THE MAORI RACE
RISK OF EXTINCTION PAST. (Per Pross Association.) January 19. The question of instructing children in Maori schools in health matters was discussed at the conference of native school teachers to-day. Addresses were delivered by Dr. E. P. Ellison (Director of Maori Hygiene), Dr. Ada Paterson (Director of School Hygiene)., and Dr. Mildred Staley (representing the Child Welfare Council). Dr. Paterson said the work of the Department was restricted to a certain extent by the size of the available medical staff and it had not been found possible yet to make medical inspection of native school children. Part of the regular routine policy had been to visit the schools where advice on special problems was sought, and an endeavour was made to supply the teachers with literature on health matters. "It appears to me that any risk of extinction of the Mairo race is now a thing of the past," said Dr. E. P. Ellison (Director of Maori Hygiene) referring to the vital statistics quoted in the course of a review of the work of his division. Compared with the people of the Pacific Islands, Dr. Ellison said he found the Maoris difficult to help on account -of their strong prejudices fostered by half-educated natives, and in some cases by Europeans. Such prejudice had considerably hampered the measures for the control of typhoid fever by the innoculation method which had otherwise proved highly successful. Ther? had been a marked improvement : n recent years in the hygienic conditions at public native gatherings. There were exceptions, but the Maori generally was not nearly so careless in these matters as formerly. The real meaning of education should be to teach the children how to live, said Dr. Mildred Staley. In Maori schools, especially, the whole basis of health teaching should be to instil into the children a practical knowledge of how to manage the body, the most wonderful machine ever made. Such teaching was of far greater importance than cramming their minds with history, geography, and arithmetic.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AG19280120.2.69
Bibliographic details
Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 85, 20 January 1928, Page 7
Word Count
336THE MAORI RACE Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 85, 20 January 1928, Page 7
Using This Item
Ashburton Guardian Ltd is the copyright owner for the Ashburton Guardian. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Ashburton Guardian Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.