It transpired he’d run an item he should never have allowed to be published, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d put it on the front page.
This was a cry of woe from a Professor Rawinia Higgins, a language and culture specialist, these being perfectly legitimate fields of study, as also mind you, are medieval church architecture, lycanthropy and no end of other topics.
Professor Higgins is a Maori Language Commissioner and she was bemoaning the absence of progress in persuading the public to resurrect a dead language, namely maori.
Language romanticism is insane. It may surprise to learn that when I was young, to obtain a law degree required a unit in Latin. So too in Britain up to about 1950 when the best prestige private schools also saw Latin as essential. Common sense eventually prevailed.
Evelyn Waugh, the ultimate master of cynical comedy about human behaviour, sent up this thinking with his hilarious 1947 novella “Scott-King’s Modern Europe.”
Despite his often anachronist values, with Waugh they amounted more to snobbery and he was sensible enough to see the foolishness in romanticising a dead language.
English is now the universal language and compulsory in most European countries. Thus nearly 90% of continental Europeans are fluent in two languages, being their own, be it German, Spanish or whatever, and English.
The odd man out is Britain, where only about 25% of the population have two languages, they being migrants. There’s no need for British kids to learn another language as they already speak the only one which counts, even if mostly appallingly when compared with Germans and Scandinavians in particular.
Sometimes the utterly bogus argument is proffered that learning to speak another language has a double whammy benefit in having to master both the written and oral aspects.
That’s a negative factor. The brain has enormous capacity to absorb knowledge, but not so the body to acquire it. Learning anything takes time and time is finite, thus it’s important how you ration it to what counts.
For a number of reasons, mostly poor parenting, maori kids are failing badly on the school front. They’ll fall even further behind if they waste valuable learning time on pointless subjects. Making them do this on romantic grounds amounts to child abuse.
Evelyn Waugh, the ultimate master of cynical comedy about human behaviour, sent up this thinking with his hilarious 1947 novella “Scott-King’s Modern Europe.”
Despite his often anachronist values, with Waugh they amounted more to snobbery and he was sensible enough to see the foolishness in romanticising a dead language.
English is now the universal language and compulsory in most European countries. Thus nearly 90% of continental Europeans are fluent in two languages, being their own, be it German, Spanish or whatever, and English.
The odd man out is Britain, where only about 25% of the population have two languages, they being migrants. There’s no need for British kids to learn another language as they already speak the only one which counts, even if mostly appallingly when compared with Germans and Scandinavians in particular.
Sometimes the utterly bogus argument is proffered that learning to speak another language has a double whammy benefit in having to master both the written and oral aspects.
That’s a negative factor. The brain has enormous capacity to absorb knowledge, but not so the body to acquire it. Learning anything takes time and time is finite, thus it’s important how you ration it to what counts.
For a number of reasons, mostly poor parenting, maori kids are failing badly on the school front. They’ll fall even further behind if they waste valuable learning time on pointless subjects. Making them do this on romantic grounds amounts to child abuse.
Sir Bob Jones is a renowned author, columnist , property investor, and former politician, who blogs at No Punches Pulled HERE.
5 comments:
Instead of compulsory Maori language lessons, it would be much more sensible to fund and promote English speaking lessons (elocution ?) for the students, to allow them to not be condemned to low paying jobs because of an appalling gansta-style diction.
Sir Bob, not only European Countries teaching their students English. China does as well. From 5yo if I am not mistaken
Bob, how can you have a language specialist when the stone age language had approximately a 700 word vocabulary but no written language whatsoever? The missionaries cobbled one up for them and I'm sure didn't included the words co-governance, treaty industry or treaty obligations. As for the cultural specialist side, does she specialise in slavery, tribal warfare or maybe even cannibalism plus reed basket making to use as doggy bags. I also studied Latin and French at High school which may be useful if you travel overseas but forcibly teaching Te Reo to our kids who have no cultural links or family links to the language is a total waste of their learning time. The bulk of Kiwis have had a gutsful the crap being forced on us but are so afraid of being tagged a racist that they just accept it. The only racist ones are the woke fools in the government trying to divide our Country. Kiwialan.
So that students may have just a sporting chance of reasonable achievement in the 21st Century world, very able teachers in the public system fritter their valuable time attempting to instil English as a second language in children who have had total immersion inflicted upon them. Immersion does the children a greater disservice than the occasional mild beating.
This Labour government knows only foolishness. Labour may never be in power again come next year, as the memory of their foolishness will remain forever.
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