TEACHING THE MAORI

Shannon News, 18 May 1926, Page 4

TEACHING THE MAORI

A DIFFICULT TASK. CHILDREN FIND ENGLISH HARD SOME GENUINE "HOWLERS." ' Teachers in charge of native schools often experience the greatest difficulty in teaching Maori Children how to write and speak correctly in English. Especially is this so if the majority of the pupils live in a pah where > conversation is cariecl on in (the native tongue. Maori boys and girls love to recite poetry, but unless a teacher has more than ordinary patience and a great deal of enthusiasm, it is next to impossible to make th.em deliver their recitations in anything resembling the tone of voice proper to the poem. Nor do they emphasise the proper words. The effect is often ludicrous.

Instancing the difficulties which pakeha teachers have to overcome in teaching English in Maori schools, a gentleman who has long experience among the natives showed a "Star" representative some essays written by Maori children in Standard IV. The subject of those essays was the visit of a young lady from —■ —. One boy's effort read thus: —"A reliable looking woman came from a few weeks ago. Her name is Miss Smith, which came on two vehicles, car and train, also a - steamer and a launch. She is now here ,and was born in Invercargill in the south of South Island. In her age its about 20, Her hairs are cut and in barbed fashion or buster. She is a Scottish descent. Hor complexion is the same as Miss 's. Her journey is about '2 00 miles, and that shows she haa a long journey. When she landed at Blank Bay Mr. Brown and the faithful driver then brought her along. She have travelled in many parts of New Zealand and our teacher also She lives in a part of the world-wide British Empire called th e "gem of the Southern Seas." Another Maori child, in her essay on the lady's visit, wrote: "'Her hair, was something coloured like gold, and at the back of her hair was, shingled. Shingled is the latest stile that ladies carried in town. Miss Smith was a nice lady because we have seen him doing something good helping Miss Brown to sew the clothes that the children used to do." Another gem, better far than most English schoolboy "howlers," was provided by a Maori youth in Standard IV.: —"About a fourth night ago a visitor visits Miss Brown, and she visits very friendly. She lives in New Zealand, which is the gem of the Southern Seas, and she is a Scottish descent. She is u straight forward young woman, and she is not well when reaching here. She travels by four vehicles to come to sec her. friends. Miss Smith is her full title and she was born in Invercargill .and! living in now. Her ancestor was living in Scotland by the time thaft she was not born. Now here she is facing us. If she has. not come •here we don't know her. She is an industrious woman, and acts very women like. She does not force her mind on bad things, but in studying this great universe that we live in She came by a vehicle, and she came lately in the night. She is now indoors, and will be darting from us in. a few days." "Miss Smith's hairs was cut on the back, and it calls a shingled cut. There are lots of ways to cut your hair when we go in towns," wrote another. Maori maid. "Mis Smith and her friend walks smartly, quickly, alert, wisely and

straight," .volunteered a lad with a European name. "When we were milking, my mate saw Miss Brown and her friend was running at full speed, and I know /they ran away from a rotten horse." The teacher's preamble about the lady's antecedents and her means of transit was evidently too much for a Maori girl in Standard 111., who wrote that "Miss Smith has a nicelooking face and acts wisely and walk alert, lit h4s a Pakeha-colour-cd face, but she is not a Pakeha lady, it is called Scottish descent. It is born in Invercargill and it is came the.way from on a train and a launch and a boat and a car."

Although Maori children frequently found English a difficult subject .they were usually keen to learn ,and would express "themselves as well' as they know how when writing an essay, said the teacher. On one occasion he had thought of a novel subject for part of the English lesson. He wrote an advertisement on the blackboard. The children were told to write replies imagining that 'they were the owners of houses which were for sale. Many of the pupils elaborated the attractive features of their houses in a manner worthy of an adult with shrewd business instinctSj some mentioning the hours during which prospective buyers would be received. Ono lad, with a- fine touch of satire, offered for sale a mansion of sixty looms, built entirely of marble! After enumerating scores of details concerning the superlative appointments of the place, he concluded by stating that the centre of the house was occupied by a bank, full of money which would be thrown in free of charge to a suitable tenant. "I am making this stupendous offer because I am tired of .the gay life," he wrote. "I have no further use for the house or .the money, as I wish to go bushwhacking and find .out if the simple life is all that it is cracked up to be!"