I found this fascinating listening this morning:
Professor Bill Tunmer from Massey University and Mary Chamberlain from the Ministry of Education discuss the Ministry's Reading Recovery Programme. Tunmer says it's a failure. The woman from the Ministry disagrees. He points to failures in the Government's literacy strategy in general [who knew there was one?] and, in particular, the Reading Recovery Programme, which "are not delivering" -- or at least are delivering failure. The woman from the ministry talks jargon.Tunmer points to OECD surveys showing New Zealand plunging down the literacy ranks (from 1st in 1970, to 6th in 1990, to 13th in 2001, to 24th today - ref IEA Reading Literacy studies), and the huge and increasing gap between those who can read, and those who can't. The woman from the ministry ignores them.
Listen here: NZ Children's Reading Ability[audio] - RADIO NZ: Nine to Noon (duration: 28′11″)
3 comments:
"Literaacy"? Oh the irony! But you're spot on about RR. If schools were doing their job, it wouldn't be necesssary. My brother is 32 and can't spell or write properly. He has a near-adult vocabulary, but wrties fo-ne-tick-ly like a 6-year-old. He's an example of someone who wasn't stupid or "special" as a child, but did have problems with reading. He was left behind by a system that just didn't want to know, despite my mother's best efforts to get help from school authorities. He got into trouble as a teen, did a lot of pot, had run-ins with the law later, and eventually did some time (for drunk driving too many times). At least he's worked most of his adult years, rather than being a dole bludger. Sadder are the poor kids whose minds are blighted and permanently wrecked by the state, never able to function as normal autonomous adults.
In the UK, there was a boy in a special calss for dyslexics. He had a stomach op and was off grains for a few weeks. His dyslexia disappeared. So they took all the class off grains. 90% of them lost their dyslexia.
Evil grains. meat and veg is all we need. Just sayin.
found some links now:
http://lists.becta.org.uk/pipermail/senco-forum/2004-October/041481.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/5ueuba
and:
http://tinyurl.com/5eadqx
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