Transforming the bureacracy

Tu Tangata, Issue 18, 1 June 1984, Page 8

Transforming the bureacracy

T, ~r ,i • ~ m he task of the maori people in the . . , c , 1980 s is to transform bureauAl _ T .. , o • i cracies like the Justice and Social Welfare Department’s in the same way ~ , f c i ~ 17 j .. they have transformed the Education „ J . . j. . . Department, according to a maori ° eacler ’

Auckland District Maori Council chairman Ranginui Walker said this to delegates at a maori education development conference at Ngaruawahia’s Turangawaewae Marae in March. In a keynote address to the conference, Dr Walker said maori people had to transform more bureaucracies so they reflected the bicultural and multicultural nature of New Zealand society. “The transformation of the education system provides the model,” Dr Walker said. “It is an encouraging start, and indicates that minorities are capable of ordering their own destiny and maximising their own choices and life chances.” Earlier Dr Walker had described as “remarkable” the impact on the country’s education system of the appointment of maori language teachers, itinerant teachers of maori, and specialist advisers in maori education. He said “the value now placed on maori identity and culture in schools is

reflected in the growing pride of maori children and the widening respect for biculturalism in the general community-” Much of his address was taken up with tracing the history of maori education since the missionaries used it to convert the maori from “barbarism” to “civilisation”.

He cited examples which he indicated showed that the pakeha used education to subvert maori culture and impose pakeha monoculturalism on the country. Among them were: £ Governor George Grey’s 1847 Education Ordinance which provided government money for church schools to take children away from “the demoralising influences of their villages”. But Dr Walker said that by the late 1950 s it was realised that town and city schools were not equipped with teachers who could cope with the influx of maori children moving in from their traditional rural homelands. And with the declining numbers in the tribal homelands, their capacity to absorb the many maori school failures was reducing. Only one in 200 maori children were getting to the seventh form in 1960, compared with nearly 8 out of 200 pakeha. Maori representation at university was only one-eighth of what it should have been.

A number of efforts were made to improve matters in the 19605, but by the 1970 s it was realised they had had little effect in improving the number of qualified maori people. “The stage was set in the seventies for the acceptance of new strategies,” Dr Walker said. “Attention was drawn to the denial of maori identity as perhaps the most important single factor within the school situation which incapacitates a child’s ability to relate himself to school.” He recalled that growing maori assertiveness about their education problems “fortunately” coincided with the appointment of two liberal education ministers in succession Phil Amos in

1972 and Les Gandar in 1975. The latter “actually took the trouble to learn the maori language”. Dr Walker said the 1970 s were marked by rapid reforms in education which substantially reversed the former policies of assimilation. Teachers’ colleges set up maori studies courses, and native maori speakers were given oneyear teaching courses to train them as maori language teachers. By 1979, 171 secondary schools were teaching maori to 15,000 pupils, and 250 primary schools offered maori studies to 50,000 children. The challenge now was to carry that same reforming momentum into other areas of the bureaucracy, Dr Walker said.