MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 December 1939, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

TEACH THE MAORI. . (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In the vicinity of a Maori Pa the teacher of the State School almost invariably lacks the two essentials of success in his approach to prospective Maori pupils. He must know their language, which naturally means some knowledge of their wishes in regard to what they consider the . first and only other essential of learning—iiow to live. The teacher must be a practical worker with a hand and heart, for building a home, making a kitchen garden, milking cows, or managing a team. Women teachers must be experts in cookery, malting clothes, and rearing a family Every Maori parent holds arithmetic. Euclid, astronomy, and foreign languages in utter contempt; but his iinlur.'il reticence and desire to please will not permit him to speak his mind. As boys in the country, 90 per cent of us can remember the pride and pleasure wo had in using the saw. chisel, plane and hammer on Saturdays. or our eagerness to ride bareback ponies, mill; our first cow. or kill and skin a sheep. These arts, in contrast with his own youthful practices of monotonous labour making and using primitive tools and weapons of wood and stone, were as miraculous as tlie first telephone, wireless, and electric light were to us. Even our technical schools are in the large centres of populaton. quite beyond the reach of Maori boys and girts, for whom the school buses are only to reach and teach theoretical learning. When will our educators awaken to the real need of a dying race'.'