(Maoris very often had to provide the land for the schools) they set up Maori schools all over the North Island, particularly in those most isolated areas. They staffed them with two teachers, a married couple, whose main function was to try and put hope into the Maori people, to bring health to the Maori children, and to teach them English. These village teachers were also the nurses—and they ran the post office. They became part of the tribe itself; well accepted. They were so isolated that very often they could only get their provisions in twice a year—by boat from Auckland or something like that. The work they did on the health side and the social side was tremendous. Many a time I've seen the children lined up with their heads back and their mouths open like cuckoos, while the teachers went down and poured in a teaspoonful of cod liver oil. The district nurses co-operated tremendously and they and the teachers had to fight all the skin diseases, impetigo and scabies and so on. But these teachers, most were up certificated—they knew nothing about teaching. And of course they tried to meet the requirements of the annual examination So it was all written work. So from the social and the health side the children got a lot; from the academic side they got nothing because the English they got had no meaning. Although they were Maori schools, did the schools adapt in any way to suit the Maori way of living? In no way at all. Maori children were not even allowed to speak Maori in the playground. If they did they would probably be punished. The purpose was quick assimilation—forget your Maori side and get our side. This was the recognised philosphy of the western world, because I went to a big Pacific conference in Honolulu in 1936 and there were educationalists working in the native schools in all these areas, from Japan, from the Philippines and other countries round the Pacific, and they all accepted the same thing. You see, social sciences were in their very beginning. We knew nothing of anthropology, we knew nothing of the importance of a culture, of the development of a personality. We imagined that you could drop a culture, pick up another one, just like you can buy a loaf of bead and then throw it away. Well, you just can't do that sort of thing; we know that now but we didn't know it then. Maori children would come to school, they'd stay there for five or six years trying to pick up a little bit of our English language and way of life. For five hours a day, five days a week, they would try to do that, but all the rest of the time they lived in their tribe in their homes, speaking Maori and living Maori and when they left their school they just undid the cloak of a little bit of English and dropped it on the ground. They were completely out of touch and completely unable to confront the civilisation that was overwhelming them. In your first year as an inspector, from 1929, what was the type of inspection you carried out? Well, I would go from Wellington, say to Opotiki the best way I could, and there I'd hire a horse—there might be two of us and we'd set off and we'd ride six or eight miles to the first school, Omarumutu. We'd throw our sleeping bags onto the verandah of the teachers—ninety-nine percent—didn't we'd stay with the teacher. Then we'd go over to the school and hope to get through the main part of the inspection in the morning. At the school there'd be all the people of the pa—men and women—all of them watching ‘Te Popi’ get on with the job. In those days the children themselves had to do all the cleaning and the school got paid for that. Well, the Chief, who would also be head of the school committee, would take me round the classrooms and look at every desk, and if there was a spot of ink on the desk he'd give those children what oh! I mean it just had to be perfect, and the floors were perfect; on that side the teachers did a marvellous job. We'd finish the inspection, then out to a hangi. Everybody was there. We'd have a wonderful time and then the speech-making