Title: Under Pressure to Integrate: The Situation of Maoris in 1962

Author: Bill Pearson

In: Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays

Publication details: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Paul Millar

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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The currency of the Maori language cannot be accurately described. A recent Education Department 'survey', consisting of an on-the-spot questionnaire to headmasters of Maori schools, was worthless. On the East Coast, in the Urewera and in the Far North, Maori is spoken in the homes. There are districts where the children know no Maori. One hears of children in Maori-speaking areas who resist using Maori and answer their parents in English. In the cities there is the pressure of courtesy, by which Maoris in the company of a pakeha, use his language—and there is usually a pakeha around. No doubt, if it is indicative of a trend, this is pleasing to those pakehas who look on a non-Indo-European language spoken by fewer than 170,000 people as an anachronism and an irritating disconformity; one suspects that educational policy-makers would be happier if the language did not exist. The Pope policy for native schools, followed from 1877 to 1930, assumed that in order to prevent the disappearance of the race, rapid acculturation was necessary and only English must be used: the Ball policy from 1930 admitted some elements of Maori culture, but not the language as a teaching medium, on the grounds that Maori children should not speak inferior English.¹⁴

But after 85 years of compulsory English Maori parents and children often still speak a dialect of English with a limited vocabulary and range of constructions. And many teachers implemented official policy by strapping children if they spoke Maori—a thing for which a well-known kuia (old woman: a term of respect) told me she would never forgive my race. When they first come to school some children are taught in a language they either do not know or only partly know. In English-speaking districts the kind of English spoken is not standard New Zealand English. The question arises of the psychological effects of linguistic frustration: of not having a language in which to express one's most complex thoughts or most intimate feelings. And it is arguable that there is a connection between self-respect and knowledge of a language which expresses one's ethnic traditions. Language like land would seem to be an anchor against demoralisation. But until some reliable research is done, no one can accurately say how widely, or by what age-groups, Maori is spoken.

There have been, both at young leaders' and students' conferences and from the Gisborne Jaycees, a number of recommendations that Maori should be taught in schools. So far as one can distil the common agreement of all these motions, it would be that Maori should be available at all secondary schools with a good proportion of Maoris, and that Maori studies and correct pronunciation of place-names should be compulsory at all primary schools. A stronger proposal was that Maori language should be compulsory for all Maori pupils and optional for pakehas. The difficulty page 119 is to find the teachers. For the last few years, Maori studies has been taught at two training colleges, but not language: yet as far back as 1939 this very request was made by young leaders.

Desirable as these proposals are they will not transmit the language as a current medium of communication. Only Maori parents can do that. Frequently enough one speaks at morning-tea to a delegate who has supported such a proposal and finds that he and his wife use English at home. But whatever the Maori people decide to do with their language, we should at least not hamper their freedom in deciding.