King's College is the first private school to make Maori compulsory for Year 9 and 10 students. Some good points made in this video include the fact that within New Zealand, there is greater need for understanding of the Maori culture, the Maori language and of the Treaty of Waitangi within the workforce. Having Maori as an official language will then equip the students, our future generation, with the knowledge they need for the real world.
Also, with some Maori students in the college, some with the help of scholarship schemes, they felt it was important for those students to understand the language and the culture.
I feel that if King's College, who have a small number of Maori students, 5% (Marae TV) can adopt Maori as a compulsory subject, I do not see why the rest of New Zealand schools can't as well. At least they are standing there as a model for the rest of New Zealand to see.
I have to disagree with you when you said we only use it when it suits us in A Nation's Identity. You gave the example of the headmaster blundering through a Maori speech and prizegivings and other such events. I experienced the same thing at my highschool. But I would hardly call that suiting the headmaster because he knows he isn't doing a very good job of it. And the majority of the people there can't even understand him, so it's hardly suiting anyone. Yet, he still uses it, why? Because it's a part of our culture and he wants to include that as a part of the celebrations. How can you say we only use it to suit us? It would hardly be wise to use Maori during a lesson in a normal high school unless it were the Maori language class.
ReplyDeleteI also want to point out that I went to a semi-Private, Catholic high school that was 97% Pakeha students and newly built. Yet before they even built a school hall or swimming pool or enough classrooms even, they built a Whare. And, it was compulsory from years 7-10 to learn Maori. From then on it was available as an option, as I think it should be, as all other languages were and other classes. We have a right to choose whether we continue with languages or choose something that is more focused on what we plan on doing in our future, our careers. High school students have limited options in a limited amount of space on their timetable, it's hard enough juggling everything else without having Maori language made compulsory.