Conclusion
The huge quantity of material on the teaching of reading cannot be
adequately covered in this survey but even a preliminary indication of
its extent draws attention to the importance of literacy in New
Zealand's colonial and post-colonial culture; the ways in which literacy
is both the first ground and an active factor in discourses as widely
spread as colonisation, imperial history, pedagogy, economics, cognitive
development and gender; its role in the conflict between an oral and a
print culture; and to the development of reading materials and methods
in New Zealand that are internationally recognised and imitated. The
teaching of reading and the place of literacy are significant emphases
in New Zealand cultural history.
