Ever PC world
Chong on song
What is all the ruckus about? I agree with Mr Chong. Over $600 million is spent on reviving the Maori Language and only a small portion of Maori can speak their own language.
So who is profiting? Who is making money while the sun shines? As a Maori that is not proficient in (Maori) I have to pay a university, a Wananga and Witt a lot of money to learn what should have been a natural gift. It will take me three, maybe four, years to learn what I should have known 50 years ago. There are a lot of us out there but we are too shy to tell people, even amongst our kaumatua, we cannot speak our own language. We are disabled by prior governments policies and laws.
Well done Murray! The knockers need to take a good hard look at themselves and ask the question how many of my friends are illiterate in their own Maori tongue? Is Te Reo being kept alive on a respirator? Maybe not how I would say it but you need to know the man. I would not apologise if it was me, Murray.
It is time Maori faced reality and like our iwi and other iwi throughout the country, start reviving the Maori language on the marae, halls, in schools, everywhere you can, and stop bleating. Bill Simpson Waitara I have no idea whether Maori is a dead language or not; my personal view is that it should be taught compulsorily in schools until perhaps the age of 11, then, a child is given the personal choice as to whether they continue to study and develop it further. I think it is important for all Kiwis to understand some basics of that part of our combined heritage, cultural and spiritual, and how this part of our society works and thinks.
What I don’t like is having it forced down our collective throats as if it must have primacy above all else, nor do I believe that a councillor should be admonished for asking a question about its value. I don’t agree with him, but as Evelyn Beatrice Hall said in her book, The Friends of Voltaire, ‘‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it’’.
This is just another sad episode in our ever increasingly PC world, where everything is ‘interpreted’, and often deliberately misinterpreted, as being racist, anti-gay, anti-specific religion or myriad other interest groups.
The latest in your paper was a letter from Liz Bridgeman titled ‘Colonial traces’; the inference that the TV advert referred to may harken back to the days of illegal land confiscation is just another step too far in the sanitised world some people want us all to live in.
It was a kid doing what kids do, nothing sinister until now. Peter Barker Bell Block
President for life
The biggest yes to peace in the world today is yes to life, especially life on the womb.
‘‘President for life’’ Donald Trump acknowledges this, giving hope where there was none and a future to many. Mary-Lee Hall Urenui
Thesis research
My name is Jacqui Burne, and I am currently collecting data on Will Potter, my father, as part of my thesis research for my Doctor of Education degree. I am keen to get in contact with any former students who were taught by or previous staff members who taught with Will during the time he was teaching at Spotswood College from 1967 to 1974, inclusive. I wondered if the advertisement on the next page could please be included in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of the Taranaki Daily News?
In my thesis, I am seeking to give an account of Will’s life, both from personal and educational perspectives, especially as he came to teaching later in life, was an immigrant with English not his first language, and he went on to write Commercial textbooks in use in New Zealand secondary schools during the late 1960s and 1970s.
The privacy of all prospective participants will be assured, and my research has been approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee: Northern, Application 16/08.
If you require further verification, you could contact either of my Supervisors: Dr Alison Sewell (A.M.Sewell@massey.ac.nz) or Professor Howard Lee (H.F.Lee@massey.ac.nz). Jacqui Burne Doctoral Candidate, Massey University.