Editor
It is impossible not to be affected by the enthusiasm and joie de vivre of young children. One of the great pleasures of writing stories for this magazine is visiting schools and experiencing first-hand the indomitable optimism that children exude. It is not a misguided optimism. Kids are demonstrating that they love to discover new things and learn more about those things. They are eager to share their knowledge, show pride in their achievements and tell you what they are aspiring to next. Visiting enviroschools in Hamilton was such a treat. To report all the comments so exuberantly delivered by these energetic youngsters would fill several issues. An abiding memory, however, will be
of a water supply mathematically, but I doubt they saw this as ‘performing a numeracy task’. For these kids numeracy and literacy don’t exist. They would have no idea what the terms meant and if they did, I suspect they would have no interest in them. What they do know is that when school gives you lots of scope to dream, question, discuss plan, work on projects and solve problems, you use tools. Alongside the spades and rakes, trowels and watering cans are some other tools that help you find out more. They are the tools of maths, of reading and writing. But that’s all they are – just tools. They don’t come first any more than the rake or spade comes first. We need to be careful about elevating the importance of one tool over another. A teacher at the Enrich@ILT programme in Invercargill I (wrongly) imagined that the children in this noted that there were children attending the group would be the loners and geeks who centre, clearly identified as highly gifted but who would not necessarily reach the national preferred to be immersed in the writing of standard in writing or reading and some boring detail than out there breaking in the land would be below in maths. Obviously, this has nothing to do with the children’s thinking and debating the next ‘what if’ question. abilities, nor their ability to use these tools when they need to. But imagine if all that meeting the group of year 6 children at Hukanui School who talent, questioning, thinking and creativity was stifled while the were recording the history of their eco classroom’s development. child went into remediation to get up to some arbitrary reading or I (wrongly) imagined that the children in this group would be the writing standard? It would be like taking them off oxygen – death loners and geeks who preferred to be immersed in the writing of to creativity and higher-order thinking. I wondered which of the boring detail than out there breaking in the land and debating the Invercargill children I met could potentially be affected. Would next ‘what if ’ question. Not a bit. These kids were enjoying their it be the child leading the southern region chess competition? writing task because they had already been out there ‘breaking in Would it be the one who painted a portrait of Walt Disney, the land’ and some had been at the forefront of the eco classroom creating a look so disapproving it made me want to apologise building project. What I discovered was that children found it as out loud? Or would it be the year 5 stone carver who fashioned much fun constructing the written version of this extraordinary a horse head so convincing it went on public display? eco classroom journey as they found in the hands-on tasks. They I’m an optimist. I believe sanity will prevail and it will transpire recognised the power of the written word and the importance that no teacher will be interfering with the progress of a child’s of its use. They also didn’t want all that thinking, discussing learning to make them sharpen a single tool because it is more and planning to be forgotten, and writing it all down meant important than the rest. It is not. It is expansion of minds that it would always be remembered. They were not performing a matters. It would greatly benefit our country as a whole if at every literacy task, they were transferring their lived experience into level we adopted that philosophy and allowed it to underpin the written form for posterity and they were doing it knowingly. every future policy decision irrespective of the government of The same applied to the children taking measurements of water the day. The children would vote for that. tank levels, recording them, creating graphs and extrapolating statistics from their data. They were recording the fluctuations