|
You are subscribed as |
Unsubscribe
|
View online version
|
Forward to a friend
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
Things are made much easier for beginning readers if they are explicitly taught the regular correspondences between spelling and sound. It enables them to sound out words they haven’t seen in written form before, provided they know those words in spoken form. Teaching spelling-sound correspondences is the first step in the ‘structured literacy’ approach to teaching reading. Mandating that approach was one of Erica Stanford’s first moves when she became Education Minister. Different languages have different spelling-sound mappings. For example, in English, the letters ‘wh’ correspond to a /w/ sound, as in ‘where.’ But in te reo Māori, the same letters correspond to a /f/ sound, as in ‘whānau.’ Because the two languages have different spelling-sound correspondences, it is a mistake to introduce beginning readers to both at the same time. In fact, if a child is learning to read in English, it is best to also avoid English words that don’t follow the regular rules, until they are fluent with the regular spelling-sound mappings. Children need to master the spelling-sound correspondences of one language before they tackle those of another. Otherwise, they are likely to become confused. That is why Minister Stanford asked the Ministry of Education to remove Māori words from reading books for Year 1. That move was widely reported in the media last week. It took me just six brief paragraphs to explain the reason for Stanford’s decision. Yet, none of the mainstream media clearly articulated that reason. Apart from a conversation with Professor Elizabeth Rata on The Platform, no structured literacy experts were interviewed. Instead, a range of school principals and academics were invited to give their mostly uninformed views. There was a lot of handwringing about Stanford devaluing the Māori language. Predictably enough, some commentators called her decision racist. According to one headline, Stanford has ‘banned’ Māori words from our schools. In fact, she explicitly asked the Ministry to include Māori words in the English curriculum from Year 2. Sadly, the episode is emblematic of a media that prefers confecting outrage to informing the public. Inflammatory headlines, biased selection of interviewees, and deliberately ignoring the facts are all part of the playbook. Fortunately for our young people, Minister Stanford is not easily intimidated. But shame on our broken media. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Dr Eric Crampton | Chief Economist | eric.crampton@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
Or, as economists sometimes put it, barriers to exit are barriers to entry. Last week, the Competition Law and Policy Institute of New Zealand held its annual workshop. Academics and practitioners compare notes on local and international developments in areas like merger control and utilities regulation – the kinds of things with which the Commerce Commission busies itself. One of the presented papers, from a competition and consumer law practitioner, made the case for a de minimis threshold for merger applications. De minimis simply means things that are too minor to be worth dealing with. The Commerce Commission, like everyone else in the world, has limited resources. It needs to be able to choose where its efforts are best deployed. A Commerce Commission review is probably not worth the hassle if two merging firms are small. Similarly, if the affected New Zealand market is tiny, the Commission ought to have higher priorities. The case was timely. That morning’s edition of The Post included a column by Terry Allen, a former Chair of Serato. Serato is a New Zealand success story. Founded in Auckland in 1998, the company developed software for DJs. Their software became very popular among hip-hop artists so much so that music hardware maker Pioneer’s parent company wanted to buy Serato. The hip-hop DJ software market in New Zealand is not large. Documents filed as part of the Commission’s merger evaluation process suggested that the domestic market’s annual turnover amounted to a single day’s revenue for a large supermarket. In a sane world, it would not have been worth the Commission’s attention. Instead, the Commerce Commission took a year to decide to block Pioneer from buying Serato. Growing start-up companies often need funding from venture capital. Those investors help young companies grow, then sell their equity so that they can help the next company. They do not want to stick around forever. Banning sales of New Zealand start-ups to larger international tech companies effectively tells those investors to steer clear of New Zealand, as Allen’s column in The Post pointed out. A de minimis threshold on mergers could help the Commission better focus its attention. It could also help make New Zealand a safer place for tech start-ups. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Roger Partridge | Chair and Senior Fellow | roger.partridge@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
|
A confidential review helps explain why. RNZ has “no shared understanding” of its audience. Many staff even believed live radio was in long-term decline — a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. Mike Hosking commands a 20.5 percent breakfast share. Meanwhile, RNZ’s Morning Report has embraced “a patchwork quilt of taupe.” The review’s prescription reads like a consultant's guide to the blindingly obvious: audit presenters (“some people shouldn’t be on air”), hire one high-profile voice “to signal ambition,” target people aged 50 to 69, shift Morning Report to Auckland and introduce shorter bulletins. Most of this is self-evident – though perhaps not to a broadcaster that has built its identity in the Wellington beltway. Audiences prefer presenters worth listening to. The review does not use the word bias, but RNZ needs to confront it. Polls show most journalists lean left, and RNZ is no exception. They approach centre-right ideas – that markets work, that success should be celebrated, that wealth creates jobs – as if they are a foreign language. Anecdotes are not evidence. But a personal experience sums up RNZ’s problem well. A few years back, an RNZ business reporter interviewed me about “whether billionaires were good for New Zealand.” Really? We scaled it down to a corner dairy: jobs, taxes, community contributions. Billionaires, I suggested, were dairies grown large. “Fascinating,” she said, “could we get that on tape?” As if the thought that wealth might be socially useful had never previously occurred to her. RNZ can relocate to Auckland, refresh its line-up and even import a star. But what it has not confronted is that audiences left not just because the sound is tired, but because it is narrow. For a broadcaster devoted to “diverse voices,” RNZ has mastered only one kind of diversity: diverse ways of agreeing. The town square became an echo chamber with expensive acoustics. Still, the review’s irony is cruel. After years of preaching to the converted, RNZ must now win back the conservative-leaning over-fifties who tuned out long ago. The real lesson from the review is simple: if you don’t have anything relevant to say, people switch off. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| On The Record | ||||||||||||
To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. |
||||||||||||
| All Things Considered | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
Unsubscribe me please |
|
Brought to you by outreachcrm |