Dr Ann Milne - Colouring the White Spaces.
Equity for Maori is not the end game. It is sovereignty (shared ownership, self-determination)
How could schools ensure all students have strength in their own cultural
identity?
This is a school and community journey and there are no quick fixes. Because it is a partnership it is
difficult to pluck a solution from elsewhere and hope it will fit a local setting. Some schools have
many different ethnicities, some have very few. In all New Zealand communities the place of Maori
as tangata whenua behoves all schools to listen and respond to their Maori communities, and to
Maori as partners under the Treaty of Waitangi. The fact that this is a requirement already, yet we
haven’t made a difference for Maori learners, is an indictment on our system and our listening
processes.
The most consistent argument I hear as an excuse for doing very little is that parents wouldn’t agree
to a more culturally responsive school. “Maori and Pasifika parents in my school,” I’m often told,
“don’t want that culture stuff. They want their kids to achieve academically.” Of course they do –
but we are asking the wrong question when we give parents an either/or choice.
In nearly 40 years
of teaching in predominantly Maori and Pasifika communities, I’ve never met a Maori or Pasifika
parent who, when assured the two are not mutually exclusive, didn’t want both! It’s also true that this argument is weakening as Maori and Pasifika parents become aware of the damage caused by
loss of language and culture and more families practise the resistance I described earlier from my
family’s personal experience. It’s worth repeating that it is wrong of us to assume that by enrolling
in their local mainstream school Maori and Pasifika parents are not conscientised, resistant, and
seeking transformative school practice. However, most Maori and Pasifika families have generations
of experience of schools not responding to their viewpoint. It is equally wrong of us to assume that
silence means families agree with what we are delivering. More often than not silence is a sign of
disapproval, or of the fact no one has listened in the past so why would that change now?
In order to develop culturally responsive programmes that develop strong secure cultural identities
we have to do all of the following – and more:
Raise our own awareness of the effect of whiteness on our thinking and practice – as
individuals, as leaders, as a staff, as policy and decision-makers, as an education system and
as a community.
Critically analyse our current practice and policy in our own schools.
A powerful exercise we
once did at a staff meeting was to start from the footpath across the road from the school
gate looking at the image we presented to our community, then walk through the school
office, classrooms, playground and finally examine a range of school documents,
newsletters, our prospectus, our Charter, etc. As a staff we were shocked at the not-so hidden messages we were sending out to our Maori and Pasifika communities about what
was “right” and about how they should meet our expectations.
Ask different questions in conversations with your community. You are the educational
leaders, so lead. Don’t wait for initiatives to be suggested by parents whose experience is
that they don’t have a voice in education. Offer parents programmes that deliver BOTH
academic achievement and cultural identity, languages, and knowledges, as of right. When
you do develop these programmes don’t imply that you are doing the targeted children
some special favour that the white majority of the school don’t have. They do.
Don’t overtly or covertly structure learning and achievement as some sort of hierarchy with
high status for some learning (literacy and numeracy) and lower or peripheral ‘add-on’
status for other knowledge, particularly cultural knowledges and competencies.
Ask!
The resources for designing culturally responsive learning that fits your community
exist in the community right at your doorstep.
Listen! Having asked different questions don’t then re-interpret what your community tells
you into “school-speak”. An example of this practice is the way we ‘allow’ bilingual units to
develop but then measure their success in terms of their English literacy levels.
Read! There is a vast pool of research and literature in this field that all educators need to
examine. This is rich material for staff discussion and professional development.
Audit! Truthfully and name the colour of the spaces on our own school ‘page’ and genuinely
work towards changing this so all children can see a place for them in your space.
We need to teach our pakeha students about White Privilege.
Recommendations
1. That “mainstream” schools, or the national “network” of schools become culturally
responsive to Maori and to children of other ethnicities so that this is not considered
“alternative” to the norm.
2. That school principals and senior leaders develop an understanding of culturally responsive,
critical, social justice pedagogy.
3. That pre-service education includes understanding of culturally responsive, critical and social
justice pedagogies.
4. That Ka Hikitia be fully resourced so that schools can avail themselves of the professional
development that should accompany this strategy.
5. That we ask different questions of our Maori and ethnic communities about their aspirations
for their children, then don’t allow our own agendas to influence the answers, or reinterpret
the answers to fit our preconceived ideas.
6. That we give Maori and Pasifika parents genuine choices. If mainstream schools are not
providing authentic cultural learning environments, Section 156 of our Education Act should
be supported to work in the way it was designed to do. The Ministry of Education should
not put insurmountable barriers in the way of schools trying to implement the Act to provide
an education that fits their community. The strength and bitterness of the opposition from
education officials to any notion of self-determination or educational sovereignty in
mainstream schools is consistent across countries and communities. Implementing this
change should not be so hard.
7. That we seriously review our narrow blinkered focus of literacy, numeracy and technical
academic achievement as our primary measures of “success.” This includes refusal by school
leaders to implement National Standards in their present form.
8. That we acknowledge that this is a systemic issue, therefore apportioning sectoral blame is
counter-productive to finding meaningful solutions. Alienation from school is not an
intermediate/middle or secondary school phenomena. Disengagement and dislocation from
their cultural identity begins when children enter our schools’ white spaces. Just because it
takes some years for the impact of this dislocation to manifest itself does not absolve
primary schools from their responsibility to respond differently.
9. That school leaders and teachers recognise that the systemic change required is unlikely to
happen overnight, if at all. Our self-governing education system however, gives us an
autonomy that the educators I visited could simply not believe. The greatest barrier to each
one of us making this sort of change in our own school is our own thinking – which we do
have the power to change.
What does it mean for Maori to have success as Maori? See photo
3 criteria culturally responsive pedagogy
Student learning.
Cultural competence requires an awareness of cultural diversity and the ability to function effectively and respectfully when working with and treating people of different cultural backgrounds.
Critical pedagogy (social justice) is a philosophy of education that views teaching as a political act. This philosophy focuses on issues of inequality such as social class, race or gender. At the heart of critical pedagogy is the idea that individuals can, in their own ways, transform the world into a better place.
link to sabbatical report
What can I control? - Who can I influence?
http://www.annmilne.co.nz/blog
Streetwise for mapping events and
What is a graduate profile?
