Nas and the Crab

The Loraxes read a story called 'Nas and the Crab' which is about a boy who moves to Auckland from Apia, Samoa. They then wrote a comparison on Google Docs.

Many of the world’s children are lucky enough to go to school. However many cultures have their own ideas about what is a good education. This means that children’s experience of school can be very different.

In New Zealand we speak English at school and are taught some Te Reo Maori. In Shanghai they teach and learn both in English and Chinese throughout the school day. The bilingual (able to speak two languages equally well) schools in Shanghai show that being able to speak more than one language well is very important in China. Nivedita

Both schools in China and New Zealand study maths science, art and music. However in China they also study history and calligraphy. This shows that in China they consider learning about their culture’s history and traditions to be very important.  Heather

School hours in China are a lot longer compared to in New Zealand. While at Halsey Drive School we start at 8:55 am and finish the school day at 3:00 pm, at Ping-He School they start at 7:00 am and don’t finish the school day until 5:00 pm. In New Zealand we are lucky to finish earlier in the afternoon as this leaves us time after school to play sports, go to music lessons or just hang out with friends. Simone

Part of New Zealand culture is having a history of being good at team sports e.g. the All Blacks and the Silver Ferns. This is probably why we play a lot of sports and games in our PE. However in China they seem to only do fitness. For example at Ping-He school they have to do 100 sit ups, 100 push ups and 50 laps around the track each day. We are lucky that our PE is different because we wouldn’t like to do all that fitness. Emily and Tanishaa

Overall our schools teach the subjects New Zealanders feel are important to New Zealand culture. However as more immigrants move to New Zealand some may want schools to change and teach subjects important to their cultures. We think though it is important that New Zealand schools don’t change too much as our school’s may be the reason why many immigrants move here in the first place