Consequences for Education

Te Ao Hou, December 1963, Page 12

Consequences for Education In this paper I shall discuss the consequences for education of this rapid expansion. Let me say at the outset that this will not be an essay in social science, dimensioned by statistics and boundaried by the guide posts of research. It is a blunt statement of my own views, arrived at I admit with some regard for evidence, but also slanted by what I consider to be the good life, and the well ordered state. My concern is the social pressures which come to bear on the Maori child and how schools are involved in them. We have reached our first clue then in the hunt for consequences, the fact of a relatively large migrant population concentrated largely in the more decrepit areas of a smallish town. Already an almost classic situation is beginning to arise, one in which the older immigrants are being displaced, with attendant conflicts, by the newer people of alien culture and attitudes. This is the experience of cities such as New York, Chicago and London, and it is now, on a smaller scale, to be our experience. It is caused not merely by the movement of Polynesians, but by the movement of the whole of New Zealand's population. Let us look for a moment at the figures so far published from the Census of 1961. In the 27 statistical areas included in Auckland city, the total Maori population increased from 5,600 in 1956 to 8,009 in 1961, an increase of 75%. Almost all areas showed an increase, the inner city accounting for 5,230. There was a decrease in Auckland central, due no doubt to re-development, and there were falls in two other areas, Mission Bay and Kohimarama. Even the white fastnesses of Remuera and St. Heliers were breached, the Maori population of the former increasing from 38 to 89 and of the latter from 6 to 18. By way of contrast Wellington's total for 1961 was 2,620. This startling increase in the Maori population, then, is exclusively part of Auckland's development. Because of the predominant youthfulness of this population and the high birth rate the result has been a general increase in school population.