MAORI GIRLHOOD.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13574, 4 December 1907, Page 7

MAORI GIRLHOOD.

Somo very sugKcslivo remarks by Mr H Hill, the well-known Inspector of Schools for IlawUc's H«y, appear in tho Poverty Bay J-loraltl. Ho holds that all efforts to elevate tho Maori will fail until wo pay more sympathetic attention to the training of their girls, who ought to be educated in tho public schools, under the same conditions and with th© samo scholarship privileges as their white sisters. Ho mentions specially two Maori girls at Waipiro, one a "brilliant" seventh standard girl, not to be surpassed in the district. "I am sorry we cannot bring her out. Such girls are thrown back among the Natives, and we can do nothing for them. Those girls should be sent to tho hospital to be trained as nurses, or taken into the telephone bureau to show tho Maoris the benefits to be derived from education among Europeans. Nothing is done for thorn, and the poor girls are left to themselves. You see women sitting about in a gardon with a spade and hoe, digging, while the men are lolling about doing nothing — the old system of savagory, when the women always had to do the hard work. A civilised community? How can you call it civilised when the woman has ho hope ? The only place where they are getting real improvement is at Nuhaka, where the Mormons take an interest in them. The missionaries have brought their wives out. Their method is simple. The women meet on Mondays and talk about the week's work, and what each is going to do amongst them. One is going to scrub and do house-cleaning, another would perhaps make clothes, another would bake, another would iron. I said, 'You have got the secret.' " The testimony of the teachers at such institutions, as Hukarere Maori Girls' School is that there is splendid material among the Native pupils. But how can a refined girl, unsupported and single-handed, struggle against the traditions of the kainga?