title: Schooling  for  'lesser beings'

authors: Holdom, Jim

subjects: Maori

abstract: Using Edward Said’s notion of ‘lesser beings’, it is argued that the political culture of schooling for Maori was and still is part of a pervasive Western European intellectual climate and culture which has a quite recent history, and which provided powerful support for the notion of Europe possessing a categorical superiority over all other continents, which in turn justified imperialism or neo-colonialism as civilising missions.
Racism and violence were endemic in colonialism and, despite the claimed moral high ground, were endemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand.  War was eulogised in the Native School system more than once.  The rise and demise of the World War II Maori War Organisation is illustrative of the rejection of Maori aspirations.  There were still no Maori in the senior echelons of the Maori Department in 1972.
The Native, later Maori, School system was overtly designed to 'Europeanise' Maori children and therefore Maori society.  Individualism was deeply embedded in English and set-tler thinking, whilst communal, ‘communist’ Maori society was to be destroyed.
The thesis examines images of colonialism, empire and imperialism in fiction and non-fiction, New Zealand and British, for adults and children, and notes the attitudes of think-ers like J S Mill and Darwin, of children’s authors Jules Verne and G H Henty, and of New Zealand author William Satchell.  The images continue, pervasive and endemic, in recent adult novels.  Science also played a role, as did history.
 Ranginui Walker, who is Maori, is the only historian to have written a history of New Zea-land which addressed the issue of waste lands, an issue on which Pakeha historians have a blind spot.  New Zealand encyclopedia do not index ‘waste land’ or ‘confiscation’.  Only two Waikato histories deal adequately, or even accurately, with confiscation, the central episode in the history of the Waikato.  Tourist material is equally illustrative.
The Native Schools section of the Education Department ran the Native Schools like a fiefdom, operating in legislative and regulatory black holes for the first thirty years and for much of the time after that.  Teachers were moved around at will.  
The practice of James H Pope, the first inspector of Native Schools, is closely and critically examined, and negatively assessed.  His official writings were consistently derogatory of Maori, and his decisions in respect of Te Kopua Native School were at times detrimental to the pupils.  Pope was a product of his times.
The Te Kopua record is closely scrutinised, and the practice of the Education Department is frequently found wanting.  It is probable that the establishment of the school was aimed to destabilise King Country Maori, not to benefit the children.  It is a story of Maori co-operation and contribution.
Part Two is a detailed partial biography of Te Kopua, it being argued that until there is a significant corpus of studies of Native Schools a valid history of the Native/Maori School system and of schooling for Maori is not possible

text: Schooling  for  'lesser beings' Using Edward Said’s notion of ‘lesser beings’, it is argued that the political culture of schooling for Maori was and still is part of a pervasive Western European intellectual climate and culture which has a quite recent history, and which provided powerful support for the notion of Europe possessing a categorical superiority over all other continents, which in turn justified imperialism or neo-colonialism as civilising missions.
Racism and violence were endemic in colonialism and, despite the claimed moral high ground, were endemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand.  War was eulogised in the Native School system more than once.  The rise and demise of the World War II Maori War Organisation is illustrative of the rejection of Maori aspirations.  There were still no Maori in the senior echelons of the Maori Department in 1972.
The Native, later Maori, School system was overtly designed to 'Europeanise' Maori children and therefore Maori society.  Individualism was deeply embedded in English and set-tler thinking, whilst communal, ‘communist’ Maori society was to be destroyed.
The thesis examines images of colonialism, empire and imperialism in fiction and non-fiction, New Zealand and British, for adults and children, and notes the attitudes of think-ers like J S Mill and Darwin, of children’s authors Jules Verne and G H Henty, and of New Zealand author William Satchell.  The images continue, pervasive and endemic, in recent adult novels.  Science also played a role, as did history.
 Ranginui Walker, who is Maori, is the only historian to have written a history of New Zea-land which addressed the issue of waste lands, an issue on which Pakeha historians have a blind spot.  New Zealand encyclopedia do not index ‘waste land’ or ‘confiscation’.  Only two Waikato histories deal adequately, or even accurately, with confiscation, the central episode in the history of the Waikato.  Tourist material is equally illustrative.
The Native Schools section of the Education Department ran the Native Schools like a fiefdom, operating in legislative and regulatory black holes for the first thirty years and for much of the time after that.  Teachers were moved around at will.  
The practice of James H Pope, the first inspector of Native Schools, is closely and critically examined, and negatively assessed.  His official writings were consistently derogatory of Maori, and his decisions in respect of Te Kopua Native School were at times detrimental to the pupils.  Pope was a product of his times.
The Te Kopua record is closely scrutinised, and the practice of the Education Department is frequently found wanting.  It is probable that the establishment of the school was aimed to destabilise King Country Maori, not to benefit the children.  It is a story of Maori co-operation and contribution.
Part Two is a detailed partial biography of Te Kopua, it being argued that until there is a significant corpus of studies of Native Schools a valid history of the Native/Maori School system and of schooling for Maori is not possible

year: 1998

title: Toitū Te Whānau, Toitū Te Iwi: A Community Approach to English Transition

authors: Berryman, Mere

subjects: Maori

abstract: The research project presented in this thesis documents and describes the outcomes of effective whānau (immediate and extended family), kura (school), student, and researcher collaboration. The researcher became part of a whānau-of-interest (Bishop, 1996b) in 1998 and 1999 when she was invited by this community to help develop a suitable programme to assist highly competent Māori immersion students in their transition to a bi-lingual secondary school (the only option available in their community). The whānau wanted students to begin their secondary schooling with an improved competence in reading and writing in English but without compromising their competency in Maori language. Prior to this programme few of the students had received any formal instruction in the English language.
After a ten-week intervention implemented mainly outside the classroom, the researcher found that whānau tutors had effectively implemented the programmes and that all Year 8 students were able to read stories (in English) and talk about them (in English) at age appropriate reading levels. They also displayed improved rates of writing in English while maintaining their high fluency in reading and writing in Māori. The 10-week programme and results were replicated over a further three terms with the Year 7 and again with the Year 6 students. The study employed a multiple baseline across groups, design. A collaborative story gathered from participants at the end of the programme, together with these process and outcome data, strongly support the successful outcomes of this "participant driven" (Bishop, 1996b) programme.

text: Toitū Te Whānau, Toitū Te Iwi: A Community Approach to English Transition The research project presented in this thesis documents and describes the outcomes of effective whānau (immediate and extended family), kura (school), student, and researcher collaboration. The researcher became part of a whānau-of-interest (Bishop, 1996b) in 1998 and 1999 when she was invited by this community to help develop a suitable programme to assist highly competent Māori immersion students in their transition to a bi-lingual secondary school (the only option available in their community). The whānau wanted students to begin their secondary schooling with an improved competence in reading and writing in English but without compromising their competency in Maori language. Prior to this programme few of the students had received any formal instruction in the English language.
After a ten-week intervention implemented mainly outside the classroom, the researcher found that whānau tutors had effectively implemented the programmes and that all Year 8 students were able to read stories (in English) and talk about them (in English) at age appropriate reading levels. They also displayed improved rates of writing in English while maintaining their high fluency in reading and writing in Māori. The 10-week programme and results were replicated over a further three terms with the Year 7 and again with the Year 6 students. The study employed a multiple baseline across groups, design. A collaborative story gathered from participants at the end of the programme, together with these process and outcome data, strongly support the successful outcomes of this "participant driven" (Bishop, 1996b) programme.

year: 2001

title: The reassembly of soil food web structure and functioning in restored urban forests across Aotearoa - New Zealand

authors: Rai, Bibishan

abstract: Soil food webs play a central role in the successful restoration of critical ecosystem processes. Yet, we lack an understanding of how these highly diverse and functionally complex belowground communities reassemble in forests undergoing restoration, and the factors responsible for varying trajectories of soil community reassembly. Even more poorly understood is the reassembly of soil invertebrates across multiple trophic levels after disturbance. Moreover, any potential effect of ecological succession on food web structural properties (connectance and maximum trophic level) and its implications on soil invertebrate trophic functions remains poorly understood. In this PhD thesis, I investigate the effect of restoration age and biotic and abiotic characteristics of restored forests on the reassembly of soil invertebrate communities across different trophic groups. I also explore the effect of the aforementioned predictors on soil food web structure and associated ecosystem functioning.
I sampled soil invertebrate communities from 70 urban restored forests, as well as three unrestored and three remnant urban forests. All forest sites were distributed across eight cities in Aotearoa, New Zealand and were historically occupied by native vegetation until cleared for either agriculture or urban development. The sites were then planted with native woody species between six and 60 years prior to this research, forming a chronosequence of forest succession. In addition to soil invertebrates, vegetation data (e.g., mean tree diameter, tree species richness) and site characteristics (e.g., litter depth, soil temperature) were also collected from these forests. I identified the soil invertebrates into major size-based functional groups (i.e., microfauna, mesofauna and macrofauna) and further into trophic levels: detritivores, fungivores, herbivores, omnivores and predators. Additionally, I quantified the abundance, biomass and mean body mass of all soil invertebrates. Finally, I constructed 70 local food webs across the restored forest sites and quantified the flux of energy between different feeding groups and their food sources to estimate five important ecosystem functions in soil food webs: detritivory, bacterivory, fungivory, herbivory and predation.
I analysed the relative importance of restored forest age and environmental variables as predictors of variation in soil invertebrate communities. I found that restoration age, in itself, had no discernible effect on the abundance, biomass or mean body size of soil invertebrate communities. Instead, site characteristics like mean tree diameter, tree species richness, litter depth and soil temperature were the main drivers of variability in soil communities. Notably, these factors influenced larger macrofauna and mesofauna more than nematodes. However, when I modelled the effects of restoration age on soil communities in a structural equation modelling framework, taking into account bottom-up effects from plant communities to invertebrate predators, restoration age was shown to have indirect effects on the biomass of mesofauna decomposers, omnivores and nematode predators. Finally, by investigating shifts in food web structure and resulting changes in energy fluxes across trophic levels, I found that forest restoration age did not directly influence either the structure (connectance, maximum trophic level) or the five examined trophic functions of the soil food webs. Instead, effects of forest restoration age occurred through changes in vegetation characteristics as forest succession progresses.
My results suggests that forest age is not a direct major driver of the reassembly of soil invertebrate communities. Instead, mean tree diameter, tree species richness, litter depth, and soil temperature play important roles in the process. My results show the significance of planting trees that can grow large, promoting species diversity and allowing leaf litter to accumulate naturally to support soil invertebrate community of different trophic functions. Through my results, I also show how the aforementioned vegetation characteristics can contribute to flow of energy in the soil food web. In addition to demonstrating how crucial food web structural properties are to energy flow via trophic interactions such as detritivory, fungivory and predation, this research also highlights the interconnectedness of above and belowground ecosystems. Taken together, my findings suggest that urban restoration efforts should focus on promoting these beneficial vegetation characteristics, alongside considering food web complexity, to optimize trophic functions performed by soil food webs.

text: The reassembly of soil food web structure and functioning in restored urban forests across Aotearoa - New Zealand Soil food webs play a central role in the successful restoration of critical ecosystem processes. Yet, we lack an understanding of how these highly diverse and functionally complex belowground communities reassemble in forests undergoing restoration, and the factors responsible for varying trajectories of soil community reassembly. Even more poorly understood is the reassembly of soil invertebrates across multiple trophic levels after disturbance. Moreover, any potential effect of ecological succession on food web structural properties (connectance and maximum trophic level) and its implications on soil invertebrate trophic functions remains poorly understood. In this PhD thesis, I investigate the effect of restoration age and biotic and abiotic characteristics of restored forests on the reassembly of soil invertebrate communities across different trophic groups. I also explore the effect of the aforementioned predictors on soil food web structure and associated ecosystem functioning.
I sampled soil invertebrate communities from 70 urban restored forests, as well as three unrestored and three remnant urban forests. All forest sites were distributed across eight cities in Aotearoa, New Zealand and were historically occupied by native vegetation until cleared for either agriculture or urban development. The sites were then planted with native woody species between six and 60 years prior to this research, forming a chronosequence of forest succession. In addition to soil invertebrates, vegetation data (e.g., mean tree diameter, tree species richness) and site characteristics (e.g., litter depth, soil temperature) were also collected from these forests. I identified the soil invertebrates into major size-based functional groups (i.e., microfauna, mesofauna and macrofauna) and further into trophic levels: detritivores, fungivores, herbivores, omnivores and predators. Additionally, I quantified the abundance, biomass and mean body mass of all soil invertebrates. Finally, I constructed 70 local food webs across the restored forest sites and quantified the flux of energy between different feeding groups and their food sources to estimate five important ecosystem functions in soil food webs: detritivory, bacterivory, fungivory, herbivory and predation.
I analysed the relative importance of restored forest age and environmental variables as predictors of variation in soil invertebrate communities. I found that restoration age, in itself, had no discernible effect on the abundance, biomass or mean body size of soil invertebrate communities. Instead, site characteristics like mean tree diameter, tree species richness, litter depth and soil temperature were the main drivers of variability in soil communities. Notably, these factors influenced larger macrofauna and mesofauna more than nematodes. However, when I modelled the effects of restoration age on soil communities in a structural equation modelling framework, taking into account bottom-up effects from plant communities to invertebrate predators, restoration age was shown to have indirect effects on the biomass of mesofauna decomposers, omnivores and nematode predators. Finally, by investigating shifts in food web structure and resulting changes in energy fluxes across trophic levels, I found that forest restoration age did not directly influence either the structure (connectance, maximum trophic level) or the five examined trophic functions of the soil food webs. Instead, effects of forest restoration age occurred through changes in vegetation characteristics as forest succession progresses.
My results suggests that forest age is not a direct major driver of the reassembly of soil invertebrate communities. Instead, mean tree diameter, tree species richness, litter depth, and soil temperature play important roles in the process. My results show the significance of planting trees that can grow large, promoting species diversity and allowing leaf litter to accumulate naturally to support soil invertebrate community of different trophic functions. Through my results, I also show how the aforementioned vegetation characteristics can contribute to flow of energy in the soil food web. In addition to demonstrating how crucial food web structural properties are to energy flow via trophic interactions such as detritivory, fungivory and predation, this research also highlights the interconnectedness of above and belowground ecosystems. Taken together, my findings suggest that urban restoration efforts should focus on promoting these beneficial vegetation characteristics, alongside considering food web complexity, to optimize trophic functions performed by soil food webs.

year: 2024-09-02