Truth-telling surely obliges us to torpedo the oft-repeated assertion that 19th Century white settler governments wiped out the Maori language as part of a deliberate policy of enforced assimilation.
Hitler’s Big Lie technique: repeat a lie over and over until it becomes the ‘truth.’
The tripe you will read below is undoubtedly duplicated in educational institutions all over New Zealand.
Its purpose is to peddle the ‘brown man good, white man bad’ Critical Race Theory narrative to promote white guilt and brown anger.
Here’s the late, unlamented, Te Wānanga ō Aotearoa indoctrinator, ‘Matua Bruce’ Stewart [fine Scottish names those] on this matter:
“The government tried to kill te reo once. It’s only fair that they pay for you to sit here and get it back … This was done to you. They stole your language from you. But guess what? You can get it back.”
Meanwhile, back to reality.
In the 1870s, soon after the Native Schools system was established, prominent Maori worked through Parliament to emphasise the teaching of English in the schools.
A newly elected Maori Member of Parliament, Tomoana, sought legislation to ensure that Maori children were taught only in English.
Several petitions in a similar vein were also taken to Parliament by Maori.
One such petition in 1877 by Wi Te Hakiro and 336 others called for an amendment to the 1867 Native Schools Act which would require teachers in Native Schools to be ignorant of the Maori language and not permit the Maori language to be spoken at the school.
Some school committees advanced similar restrictions themselves. For example, the minutes of Waima School Committee show that as early as 1883 this school developed a policy forbidding both parents and children to speak in Maori.
The minutes recorded that: “[to] supplement the law forbidding the speaking of Maori in class, or in the school grounds in school hours, no person or parent can engage a child in speaking Maori, and in such cases, any child can inform on that person or parent to the Committee, who shall be empowered to fine that person or parent the sum of five shillings. If it is a matter of emergency or extreme importance, the child can be removed out of sight or hearing of other children before any communication takes place.”
These rules were generated and approved by the school committee, all Maori except for the teachers.
Ironically, the minutes from which the above quote was taken were written in Maori.
It was commonplace for such meetings to be held and recorded in Maori during this period.
By the early 20th Century, teachers had discovered they needed to do what actually worked in practice, and the Ministry of Education turned a blind eye to this in the interests of better outcomes for Maori children.
In the 1930s, my grandparents were a sole charge husband-wife teaching team in the Native Schools system.
I once asked my 1/8 Maori grandmother if it was -- as claimed by racial activists -- ever official policy for Maori children be beaten for speaking Maori in the classroom or the schoolyard.
"Not in our school," I was told. "Our children were coming from a home environment in which Maori was the first language and English infrequently spoken. The only way to bring these children into the learning environment was for the older children to use Maori with the younger ones to help them learn English."
Inspectors came by several times a year, frequently complimenting my grandparents on their teaching methods.
The push to eradicate the Maori language from the school environment came not from the wicked Pakeha, but from the Maori parents, who would buttonhole my grandparents at the school gate or out and about in the community with: "I hope you aren't letting those kids of mine talk Maori at school. I want them to learn right how to speak the English."
Sensible parents, since Maori had no words for the technological or economic concepts needed to get ahead in Te Ao Hou.
It was Maori elders who asked for Maori children to learn English and for them to be punished for speaking Maori at school, so the revisionist assertion that some kind of institutional racism sought to stamp out Maori language and culture doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Former CEO of the Maori Language Commission, Haami Piripi aka Sammy Phillips, is revealingly honest in an E-Tangata interview headed Still fighting the losing Te Reo battle:
“… the old people didn’t seem to have any commitment to passing on the reo to the next generation. They had the view that English was the bread and butter language and that we should be proficient in that. They saw it as the only path to success. It was, to their way of thinking, the language of status. In my view, they almost gave away their own reo. They couldn’t see the value in it.”
There you have it – straight from the horse’s mouth.
Where children were actually punished for speaking Maori at school, it must be pointed out that until the early 1980s, all children were physically disciplined for any perceived misdemeanour, even for a spelling mistake.
Nearly anyone I know over 50 remembers a teacher smacking them with a ruler, leather strap, or cane.
Skulking down the back of the class, nudging one another and sniggering at the disrespectful remarks your mates were making about the teacher, was guaranteed to get you the biff, whatever language you were using.
The fact that some students were doing this in Māori—which most teachers didn’t understand —simply added an additional layer of insolence.
In 1962, visiting AFS scholar, David Ausebel, observed: “The future of the Maori language and culture lies not with the intervening European, but in the Maori home, and in the habits and usages of the Maori parents.”
Maori are great dissidents. Had Maori-speaking parents wanted to teach their children the Maori language, they would have done so.
Nobody could have stopped this from taking place at home, even if the children were forbidden to speak Maori at school.
Succeeding generations of Maori parents chose (for very valid reasons) not to teach the Maori language to their children outside the school gate, so demands that everyone else pay for its revival are difficult to support.
Nor should everyone else’s children now be forced to learn Maori at school.
While the Maori language and culture may be a very great treasure to those who value it, to those who do not, it is not.
Do it in your own time, and on your own dime.
Peter Hemmingson is a New Zealander of multiple ethnic origins, who believes in a single standard of citizenship for all.
Its purpose is to peddle the ‘brown man good, white man bad’ Critical Race Theory narrative to promote white guilt and brown anger.
Here’s the late, unlamented, Te Wānanga ō Aotearoa indoctrinator, ‘Matua Bruce’ Stewart [fine Scottish names those] on this matter:
“The government tried to kill te reo once. It’s only fair that they pay for you to sit here and get it back … This was done to you. They stole your language from you. But guess what? You can get it back.”
Meanwhile, back to reality.
In the 1870s, soon after the Native Schools system was established, prominent Maori worked through Parliament to emphasise the teaching of English in the schools.
A newly elected Maori Member of Parliament, Tomoana, sought legislation to ensure that Maori children were taught only in English.
Several petitions in a similar vein were also taken to Parliament by Maori.
One such petition in 1877 by Wi Te Hakiro and 336 others called for an amendment to the 1867 Native Schools Act which would require teachers in Native Schools to be ignorant of the Maori language and not permit the Maori language to be spoken at the school.
Some school committees advanced similar restrictions themselves. For example, the minutes of Waima School Committee show that as early as 1883 this school developed a policy forbidding both parents and children to speak in Maori.
The minutes recorded that: “[to] supplement the law forbidding the speaking of Maori in class, or in the school grounds in school hours, no person or parent can engage a child in speaking Maori, and in such cases, any child can inform on that person or parent to the Committee, who shall be empowered to fine that person or parent the sum of five shillings. If it is a matter of emergency or extreme importance, the child can be removed out of sight or hearing of other children before any communication takes place.”
These rules were generated and approved by the school committee, all Maori except for the teachers.
Ironically, the minutes from which the above quote was taken were written in Maori.
It was commonplace for such meetings to be held and recorded in Maori during this period.
By the early 20th Century, teachers had discovered they needed to do what actually worked in practice, and the Ministry of Education turned a blind eye to this in the interests of better outcomes for Maori children.
In the 1930s, my grandparents were a sole charge husband-wife teaching team in the Native Schools system.
I once asked my 1/8 Maori grandmother if it was -- as claimed by racial activists -- ever official policy for Maori children be beaten for speaking Maori in the classroom or the schoolyard.
"Not in our school," I was told. "Our children were coming from a home environment in which Maori was the first language and English infrequently spoken. The only way to bring these children into the learning environment was for the older children to use Maori with the younger ones to help them learn English."
Inspectors came by several times a year, frequently complimenting my grandparents on their teaching methods.
The push to eradicate the Maori language from the school environment came not from the wicked Pakeha, but from the Maori parents, who would buttonhole my grandparents at the school gate or out and about in the community with: "I hope you aren't letting those kids of mine talk Maori at school. I want them to learn right how to speak the English."
Sensible parents, since Maori had no words for the technological or economic concepts needed to get ahead in Te Ao Hou.
It was Maori elders who asked for Maori children to learn English and for them to be punished for speaking Maori at school, so the revisionist assertion that some kind of institutional racism sought to stamp out Maori language and culture doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Former CEO of the Maori Language Commission, Haami Piripi aka Sammy Phillips, is revealingly honest in an E-Tangata interview headed Still fighting the losing Te Reo battle:
“… the old people didn’t seem to have any commitment to passing on the reo to the next generation. They had the view that English was the bread and butter language and that we should be proficient in that. They saw it as the only path to success. It was, to their way of thinking, the language of status. In my view, they almost gave away their own reo. They couldn’t see the value in it.”
There you have it – straight from the horse’s mouth.
Where children were actually punished for speaking Maori at school, it must be pointed out that until the early 1980s, all children were physically disciplined for any perceived misdemeanour, even for a spelling mistake.
Nearly anyone I know over 50 remembers a teacher smacking them with a ruler, leather strap, or cane.
Skulking down the back of the class, nudging one another and sniggering at the disrespectful remarks your mates were making about the teacher, was guaranteed to get you the biff, whatever language you were using.
The fact that some students were doing this in Māori—which most teachers didn’t understand —simply added an additional layer of insolence.
In 1962, visiting AFS scholar, David Ausebel, observed: “The future of the Maori language and culture lies not with the intervening European, but in the Maori home, and in the habits and usages of the Maori parents.”
Maori are great dissidents. Had Maori-speaking parents wanted to teach their children the Maori language, they would have done so.
Nobody could have stopped this from taking place at home, even if the children were forbidden to speak Maori at school.
Succeeding generations of Maori parents chose (for very valid reasons) not to teach the Maori language to their children outside the school gate, so demands that everyone else pay for its revival are difficult to support.
Nor should everyone else’s children now be forced to learn Maori at school.
While the Maori language and culture may be a very great treasure to those who value it, to those who do not, it is not.
Do it in your own time, and on your own dime.
Peter Hemmingson is a New Zealander of multiple ethnic origins, who believes in a single standard of citizenship for all.
8 comments:
For anyone who knows New Zealand history we know this to be a truth.
Why is it then that we live in a nation where lies seem more palitable than truth?
Of course anyone with a modicum of critical thinking knows the reason.
Our government, our media and our academic treaty(un)wise elites do not like the truth because there is no money in that truth.
Factual coverge of this topic in the new syllabus is highly appropriate. Understanding will thus become so general the need to labour the point will become unnecessary......
Wise Maori elders saw the English language as key to the future prosperity of their families and tribes back then, just as it supports the future prosperity of our nation now. English is the language of international business. We are a small trading nation at the bottom of the world. Our proficiency in English is highly advantageous to us. We should cherish it. Our current progression towards adopting a pidgin patois will not be help us earn a living as a global trading nation.
this is pure vsbs!
i can't think of any other ethnicity expecting their kids to be taught the native language in school - they already do that at home. what's the return of investment in sending your kid to school if they learn the same stuff you are already teaching them at home.
this should also be the reason why religion, sexuality & moral sciences should be kept out of school curriculum. parents are responsible for teaching that at home.
An elderly Maori gentleman told me some 60 years ago that Maori language that was spoken then was not the same as that which was spoken in 1840. He would be horrified to hear it now! Try landing an aircraft using the Maori language or docking a ship. Language is a means of communication and I say all hail to those who want to learn it, but not at school where they should be taught to be more fluent in English. A message to the superior Rawiri Waititi: Wonderful is the works of a wheelbarrow!
Kevan
Hi Anonymous at 3.16. If the children possess reasonable IQ, te reo will stand them in a great position for one of the many (well paid) te reo teaching or (well paid) consultation or maori promotion appointments in a myriad govt and council organisations. Or teaching maori studies with lots of matauranga and other dreamed up hogwash etc... Why spend time toiling away on coventional subjects preparing to be productive in the demanding real world.
adv
The Maori language can never now be lost. A language is only lost when no-one knows how to speak it, write it or translate it into a current language. There is now enough written and video recorded material that this can never happen.
I spent several years learning Latin at school. I am pretty sure hardly no one now speaks this language, yet it did me good. Same goes for any language studied and (partially, probably) learned at school or elsewhere - it is an intellectuai exercise of value. I also studied algebra and geometry but never use these in daily life. Maori parents quite reasonably and correctly saw that the ability to speak and understand English in the new ao pakeha would be essential. But that does not diminish the value of the other language. The heat,fury and unreasonabness of so many objectors calls into question their motivation.
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.