Ngā Matapakinga | Discussion

Here are some thoughts from my presentation yesterday in the Education Summit in Christchurch #EdConvo18 that are relevant to our korero coming up at the CORE Breakfast in Wellington on 25 May. What do you think?

The “unsolicited” comments of children about the racist language and practice they experience in school, “surprised” the interviewers in the research carried out jointly by the Children’s Commission and the Schools’ Trustees Association. The Ministry of Education has been reported just last week as advocating that a “bold step” that would make a difference for Maori learners would be to address teachers’ “unconscious bias” towards Maori children. They are right – it would – but I find that hypocritical if we are not going to address the institutional racism endemic in our education policy and practice.

We cannot continue to fudge this issue by using what Kegler calls the “sugar-coated language of White fragility” – using words that let us off the hook, trying to describe racism, “nicely” in ways that are more palatable to us. Unless we are actually unconscious, as in out cold, we cannot be oblivious to the fact that our system only works for some of our children and we can predict who will be at the bottom of our achievement data, with absolute accuracy, before the school year even begins. That’s a rigged game.