Wendy Geus: Kids need to memorize tables, basic facts and spelling, not karakia and waiata

Do NZ's appalling attendance rates reflect parents' rejection of race mandated education?

Are the many women with their healthy, energetic kids I see in the supermarket during school hours rejecting Stanford's mandatory, Maori infused programme, or do they just prefer to home school their offspring? I am not talking about unattended school age thugs terrorising shop keepers, but respectable looking women with their school age kids in tow.

This is just a snap shot of one group of truants. I understand Maori truancy is very high, except at expensive charter schools like St Stephen's boarding school where the teachers have a captive audience and apparently their spelling is improving! Baby steps.

David Seymour's announcement earlier this year that a Christchurch charter school had reached, an encouraging, 50% attendance rate of its Maori students, left me aghast. The May 2025 NZ attendance rate was 58%. Appalling!

Unlike the UK whose 2024/2025 figure is 93%. Where penalties are applied, things improve. There should be no excuses for children truanting. Don't give me the mental health excuse. As believable as the 25% of public servants conveniently (not) working from home on a Friday.

The tyranny of low expectations.

Stories of children being punished for using the English word rather than the Maori; daily chanting waita and karakia, in a secular country where religion should be kept out of school; and compulsory lessons which include the revived radical version of our history.

If I had school age children I would be home schooling or enrolling them into a private school without the mandatory Maori trimmings!

And are the tens of thousands leaving our shores for Australia each year reported in news.com (see link below) escaping the credit crunch as well as the racist programme the mostly Marxist teaching work force and their zealot Minister insist on forcing on our children? Why is there not a question on leaving documents to give the reason for their departure?

The attendance system Seymour was going to implement in all schools this year he put off until 2026, when the unions got angsty. Stanford's new resources to help children and teachers alike with numeracy and literacy sound good. But what use are they without the kids there; those absent are likely the ones needing the remedial work most. Has Seymour cowed in the face of Stanford's ferocity. Where is his fight?

Like Winston who seemed to have lost interest in removing Maori references from public service agencies (a major part of his Coalition agreement) and given the task to activist Potaka with his dithering side kick Goldsmith, who have passed it on to a working group of mostly Maori, with a predictable outcome.

National's two zealots Potaka and Stanford calling the Coalition shots have got their wires crossed on how to achieve our kids' and country's success.

Learning their basic facts and tables by heart gives them tools for life as well as ensuring greater success in maths. Forcing non Maori to recite karakia and waiata is pointless, along with indoctrinating from an activist angle, a guilt inducing view of our history.

As a former teacher I know kids do better when they know their basic facts and times tables by heart learned incrementally as they progress, as they use them for problem solving and all aspects of their maths work. It can be turned into a game. Kids are very competitive and love beating their mates. It DOES NOT require more resources just teachers in the classroom (not on strike) doing their job.

This is not to say there aren't teacher's out there insisting children learn their tables and basic facts but I get the impression this is not the norm any more. Just like spelling. My intermediate classes would compile 20 words to learn each week.

And I kid you not even with my awful art skills, a smiley face inexpertly drawn in their notebook at the bottom of their word list for all words correctly spelled out to me, saw them return to their seats with a smile on their faces. Little successes build bigger ones along with your relationship with each child.

Potaka's (uncampaigned on) stated aim, using hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars, to have a million kiwis fluent in Maori by 2040 is purely fictional and unachievable. With just over 4% indicating fluency on the 2023 census, (we have a current rate of 213,849) an increase since 1996 of only 60,000. He is dreaming!

This is outrageous and will be more money down the drain.

I am not saying learning Maori should not be available and encouraged for adults and in schools, but NOT mandatory in schools.

Stanford is going to have to make the Maori component voluntary. Her zealotry and quoting of 'honouring the treaty' is embarrassing. She was not elected on that and her outburst on Hosking to the thousands of her, now former, Hobson Choice supporters that they are 'hate filled', showed the extent of her bigotry and refusal to listen to reason.

Maori themselves, apart from those in the public service, academia and the media, gaining financially from it, mostly don’t learn it. Why is she forcing it on all our children who it seems have lost the will to live... well, attend school anyway.

Most Maori are probably like me, too lazy to learn a language they don't need as they already speak English. That is the harsh truth and no matter how much Maori signage is added to buildings and road signs, won't change that. Its mere virtue signalling and as visitors note, why have all the road signage in Maori when nobody speaks it?

This government just loves spending money we don't have on posturing and appeasing activist Maori and their Marxist supporters, thousands of whom work in our public service. Not to forget it makes it more dangerous on the road as drivers try to navigate the more complicated signage which we all can read in English. I ranted about this years ago and cannot believe it has actually come to pass.

I am not against Maori language usage everywhere on branding, buildings etc, but it should be underneath the English in a different font. We look for what we know and almost 100% of New Zealanders speak English. The implementing of this election promise has been random with no thought to how it will look. A complete disaster.

If Potaka really wants to improve Maori children's lives and their prospects he needs to actively encourage Maori parents to get their kids to school, learn their tables and basic facts and their spelling, do their homework and hear them read and read to them. Take an interest in their schooling. This has always been the drill with all children... And doesn't cost millions.

Also impress upon them that English literacy is extremely important, as our businesses and NZ life generally revolves around English, not Maori. That's where 95% of the jobs are as most will not end up in the media, public service or academia.

Maori children not achieving is not due to institutional racism. A lazy explanation and a point Jack Tame unsuccessfully attempted to coerce the new Race Relations Commissioner, Dr Melissa Derby, to concede on Q + A.

Two years in and we have a socialist orientated government embedding Labour's programme.

This is actually tyranny and not what the hundreds of thousands who voted for this government expected. This is Mahuta's and Labour's dream come true and Ardern's legacy realised.

How could you do this to us Mr Luxon? You have betrayed us.

References

‘Deeply concerning’: New Zealand’s population exodus as record numbers of citizens move overseas | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site for latest headlines

Wendy Geus is a former speechwriter and generalist communications advisor in local government. She now writes for the pure love of it.