Myths of the Maori minority

Press, 11 May 1984, Page 12

Myths of the Maori minority

This is the last of two articles by JOHN GOULD, Professor Emeritus at Victoria University, in which he gives a personal assessment of the social and economic inequalities between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand. This article looks particularly at some of the fallacies that have made education a scapegoat for Maori underachievement. The first article was printed yesterday.

In the years immediately after World War 11, probably very few Maoris left school with School Certificate or any higher qualification. Among those leaving school in 1982, 23.7 per cent had at least three School Certificate passes or some higher qualification; a further 11.5 per cent had passes in one or two School Certificate subjects. In comparison with non-Maoris, the gap was wide, but it was closing. Among 1968 school leavers, 7.3 per cent of Maoris and 33 per cent of non-Maoris had obtained some qualification higher than School Certificate — a four-and-a-half-fold advantage in favour of the latter group. Fourteen years later the comparable figures were 18.4 per cent and 49.2 per cent respectively; the non-Maori advantage had narrowed to about two-and-a-half fold, and the Maori proportion with these higher qualifications had more than doubled. If the degree of Maori “failure” is overstated, the causes of it are often misunderstood. For instance, it was claimed in one of the recent hui on the educational system that Maoris “fail” because the School Certificate pass rates in subjects at which they are relatively good and in which they are interested — like home economics, woodwork, and Maori itself — are “set at” artificially low levels of around 40 per cent, whereas pass rates for “Pakeha” subjects like French and German are “set at” 75 per cent or more. Two things make this “explanation” quite inadequate, apart from the fact that it misunderstands why pass rates for various subjects differ. The first is that so few students offer these subjects that it wouldn’t make much difference if over-all pass rates were the same in all of them. Only one Maori candidate in nine offers home economics, only one in 13 woodwork; even for Maori, the entry rate is only one in five. As for French and German, they are offered by fewer than (respectively) one in 50 and one in 300 of non-Maori students. The plain truth is that relative pass rates are dominated by the “big” subjects which most students of all races offer — English (offered by more than 90 per cent both of Maoris and non-Maoris), mathematics (offered by 80 per cent of non-Maoris and 63 per cent of Maoris), science and geography. The second reason why this explanation is unsatisfactory is that, in any event, Maoris do not perform relatively well in several of the subjects which they favour. In home economics, for instance, the 1981 Maori pass rate was only 15.2 per cent, as against 42.9 per cent for non-Maoris. In woodwork, the figures were 16.9 per cent and 42.3 per cent respectively. Relative to non-Maori performance, Maori performance in both subjects was, in fact, substantially worse than in English or mathematics. It compared better, naturally enough, in Maori; but even here non-Maoris had a significantly

higher pass rate: 45.1 per cent as against 38.5 per cent for Maoris. Ironically, the subjects in which there was the smallest gap between Maori and non-Maori performances were subjects like French and German, doubtless because they are offered by only a small number of gifted and highly motivated students in either group. In “knocking” this explanation I am not writing as an apologist for the School Certificate examination. As an educationist, I should be glad to see the examination drastically modified or indeed abolished. What I am saying is that it is wrong, or at least grossly inadequate, to look here for the cause of Maori “failure.” • It is, of course, possible to argue that the educational system and school curricula are insufficiently sensitive to Maori cultural and linguistic needs. Even here there have been large changes in the post-war years. Remember that only 50 years ago many Maori leaders and parents supported the view that taha Maori should not be taught in the schools; this was the business of the home and community, and should properly be left to them. Sir Apirana Ngata wrote in 1930 to the Minister of Education: “Maori parents do not like their children being taught in Maori, even in the Maori schools, as they argue that the children are sent there to learn English and the ways of the English. The language (Maori) should be the language of the home...” Ngata was later to change his mind, as he realised that the home and community were increasingly falling down on the job. This is why there is a demand for more Maori language and taha Maori in the schools today — it is to rectify a failure, not of the schools, but of the Maori home and community. Why should Maori parents have failed in this? Why should the Maori language and culture need propping up at the taxpayer’s expense? And why should the other ethnic minorities not get — or apparently need — similar help? This last is an extremely important question which is not often enough asked. Maoris are guilty of arrogance in complaining of a monocultural society yet ignoring all minorities except themselves. The fact is that though Maoris have been increasing as a proportion of New Zealand’s total population, they have been declining as a proportion of the non-European population. Today, about two in every five non-Europeans are also non-Maori. Unfortunately there are no statistics of educational achievement, criminal offending, and the like, to allow us to

compare these various non-Euro-pean minorities. Yet this would provide a far more revealing insight into Maori problems than the usual comparisons between Maoris and non-Maoris. One would then be comparing the performance of various minority groups, all of whom have suffered at the hands of the European majority, or (in the case of refugees) at someone else’s hands, but who have reacted in different ways. In the absence of statistics, I can record only my impression — based on casual observation, reading the newspapers, and my own experience in teaching some members of these non-Maori minority groups — that for the most part they perform very well in their studies and have excellent records as regards respect for the law. Communities such as the New Zealand Indians and Chinese and the refugees from South-East Asia have sustained their own cultures without help from the State or the education system. Why, some would ask, do not the same comments hold for Maoris? This question brings us much closer to an understanding of Maori problems. There are perhaps four main factors. First, communities such as the Indians and Chinese in New Zealand remain close-knit, with relatively little intermarriage with other racial groups. Maoridom, by contrast, has been heavily “diluted” by generations of intermarriage with pakehas. Second, and most important, Maori migration to the towns, which in housing, health and employment brought so many advantages, had its negative side: the traditional pattern of community and family life of the rural Maori was destroyed. Migration to the towns was so massive that the proportion of Maoris living in country areas fell from 74.3 per cent in 1945 to 23.8 per cent in 1976. Moreover, Maori migration, like almost all migration, was predominantly a movement of young people, the elderly remaining behind. This fractured the “extended family” system typical of premigration Maoridom, under which grown-ups other than the biological parents — including grandparents, the siblings of the parents or the grandparents, and others — had typically played an important and sometimes dominant role in caring for and bringing up children. Most of the second generation of urban Maoris — those born to the young people who had themselves moved into the towns — have grown up or are growing up without the traditional support of the extended family, without com-

parable exposure to Maoritanga (and with all too much exposure to the seductive temptations of the city), and in the care of parents whose own grip on Maoritanga may have been weakened and who had, nevertheless, not gained much experience of the pakeha norm of two-generation family life. Accentuating the difficulties of child rearing which all this implied was the third factor: the much larger size of Maori families. Maori population has always been characterised by very high birth rates. In the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century this was counterbalanced by very high infant death rates, so that normally only two or three children survived to adult years. In the years after 1945, Maori infant death rates fell dramatically, that fall not being matched until recent years by a corresponding fall in the birth rate. As a consequence, Maori families have become typically much larger than pakeha families. The 1981 census suggests that half of all completed Maori families comprised six or more children, as against only one in 12 “European” families. Not only did this put an additional strain on the care and upbringing of Maori children, a process already weakened by migration, but it reduced Maori incomes relative to those of nonMaoris, there being so many more mouths to feed for each breadwinner and Maori mothers having so much less opportunity to take paid work than pakehas with fewer children. Finally, Maori under-achieve-ment in education is of course one factor — not, in my view, the only one — which has led to a very different pattern of Maori employment, with relatively few Maoris in the professions or in administrative or managerial positions, and many more in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs in industry, building and the transport sector. This helps to explain why Maori per capita incomes are little more than half those of pakehas. Moreover, there is clear evidence from many countries that children whose parents are poor or relatively unskilled — whatever their race — have far less chance of going on to tertiary education and professional careers or of advancing to top positions in business or the public service. The belief that New Zealand is in this respect different from other Western societies is a myth. Two things should be noted about this last factor. First, it has nothing to do with race or colour. Indeed, a vital point to grasp is that many so-called “Maori” problems have little to do with being Maori and nothing at all to do with

being brown-skinned: they are simply the problems of poor people everywhere. Second, there is a strong tendency for the pattern of educational under-achievement and dead-end jobs to be self-perpetuating through the generations, so that it needs a correspondingly strong and long-sustained effort to bring about any improvement. This explains why Maoris have made slower progress in education than in housing or health. It also leads to the pessimistic but, I believe, inescapable conclusion that there is no way of bringing about quick and dramatic improvement. Progress will continue to come, as it has done so far, only from patient efforts to improve' Maori achievement sustained over a long period. Maori leaders who advocate some “quick fix” solution like altering the pattern of the School Certificate examination are not only wrong, but are practising a cruel deception on their people. That is not to say that the more specific suggestions — for more taha Maori in school curricula, for example — do not deserve support. They do; and not only for what they would do to improve Maori self-esteem and confidence. Pakeha children will learn more about New Zealand, and develop more insight and tolerance in doing so, from studying Maoritanga than from projects on the Eskimo or the medieval English manor. Equally, the new thrusts to revive Maori values and support systems through the Tu Tangata programmes are excellent. Nevertheless, realism must prevail. However successful the kohanga reo may be, there is no chance of secondary and tertiary education being conducted bilingually in English and Maori. Not only are there not the teachers, there are not the textbooks either. Around the world, universities in many small countries and some large ones effectively have to use English as the medium of instruction because the resources for teaching at advanced levels are not available in the vernacular. Bilingual education, at least beyond primary school, would not only be segregated education — for one can hardly imagine most pakeha parents letting their children attempt it — but education which could not fit the children receiving it for life and work in a world of big business and high technology. Since World War 11, Maoris have made much progress towards equality with European New Zealanders. Fundamentally this has come about through a greater mixing of the races and through more equal access for every New Zealander to the benefits of economic growth and the provision of State services. To seek to accelerate that progress by now trying to build a system of separate facilities would be detrimental both to the interests of each race separately and to relations between them.