Te wiki o te reo Maori 2018...

Kia ora koutou katoa, nga mihi atu kia koutou i tenei wa. In celebration of Maori language week, I would like to weigh in on current discussions regarding making Maori language compulsory in schools from Years 1 - 10.

This was discussed in my class yesterday and I am fully supportive of this move by the 'Greens' in our MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) parliament to have this become legislated. Yes, I know there's a whole lot of problems in resourcing the teaching for learning another language but there are also many benefits.

What many New Zealanders don't know is that many European countries have been doing that for decades so that it is not uncommon for children to be conversant in more than 3 languages. The mindset in New Zealand for the past couple of centuries has been built upon racist mindsets that NZ needs to be monolingual with the predominant language being English which was built upon the paradigms of oppression.

This has really set up minority cultures such as Maori and Pasifika cultures to have to leave their languages and cultures at the door steps of schools or outside the schools or even be punished for speaking their home languages and to take the Pakeha/Papalagi mindset out into homes. It's no wonder many of our young people don't make it through our school systems in having to deny what is an inherent part of themselves.

The other reason is that in learning more than one or two languages, you get an insight into different ways of thinking and it's been neat to be able to compare the Maori and Samoan languages with cultural similarities and differences, therefore when you have a better understanding of other cultures there's more acceptance of those differences and similarities.

So I say that it's stunted thinking of many to think that it's a 'bad thing' to have Maori being taught in schools. For me it's an exciting time for NZ to stop looking into the past and to start looking into the future where we speak more than two languages and that's even including signing for the deaf. No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa...