MAORI EDUCATION DEPARTMENT TO JUDGE SUGGESTIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 910, 1 March 1930, Page 9

MAORI EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT TO JUDGE SUGGESTIONS

MEETING MODERN NEEDS Officers of the Education Department are to give consideration to representations by the Akarana Maori Association concerning native educational questions. A REPORT to this effect has come to the association from the deputation which discussed the question with Mr. T. B. Strong, Director of Education, and an officer of the native division of the department, when they visited Auckland this week. Mr. Strong expressed sympathy with the views advanced by the association and assured the speakers, Mr. George Graham and Mr. James Rukutai. that consideration would be given. Proposals for the improvement of the native education system were formulated by the association following a lecture on Maori education by the secretary, Mr. Patrick Smyth. Mr. Smyth gave the address at the summer school for North Island teachers held recently at New Plymouth. The audience there was considerably impressed by certain aspects of the instruction of Maori children, and it was decided to consider possibilities of development. SECONDARY SCHOOLS One of the views advanced by the association, realising that most of the Maori population exists in Auckland Province, was the establishment of a system of secondary schools for natives. North Auckland. Waikato and the Bay of Plenty were the districts suggested. The association also desires close attention to vocational courses and judgment in defining specified lines of instruction for Maoris with reasonable prospects of future employment. Preservation of pure Maori language —an important question in these days of the ever-increasing use of European derivatives and deterioration of Maori as a particularly fine dialect of the Polynesian tongue—and possibilities for the employment of more qualified teachers of Maori extraction were other points suggested by the deputation. Education is a subject of immense importance to the Maoris of today in their desire to be fitted for the demands of modern life, in which the native customs are undermined.