Retorts

Science Knowledge

Your Retorts column [October] may well mislead readers into thinking that, as Lydia Austin asserts, "science education in New Zealand is now based around a few skills and what the students think they might like to know, rather than around the basic principles that have taken scientists hundreds of years to develop".

Rather than remain so misinformed, I invite your readership to read Science in the New Zealand Curriculum for themselves and make their own judgements. Learning Media has recently published a handbook for the Ministry of Education to assist teachers implementing the curriculum. This handbook, Developing Science Programmes, demonstrates through examples of classroom practice that knowledge is indeed alive and well in New Zealand science education.

I trust your readers will also not be misled into believing that "whole language" is a fad as your writer asserts. Whole language is not a fad nor is it evangelical! It is an American description of a very well researched literary process which shows that children learn English more effectively when words are in the context of whole sentences or stories than when words are learnt in isolation from such real contexts.

Neale Pitche
Chief Executive, Learning Media