MAORIS’ NEW MIGRATION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29383, 9 December 1960, Page 19

MAORIS’ NEW MIGRATION

fMove To South dsland Predicted

A prophecy that Maoris would Come to the South Island in increasing numbers during the next few decades was made at the Christchurch Girls’ High School break-up last night by Dr. K. J. Sheen, secretary to the Education Commission.

"It won’t be only power that grosses the strait. The islands will be linked together much igore closely in all sorts-of other Ways,” he said. Maori migration was one of these. ’The commission had completed arrangements for "quite a detailed examination” of Maori schools in four different districts, Ur. Sheen said. Maori education was “one of the most pressing problems” facing the commission, •it was “not an accident” that New Zealand was "just one of tile many advanced countries reassessing their systems of education at this time.” As material culture advanced, education had to advance to keep pace with it. Static schools were all right w static cultures, but in an adifencing civilisation the standards set had to be those of the future, dot of the past.

The commission had received Submissions from hundreds of rources. “We have listened to a million words already, and are threatened with a million more—quite besides the pile of written submissions,” Dr. Sheen said.