Graham Adams details a number of media failures to provide the full story culminating with:
Perhaps the most egregious omissions, however, occurred during Maori Language Week, which ran from 13-19 September. The programme aims to encourage wider use of te reo, with relevant stories featuring heavily in most media outlets.
Several times over the week readers would have seen references to Maori being beaten for speaking te reo at school.
On Stuff, the Human Rights Commission’s chief executive, Rebecca Elvy, was reported saying: “State-sanctioned attempts to assimilate Māori into British culture through the removal of language have a long and documented history in Aotearoa. For more than 100 years Māori children were beaten and traumatised in Native Schools for speaking their reo.”
In the Guardian, former RNZ journalist Eva Corlett wrote: “When Aotearoa was colonised, Europeans actively set out to erase Māori language and culture. Schoolchildren were beaten for speaking it.”
On RNZ, former Labour Māori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels related his experience of being caned in the 1940s for speaking te reo — and asked the Queen to send Prince William to apologise for this injustice.
It is extremely rare for any journalist or editor to put this unfortunate practice of corporal punishment into a historical context. The sad fact is that caning or being strapped was an extremely common form of punishment for school children of any race until at least the 1970s. Qualifying misdemeanours could be as minor as having dirty shoes, an untidy sports locker or talking in class. Thrashings were so commonplace they were unremarkable.
But a much more significant omission is the fact that well-intentioned Pakeha and Māori alike during the late nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth believed teaching Māori children English as a priority was the best way of helping them prosper. Banning any Māori being spoken in schools — and punishing those found speaking it — was an inevitable extension of such a policy.
And it was, in fact, Maori leaders who pushed most energetically for English to be the only medium of instruction in Native Schools.
In 1871, newly elected MP Karaitiana Takamoana pointed out in Parliament that missionaries had been teaching children “for many years, and the children are not educated. They have only taught them in the Māori language. The whole of the Māoris in this island request that the government should give instructions that the Māoris should be taught in English only.”
A petition by Wi Te Hakiro and 336 others presented to the House of Representatives in 1876 recommended: ”There should not be a word of Māori allowed to be spoken in the school, and the master, his wife and children should be persons altogether ignorant of the Māori language.“
There were more, including one by Renata Kawepo and 790 others. They asked that: “The government should use every endeavour to have schools established throughout the colony, so that the Maori children may learn the English language, for by this they will be on the same footing as the Europeans, and will become acquainted with the means by which the Europeans have become great.”
Piri Ropata and 200 others also asked that Māori children be given the opportunity to be instructed only in English at school.
The great Sir Apirana Ngata — who served as Minister of Native Affairs, was ranked third in Cabinet and whose image graces our $50 note — was positively evangelical in his campaign in the 1920s and 1930s to have English given priority in Māori primary schools. He argued that proficiency in the English language was “the key with which to open the door to the sciences, the mechanised world, and many other callings”.
Furthermore, it was an approach endorsed by many Māori parents, who backed teachers disciplining their children for speaking te reo because they believed learning English was the path to success.
The essential countervailing fact that helps make sense of these campaigns is, of course, that te reo was widely spoken in homes and marae, where Ngata and other leaders believed it would continue to prosper. In short: Māori at home; English at school.
6 comments:
Robert Caro in his biography of LBJ wrote about how his first job was as a teacher to Mexican kids on the border. LBJ would beat them up if they ever spoke English at school. He said it was vital that they learned English to escape poverty
Irony
I attended Petone's Wilford Primary School during the 1950's. Every year one form 2 pupil who was considered worthy by the then Headmaster, was schooled in Te reo by the Headmaster. At the annual end of year prize giving, the chosen one gave a speech in Maori celebrating the school year. Always received with much applause, we though our school chum rather special.
So could one inquire as to who might be the image to follow, Sir Apirama Ngata , a very proud Maori leader who could see the real world his people needed to be a part of or a scribble faced wannabe with a penchant for Cowboy Hats and a strong desire to place his part Maori family members in servitude where only a Language that had a time nearly two hundred years ago and would be totally irrelevant in a modern world where digital devices rule. The UN began with only English and French then extended, On 24 June 1946 when the Security Council adopted its Provisional Rules of Procedure S/96, naming Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish as official languages later adding Arabic. Sheesh even German didn't make the cut.
As for corporal punishment as a college student mid 20th century I quickly worked out a couple of stripes on my arse was far preferable to detention or fatigues a quaintly named 40 minutes of labour in maintenance; window washing, Quadrangle sweeping, shingle raking etc. One minor thrashing came courtesy of a prefect taking my name for Cap on back of head, hands in pockets, chewing gum while celebrating Mighty Canterbury who among many notable scalps of that era, managed to defeat an All Black team on Lancaster Park when the mighty Don "The Boot" Clarke missed a fulltime penalty that would have saved their red faces. The adrenaline surge lasted until back at the College two hours later and the caning went unfelt.
One must never let the facts get in the way of an agenda!
The interesting thing is that the peddlers of this chestnut know that it was the Maori elders pushing the use of English. They get in first with "don't give us the hoary chestnut that it was at the behest of the Maori elders".
If you believe that Maori language is a precious taonga absolutely essential to Maori identity, then it’s just too cognitively dissonant to ever admit that your ancestors could ever have stopped speaking/not transmitted it voluntarily, and super convenient to blame someone else.
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