THREE BOOKS FOR SCHOOLS

Te Ao Hou, July 1973, Page 57

THREE BOOKS FOR SCHOOLS reviewed by Ani H. N. Bosch THE MAORI—An action text for Social Studies by Barry Mitcalfe Illustrated by Christine Fielder Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., $2.65 Barry Mitcalfe, lecturer in Polynesian Studies at the Wellington Teachers' College has written The Maori to help schools develop Social Studies incorporating anthropological skills and insights. The ‘new’ Social Studies syllabus (currently being developed) for Forms I-IV specifically requires the study of social and cultural interaction and New Zealand's bi-racial society offers relevant material at first hand. In Chapter 10 page 93 it says, ‘the attitude of others helped to shape the child's attitude to himself.’ This I feel is a true summation of this book and all other books written about the Maori for the Maori by an author who is not ‘Maori’, and the following review is based on my own experiences, attitudes and prejudices. Content-wise, this book is overloaded. There is far too much information for a student to wade through to find what he needs for a specific study. In fact, I doubt if an average student in Form V, or Form VI could present a ‘balanced’ study of any phase of the Maori life after using this text book, let alone fully understand one of the many paths that the author has opened up. Barry tried to take a scientific or anthropological slant in this textbook and backed by such ‘respected authorities’ as Kenneth B. Cumberland, Dr Roger Duff, Sir Peter Buck to mention three of his resource references, I would say he succeeded. Reference materials scattered liberally throughout the book were plucked from a very wide field beginning on the archaeological sites through filed and categorised records, journals, letters and publications to history books. As I commented before, the content is loaded. As an average teacher, I would need many hours to sift through and find a single workable ‘unit of work’ and even then probably end up taking one of the other references mentioned in this text book. The illustrations, especially where they depict people, I simply do not like. They are too stilted and are perhaps even romanticised portraits of people engaged in physical labour, yet frozen by the artist's pen. The drawing on page 34 of a woman cleverly draped in a revealing ‘gown’ and the young man on page 88, framed by the fruits of the land and the storehouse are two I find particularly distasteful and everything Maori in me screams out against it. I am surprised that these as well as others were accepted by both the author and the publishers as worthy complements to such a textbook as ‘The Maori’. Finally, perhaps only an anthropology student could benefit from this book and I would be most interested to see how this gets on when it is freely available for use in the schools, but then remember, I too am guilty of being prejudiced.