System well past use by date

Should we be focusing on the so-called "Maori problem" and blame hardworking Pakeha teachers Tom, Dick and Hariette for low achievement rates in our children's education by jamming some grab bag constructions of what it is to be Maori and culturally cognisant down their throats or open up the entire field with more innovation and futurescope the whole idea of schooling?

I don't think any number of silver bullet educational initiatives, or blame games will alter our Maori stats because it is the overall education institute that needs challenging and changing.

I feel our kids don't need to be pricked and prodded by (admittedly well-meaning) highly-researched educational (and therefore super expensive) programmes that unfortunately take away the agency of self-achievement from our kids.

They don't need to be inundated with massive hotch-potches of so-called best practice teaching methods, all grouped together like a booster shot, whereby the programme founders are merely gambling, placing their hope, and bets, wistfully on at least one of their multiple methods working or getting results. Unfortunately education doesn't work that way.

That has been proven time and again. The results are miserable and the costs exorbitant. Nothing works within school systems except good old teacher and student graft.

There is no magic elixir no matter which patsies have been chosen to head the new educational projects. Some kids click in while most Maori kids click out. What we do need is systemic change.

Our Maori kids have amazing intellect which you see come out all the time out of school, so why do schools generally stuff up their potential? We are talking about great kids being slowly worn down and ejected with horrendous social implications. Many become alienated from society because of their catastrophic schooling experiences. No amount of "we hear you and empathise with you" bluffery will change that.

I am contracted by government agencies to facilitate educational workshops around the country and explain to our open-minded attendees, including teachers and principals, that schooling as we know it is not broken but that it is an outdated British institute, some three centuries old that is well past its used by date.

It is part of my introduction into Nga Taonga Takaro because the systems developed around mahi tinana - their rituals, whanaungatanga, whaikorero, activities, resources and feasting were in effect integrated educational programmes that focused on the educational wairua of the whole person and in creating resilience for a tribe by promoting creative and critical thought.

We really need to design a Maori/Pakeha hybrid systems of schooling that resonates with kids in much the same way. It is the computer age and our kids have all knowledge at their fingertips.

I also talk about Maori achievement which is in effect a loaded term, designed to celebrate just the educational accomplishments attained by children in schools. When you look critically at achievement you can see that every kaumatua that stands on a marae should be by rights awarded, at the very minimum, an honorary masters degrees, as for every kuia versed in the arts of karanga and manaakitanga.

Just because a few Maori have gone on to become university scholars and are lauded by mainstream educators (thereby self-perpetuating our present education model) doesn't mean that the other 96 per cent that have no pieces of paper have to aspire to be the same.

Unlike schooling at present which homogenises individuals and knowledge, we should celebrate difference and diversity the way our creative and wise tupuna did in their hapu enclaves.

The schooling system (destructive fire) is out of control among Maori communities, as is the dysfunctional means to arrest it by throwing more money at Maori problems, which is just fuelling a bigger blaze.