‘Kiwitanga' is the aim

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32613, 22 May 1971, Page 18

‘Kiwitanga ' is the aim

A successful Maori is dignified, hospitable and tolerant, and has a good family life, the first fulltime lecturer in Maori studies to be appointed to Christchurch Teachers’ College, Mr Hone Taumaunu, said yesterday.

“The successful Maori doesn’t have to be an intellect, but he must perform a service to New Zealand,” he said.

Mr Taumaunu arrived in Kaiapoi this week after returning from three weeks in Australia with his wife on a Woolf Fisher Travelling Fellowship. There he studied work being done on teaching English to migrants.

A quiet, rather shy Maori with four young children, Mr Taumaunu has spent the last six years as senior secondary assistant at Tolaga Bay District High School, on the east coast of the North Island. There he adopted a “radical, very unconventional” method of teaching both Maori and English, and he was very proud of his results—his pupils gaining a 60 to 70 per cent pass rate in national examinations.

He regards his course at the secondary division of the Teachers’ College as twopronged—a straight academic study of Maori culture, and a practical involvement in teaching the Maori language. He will give top priority to the latter, hoping that his

students will become fully committed to learning the language; he hopes that many will leave fluent enough to teach Maori at junior levels.

Mr Taumaunu sees himself as the “symbolic bridge” between the Maori and European cultures. His ultimate aim is to help create an ideal state between the two cultures known as “Kiwitanga.” To achieve this will mean a cultural contribution from both the Maori and pakeha. It will involve a complete change of attitudes by the two races, whose members will have to lay "all their cards on the table” and give their honest opinions about each other.

“ ‘Kiwitanga’ will not be created by the romatic who adopts the attitude of ‘I love Maoris’ and who spouts a few words in Maori to prove it nor by the person who takes the computer approach to the problem and feels he has all the answers,” said Mr Taumaunu.

He believes that both Maori and pakeha have a lot to offer each other; indeed, over the past century they have already contributed in some measure to each other’s culture.

“New Zealanders are now a very hospitable people largely due to the influence of the Maori. On the other hand the Maori has adopted European, phrases in his speech.” Mr Taumaunu hopes that his students will graduate as "enlightened people” capable in future years of succeeding as principals in creating the ideal—“Kiwitanga." He said that he admired the work done by the principals of Hillary College, Auckland, and Whakatane High School, and hopes to mould his pupils on the same lines. There the two races work together in close harmony, which has given “warmth” to the school atmosphere. It was a pleasure to enter their classrooms, said Mr Taumaunu. Mr Taumaunu, who is aged 41, was bom at Whangara, 17 miles north of Gisborne. He attended the local Maori primary school, where he won a scholarship for secondary education at Te Aute College. Eventually he taught at Te Aute for seven years. During his icareer he has taught children from Melanesian, Tongan, Samoan, Maori, European and Rarotongan backgrounds.