{"id":73528,"date":"2025-08-20T09:01:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T00:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/20\/maori-words-school-books-new-zealand"},"modified":"2025-08-20T09:01:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T00:01:30","slug":"why-is-the-new-zealand-government-cutting-maori-words-from-some-school-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=73528","title":{"rendered":"Why is the New Zealand government cutting M\u0101ori words from some school books?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Changes to readers for young children have sparked criticism from academics, authors and teachers, who have called it \u2018an assault\u2019 on M\u0101ori identity<\/p>\n<p>A shake-up of New Zealand\u2019s curriculum has resulted in M\u0101ori words being scrapped from a selection of books used to teach five-year-olds and a decision not to reprint a well-loved book for young readers because it contained too many M\u0101ori words.<\/p>\n<p>The changes have sparked widespread criticism from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepost.co.nz\/nz-news\/360791088\/maori-words-cut-early-reading-monolingual-mindset-expert-says\">academics<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/569872\/education-minister-over-reached-on-te-reo-in-books-say-principals\">teachers<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.co.nz\/2025\/08\/18\/authors-call-out-stanfords-racism\/\">authors<\/a>, who have called it \u201can assault\u201d on M\u0101ori identity and the latest in the coalition government\u2019s efforts to prioritise English over the Indigenous language \u2013 criticisms the education minister has strongly rejected.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/20\/maori-words-school-books-new-zealand\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Changes to readers for young children have sparked criticism from academics, authors and teachers, who have called it \u2018an assault\u2019 on M\u0101ori identityA shake-up of New Zealand\u2019s curriculum has resulted in M\u0101ori words being scrapped from a selection of bo&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2286,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,897,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-maori","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73529,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73528\/revisions\/73529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}