Education As Cultural Artifact: Studies in Maori and Aboriginal Education By R K Harker. SCARCE.

Education As Cultural Artifact: Studies in Maori and Aboriginal Education By R K Harker. SCARCE.

Publisher: Dunmore Press , Palmerston North , 1985 first edition. Good softback, name inside front cover, pages tanned with minor marks. Covers creased on corners.

Although Maori children have considerably more school success in New Zealand than their Aboriginal counterparts in Australia, the evidence still shows that the underlying European structures and ideologies of New Zealands education system leave many Maoris disadvantaged for life. Instead of examining the structural reasons for school failure most literature on the subject tends to look at environmentally induced deficits in the children themselves. Arguments for equality of opportunity through education are substituted for detailed examination of the influences which trap Aborigines and Maoris in the poorest strata of their nations. At all levels of the education system, the implicit acceptance of assimilation as a goal has blocked any real consideration of the social implications of schooling in plural societies such as Australia and New Zealand. The authors raise questions about the ideologies of Maori and Aboriginal schooling both past and present, making full use of extensive case study material.