two cultures, it can't be Maori vs everyone else. We need to be united as New Zealanders
Absolutely. But the current system disadvantages our indigenous population. Continuing with the system will not improve the situation, so a targeted approach is required. Better outcomes for the disadvantaged is only a good thing for society.
So then fix it. Or change it, or rework it. Don't just cut cut cut because things aren't perfect. How is society supposed to progress if we kill any ambitious programmes?
A lot of virtue signaling and dog whistling in the list as well. For example:
• As a matter of urgency, issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government's expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race.
This isn't a thing that happens, but it's playing up to the whole 'hospitals use race when determining surgery' misinformation bullshit. It will have zero impact in how care is given.
I don't really have anything else to add that hasn't already been said, so I will just leave you with the route I ended up taking.
I decided upon Google Workspace. The price vs convenience is very high, and I personally have no problems using either Microsoft or Google office software. Google admin is easy for users, and you can easily set up aliases which point to different email addresses. For example, sales@ and info@ can all point to axisential@, and it handles return email addresses as well. I don't know how MS handles this, as I don't have much experience with their enterprise side.
Instead of self-hosting a website, storage, etc, for many of the reasons outlined elsewhere in the comments, I went with Google for file storage and Shopify for the web-store. The cost you pay is more than made up for the fewer man-hours of running a system yourself, and the security built in to the platforms. I have experience with Magento, and I will never use it again.
Interesting article, thanks for posting! Kudos to Stuff as well.
I really don't get why some people are so resistant to the more prominent position Te Reo is taking in society recently. Another language and culture is the spice we can add to our plain, unseasoned potatoes that is our predominantly European colonial history.
Drove 4 hours round trip to visit an uncle today. Grabbed this shot in his garden as I thought the juxtaposition of blossoms with sullen grey sky seemed to summarize the changeability of spring, at least around here.
As a bonus, he couldn't remember what this tree is (early dementia).
So perhaps the problem is the things we are valuing in our assessments not matching real life? Which may have been your point originally. 😂