Ways to Help

Realising the importance of Maori education, the Commission devotes a whole chapter to it in this Report. It makes it clear that there is a very great effort needed now by all concerned with the education of our Maori children. There are so many of them who have the ability to do well at school but who, for a variety of reasons, are not successful. There are so many who, because they have not been able to get the most out of their education, must always stay in jobs that make use of only half their intelligence. The Commission makes twenty-three recommendations in connection with Maori education, all of which, it thinks, will help your children in one way or another.

While the report deals with the problems of teaching Maori, of providing scholarships big enough to meet the cost of boarding-schools, of meeting the needs of the pre-school child, most attention will probably be focused on the suggestion that the Department of Education should aim at handing over all Maori schools to Education Board control within the next ten years. At first sight this looks as if it will be a most unpopular suggestion. We all know how proud many settlements are of their Maori schools and how strongly they have opposed this change in the past. What the report proposes, however, is going to give far more than it takes away and deserves careful thought on the part of all Maori parents.

At the present time only one-child of the Maori children at primary schools attend the Maori schools which are administered by the Department of Education. The other two-thirds attend schools run by Education Boards, even though some of them have only Maori children on their rolls. The Commission proposes that all schools with more than a certain proportion of Maori children should be classed as ‘Maori Service’ schools, being given special assistance on a higher scale than Maori schools receive at present. These Maori Service schools would have extra money for library books, extra teachers to help children overcome reading difficulties and other specialists to guide the pupils in their school work and to advise parents how to help their children. This would apply to secondary schools as well as to primary.

‘A Special Need’

Probably some people will say that Maoris should be content with the same education that is available to everyone else. This is a shallow argument that supposes all children to be the same. What the schools try to do is to provide the very best education for all children, whether they are bright, dull or only average, whether they are blind, in hospital or perfectly healthy, whether they are Islanders, Pakehas or Maoris. The Commission says this, ‘that Maori education must become an area of special need, requiring special measures and, inevitably, increased expenditure. It (the Commission) believes that the Maori has as good a right to claim this from our community as have any other groups where children are handicapped through no fault of their own….’

The recognition of this special need is a good starting point. Not everyone will agree with the Commission's next step, the replacement of Maori schools under the Education Department with Maori Service schools under the Boards. In the writer's view, however, the gains should be far greater than the losses and should result in a far better educational deal for Maori children than they get at present.

‘New Zealand in Colour’, Vols. I & II
A. H. & A. W. Reed, each vol. 25s.

These big twin volumes contain well-printed colour photographs of New Zealand scenery, mostly beaches and lakes. Apart from a few distant views of holiday-makers, and one photo of some birds, almost the only sign of life they show is some of the Waihirere Maori Club, in Maori costume needless to say, performing in front of Poho o Rawiri in Gisborne. ‘New Zealand Scenery’ might have been a more accurate title; but certainly the photographs are very handsome.

Tales of Tamati
by Ian MacKay
Oswald Sealy Ltd., 18s.

These are home-spun, whimsical tales, of a rather old-fashioned kind; many readers will find them attractive, though other readers may get rather irritated at them.

They are ‘Maori’ stories, but Mr MacKay tells us that he has intermingled a considerable amount of fiction of his own invention. He also says that the tales are presented in a manner similar to that adopted by a Maori story-teller. This is a matter which readers will have to judge for themselves; of course, not all Maori story-tellers adopt the same manner.

The Dead Men of Eden
by V. Merle Grayland
Whitcombe & Tombs 12/6

The Eden in this detective novel is a new suburb being built on the outskirts of Auckland. There are quite a few dead men strewn around before the mysterious strangler is discovered, and the amateur sleuth who works it all out is a Maori, Hoani Mata.

Hoani isn't really keen on corpses, and likes an easy-going, enjoyable life better than an adventurous one. But no sooner does he come to Eden to help his brother Bob build a new house, than he finds sinister mysteries all around them. After a while he starts to put two and two together …

‘The Dead Men of Eden’ is unpretentiously written, but the background characters who live in this new suburb—young married couples trying to get a start, do-it-yourself experts, outdoor types, eccentrics and so on—are attractively presented and reasonably convincing; the same goes for Hoani and his brother. The book has humour as well as suspense, and it is interesting to read a detective story with a New Zealand setting. Altogether this is pleasant, easy reading.

—M.O.

From East Cape to Cape Egmont
by A. H. Reed
A. H. & A. W. Reed, 21s.

At 85 years of age A. H. Reed undertook a walk from New Zealand's extreme north to extreme south, writing a book about his travels called ‘From North Cape to Bluff’. Now he has made another expedition—from Te Araroa to Egmont, across the widest part of New Zealand. ‘From East Cape to Cape Egmont’ is an attractive account of some of the people, many of them Maori, whom he met on this long trek.

When Bishop Panapa re-dedicated the Poho o Kahungunu meeting house at Porangahau recently, he had a few sharp comments to make about education.
If he were Prime Minister of New Zealand, he told the large gathering, he would make a law against Maori mothers who take their sons out of school at the age of 15 and place them with shearing gangs. Any mother who did so, he said, ‘should be shot’. The Maori race was breeding like rabbits, but there was nothing wrong with that.
‘The thing is that we are a growing nation and combined with our European brothers what we need is education—first, second and last.’