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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 8. April 24 1972

The significance of Maori initiative in the education system

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The significance of Maori initiative in the education system

Concluding the submissions of the Maori Organisation on Human Rights to the Education Development Conference. Part V: continued from issue 6.

a) We have already referred to the flourishing Maori-run schools in the 19th century and to the bankruptcy of government policy aiming to Europeanise the Maori people, their land and their schools dating from the Native Schools Act 1867 (see Sutch, pp. 68-69, explaining the creation of four temporary Maori Parliamentary seats at the same time and the reason why these four seats were made permanent in 1876).

We have already noted that, when government policy on banning the Maori language from schools has swung almost full circle in a century, more positive actions officially was taken as a result of Nga Tamatoa's petition in 1972 than as a result of the Currie Report a decade earlier.

But it should also be noted that government has not acquiesced in recognition of the Maori language (and the educational reasons for re-instating it) till its foreign and trade policies (since World War II) are orientated more towards the Pacific and SE Asia, areas with many languages belonging to the same family as the Maori language. Unfortunately there still appears to be a tendency for the education system to give more recognition to Pakeha training methods for teachers than to speakers of the living Janguage.

It should also be noted (as pointed out a couple of years ago by the MP for Sogthern Maori) that government has spent more money on Colombo Plan education assistance for SE Asian students than on its contributions to the Maori Education Foundation (which, built on Maori money and fund raising, still disposed of only $1,000,000 over some eight years compared to $4,000,000 spent on Colombo Plan students over a shorter period); and that an official's statement on the Foundation (published in the Sunday Times 22.7.1973) altogether omitted to stress the Maori contribution to this Foundation.

And it should be noted that the government aid to private schools (some $2,500,000 in 1970 with more proposed this year) did not include equally Maori private schools — so that, for example, Queen Victoria College had to do its own fund-raising —although such Maori private schools take children from disadvantaged Maori homes and were the only schools in the NZ education system to achieve equal (or better than Pakeha) opportunity academically for Maoris.

We appreciate that there have been some marked improvements in schools such as Hillary College, Otara, which have adopted more enlightened policies and are showing the greatest advances to date.

But it should be noted that in 1972, although there was some increase in the number of Maori pupils qualifying for some degree of School Certificate pass (together with the overall increase due to liberalised policies) there has been little significant change in the disproportionate percentage of Maori pupils leaving school with no recognised qualifications (still over 80%). This despite the pressing representations of the PPTA's 1970 Interim Report on Maori Education which estimated (on the basis of painstaking documentation) that "the waste of Maori potential" was costing the country at least $25,000,000 annually and that this figure was rising rapidly — indicating (by a process similar to that used in the Social Welfare Department's Report on Juvenile Crime) future annual costs of something like $40,000,000 and $60,000,000....

b) In the present period of almost world-wide inflation with its inflationary market greedy for Maori artefacts, it has been Nga Tamatoa and other Maoris or part-Maoris who, like Auckland's Memorial Museum ethnologist D.R. Simmons, have drawn most attention to the fact the New Zealand's heritage is not protected by NZ laws — because NZ laws has never given equal protection to Maori and Pakeha burial grounds, historic sites, etc. NZ are haeologists are now doing their best to save what can still be saved.

In October 1971 Mr Simmons had already publicly expressed his views as an ethnologist that "with more than 500,000 throughout New Zealand who recognise themselves as Maoris or of Polynesian descent" the New Zealand races "would grow into one society which would receive most of its strength and vigour from the Polynesian segment". He said that up to 1939 it was normal for the Pakeha to say there was no colour bar in NZ "because most of them had never met Maoris any-way. But now it is different...."

Carved tiki figure

In this context it is good to read that in 1973 in various country areas (e.g. outside Waihi and Hamilton) education boards are taking some measures to put an end to NZ's brand of apartheid — by closing down some small uneconomic schools, so that more Pakehas will perhaps send their children to the same schools as Maoris. An NZPA message (Dominion, 28.873), reporting the decision of the South Auckland Education Board to close the Karakariki school (11 pupils), quoted board member Mr D A Fraser as stating that these pupils' parents seemed reluctant to have their children "become a European minority" in the Whatawhata school (68 pupils) in an area where half the residents were European but only one European child attended the school.

c) The initiative of Maori parents of Kelston pupils this year, in raising the matter of expulsions and suspensions with their Maori Minister of Maori Affairs, result in improving democractic relations generally between schools and parents, school baords, principles and pupils.

Maori and Polynesian parents have been more aware than Pakehas of the increasing number of such expulsions over the years. But proposed remedies, such as appeal procedures, should help relationships for all.

It should be noted however that Maori parents did not attempt to appeal to last year's Pakeha Minister of Maori Affairs, when expulsions took place, and that while some parents have earlier tried (unsuccessfully) to halt such procedures, most Polynesian parents have not complained (cf. p.5 of the Conciliator's Annual Report recording UK experience that "most victims of racial discrimination do not complain").

The climate in which Maori can talk to Maori (but not always to Pakeha") about such discrimination is created by official denials of its existence — which can protect only institutional racism itself but not its victims.

Thus, on 6.4.1973 before the Kelston situation had been fully investigated, the Minister of Education also publicly denied the existence of racial discrimination. He told a press conference that he "unreservedly accepted the statements of the Board and Principal of Kelston Girls High School that their actions have at all times been free from racial discrimination" after their expulsion/suspension of 21 pupils (16 of whom were Maori/Polynesian) had made headlines.

Such a denial may cover intent to discriminate racially. But from the point of view of promoting racial harmony it is worse than useless because it can only confirm prejudice: If there was no racial discrimination, then 16 out of the 100 Polynesian pupils at Kelston deserved their expulsion/suspension compared to only five out of some 500 Pakehas? And so we are back in the vicious circle of "racial stereotyping" etc.