Sharon Harvey: The question of compulsory te reo Māori in schools

Tuesday, 11 September 2018

A parade to mark the start of Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori - Māori Language Week - was held in Wellington.

OPINION: This week we celebrate the Māori language for the 45th year since the first Māori language week in 1975.

Friday, September 14 is Māori Language Day and the 48th anniversary of the day the Māori language petition was presented to Parliament. It was initiated by the Māori activist group, Ngā Tamatoa, and the Te Reo Māori Society and carried 30,000 signatures calling for te reo Māori to be taught in New Zealand schools.

Since that time, huge strides have been made by Māori in establishing Kohanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa Māori and Māori tertiary institutions. As a result of these steadfast efforts to educate through te reo Māori medium, many young Māori now speak te reo better than their parents.

It is a wonderful thing that in a country so dominated by the English language we can witness these young people move with ease in and out of the languages they speak, read and write. Some of them of course speak more than Māori and English.

Associate Professor Sharon Harvey is Head of the School of Language at Auckland University of Technology.

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From the 1980s, English medium schools, directed by successive national curricula, have also integrated Māori into their school culture. Primary teachers, especially, have made considerable efforts to improve their Māori language proficiency and thread te reo into much of their classroom work.

Consequently, several generations of young New Zealanders have high quality Māori pronunciation of place names and the like, and can use Māori words and phrases effortlessly as part of their New Zealand English.

If New Zealand really wants to see a million Kiwis speaking te reo Māori by 2040, we all need to learn to have these mundane conversations.

Despite successes in the education system both for Māori and others, a more worrying reality sits under these developments. The 2013 census showed that Māori speakers of te reo Māori have been in decline since at least 2001. The 2018 census data may be even more of a wake-up call. And New Zealanders as a whole still confess to being overwhelmingly monolingual in English. This is true for more than 80 per cent of the population.

By widening the education effort to explicitly include all young New Zealanders, te reo Māori may have a better chance of long-term survival and revitalisation.

Important also will be the many benefits that accrue to students. They will have the opportunity to become multilingual through learning our indigenous language, a key Pacific language with historical roots extending across much of the Pacific.

This will also enable them to connect more intimately with the land they are growing up in and they will have the chance to empathise with the struggle Māori have had to hold their culture, language and land throughout colonisation.

Māori Language Week, Te Wiki ō te Reo Māori is an occasion that gives us pause to consider why te reo Māori is still not a language all New Zealanders learn at school from teachers who are highly proficient in te reo Māori, as well as capable in language teaching pedagogy.

Some say it's too hard because we just do not have the skilled teachers. My answer would be to start right now to train those teachers and not leave it a day longer.

Many of us believe that Māori students need first access to high-quality Māori instruction but the plan should be in place for others to come close behind. With no plan and no resourcing, nothing will happen.

The question of compulsory Māori in schools appeared on the 2017 election manifestos of both the Green Party and Labour. The related press announcements attracted some vehemently negative positions on the issue of teaching te reo to all New Zealand students. Why people could be so concerned about their children becoming multilingual can be puzzling to contemplate.

However, if people have grown up monolingual speaking the world's most dominant language (English) and see little modelling of multilingualism in their communities or society more generally, then it may not be so surprising that they have extreme views.

As a society and particularly within our education system, we need to put more effort into explaining to people the benefits of learning other languages and te reo Māori in particular.

Associate Professor Sharon Harvey is head of the School of Language at Auckland University of Technology. Te wiki o te reo Māori/Māori Language Week runs from September 10-16.

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