A CIVILISING MISSION? NEW

A CIVILISING MISSION?: PERCEPTIONS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF THE NEW ZEALAND NATIVE SCHOOLS SYSTEM

EDITED BY JUDITH A. SIMON AND LINDA TUHIWAI SMITH

ISBN : 9781869402518 Publisher : Auckland University Press 2001 Dimensions : 226mm X 150mm X 24mm

IN NEW CONDITION – NEVER USED – BEEN IN STORAGE

For 100 years the school was often where Maori and European cultures met: it was a salient point of colonisation. Here the nineteenth-century state attempted to “civilise” the indigenous people. But the reality was complex, contradictory and variable.

Following on from Nga Kura Maori (AUP, 1998), this book is a more thorough and searching analysis of the Native Schools system in New Zealand which began in 1867.

While earlier accounts have relied on official documents, here the focus is on the two groups most intensely involved: the teachers and the pupils. Oral testimonies from teachers at Maori schools and from the children who attended them are the core of this important book.

Major issues explored include the learning experience and the curriculum, the handling of the Maori language, health, and changing attitudes towards assimilation, Vignettes and case studies highlight individual experience in all its richness and variety and show an educational system which was made up of personal encounters and particular lives.

Official perspectives are also provided and photographs and facsimiles of documents enhance the vivid sense of actual experience which the authors place at the centre of their study.