Learning to read is the first step in school education. It is essential to later learning. At first, it is also very difficult.  

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.