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Native Schools.
There is a very general belief that by a course of education according to European standards the Maori will be enabled to avail himself of the benefits of civilisation, and so raise himself towards the level of the white population. To this end the Government has established a system of Native schools all over the country. These schools are, in fact, the forlorn hope of a large section of the community who have the interests of the Maori at heart. We shall see how this hope has been fulfilled.
Tried by an examination test the system has been successful enough. The attendance is generally satisfactory, and the average of attainment is wonderfully good, especially when we consider that—at the commencement, at least—the teaching has to be imparted in a language imperfectly understood by the pupils. In some subjects—e.g., drawing, mapping, singing, &c.—the average of proficiency is usually quite above that of the country district schools. Tried by another standard, however, the Native-school system is not so satisfactory. In the first place, the school is a “Native school”: the race-distinction is emphasized from the start, and carried on all through. In the next place, there is a good deal of time wasted that might be more profitably spent if a school career is to be considered as a preparation for adult-life. The teacher conscientiously tries to keep up the attendance, and endeavours to attract the children by means of treats, games, singing-classes, and so on, while these, naturally preferring the excitement of the playground and the society of their mates to the dreary monotony of the kainga, have little or no opportunity of practising the duties of the house or the cultivation.
From a hygienic point of view, also, the Native school is generally prejudicial to the welfare of its attendants. The children are often only half-fed and imprefectly clothed, and after walking perhaps a mile or two in the rain, or lounging about on the wet grass of the playground, they have to sit for hours shivering in their damp garments. As a natural consequence the germs of pulmonary troubles are nursed into growth, their general health is undermined, and when an epidemic of typhoid
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or measles attaks a settlement it finds its readiest victims among the children of the Native school.
Though there are, of course, individual exceptions, still the vast majority of the Maori scholars find little or no opportunity in adult life of making practical use of what they have learned. The Maori is handicapped from the start, and overweighted all through the race of life. His natural indolence and his love of change and excitement unfit him for the uninteresting monotony of steady effort, while his constitutional diffidence and his fear of putting himself in the wrong act as a bar to any real competition with the pakeha. Thus it is that numbers of young men with a sufficient educational equipment to fit them for employment in a lawyer's or a surveyor's office, or in a banking or mercantile establishement, are to be found cutting flax in swamp, acting as ostler or boots at a bush publichouse, or driving bullocks at starvation wages for a country storekeeper. Nor are the girls any more fortunate. In the early days, when white women were scarce, many a settler found an excellent wife in a Maori maiden—not only as a practical helpmate, but as a refined and intelligent companion. But as European population has increased the race prejudice has correspondingly asserted itself, and, no matter how capable and attractive a girl may now be, she has very little chance of rising in the social scale. Her bright early promise is unfulfilled. Hope is soon lost, and she gradually sinks back to the general level of the tribe.
Looking at the question in all its bearings, it must be admitted that the Native schools have not fulfilled the hopes that have been reposed in them. In the vast majority of case they have failed to bring the Maori into closer touch with what is best in the European civilisation. They have emphasized the racedistinction, and have deprived him of the opportunity of study and practice in many useful directions, while by the inevitable conditions that surround them they have largely contributed to his physical decay.