Letters: David Seymour’s school lunch plan deserves support; law school dean’s tikanga comments cross the line

"Lunches for more children at less cost is a good outcome, and if Seymour’s plan works, he should be applauded by all sides of politics."

Seymour’s school lunch plan deserves support

My initial reaction to David Seymour’s announcement that the Government intends to use a Wellington central government bureaucracy to provide school lunches cheaper and more efficiently was bemusement. Surely this goes against his philosophical roots?

Perhaps, though, we should all put philosophical ideas aside in the interest of good outcomes. Lunches for more children at less cost is a good outcome, and if Seymour’s plan works, he should be applauded by all sides of politics.

John O’Neill, Dargaville.

Learning opportunity

Why are we giving kids lunches in school? Surely a far better idea would be to provide them with the facilities and products for them to make their own lunches in school?

In fact, parents of the kids who benefit could be volunteered to assist. The result would be an education to both kids and their parents in making lunches, as well as learning about nutrition.

Complaining about slack parents isn’t going to help the kids with those parents. Therefore, I totally agree with providing food for kids in school.

Kent Millar, Blockhouse Bay.

Opinion v abuse

Khylee Quince, dean of the law school at AUT, would do well to remember the lucky escape the country had when the previous Government was considering the introduction of a hate speech law, but did not.

The dean’s outburst towards Gary Judd, senior KC, [on social media] is as follows: “I suppose it was inevitable that one of the old dinosaurs would make a pathetic squeal in an attempt to preserve the status quo. ”

I believe it is still legal to express an opinion in New Zealand, but we do need to ensure our opinions are not derogatory.

Janet Boyle, Ōrewa.

No more ‘5 per cent men’

Another day of populist rhetoric from Winston Peters to elicit reactions from enough people to maintain 5 per cent of the vote, this time about tikanga and the law (NZ Herald, May 8).

Claiming we are being bombarded with “woke cultural indoctrination” is rhetoric designed to appeal to the disgruntled 5 per cent. What we need is not 5 per cent men, but diverse political parties prepared to deliver positive policy to move us forward as a country.

That needs understanding, including from our legal fraternity, that we are not an anachronistic relic of the British justice system, but a nation proud of our independence in our legal system, our foreign policy, our culture and in all we do.

Neil Anderson, Algies Bay.

Tikanga benefit

The report about King’s Counsel Gary Judd’s action regarding whether tikanga Māori should be on the curriculum for a law degree in New Zealand caught my attention.

While I can understand that the study of subjects directly related to the practice of law in New Zealand is of primary importance, I cannot help but think that a basic understanding of what someone’s culture considers proper etiquette or social practice could assist in being a better legal practitioner in any area of the law.

Dunstan Sheldon, Hamilton.

Past lessons on port deal

As a development economist, I advised several governments in the 1980s regarding how to survive a mess of their own creation. Instead of raising taxes, they demanded profit distributions from state-owned enterprises. The SOEs couldn’t meet the Government’s profit distribution targets and so borrowed to supply the shortfall.

Over time, the governments raised their targets and the SOEs borrowed more, eventually leading both the Government and the SOEs to become insolvent. This Brown/Port of Auckland deal may be a bad precedent and not the solution we think it is.

Robert Myers, Auckland Central.

Structured literacy risk

Phonics or “sounding out” is the lynchpin of structured literacy, soon to be imposed on schools. Phonics teaches a child to say words. But saying words is not reading. Reading is a complex process through which a child constructs meaning by bringing to the task his experience of language, his knowledge of the world, his attitude to print.

I recently asked my 5-year-old grandson if he had learned how to sound out words. “Oh yes,” he replied with a huge smile of pride. So I wrote BOAT on a white card.

He painstakingly sounded out each letter. All correct. “Great,” I said.

“So what does it say?”

“I dunno,” he said. And ran off. The strategy failed him so he lost interest.

Structured literacy runs this risk. With a coloured picture, an early learner can instantly predict the “boat” word and willingly move on. The word will recur over and over. Arising from failure analysis, structured literacy has had deserved success with dyslexia, but this group has unduly influenced our government. Most of our students are not dyslexic.

We need rigorous debate about the $67 million Erica Stanford has been allocated. Or do we allow a politician to just pick a pedagogy?

Joan Ruzich, Ōrewa.