Kohanga environment lacking

Tu Tangata, Issue 19, 1 August 1984, Page 8

Kohanga environment lacking

Henare Reriti, 5, was one of the star students at his Waiwhetu kohanga reo. When he left to go to school at the beginning of the year he had a maori vocabulary estimated at 1000 words and could converse easily in maori and english. His mother, Parekohai, a fluent speaker and supervisor at the language nursery, had seen him absorb the language which her generation was punished for speaking in less than two years. Now she says, he is beginning to lose it. ‘I regret sending him to school,’ Parekohai said. ‘He says he won’t speak maori at school. The other kids tease him.’ She brings Henare back to the language nursery after school and speaks maori to him at home. But she says it is not enough. She agrees with the other language nursery supervisors Makere and Wikitoria Ratu that the school is trying to help. But she says the level of maori of the

teachers, at best, is only at the ‘kia ora’ and ‘tena koe’ stage which the language nursery graduates have long since passed. The children are used to talking maori to their ‘nannies’ and each other for at least 40 hours a week. The parents stress that they do not want the school to provide maori lessons from books they want some of their children’s classes to be taken in maori a vitally important distinction. In departmental jargon they want maori language to be the medium of instruction for one to three hours every day. They want the school to employ a fluent maori speaker who would use that language to take all the bilingual children and any others for suitable scheduled activities like morning talks, nature study or physical education. And they say that all the ‘kohanga kids’ must be kept together another eight are due to go to school by the end of the year as they will feel confident enough to converse in maori in the classroom and playground.

KOHANGA REO