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made by the education committee which prepared the report, that ‘a change of administrative control and a change of name has not altered the fact that many Maori children have special needs requiring special provisions’.

‘The Board must be awake to recognizing where these special needs exist and must cope with them adequately. An active school committee which draws in Maori parents as members is an excellent safeguard by which Maori parents can ensure that the special needs of their children are in fact discovered and provided for.

This reference extends beyond the recognized disability of the Maori child in English language and literature, to that broad, rather vague and controversial concept—Maoritanga. Here is a specific need, and an important one. The director of the English Language Institute at Victoria University of Wellington made these two encouraging observations: ‘The child whose mother tongue is not English is basically a privileged child … investment in these children is not a regrettable duty but a profitable venture.’

Critics of this point of view rely on the argument that the language is dying if not already dead, and it is but a matter of time when Maori custom and practice will also disappear. This argument of course is not true. Maori is the language of the marae, the church, the daily language of the people of the East Coast, Northland and the Urewera; and for any Maori with aspirations of a place of prominence among his people he must be conversant in Maori.

If Maoritanga is to find its true place in the schools, it is surely the Maori community that must agitate to achieve this end, and places where such agitation pays off include, among others, the small, humble, and inconspicuous school committee.

When Samuel Marsden conducted the first Christian service in New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814, he had only the English Authorised Version of the Bible, and Ruatara, a Maori chief with whom he had struck up a friendship, acted as interpreter. The translation was imperfect, but it was the first step in the long task of producing the whole Moari Bible.

The Maori language, full of poetic imagery, expressed thoughts about God closely resembling those of the ancient Jews. Maori legends were told in language well suited to the expression of Christian thought, but it was only a spoken language.

The early missionaries reduced the language to writing, and set down its grammatical forms. Within six years their knowledge was sufficient to begin translation of the Bible, and the first part to be published was the Lord's prayer, in 1820. Then the Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Creation Story and the first chapter of St. John's Gospel were translated, and in 1827 these selections were sent to Sydney and produced in one volume.

The arrival in 1835 of William Colenso, the first missionary-printer, enabled books to be printed in New Zealand, and the first to appear was a 16-

Pictured at right is the stamp issued to mark the Maori Bible centenary. It shows Bishop Hadfield's Bible. still in use at the historic Rangiatea Church, Otaki, open at the book of Deuteronomy.