Education

There is much evidence available to show that the Maoris are taking far more pride in the education of their children. This is reflected in the way many of them make enormous sacrifices to ensure that suitable education is given. The need for their attitude is more clearly shown when statistics revealed that in 1951, 46 per cent of European male workers in New Zealand earned more than £500 per year, but under 15 per cent of Maori male workers reached this amount. Because of this disparity in income it has always been clear to them that education in the widest sense of the word is the most powerful agent in bringing about the most successful adjustment of the people to the social and economic life of the community.

The Maori children enjoy equal opportunities with European children to acquire education, and wherever possible they are educated in the same schools. Last year 40,000 Maori children or nearly ⅓rd of the population were going to school and they constituted 9.2% of the total population of the country: whereas the Maori population is 6.2% of the total New Zealand population. About 5,000 of them were going to secondary school which is a very high figure compared to that of a few years ago. While statistics show that the Maori High School pupil does not yet reach the same educational standard as his European counterpart, occasionally we read in the newspapers that in some districts real progress is being made in bridging this gap. For instance, at the Rotorua High School's prize-giving ceremony last December, the Headmaster, Mr Harwood, said that the number of Maori boys and girls collecting scholastic trophies confounded the oft-repeated statements that the Maoris could not make use of European facilities in education.

Mr Harwood went on to say that he had for 34 years been in schools where there was a high percentage of Maori pupils. His answer to the criticism of the educational methods now employed to enable the Maori to use all that the European system could give him, was on the platform, where Maoris were collecting prizes for English, Latin, Mathematics and almost every other subject on the curriculum.

He issued a warning that any people today who failed to take advantage of the educational opportunities to acquire an understanding of modern life, science and technology, could not keep its place in the world.

He described the Maoris as a race which was emerging fast out of the world of isolation which was theirs thirty years ago into the modern world of today. From success on the playing field they were coming in to compete strongly in the classrooms.

There were many Maori pupils among those who went up to collect prizes in all subjects. The two highest prizes for general excellence, in scholastic work and in short, leadership and character, both went to Maori pupils, a boy and a girl.

Equality of Occupation

Nearly 40% or some 350 of the pupils of the High School in Rotorua are Maoris, and in the town all but a few positions are open to them when they leave school. They are doing well in shops, offices, trades and Government Departments. It is interesting to know that Maoris are in the majority in the telephone exchange. The new houses being built for them in Rotorua under the direction of the Department of Maori Affairs are up to the standard of State houses, and are being well kept. While problems enough remain for the Maori people, the developments that have taken place in Rotorua show the shape of things to come.

In more isolated areas, difficulties of adaptation are in general greater than in Rotorua. In such districts there still tends to be a wide gulf between the attitudes of the old generation and the new. Many young Maori pupils go back to their villages after leaving school. And because of the desire of their parents to have their children about them before moving to the larger centres in search of work, a year or two of their adolescence is often spent in a district where regular work is not readily available and comparative idleness results. At about 18 or 19 they realise they must start on some permanent form of employment; but at this age the opportunities for entering trades as apprentices are limited, and much of the benefit of their schooling is lost. The welfare section of the Department of Maori Affairs spends a lot of its time persuading such parents to see where their duty lies.

Another interesting development in the Rotorua-Taupo area is in connection with the timber industry. Maoris owned large reserves of native timber in the Taupo area. Previously they used to grant the culling rights to European companies; but for the last 10 years they have been successfully working the timber themselves in incorporated groups. One group was selling as well as logging. This was a significant development as

Maoris had made very few excursions into commerce.

True equality between Maori and European can only come if their occupation spread is proportionately similar. An examination of the data relating to occupation as shown in the 1951 census indicates that relatively few are employed in the skilled trades or in the professions. The Maori of old was a craftsman, and this ability to use tools successfully persists today but proper training and experience are necessary. Special facilities are now provided by the Labour Department to assist those desirous of qualifying as carpenters, motor mechanics, electricians, plumbers, plasterers and painters.

The main concern of Government Departments is to increase the proportion entering skilled trades and professions. Figures supplied by the Education Department showed that a very large percentage of Maoris tend to enter farming, domestic and factory work and not enough were entering the skilled jobs.

The experience of the Department of Maori Affairs since 1951 when hostels for apprentices were established in collaboration with Vocational Guidance Officers and the Labour Department has been favourable and encouraging in every way. Religious and other organisations have since been subsidised to provide further hostels for Maori youths and girls in any kind of employment.

The Department of Maori Affairs last year expressed great concern that large numbers of Maori youths qualified and able to become apprentices could not do so. The Department rightly regards the apprenticeship movements as a positive scheme to raise the economic rehabilitation of the Maori people.

It would therefore be regrettable if a promising start were allowed to fall behind for lack of public help in its early stages. Probably in a year or two Maori economic and social progress will enable the race in time to look after its young people; but at present active European help is needed. Maori apprentices in general do very good work and are warmily praised by their employers. For many reasons, the community should recruit

The latest hostel for Maori apprentices to be opened is Rehua Hostel, 79 Springfield Avenue, Christchurch. The opening ceremony took place last April the day after the completion of the Maori Women's Welfare League Conference. Hostels have an important part to play at the present time, when further education for the young Maori is often impossible without them. (Christchurch Star-Sun Photograph.)

and train more of them.

This new desire of the people for higher education springs from the realisation that if they are to succeed in life they must equip themselves to compete in the European economy on equal terms. They have had sufficient experience to know that under-educated people cannot compete with people of greater education for the jobs in which greater education is looked on as necessary.

There is, therefore, a steady demand for more and more vocational training and up to last year 411 apprentices had been taken on throughout New Zealand under the Apprenticeship Act. Increasing numbers of Maori students are taking up the teaching service as a career. There are a number of private residential colleges for Maori students run by the different churches with the assistance of various welfare organisations.

Medicine, dentistry, teaching, agriculture, science and theology are greatly favoured while there is a trend in recent years towards a wider field, including the Arts, Science, Law and Fine Arts.

The numerous cases of Maoris who have succeeded as individual sheep or dairy farmers, who have graduated at the University, and who have qualified as skilled tradesmen indicate that there is much ground for optimism. There is however no room for complacency in the rapidly changing world of today. Progress must be the watch word of those desirous of ensuring to both European and Maori a stable future.

Material Conditions of Harmony

It is said that the Maori has as wide a range of ability as the European. Advantage should be taken of this natural aptitude by making sure that the Maori is granted opportunities in a variety of occupations more or less foreign to him at the moment. By doing this, gradually responsibility and a new attitude to work will be built up.

It might well be asked why the Maori should be expected or encouraged to attain European standards of work? The first answer is that it is in the national interest, and is “good business” for the community in general to see that the Maori people who make up one-fifteenth of the population become healthy and self-reliant members of the community. The second answer is that unless the material standards and even the ways of the Maori people approximate more closely to those of the Europeans, it may become increasingly difficult for two races whose material standards differ markedly to live together in harmony. This situation would be a denial of the Christian doctrine of the equality of man proclaimed two thousand years ago.

Since the beginning of the century the Maori has been rapidly assimilating the European ideas about work, and the period of prosperity of the last ten years has helped considerably in quickening the pace of progress. Much could be said about the Maoris innate ability for many roles in a modern community.

There is a feeling amongst many enlightened Europeans that because economic security is attainable in normal cases by the Maoris' own effort there should be no reason for any concern about the place of the Maori in a modern community. But is economic security the only answer to the burning question of the future of the Maori To me the answer is clearly “No”.

Two more important needs are spiritual security and social security. He must be made to feel that he is accepted as a full and valued member of society. The Churches must provide the Maori with spiritual security and they can help greatly in providing greater social security in the sense first described.

If the Maori is denied the normal opportunity of achieving a social position acceptable to him in the new society which the European is encouraging him to enter, he will seek this prestige in un usual ways. These are the usual ways which people of all races adopt to make up for their low status. The development of these undesirable traits is often a step towards delinquency or crime. All these help to bring about a certain amount of tension and strained relations between our two races.

My experience is that if the average European is made aware of the difficulties at present facing the Maori, he is always willing to help them to become a full and recognised partner in our social structure. What the European partner wants to know is how he can help. At the present time the best thing he can do is to encourage his Maori partner to find and feel his feet. He will need to help the young Maoris who are trying to enter the more advanced type of jobs by providing the openings which will enable this to be done.

The Urban Maori

While much has been accomplished by the country during the present century in improving the living conditions of the Maori people, western civilisation has also brought them the problem of having to face an unknown social and economic future. The Maori youth is uncertain of his ability to adjust himself to the new social habits of modern times. He is uncertain of the reception he will receive in the new environment of the modern community in which he is being sought to enter.

The Maoris realise that they have to conform to a way of life in the cities contrary to their upbringings. Because of economic reasons, many of them are now living in an environment so strange that most of them fail to understand its meaning. Knowing so little of the social habits of modern life, they have found it difficult to enter into the closely knit society of the European. This has

left a vacuum in their lives which can best be filled by the European helping to find the answer to this difficulty.

While young people are still in the process of breaking away from long-standing habits of life in their rural home communities, it is important that they should have some focus of social activity in the place in which they work. That focus can well be given through a Maori community centre or club, one feature of which can be the cultivation of Maori arts and crafts. By the use of activities with which young men and women are already familiar, or in which they can find some pride, it is possible to bring together those who would otherwise be lonely and homesick. These activities can give them an active interest and a regular leisure occupation. The leaders of such a centre will also look on it as an opportunity to maintain some form of discipline over the outside activities of the members. I know of no better way of explaining in definite terms those ideals of conduct required to strengthen their resistance to the temptations which often surround them. It helps to bridge the social gap which is the main difficulty facing these people. Such clubs, of which Ngati Poneke in Wellington is a shining example will have a part to play for many years to come in placing the Maori in a modern community.

A community centre in a large city provides a link with the past to these young people who often feel that they have lost their past in coming to a new environment to throw down fresh roots. A centre gives a new sense of community to those who now live in a place where there are no traditions, no strong kinship ties, and no established way of life. It brings to lonely young men and women new friendships and traditions which reach back to the past, and stretch forward to the new life they are beginning to develop for themselves. It organises activities for young people who have only pathetically dark and lonely streets to roam in before retiring to a dingy room to seek the sleep and rest needed for the next day's work.

It will be a place where they can entertain their European friends; where they can meet with each other and play games with each other until all the social adjustments are successfully made by the majority of Maoris, when the need for separate Maori community centres will no longer exist.

When this stage is reached. I am quietly confident that the powers of endurance and the high courage displayed by the Maori soldiers on Galiipoli and in Crete and North Africa will be equally as valuable to New Zealand and the British Commonwealth in the years of closer partnership that lie ahead. The future can be faced by them with hope if they as citizens of this fair country, along with their European friends resolve that people, goodwill and service will be their guiding principles. Such is the product of one hundred years of beneficent contact with the British rule.