Before 1877
The teaching of reading and education generally in New Zealand was
sporadic and uneven in the first years of the 19th century. Samuel
Marsden opened the first mission school for Mäori in 1816 in
the Bay of Islands, and before 1840 there were also Wesleyan and
Catholic mission schools. C.L. Bailey in A Documentary
History of New Zealand Education (1989) points out there were
'hordes' of children on the ships of the New Zealand company, 195 on the
Bolton alone, with some desultory schooling
but, though clergymen were given free passage for services rendered,
schoolteachers were not.
Most schools were
established by churches or private individuals and privately run and
paid for. In the 1850s provincial governments were given responsibility
for education, but only Nelson and Otago set up education systems, and
in 1858 Nelson abolished fee-paying in favour of a household levy.
Reading was dependent on the reading books used in Britain which were
brought by settlers, and Hugh Price's essay 'Reading books and reading
in New Zealand schools 1877-1900' (1987) notes the most widely used were
the religious and didactic Irish National Readers. From 1867 New Zealand
booksellers began to import the graded series of Royal
Readers , published by Thomas Nelson of Edinburgh to meet the
needs of the British Revised Code of 1862 which
varied teachers' payment according to the examination success of their
pupils. Parents were required to buy one reader per year, and promotion
from class to class was based almost entirely on success in reading.
Demand for literacy
among Mäori was very strong in the early part of the 19th
century. M.P.K. Sorrenson in 'Maori and Pakeha' in The
Oxford History of New Zealand (1981, p.170) estimated that by
1845 about half of adult Mäori could read a little in
Mäori. Readers for Mäori speakers appeared very early:
in 1815, A Korao no New Zealand or the New Zealander's
First Book , a glossary and phrase book; Ratari , lists of phonetic sound groups in Mäori and
words in 1834; and from 1839 William Colenso printed a series of readers
and lesson sheets in Mäori at the Waimate Mission. Most of the
Mäori readers printed in the 1840s and 1850s were produced by
mission presses.
He
Puka Ako i te Korero Maori (1841) is a wordlist of South Island
Mäori compiled by James Watkin and He Korero
Tara mo te Kura (1851) is a collection of fables. He Pukapuka Whakaako mo te Kura , printed at St.
John's College in 1852, is a typical example of the mission-produced
reader in Mäori, opening with lists of vowels, then syllables,
sentences, paragraphs and numbers. (A later edition (1870) added prayers
and responses.) Colenso published Ko te A-Nui a Wi Hei
Ako Maana ki te Reo Ingirihi or Willie's
First English Book in 1872, a parallel text for learning
English with graded lessons and vocabularies.
Teaching reading to
Mäori in English became standard practice in 1886 with The Native School Reader for Standards II and III
, produced by the Government Printer, which consisted of 50 fables
'altered and in some cases localised so that they
may be interesting to Maoris' (preface). The Native
School Reader abounds with hortatory 'fables' which are
colonising and assimilatory in intent. Kuni Jenkins's study of literacy
as an agent of colonisation Becoming
Literate—Becoming English (1993), discusses the
earliest Mäori manuscripts by Titere and Tuai (referred to in
some sources as 'Tui'), young Ngäpuhi men who spent 1818 in
England and recorded their reading lessons in English. Jenkins makes an
important argument about the whole process of literacy as a coercive
tool of colonisation.
Reports from the
Inspectors of Native Schools published in the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR)
from 1858 onwards sometimes provide very detailed information as
to numbers of pupils, reading progress and texts used. Although
administration of Native Schools was transferred to the Education
Department in 1879, separate reports for Native Schools continue in AJHR through until 1953 (shoulder numbers vary,
especially before 1882).