item 12 set research information for teachers

number one 1989

By Ronald Sultana Commonwealth Scholar

Therese:

R.S.: Therese: R.S.: Therese: R.S.: Therese:

Because, you know, Maoris are considered to be pretty dumb, you know. I've always had this strong desire to be a criminal defence lawyer, but that's a pretty high class job! And Maoris and high class don't go together? Not really! Wo uld Maoris and low class go together? Seems to be these days . . . Wha t's low class? Just ... They seem to all be city council workers, cleaners and all that.

Some Facts

W HILE NUMBERS AND STATISTICS can be man­ipulated to shock or numb, most of New Zea­land's teachers will not be surprised to learn that

59% of Maori school-Ieavers who find jobs go into man ual occupations, that only 5% go into technical or professional work, that 49% of Maori students become unemployed on leaving school. After spending three years rubbing shoulders with New Zealan d teachers, and a whole year in their classrooms, my guess is that they instinctively know that such statistics are close enough to the mark -they see these percentages come alive in their schools year in, year out. And perhaps because of the regularity of Maori 'failure' and 'underachievement', the 'Maori prob­lem' has become something to be expected, to be coped with.

Some, openly, blam e it all on innate ability (genetics), or on 'non-motivation', or on Maori parents not giving a high enough priority to schooling. Invariably the problem is externalised. Such teachers profess themselves to be neu­tral - they claim to teach their subject, to impart knowledge which anyone, white or brown, is free to pick up and use for intellectuat cultural, vocational, and by and by, finan­cial advancement . An increasing number of Pakeha

1

teachers who have crossed cultural barriers, often during a marae experience, realise with a sudden shock of insight that Maori studen ts straddle - usu ally uncomfortably -two worlds where attitudes, priorities and values clash. They also realise from their' experience that the school ac­cepts only one version of reah ty - the Pakeha one. Whether teachers chose to externalise, ignore, or own the problem, they generally do so in an uncomfortable hedgy sort of way. For, despite possible explanations and accusations, the reality still remains, th e inequalities are still blatantly obvious, and the life chances of Maori students are still dim.

Some Theory

What (and who) keeps Maori students back? Why do they consistently 'choose' second and third best? In this race (there is, of course, a larger question I cannot tackle here, should there be a race?) for positions in a stratified and unequal society, do all New Zealand students compete under the same con ditions, or are some carrying burdens which will slow them down, leaving only the 'rubbish jobs' or a 'no vacancy' sign at the end of the run? Why do so many Maori students drop out of the race? Are they just 'dumb', 'unmotivated', or have they m ade a realistic judgement about their chances and have preferred to go another way rather than suffer the humiliation of arriving last past the post?

The firs t paint of view, which in sociological jargon is referred to as the 'meritocratic myth', is still alive an d well in New Zealand. This is despite the multitude of shldies which have d monstrated that gender, class and ethnicity weigh heavily on the shoulders of groups of students, disqualifying them from the start from the remotest chance of succeeding. The few individuals from minorities who do make it (we shall see at what cost) only serve to reinforce the meritocratic myth that those who do try can finish the race as well.

The constraints in schools are ever present but we do have a degree of autonomy - and therefore of responsibility - to work so that our schools and classrooms lean towards progressive and transformative ends rather than conserva­tive and oppressive ones .

Before reading on, however, it is essential to make an adulission to oneself: that in various ways, often unknow­ingly, we are all racist. Such an admission is necessary if we are to keep our defences down in order to let the words of pain in the excerpts following reach us. I am racist insofar as a European I have absorbed attitudes related to the superiority of my culture and filter all other possible cultures through the values that have become second nature to me . This awareness is a sine qua non for personal and systems change. Schools, as cu lturalinstitutions, cannot be changed unless people within them want to change and recognise the necessity for change. People, on the other hand, will find it rather difficu lt to change their own attitudes and behaviour if the structures they work in keep pushing them along old tracks - in our case, monoculturalism.

Their Story in Their Own Voice

Throughout 1986 I carried out observations and interviews with students and teachers in three high schools in a provin­cial city in the North Island. These schools were chosen on the grounds that each differed from the other in 'clima te' , ethos and student population. Two of these schools, which I w ill call Co-Ed and All-Girls' High, were large state schools. All-Girls had a particularly developed understand­ing of feminist issues as affecting secondary schooling, w hile the Co-Ed had made important strides in a bicultural direction . All-Boys' College was a smalt integrated catholic schoot with very few Maori students.

My research field included staffrooms, classrooms, as­sembly halls, school camps, work exploration sites, and recreation camps. Over 150 lessons were observed, and 50 teachers and 370 students interviewed, some more than once; 87 of the students identified themselves as Maori. The focus of my enquiry was firstly about school-to-work m essages given overtly and covertly by teachers and sec­ondly the reception students gave these messages . All ex­cerpts quoted are not of isolated instances but are typical of frequently occurring instances: they represent significant patterns.

How then does it feel to be Maori in the school and classroom? Why do some students have their life chances limited?

1. ' The Them-vs-Us Syndrome

Maori students' future occupational trajectories are limited by a clash of cultures. Their culture, having both c1ass and ethnic elements and dimensions, is often in direct opposi­tion to the accepted and expected behaviour within Anglo­Saxon schools generally. In attempting to use their cu ltural resources - often dependent on material levels of existence - Maori students are not competing on an equal footing with others. It is the culture of the Pakeha which imposes definitions and meanin gs . It is the Pakeha who has cultural power.

The school acknowledges and values middle class and Pakeha attitudes, behaviour and language, ranging from competitiveness to 'politeness' (which could and does in­clude dissimulating in order to please rather than openly admitting anger and frustra tion) and the use of standard New Zealand English. Such elements, in themselves rela­tive, are given an absolute and normative character. They are 'good; 'normal' and 'common sense' ways of being. They

2

are the referents, and any deviations are not considered to be variations of equal legitimacy, but rather signs of de­viance.

By the very fact of being Maori, a student is bombarded day in, day out with negative messages: he/she does not speak right, does not have the right attitude, does not be­have well, does not . . does not ... does not. The only refuge for a Maori student is to find companionship with fellow Maori and other marginals (marginalised!), and vent anger and frustration in self-hate and in sub-cultural, even counter-cultural ways. The only power they have left is to actively create subsets of meanings in opposition to the established culture. It is through this cultural imperialism that schooling provides some of the most damaging experi­ences - and it is such experiences, and reactions to them which in a very real sense determine futures.

Alice: Being Maori, we get a lot of racist comments. You might be sitting there and somebody goes: "Oh! Maoris are just thick!/I and stuff like that, and so you reply 'And you're just a maggot from the pot//I (thel) laugh). And the way they look at you eh! Thel) give you dirty looks . .. and the way they talk behind your back and you hear them . ..

Tara: Yeah ... If the class were a bit more carefree, we would do better I reckon . We'd do some learning, we'd buckle down. Like swearing . .. a lot of girls were brought up to swear and teachers go really angry. It's part of the language I reckon , so you should be able to speak it ! It's the only way to express yourself sometimes, and teachers just think that you're saying it to be cool and to be heard, but you're not . You're really angnJ and you feel frustrated, and that's the way to express myself!

The same fifth formers also described their alienation from Pakeha students. They got on well with some, often those who shared a similar socio-economic background.

... bu t then you get some who are really toe rags! Thel) have competitions against Maoris flapp ing rich things in front of your face, and then you pinch it to beat them !

Against these and other examples of cultural and cia s dif­ference , it iv not surprising that Maori students produce a counter-culture to assert themselves against a school system which they experience as alien and 'Pakeha-fied' . Such reac­tions might be seen to be 'patholOgicaL 'delinquent' even, but these definitions simply miss the realities of students as 1"ved out in an environment where their own meanings and experiences are neither recognised nor addressed .

On the other h and, it is easy to appreciate how these forms of resistance often work, in the long run, against Maori students' 'best' interest (if we accept that success in a Pakeha system is indeed an ideal goal). This anti-school culture -a way to affirm class and ethnic identity in front of a monolithic, monocultural establishment - contains not only elements of strength and power, but also, at a deeper levet an element of self-damnation . In their rejection of school­ing, these students 'in the end, do the work of bringing about the future that others have mapped out for them.' (Willis, 1977:198).

Tara: Alice:

But that gets us nowhere I reckon eh! While on the streets we'll go: 'Remember school? The laughs we had in our school days, the young days? !'

The students see themselves as making choices - sticking together for subject options, for instance - in order to re­solve dilemmas that arise for them out of the organisation of schooling . As Gaskell (1984:92) points out in another context for other groups of students who consistently 'choose' second best, their 'assumption of responsibility jor course choice is important because it leads them to accept respon­sibility for the re tricted options they face later. '

2. The Cost is Too High

It is not just that many Maori shldents group themselves in opposition to schooling . It is also that they find them­selves blocked from considering alternatives, for they have to pay dearly for the qualifications that can even tually be exchanged for a livelihood on the labour market. The way to status jobs and to occupations which offer security, pos­sibility of promotion and some degree of self-fulfilment implies an ordeal which inflicts violence selectively on them. In this case, it demands the compromising of the deepest and most important factors which give their life its uniqueness and meaning, namely their own culture . For many, such a price is too high to pay for whatever the Pakeha system can offer in return. Those who do com­promise find themselves alienated not only from their cul­ture, but also from their friends; they have to abandon not only group perspectives, but also group membership . Such students, few as they are, cannot form alternative group­ings, but find themselves ostracised both from Maori and Pakeha camps. The only seventh form Maori girl at one school spoke about her experience:

Tess : ... I'm in a position where I feel like , sort of in between, and 1 just don't fit anywhere . .. well . .. I don't fit in either way. It's dreadful! I hate school! 1 fee l I don't fi t in here, but I tn) to buck it off, because it's my bursary I'm after. I don't care about the rest, so I just forget about it.

KS. : The way you're talking about your experience reminds me of something I heard . . . that the few Maoris who get to seventh form do so at the cost of their own culture.

Tess : That's something dreadful to say, because it's so true! But thel) you've got to exist, you've got to sacrifice a lot of things to get there. That's a sacrifice you've got to make. Either you go one way or the other.

3. Low Expectations

So far we have seen how monocultural schooling and at­titudes inflict hidden injurie on Maori students. A a reac­tion, such students detach themselves from a damaging system and place themselves in opposition to it and to that whieh it represents, mainly jntellectual work. Such a 'choice' has irreversible repercussions on their future life chances. However, this does not exhaust the accoun t of how Maori students fail at vehool and in their eventual access to a comfortable livelihood. The pressures of low expectations from significant others, and the subsequent internalisation of such expectations (a self-fulfilling prophecy) reveal other processes at wOl'k in schools which further entrench this group of students into dead-end tracks . Maori students gave various accounts of how such low expectations were commu nicat d to them. The follow­ing excerpt with a sixth form Maori student is one among many recorded throughout 1986 which illustrates this point:

Rose: Our teacher was having a talk with us about what we'd like to do when we grow up, and I was the only Maori in my class, and zlJhen the teacher asked me 1 aid I wanted to do Management and Accounting, 01' perhaps Archaelogy ... And she looked at me as if to say, you know: "You guy don't do that sort of stuffY And all the class just stared at me and asked "Hey Rose! Do you really want to do that?" And 1 just got really wild and I said "Up yours!"

KS.: How does that affec t you? Do you work less or more? Rose: I want to prove to them that I can be what I want to be

. .. but then they just rub it in all the time. I just get so hacked off with it ... just can't be stuffed . . . I stuff them and enter into my own world.

3

Maoris were told in a myriad of ways about w hich jobs they could aspire to and which were beyond their reach . In a unit on 'Work' with a fourth form class, a Social Studies teacher was helping his students look at differen t career families , and each student could take a pamphlet about a job he or she was interested in and copy down the necessary information. The following are classroom observation notes, recording an interaction between Pakeha students and Kori, a Maori fourteen year-old:

All the students take more than one pamphlet and read some of the information . One boy takes a pamphlet and tries to give it to Kori, laughing. The pamphlet's title is 'S laughter Person'. Kori playfully pushes the boy away. Another boy asks Kori: 'What sort of job do you want? ' Kori shows the pamphlet he has chosen from the pile . It reads 'Land and Surveying'. The other boy answers: 'But you need two years at Varsity at least to do that ! Why don't you join the Army?!' . . . Later on in the period, another boy points another pamphlet at Kori and says: 'You want to be a bus driver?'

The dominant way of thinking amon g teachers is tha t indi­viduals freely choose, unhampered, their present alld fu­ture paths. Excerpts such as these reveal that this liberal ideology misses important realities that are lived everyday by groups of students.

It comes as no surprise that Maori students generally intemalise the version of themselves as second class citizens - as 'dumb' and 'thick' - and therefore worthy of second, if not third best at school and elsewhere .

Tara: I would say that the majority of Maori students are slower than European students.

(Fifth Former, All Girls' High) Tess: If yo u. immediately put yourself at a disadvanta.ge saying

'I can't do it' , then you're defini tely not going to do it. If Europeans say you can't do it, then they think '011 well! I can't do it! ' And society is saying that . .. that they can 't do it . . . Well, everyone is saying to them 'You can't do it , you can't do itt'

(Se enth Former, All Girl ' High).

While many internalised these imperatives, many could also make connections between the nega tive feelings they had about themselv s and the judgements m ade about them at school.

Jonathan: I think that after a whole, when the Maoris, you know, have been kicked in the guts so much, you. know, thel) just stay down, and they see how they do ... they play cool, thel) rebel against the system, thel) tell teachers where to go and all that kind of th ing. That's 'Why they give most teachers a hard time, because teachers thillk they are good for nothing. (Fifth Former, Co-Ed High).

4. Social Injustice While the focus here is on education, schools cannot be analysed as institutions removed from the socio-economic context in which they are situated. The wider social struc­ture itself consh'ains how we perceive, value an d act. It is enough in this context to mention three constraints which have a direct influence on Maori students' passage between school and the world of work and non-work.

First, Maori tudents share with working class students the very real limiting factor of lack of material resources. As one Maori teacher commen ted :

. . . and all the monel) that needs to feed them and clothe them and to send them to school . . . it's a battle. Those children might not know anything else, and to reach those standards , those levels , to be in that category of those sort of jobs , it's beyond them.

Secondly, the occupational segregation in the New Zea­land labour market ensures that young people are no t ex­posed to role models of Maori p eople in high status occupa­tions . They thus fail to imagine the possibili ty of access to such positions. A fourth form Pakeha student said for in­stance:

I've never seen a Maori doctor . .. That would be quite fu nny actually. I'd crack up laughing because it's so unusual.

Thirdly, Maori students felt discouraged from investing in schooling because of their knowledge of racial discrimi­nation in hiring practices on the workforces. A Maori teacher aid of her students at Co-Ed High's culture group:

They do n't 1.uant to pu t themselves in the position of attempting to go for a particular position knowing fu ll well that in the l0 l1g-ru11 they could perhaps be refused, or some reason given fo r them not being accepted in that kind of job. So, rather than being pu t in the embarassing position like that they'd rather not set out aiming for anything that is not for them. They'll say: 'Why bother?!'

Pakeha ~ tudents who h ad already experienced hiring prac­tices first hand confirmed that Maori studen ts' fear of dis­crimination was quite justifiable. One student who worked as a butcher assistant and also as a sprayer said:

Say there's a Pakeha, and he goes for a job in a suit and tie, and there's a Maori, also in a suit and tie ... the pakeha still has got a better chance to get that job, just because he's got a white skin ... it's racialist.

Another student explained to me that his father would never employ Maoris b cause 'it would ruin the reputation of his firm.' In other words, Pakeha employers can, and as Spoonley (1978) has sh own, often do act as 'gatekeepers' denying ethnic 'minorities' access to positions within the labour mai.'ket.

What's to be done?

Contemporary educationalists are emphasising the political nature of teachers' work. When we organise schools, teach­ing and classrooms, we are not involved in 'n eutral' proces­ses but are actively crea ting subjectivities and meanings. This article has set out to show how such meaning produc­tion in three New Zealand schools adversely a ffects the life choices and life chances of Maori students. In the larger study from which the analysis was drawn (Sultana, 1987) I have done more justice to the inter- and intra-school dif­ferences noted . Co-Ed H igh's bicultural efforts lneant that more Maoris at this school expressed p sitive feelings about the educational enterprise, there was more evidence of cul­tural sensitivity, and less of outright raci sm on the part of Pakeha students - and teachers - than in the other schools observed . Indeed, the fact that individual schools and teachers can have a real and positive effect on their students' lives is of paramount importance : we can b op timistic about our work, even if at times the change we would like to bring about seems to take an excruciatingly long time to materialise.

The fact that we can make a diff rence implies the confron­tation of a challenge, that of increasing our awareness of the symbolic violenc we - surely unwittingly and unwil­lingly - int1ict on specific groups of students ( there are gender and class issues to be considered as well). The result of such violence is that these groups cannot find in schools the refuge from the injustices they experience in the wider social spaces they already inhabit.

4

While as teachers we cannot possibly ch.ange the whole of society - though it has been argued by Giroux (1983) among oth ers that as intellectuals we h ave an active part to play in the so-called 'public sphere' - we surely can form alliances to ensure that top priority is given to the task of creating systems where all human beings are equally valued and affirmed . The further we extend OUf p erception of the way our assumptions and practices damage some and dis­criminate in favour of others, the more imminent does the possibility become that schooling moves away from merely reproducing society to making Significant inroads into prog­ressive and transformational agendas. In this context, Maori people's calls for systems change - Of, failing tha t, the set­ting up of separate schooling - can only be justified, for which parent would allow its child to enter into such worlds of pain?

In practical terms, and with reference to life choices and life chances, such schools could develop activities, similar to the feminist undertaking where the campaign 'Girls Can do Anything' urges female students to aim a t a higher and wider range of occupations. Career education could aban-­don its liberal and largely psychological models for sociolog­ical ones to en gage in a political exposition of occupational 'choice' , where elements beyond the individual's control (environment, cultural expectations, social class, gender, ethnicity, an d other factors) are seen to exert a major influ­ence on the course of one's entire life, including one's edu­cational and vocational decisions. Career education would thus incorporate a critique of the race/gender/class typing of jobs as well as a uitigue of the world of work as it is to suggest tha t more equitable alternative do exist. Schools w ould also practice what they preach. It is high time for Maori people to feature in status positions in schools: if Maori students cannot find role models in society at larg , let them a t least find them at school! But above all else, it 1 the rejection of schooling by so many Nlaori students that has to be addressed. Our, and our institutions; genuine attempts towards biculturalism could see the children of the tangata whel1ua increase their investment in education, their increasirig representation in high status positions in society, and more equity in Aotearoa.

Notes Dr Ronald Sultana was a Commonwealth Scholar to New Zealand between 1985-1987. He carried out his doctoral research at the Univer­sity of Waika to, and is now Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, Msida, MALTA. He has worked as a teacher, counsellor and social worker in schools, slums and borstaJs in Malta , the u.K. , Fran ce and Sicily.

References Brosnan, P, 1986. Maori Occupational Segregation. Working aper No.

2, Industrial Rela tions Cen tre , Victoria Universi ty o f Wellington. Department of Education, 1982. E4/1O Return, Welling ton. Department of Edll C~ hon , 1983 . Education Statistics of Ne'll.l Zealand.

Wellington. Gaskell, Jane, 1984. 'Gen der and Course Choice.' Journal of Education,

166 (1). Giroux, H ., 1983. Theory and Resistance in Educatio11. South Hadley:

Bergin and Garvey. Spoon ley, P , 1978. 'The Mlliticulhual Workforce : The Role of Employ­

ers as Ga tekeepers.' NevJ Zealand Journal of 11ldl, strial Studies, 3 (2). Sultana, R.G. , 1987. Schooling for Work ill New Zealand: A Quali tative

Study of Three High Schools Unpublished D . Phil d issertation , Un i­versity of Waikato , Hamilton.

Willi ., r: 1977. Learl/illg 10 Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Clas!:> Job:; . Saxon House .

Copying Permitted © Copyright on this item is held by NZCER and ACER which grant to a ll people actively en gaged in education the right to copy it in the interests of be tter teachin g . Please acknowledge the soure .