MAORI SCHOOLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20982, 19 September 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

MAORI SCHOOLING.

LESSONS OF AN OLDEN TIME. BY MATANGA. Ihe New Zealand nominees for the next group of Rhodes Scholars include Hirine Te Mokai Wikiriwhi. Canterbury College sends him on to the Dominion selection committee. Whatever his fortune there, his nomination accords well with the aim of the far-seeing man who wished Oxford to serve widely tho Empire and the world with tho aid of the money he left for this purpose. His will, and especially its codicil, wherein the scholarships are made available beyond the bounds of the two English-speaking races, hold proof of the catholicity of his hope. A Maori, sharing British citizenship and an English college education, comes well within the scope. Cecil Rhodes, masterful as lie was wont to be, had a sincere regard for people of prowess, bo their colour what it might. Who, having heard of it, can forget his peace-making with the Matabele? " But that is another story." Let us pass from the giver to the gift and its recipient, from the great Empire-builder to this hewn stone on which the heirs of his purpose have an eye. Hirine Wikiriwhi comes from a very old and rich quarry. There are on him tho marks of masons' tools ol which his distant ancestry knew nothing, but the stuff in him is as good as any that. Cecil Rhodes would see in the edifice of his dreams, and it was long ago shaped somewhat for such use. For the old-time Maori was no untutored savage. He had a system of education. It was much more, as it was much less, than our three R.s. It was less because the Maori then had no written language. 110 ha»l thus no occasion to learn cither to read or to write. So go out of the comparison two of the three R.s. But he could count with a revealing exportness. He had a somewhat elaborato method—reckoning by units, by twos, by fives. At the coming of the white man he was able to adopt the decimal system with alacrity. Without any other adding machine than his fingers and toes—the lure of pakeha boots took away half of these appliances—he was also without svmbols for figures; yet he did tolerably well with what he had. Mentally Expert. As an aid in reckoning insubstantial things, such as the generations a genealogy, ho would proceed £>y turning down with his right hand the little finger of his left, then the next, and so on to the thumb for five. Then, of course, he started likewise on his right hand, and, if necessary, returned to the left—supposing his normal equipment of toes to have suffered loss. What time the pakeha boots got in the way, this da capo on the left became an accepted movement,. It may not be amiss to remember that such diligent finger-work is not yet outworn in lands long civilised. Like other decent folk, the Maori was given to using approximate numbers, a habit still a little exasperating to the punctilious stranger of an invading race seeking precise statistics of years and quantities; again, a pakeha weakness of quite frequent occurrence. _ For numbers up to one hundred and eighty lie had exact terms—quito a good schooling in elementary arithmetic. After that, using his 1 ' rau " for one hundred, he could count most numbers of any practical importance —having, of happy necessity, no call to think in a national debt of millions. His " mano," for one thousand, is thought to have been of loose use also for a countless or unreckoned number; once more, a refuge not despised by alien minds, as is seen in our " hundred and one " and other phrases. Whatever the limits of tho method, taken as a whole, it was highly serviceable, and Mr. Elsdon Best was clearly right in saying that " the Maori possessed a remarkably full and useful system for a barbaric folk." His youngsters, at all events, lacking blackboards, slates, account books, paper, had to become youthfully expert in mental arithmetic. Aids to Memory. He devised reckoning aids for certain purposes. Sometimes a knotted cord of dressed flax would serve, and there was the rakau whakapapa, a piece of wood from thirtv inches to three feet in length, one side of it bearing knobs with notches between. These devices, especially the second, were used as helps in perpetuating the tables of ancestry. The names associated with successive knobs had, pf course, to be learned from an expert m tribal chronicles and to be committed to memory bv repetition of the lessons given. The third of our R.'s had thus a good place in Maori schooling. And there were schools, real schools. No primary schools, it seems strange to say. Children were not plagued to learn a mass of mental facts, and there was no drilling of them in cohorts of conscripts to even thenmultiplication table. Nevertheless, they were taught to gain full possession of their hands and feet, and in this got entry to that full-orbed education of which a Rhodes Scholarship is hallmark par excellence. This instruction of sense and sinews, and consequently mental training, was a happy blending of play with work, the play instinct rightly predominating at the very youthful stage. Take the ancient cadet and territorial system—without too much system, by the way in initial phases. To have some sort of a ' school of arms " was a grim necessity for Maori youth aforetime. Watch a lesson—say, with taiaha_ or mere. An elderly man, like a retired colonel at an English school, is teaching thrust and parry. " Now, taniariki, you. must keep your eyes from roving when you face your enemy. Watch alertly two things. Take rnoro note of them than of his hand or weapon. One is his big foe, on his waewac whangai, his advanced foot. Just before he delivers his blow there will be a clinching downward of that toe. On your life, look for it. the other is the point of his leading shoulder. An instant before the blow comes, a tiny twitch there will tell it is coming. Look out!" Knowledge of Nature. Games to keep hand and eye in close partnership were handed down as sedulously to the small fry. And the young idea was early guided m the arts—of agriculture, of carving, and (especially among the girls) of dressing flax and weaving. '[here was imparted a working knowledge of all created things as the Maori understood them. Dieffenbach, in the 'forties, noted the fruits of this: "Plants, animals, stones, and so on, are designated by their own names, the knowledge of which may be said fo be common to them all." Nor should it >e forgotten that, tho children, with no expectation of their bringing " twopence extra for manners," were taught to behave—to have a salutary knowledge ol the manifold law of tapu, to learn and observe it with tremendous care. This was schooling indeed. Later, there was a going to school, but it was a higi school reallv, the school of sacred learning, where 'things of greatest moment were imparted. Its teacher was the tohunga—the initiate, adept, historian, lawgiver, physician, metaphysician.^ Out of that mould the maturing Maori of old days came, a scholar still in the great school of life, but ready to make the utmost use of all yet to bo learned for his own and his peoples gain. Has the pakeha done much better . Ibo answer is doubtful. One thing however, remains certain: a Rhodes Scholar from that sub-soil, though it be deep now beneath what the white man has spread upon if, would not be a product to excite wonder.