Neoliberalism and Eurocentric Teaching

 “There can be no authentic Māori education without a context in which te ao Māori can find its true expression. There can be no authentic Māori education without its encompassing wairua manifest in te reo Māori, There can be no authentic Māori education that does not set out from the beginning to enhance and strengthen he tuakiri tangata (a Māori identity). (Penetitio, 2010).

The erosion of language and culture as a form of latent colonialism is still overtly present in New Zealand society. Throughout his 2010 work, Wally Penetito outlines and heavily critiques the paternalistic endeavours of the education sector in othering Māori in education. To succeed in a pākeha framework, Penetito notes that you have to cede your Māori-ness and assimilate into Pākehatanga (2010). This duality is already experienced by all Māori students in mainstream schools, and is largely responsible for the disengagement and frustration felt by rangatahi in regards to their ill fitting education. A system “designed for failure” is what makes up the education framework in Aotearoa, and the vulnerability of those the system is failing ensures that they are not in a position to enact change (Penetito, 2010). Mirroring Milne (2017) and Bishop (2005), Penetito highlights how blaming the individual for the mass ‘underachievement’ of Māori deflects the real issues of systemic and governmental failure (2010). The role of Pākeha teachers in the denigration of Māori identity in mainstream education needs to be one at the fore of decolonisation, however the reality is unfortunately markedly different. As a Pākeha teacher of rangatahi, your position and privilege serves to reinforce the colonialist structures within mainstream education.

Pākeha teachers are often unaware of their cultural position and privilege. Throughout teacher training this became increasingly apparent, and led to me leaving the profession to use my skills elsewhere. I decided that I could no longer be complicit in the institutional assimilation of Māori through mainstream (read: whitestream) education. Schools typically preserve and distribute what is perceived to be ‘legitimate knowledge’, which is decided by the Eurocentric state, and perpetuated by its Pākeha cultural currency holders in teaching positions. Trying to break this mould, or simply identifying it can result in profound hostility between colleagues, as well as significant pushback from Pākeha parents. This extreme resistance to equitable change in whitestream schools illuminates whiteness as the cultural capital that is used in social currency (Milne, 2017). The politics of who creates the knowledge used in curriculum creation, who it benefits, and whose point of view it supports is one of the fundamental characteristics of the education system in Aotearoa. What Gillborn suggests is that educational policy in Aotearoa is an act of white supremacy (2005). With a neoliberal, neo-colonialist norm, the discourse surrounding Māori education is inherently racist and discriminatory in its essence. The teacher centric pedagogy implemented in whitestream schools is definitive of a framework that consistently and knowingly puts the needs of Pākeha students above and ahead of Māori (Pihama et al, 2004). Students in this scenario are passive recipients of this knowledge, which is largely out of context, entirely Eurocentric, and taught by majorityPākeha teachers (trained in a similar method during their qualification). Who officiates the knowledge, who decides this, and who perpetuates its implementation is decided by the dominant party. This is exceptionally harmful for marginalised learners, and placed the onus of emotional labour on rangatahi and their whānau to first highlight, then campaign for change.

Being Māori is a Māori reality, and rangatahi leave school ill-equipped as Māori learners. The current legislation and policy from the Ministry of Education [MOE] pay simple lip service, and continuously to and fro with proactive efforts to implement tikanga and te ao Māori into the curriculum. The message this sends to pākeha and Māori alike is that the MOE is both a) unwilling to fund initiatives that have shown success in a neoliberal, disparitive environment, and b) do not believe that Māori education as Māori is something that requires their full effort and attention (Milne, 2017). The depreciation of Māori cultural value, and subsequent disparities should not be tolerated, nor should they be explained under the umbrella of a colonialist framework to defer blame, and suggest the fault lies with the colonised, not the enforcer. What is desperately needed is the alignment of a cultural identity within education (Pihama et al, 2004). Change implemented into rhetoric, policy, and pedagogy will begin to shift the hands of colonisation, however, as discussed in greater detail below, there needs to be acknowledgement prior to progress. Teachers’ assumptions, actions and behaviours, as well as how they interact with students, are governed by the location they place themselves in, and how they understand and position Māori learners (Bishop, 2005).

Historical pathologising of Māori through the native school system has provided the foundations for a Eurocentric education framework to continue (Bishop, 2005). Bishop goes on to note how through the boom of urban migration, “people were encouraged to abandon their language and culture as rapidly as possible in order to learn the ways of the dominant culture. This agenda pursuied vigorously through education, and punishment was rife for those caught speaking Māori” (2005). In Bishop’s 2005 chapter in Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, research found that nearly 60% of teachers viewed Māori achievement in deficit terms, and as the fault of the child themselves, as well as their whānau and home life (p.74). Teachers also noted that they felt threatened by the presence of Māori students in the classroom. This chapter highlights diverse and widespread accounts of how deficit thinking is dangerous, deeply embedded, and overtly expressed within the teaching profession. None of the accounts from teachers identified that their pedagogy or the curriculum may be failing students, and instead spoke of rangatahi as if they were adults (with full conceptualisation and understanding of their actions) making informed decisions to be as disruptive as possible for no reason whatsoever other than their Māori-ness (2005). Māori students were accused of being lazy, unwilling to engage with the material, having attitude problems, and coming from transient, broken homes fuelled by drug use. In further studies, Bishop notes that teachers were almost unanimous in identifying every other person/home/agency other than themselves in the reason for such a high degree of Māori vs. non-Māori stand downs (Bishop, 2005). This, Bishop claims, was without exception.

Intervention is suggested to make the shift for teachers from deficit interpretation of the reasons behind behavioural difficulties to one of accountability and location of a cultural self. These teachers remain the glue of the ongoing colonialist discourse that pathologises the education framework of Aotearoa (Bishop, 2005). With the inability to acknowledge responsibility for the achievement and experience of Māori students in whitestream education, front-line change is unable to be affected even with legislative change. Identification of discourse is the first step in locating deficit views so they are able to be dismantled (Bishop, 2005). Critiquing racist institutionalised discourse is imperative for change. It is easier to blame someone else than to look within, and a great many Pākeha are both unable and unwilling to tackle the task of self-awareness. Teachers noted their positions of deficiency as outside of their control, and something that they could not influence or amend. This shift in thinking from personal attack to systemic identification is not sufficient for changing the status quo, and may retain the pervasive deficit views. The excuses that arise from noting that there are widespread failures make the issue seem so grandiose in size that they are unsurmountable, and thus we cannot deal with them (Bishop, 2005). In a colonial context, the expansion of schooling served as a tool for removing indigenous elites from power and for legitimising colonial rule (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005). Schools were perceived as facilitators of assimilation and integration of indigenous communities into the white man’s world (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005).

Likened to an educational crusade, institutions have became tools of political and economic control and domination (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005). Not only have schools historically used for colonising purposes, but their role in further marginalisation of Māori allowed a socio-economic class stratification to be designed from youth. Anne Milne identifies these white spaces are places of supremacy and cultural denigration, and the role of education policy in the active structuring of racial inequity (2017). Beginning with education, the government has implemented a socially constructed power of white interests. The construction of teacher as provider, student as replicator of knowledge has resulted in a whitestream expectation of zero construction of original thought, inquiry, activism, or critical thinking (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005).

There have been numerous movements and initiatives at the burden of Māori to improve education for tamariki and rangatahi. The Kura Kaupapa and Kōhanga Reo movement, along with Whare Wananga, have allowed Māori a place to flourish as Māori. Despite the outrageous and prohibitive loopholes for these ‘character’ schools to operate, their success and positive results for Māori have been tenfold. Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia are two Ministry implemented strategies to use in mainstream schools to raise the achievement of Māori learners. Pihama et al note how Ka Hikitia is not well understood in the education sector, including teachers (2004). They also identify the myth of Māori privilege, and the fear amongst Pākeha (whether latent or overt) that runs on the fallacy that if Māori are provided equitable resources then it is at the expense and comfort of pākeha (2004). The authors also highlight the recent attempts from the MOE to remove all references to Te Tiriti in its guiding principles, something that was only halted due to widespread outrage and protest (2004). The ongoing struggle of Māori led initiatives and conceptual frameworks with the bureaucratic hoops and targets to meet, furthers a colonising eurocentric framework through prohibitive policy that marginalises and hinders Māori education. The inability of teachers to conceptualise Māori concepts that they also were not taught at school, and a woeful inadequacy of teacher training programs in New Zealand in implementing this knowledge (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005).

There is nothing Māori about achieving at a national standard in a pākeha framework. Why are we defining Māori achievement in white terms, and how do we define Māori achievement as Māori? Surely this is not able to be done by Pākeha, and it is unrealistic for Pākeha teachers to have to both decide and implement this under the current educational framework. As is currently evident in statistical information; this is already woefully underperforming, inauthentic in its application, and misinformed in its analysis. The ‘dominant culture’ is the source for legislative and policy changes that further benefit the implementation of this seemingly equitable social change, when really it shifts the blame further onto Māori (whānau unengaged, unemployment, and socio-economic issues etc.) instead of providing a mirror for the legislation from whence these inequalities stemmed. Whānau and large families are seen as too noisy and bustly, and thus not conducive to a Eurocentric learning method of quiet, homework, and individual projects. To further this, parents are seen as not having adequate skills or abilities to help their children learn (in a pākeha framework at least), and community education initiatives are implemented to apparently amend this (Milne, 2017). Non-engagement in learning seen as an indication of a personal deficit, rather than a lack of engaging material and pedagogical practice that relates to non-Pākeha learners.

The impact of whitestream education on rangatahi is immense. Pākeha teachers and senior leadership are complicit in perpetuating the pathologising of lived experience of Māori, and the promotion of a deficit model of thinking (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005). This perpetuation of deficit thinking is repeated through the pathologisation of Māori lives, as well as antiquated adherence to te Tiriti, which serves only to promote the ideals of the Eurocentric majority (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005). Rejection of mainstream schooling as a Eurocentric hegemonic form of assimilation, and highlighting the colonialist framework behind the social zeitgeist of acceptance is the ‘new role’ of teachers in whitestream schools. With a divergence from whitestream schooling as the covert civilising mission of the neoliberal, the colonising force behind education will be able to be dismanteld for the benefit of all. “White spaces are spaces that allow you to require less of yourself and that reinforce stereotypes and negative ideas about Māori (Milne, 2017, p. 5). Milne gives accounts of whānau feeling of alienation from the school, as well as disengagement through a feeling of unwelcomeness, and a negative view of whitestream schools through their own experience (a legitimate, and valid view).

Milne highlights how whitestream education demeans cultural values through tokenistic expressions, of “dialling in” Māori-ness when suited in order to meet KPI’s of cultural expression (Milne, 2017). What this shows for rangatahi, is that their value as Māori is purely performative, and serves no purpose other than small opportunities for Pākeha consumption. A dehumanisation, if you will; reminiscent of a horse being pulled out for a display before being relegated to the stables once again. We are all one when there is a pōwhiri, then once again segregated by arbitrary levels of whiteness. Trivial and self serving, tokenism is dangerous in its promotion of apparently equitable cultural observation and ‘integration’ whilst going no further (and thus washing its hands of any further responsibility).

Shields, Bishop & Mazawi note that othering is not easily challenged because “it relieves teachers of the need to engage in pedagogical self-scrutiny or in any serious critique of their personal roles within schools, and the school’s role within the wider society. In effect pathologising school failure indicts the student while simultaneously protecting the social environment from sustained criticism” (2005). A critique and understanding of social theory, and the systemic and legislative issues that allow these views to exist as a social zeitgeist largely unchecked is essential for decolonising teachers’ views of Māori students, and locating themselves within a cultural framework. What we currently have is indirect acknowledgement of racist terms and themes, but no overt, ground-breaking ascertations that wholeheartedly identify and critique whitewashing in schools through Ministry-led, funded initiatives (Milne, 2017). There’s been so much “fixing” – fixing of the deficits in the student, in the family, and the wider community through further engagement in education (Milne, 2017). If colonialist education is the source of the disparity, then expensive implementations of further education into the whānau and community (which continue to denigrate through ‘I am not enough without a grasp of Pākeha education’) is only going to further entrench this into generations to come.

Who benefits? Coercion to form compliant partnerships that perpetuate neoliberal agenda fulfil the needs only of the dominant majority (Bishop, 2005). By deconstructing the current beliefs teachers have about their role in the achievement of Māori learners, the stratification of rangatahi can begin to be disestablished. Deficit thinking is a result of long term blindness that need to be examined by teachers in terms of their own cultural assumptions and how they themselves might be participants in the systematic marginalisation of students in their schools (Shields, Bishop & Mazawi, 2005).

Pākeha teachers have a responsibility to undertake their own decolonisation (Milne, 2017). By critically engaging, and seeking a wider inquiry into their own cultural location, teachers can begin to unravel the Eurocentric dominance in classrooms. Fears and doubts about this process can be self-justifying, as rejecting the status quo can be a direct threat to the threads of supremacy within the current societal framework. As deficit thinking is relayed in a way that is seen to be the fault of the individual and whānau, it is seemingly unchangeable (requiring intervention from self-serving policies rather than a dismantling of institutional racism). In order for teachers to help students become culturally competent, they must first become aware of their own culture and its role in their lives, and become culturally competent themselves (Milne, 2017). This “location” of oneself, is essential for Pākeha teachers who wish to decolonise the lens with which they view their Māori students, and the way they engage with the curriculum. Te Kotahitanga provides a way where teachers can locate themselves in relation to te ao Māori, however (from first hand experience in several secondary schools), this is largely non-existent unless actively enforced by leadership. There needs to be a counter story to the dominant one; a definition of success for Māori outside of eurocentricity, defined by Māori for and as Māori.

References:

Bishop, R. (2005). Pathologising the lived experiences of the indigenous Māori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Shields, C. M., Bishop, R., & Mazawi, A. E. (2005). Pathologizing practices: The impact of deficit thinking on education. New York: P. Lang.

Gillborn, David; (2005) Education policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform. Journal of Education Policy , 20 (4) pp. 485-505.

Milne, A. (2017). Coloring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools (Counterpoints). New York, USA: Peter Lang Publishing.

Penetito, W. (2010). ‘What counts as education: scholarship, philosophy, ideology’. What’s Māori about Māori education? Wellington: Victoria University Press. Pp 49-79.

Pihama, L., Smith, K., Taki, M., & Lee, J. (2004).  A literature review on Kaupapa Māori and Māori education pedagogy.  Auckland, NZ: The International Research Institute for Māori and Indigenous Education. Pp 13-33. 

Shields, C. M., Bishop, R., & Mazawi, A. E. (2005). Pathologizing practices: The impact of deficit thinking on education. New York: P. Lang.