No, native schools did not ban te reo

 While considering Elizabeth Rata's recent Research Report into the History of New Zealand Education -- which I recommend, by the way -- I remembered a long-ago 'Cue Card' that appeared here on the topic of Education, contrasting liberal, conservative, and libertarian views on the subject:

The 'liberal' view [of education] is that all that is wrong with state education can be fixed with more money, better staff-student ratios, greater control of curriculum, more qualified teachers and more paperwork. But as more and more money spent on education has shown that more of the same just produces more and more failure.  

The view of conservatives is generally that public education needs to be made more efficient. With more efficiency, they say, 'delivery' of education will be better.

Libertarians however maintain that state education is all too efficient: it has been ruthlessly efficient at delivering the state’s chosen values. After generations of indoctrination at the knee of the state we now have several generations who are 'culturally safe' and politically correct -- ‘good citizens’ unable to use the brains they were born with, unthinkingly compliant in every respect with the values in which they've been totally immersed; braindead automatons to whom group-think is good and for forty-two percent of whom the reading of a bus timetable or the operation of a simple appliance is beyond them.

In previous decades the government's chosen values included banning the speaking of Maori in schools; speaking Maori in schools is fast becoming compulsory, along with the teaching of the ordained versions of Te Tiriti and the inculcation of the ideas of multiculturalism and the inferiority of western culture. Governments and their values change, but their use of their factory schools for indoctination doesn't.

The government's recently chosen values are "fairness, opportunity and security." We know that because [then-Prime Minister] Helen Clark said so. Orwell would have recognised these words, as he might the rigid orthodoxies of what passes for teacher training. "What happens in our schools is a very big part of shaping the future of New Zealand," says Ms Clark in the same speech, acknowledging that this is the way to make subjects out of citizens. Libertarians agree with Ms Clark's statement, which is precisely why we want governments away from the schools and away from control of curricula. 

Both Liberals and conservatives endorse state control of schools and of curricula, and they both seek to be the state. Libertarians don't.

They still don't.

But I made an error in the above 'Cue Card,' which Ms Rata's Report neatly corrects.

It is of course a historical fact that it's wasn't so much that the state banned the speaking of Māori in schools. What actually happened, as she reports, is that from George Grey's Education Ordinance of 1847 on, Māori were insisting that their children be taught in English, the lingua franca of the day. This is from Māori parents, Māori politicians, and Māori tribal leaders.

This is unsurprising. English was the entry into 19th century industrial technology – metallurgy for the new era of factories, rail, road and steamships, animal husbandry for livestock farming, and soil cultivation for grain and fruit production. Older crafts included leatherwork and blacksmithing. Combined with the English language, technological knowledge added to the already established Māori involvement in national and international business and trade.

The 1858 Native Schools Act continued the 1847 Ordinance's requirement for English language and industrial training. ...

The purpose of the Native village schools was to ensure that children would be bilingual: Māori at home and in the community and English acquired at school. English was a foreign language to many children so second language teaching methods and English content was used.

These were schools located in Māori villages, at the specific request of Māori elders, often with Māori parents attending classes as well, And in those "native schools" as they were called 

W. Rolleston, first inspector of Native Schools ... noted [in 1867] widespread dissatisfaction with the syllabus and with Māori as the language of instruction.

There was too much of the Bible taught, and too little of other subjects. They were taught moreover in their own language, whereas what they wished to learn was English.

The 1867 Native Schools Act directly addressed these concerns. Māori Members of Parliament supported implementing the Act. Karaitiana Takamoana (Eastern Maori) noted that the missionaries had been teaching the children –

“for many years, and the children are not educated. They have only taught them in the Maori language. The whole of the Maoris in this Island request that the Government should give instructions that the Maoris should be taught in English only”

Four more petitions to Parliament followed: In 1876 from Te Hakairo and 336 others; in 1877 from Renata Renata Kawepo and 790 others; and in 1877 from Riripi Ropata and 200 others. 

The schools gently prised education from the hands of missionaries into those of the state. They were funded by the taxpayer, with control of government funding and the school management transferred to village committees "at least 5 who are elected annually by parents of the children at the school." But above all:

The [Native Schools] Act required teacher competency, English language instruction, and syllabus quality:

The English language and the ordinary subjects of primary English education [said the Native Schools Act, 1867, S. 21] are taught by a competent teacher and that the instruction is carried on in the English language as far as practicable.

In short, while training Māori in English was one of the state's chosen values, it was at the express invitation of Māori parents, patriarchs, and politicians -- and was not to the exclusion of the Māori language itself.

* * * * 

Ms Rata discusses this topic and much more in a fascinating podcast interview with the NZ Initiative's Michael Johnston:

Justice at Ihumātao?

I'm no more familiar with the situation at Ihumātao than anyone else, and certainly no less so than the Prime Minister (but at least I've visited the place), but it strikes me that two things said by two minor party leaders over a decade ago explain what’s happening out in Ihumātao more than many things I’ve read in recent weeks.

Let me start by framing why those two comments are important, and why the site's history has some importance.

Depending on the Team you bat for, Pania Newton's protest at Ihumātao has been explained as simply a standoff between uppity Maori and the property rights of Fletcher's (that should be sorted out by the police); or an argument between Maori that has already been settled by the Waitangi Tribunal (that should be sorted by the police), or an argument about culturally valuable landscape (that could be settled by the Prime Minister visiting, holding hands with everyone, and then taking away the title to Fletcher's property).

None of those positions acknowledge the importance of the two comments that have been, unfortunately, either dismissed at the time, forgotten or never heard.

The first was by Richard Prebble, who (trying to make amends for earlier serious blunders)went around the country in the early 2000s pointing out that while the Waitangi process was making lawyers and iwi leaders rich -- a top table aristocracy he called The Browntable -- ordinary Maori "haven’t even got a schnapper" out of the process.

And he was right. The Waitangi process was set up by the odious Doug Graham et al to deliver loot to iwi leaders -- often in the name of injustices to which several other iwi had legitimate claims -- which Graham et al hoped would shut them up. Is it any wonder that many of those who never saw a schnapper are up in arms at being ignored? 

Because when you look at in this way, Doug Graham's Waitangi process was never about delivering justice, but just about buying people off with money in brown paper bags (a process that "Inmate Graham" would possibly be familiar with in his other context as a convicted fraudster). 

But Pania Newton and her colleagues are not interested in money in brown paper bags. What they want, or claim that they want, is justice.

And that's the point of the second comment, which came, as it happens, from me: in my role (as I was then) as Libertarianz leader. We Libertarianz pointed out that Doug Graham's Waitangi process was all about rewarding grievance. But never about delivering justice. Why would you expect justice from a process not designed to deliver it? From one delivered like a welfare cheque, designed simply to buy silence? 

As we Libertarianz argued, the process was flawed from the start: if Maori had legitimate claims, then they could and should be heard in mainstream courts so that justice could be done, and would be seen to be done. And if they didn't, there was no need for the Tribunal (or for Doug Graham).

Instead, since justice was done, if at all, only by accident, many feelings of injustice still remain.  And those feelings have burst out now at Ihumatao -- where, let's be fair, many of the issues Newton has raised have never been properly addressed in any court of law. 

And since those feelings and many like them remain right around the country, whatever the Prime Minister does now with Ihumātao will set a precedent, and ramp up (or down) expectations right around the country.

I doubt she is up to it. But it is perhaps appropriate that Ihumātao is the place that (perhaps) could set a precedent, for good or bad, because Ihumātao is also the place of first human settlement in these islands.

We mark such places very poorly. I harbour neither hope nor expectation, but it would be nice if something could happen in the coming weeks appropriate to that momentous arrival. Something, perhaps, that could also reflect the coming to these islands of justice, and the rule of law.