Kei roto i te whare kura

Tu Tangata, Issue 14, 1 October 1983, Page 18

Kei roto i te whare kura

Story by Charlton Clark Photos by Bill McNicol

“Haere kite tiki turn.” A small boy scampers out the classroom door and returns moments later with chairs for the visitors. The children become noisy and restless. John “Barna” Heremia raps out another instruction in rapid Maori. The noise stops and small hands suddenly appear clasped on small heads. Although Barna’s standard three and four pupils prefer to speak Engish among themselves, there is no doubt after spending a morning in his classroom that they know what’s being said when he speaks in Maori and that includes the minority of pakeha children. “He aha tenei ra?” White hands shoot up as fast as brown ones. A pupil correctly tells him that it’s “Te rua tekau ma whitu o Hurae” (July 27). Throughout the session, Barna moves easily and naturally from English to Maori and back again. The children take it all in their stride, including little Rachel, who has only been at the school 18 months. She is English, and her father came out to work on the nearby Huntly power

station. “He aha te kupu pakeha mo ‘Ko Potatau te kingi tuatahi’?” A forest of hands shoots up, and a little girl tells Barna it means “Potatau is the first king.” Potatau was the first king, he corrects her, illustrating a point that sometimes the tense of a statement in Maori must be taken from the context, rather than from the form of the verb. But perhaps more importantly, such teacher-pupil exchanges illustrate another point about Rakaumanga’s teaching philosophy Maori things matter as much as pakeha things in the education of young New Zealanders. King Potatau matters as much as Captain Cook. New Zealand’s history is recognised as having begun long before Abel Tasman discovered it in 1649. In this way, Maori children are helped to grow up feeling equal to their pakeha peers, and proud to be Maori New Zealanders. Later, something about mist and fog comes up in the lesson. “He aha to kupu Maori mo ‘foggy’,” Barna asks. No one can remember. He

reminds them that it appears in a song they like to sing. Blank faces still. “It’s pukohukohu,” he reminds them. The children’s concentration is beginning to flag, so Barna pulls out his guitar and they take a break by singing the song in question. It’s a slow, beautiful tune, and the children sing the words with a pronunciation which would put most radio and television announcers to shame. His pupils’ ability with the Maori language gives Mr Heremia a useful tool with which to boost their confidence when they find the going tough. “The kids here are all experts at Maori spelling,” he says. “Maori is a phonetic language, so they find it easier to learn its spelling than English, so that gives them their success. So what we do when we get stuck on difficult English spelling is we give them some spelling work in Maori, and they succeed with that, and success breeds success.” As for the way he switches frequently from Maori to English and back again sometimes from one sentence to another Barna ex-

plains that his pupils are not yet sufficiently competent in Maori to be able to cope with it all the time. But he expects that will start to change from next year when the first children from nearby Waahi Marae’s kohanga reo will have Maori as their mother tongue as much as English. “Kaua e korero pakeha.” Things are a little different over in Chris Lowman’s form one and two classroom, where he reminds his pupils that he expects them to speak Maori in class, not English. Chris may be a pakeha English born at that but his commitment to the Maori language is impressive. “If we do anything less than use the language 100 per cent of the time, the language will die in a generation,” he says. “What we are doing here is a salvage operation we’re dragging Maori out of the grave.” But he would disagree with anyone who accused him of neglecting the children’s English language development that is still a vital part of the curriculum. He points out that the French, Germans and Spanish don’t deem it necessary to teach their children science, maths and social studies in English. If their languages are adequate vehicles for imparting knowledge, then so is Maori, he reasons. And he says it has been shown that children who grow up bi-lingual prove to be better communicators than mono-lingual children. It’s just not true, he says, that children’s ability in

English will suffer if they are brought up to speak both English and Maori. When we arrived in Chris’s classroom, one of his pupils was on her feet fielding questions in Maori from her classmates about a “motoka miharo”. “He aha nga kupu pakeha mo te motoka miharo?” Chris asks the class. “He flash car,” several voices respond, amid laughter. The oral practice ranges through topics like a trip to the shop and a journey to Ahitereiria (Australia). The pupils show considerable ability with the language, and seem to enjoy the class. They are eager to participate, and the lesson is frequently punctuated with laughter. Later Chris gathers the class around him at a desk and he gives them a lesson in Maori vocabulary and grammar using the “rakau” method, in which coloured plastic sticks are used to illustrate what is being taught, and not a word of English is used. Chris says he does not teach his pupils anything in Maori which they do not already know in English. But when the kohanga reo children start moving into the school from next year, that situation will reverse, he says. Then, their teachers will not be teaching them anything in English which they do not already know in Maori. To bring the language alive for his pupils, Chris gets them to write and act out little plays which reflect reallife situations in which they can speak

Maori. For example, they may write a play representing a trip to the shop, which they will practise.

Then Mr Lowman may invite a Maori-speaking shopkeeper to visit the class, and they can practise with him or her what they have learnt. Hopefully, they will then go out and use it when they go to the shop.

For Chris, Maori is more than just a job. He has become so competent that he uses it quite comfortably in casual conversation. At the school, he and Barna are just as likely to speak to each other in Maori as in English. He has learnt it through university and other courses, and he spends a lot of time learning it with the help of the kaumatua of Waahi Marae. Also, his wife is a Maori.

For Barna, it’s his first language. He grew up in Ruatoki, speaking Maori from childhood, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing for him being Tuhoe, he has to watch that he doesn’t teach his pupils the Tuhoe dialect. They are predominantly Waikato children, and their parents have made it clear that the Waikato dialect is important to them.