Practical Education for Maoris BY W. PARSONAGE Until 1930, the dominant feature of Maori education was literary—a concentration on reading and writing and learning from books. When a change of policy was made in 1930, the emphasis was changed to the ‘practical’ aspects of the curriculum—to those activities in which the child was encouraged to do things and in which there was no so much reliance on books. Woodwork, farm-work, gardening, cooking, housecraft, and other practical activities assumed greater importance in the Maori schools. Often these things were taught under far from ideal conditions, but a beginning was made on the provision of suitable facilities such as woodwork rooms, cookery rooms, laundries, bathrooms and simple farm buildings. In many cases small groups of girls were taught cookery and other aspects of housecraft in the teacher's home. In a few cases, the interest of the parents in these activities led to the building of model cottages. At three schools, cottages were built and furnished by the senior pupils themselves. The usual practice in the cottages was for a pair of girls to spend a week doing all the normal housekeeping duties. Frequently they invited their school friends or parents to share meals they had prepared. In woodwork, the boys learnt to handle tools and to produce useful articles for the home. At some schools the pupils built farm gates, troughs, stepladders, tables, cupboards and similar articles for sale to local residents. The farm projects included sheep rearing, pig breeding, cattle rearing, poultrykeeping and beekeeping, as well as the growing of selected crops and trees. Nor were the Maori crafts forgotten. In fact, the most significant change in 1930 was the introduction of a study of Maori arts and crafts which had previously been strictly excluded from the Maori schools. During the past twenty-five years there has been considerable progress in Maori education, not the least significant factor being the development of a balanced curriculum with due emphasis on both the practical and the academic aspects. This development has been along certain well defined lines. First has been a broadening of the conception of practical education. There was a tendency to interpret the term ‘practical’ as indicating that the Maori child was basically different from the pakeha child, and could benefit only from an education which was mainly of a manual character. Put more bluntly, this interpretation meant to some people that the Maori child did not have enough brains to benefit from the ordinary type of education, so had to have a simpler type through which he could be taught to do something practical which would make him a more or less useful citizen. During the years, this narrow view of ‘practical’ has rightly given way to a wider conception which recognises that Maori children possess the same range of innate abilities and aptitudes as the children of any other race, and that ‘practical’ activities can and should be devised to develop their intellectual abilities as well as their manual dexterity. The language disabilities under which some Maori children labour make this wider practical approach of even greater importance, in that it provides valuable experience which can assist the children to a better mastery of language and other basic skills. The next development has been in the provision of better facilities for practical education. Even though there has been such a heavy demand for additional classrooms over the past