HIGH-PERCHED HUKARERE (Continued from page 35)

Te Ao Hou, Summer 1953, Page 53

HIGH-PERCHED HUKARERE (Continued from page 35) But the girls who take School Certificate and those who go on into the Sixth Form to get their University Entrance, generally leave school to become nurses or teachers. They want very much to go back to work among their own people.’ As I talked to the girls themselves I found how widely scattered their homes are. Some of them belong to districts where the old arts are very strong, and the Maori language familiar; others to places where Maori is scarcely spoken at all. ‘One of the things we try to do,’ Miss Hunter said, ‘is to encourage Maori crafts, and to teach them all to be fluent in Maori. It is a set subject for School Certificate, and we share our Maori language teacher with Te Aute College.’ To encourage Maori arts and crafts in a school staffed almost exclusively with pakehas would seem rather difficult to an outside observer. I had met the staff, an English-woman, a Viennese who teaches needlework, a games mistress from Dublin, a number of New Zealanders. Each of them seemed particularly happy in her work at Hukarere, but not one of them had said a word about teaching taniko or tukutuku, or action songs. But when Horowai Ngarimu, the leader of the Maori Club, called her girls together for a lunch-hour practice, I saw for myself that all Miss Hunter needs to do to encourage Maori art is to give this club enough time, and the girls will teach each other. As they moved from one action song to another, I could see that at Hukarere everyone teaches what she knows in the old traditional way. Just before the afternoon work began the Sixth Formers sang the ancient chant Popo! for us, and the rest of the school stood quietly listening and learning. When they finished the chant I talked to Horowai and the other Sixth Formers. All four

of them intend to become teachers. Tilly Moeke, of Ruatoria, who is the grand-daughter of an old Hukarere girl, will go to Ardmore next year, with Ruth Paerata, of Taupo. Angenina Hamm, of Tuwharetoa, Taupo, has other plans. ‘I'm going to have a year's teaching first. I think I'll get more experience that way. Then I'll go on to Training College.’ Horowai Ngarimu, of Ruatoria, who was elected Head Prefect this year, is going to Wellington, to Training College and the University. She was very philosophical about her work with the Maori Club. ‘When they first come to school here lots of the girls have no idea how to do taniko or how to make pois. But they soon learn, even if some of them never learn to twirl their pois.’ I left the Sixth Form settling down to a history lesson, and went to see the recently-acquired laboratory and the new dormitories. Hukarere has a full programme. But the fact that it is a boarding-school helps, and so does the rather unusual division of the school year into two long terms. ‘Some of our girls live three days' journey from Napier,’ Miss Hunter told me as we examined the new bathrooms,’ and this two-term arrangement saves a lot of extra travelling time. Besides, we get through the year's work with less pressure. And we all enjoy a holiday in the winter, especially the girls whose homes are in the far north, where the weather is more reasonable in July than it is in Napier.’