Te Aute College students perform a haka at the Waitangi Day event. Photo / Paul Taylor
Te Aute College students perform a haka at the Waitangi Day event. Photo / Paul Taylor
A LENS ON MĀORI LEARNING:
In te ao Māori, the concept of ako means both to teach and to learn.
Respect, Responsibility, Honesty and Courage are traditional values and can also be seen through te ao Māori concepts of Manaakitanga, Kaitiakitanga, Whanaungatanga, and Kotahitanga.
‘Te Aho Matua’ is a formal charter that has collectively been articulated by Māori working in Kaupapa Māori initiatives. This vision connects Māori aspirations to political, social, economic and cultural wellbeing.
Brian Rankin (Ngāti Porou) had a career in law, finance, banking, corporate property management and consulting. He is a descendant of Hone Heke of Ngapuhi through his father and is a great-grandson of Sir Apirana Ngata through his mother.
OPINION
As I was preparing to make my selections for this year’s Melbourne Cup I was trying to remember who won the cup in 1974.
The winner of the 1974 Melbourne Cup was Think Big trained by the legendary Australian horse trainer, the master of the one-liners Bart Cummings.
How did I remember that? Easy, it was my last year at school. Then it dawned on me, it’s been 50 years since I finished Form 7 at James Cook High School in Manurewa. In the seventh form I used to drive to school. I can remember my first car. It was an iridescent green Morris Minor with wide wheels, a straight pipe exhaust and a slightly modified engine courtesy of my father. CY184. What a car. Never forgot it.
Max Lane was the principal and Winstone Soper was his deputy. I remember getting the cane from Soper, formerly a teacher at Auckland Grammar. Sadly for me it was an offence that was worthy of the cane, but the offence was funny nonetheless.
He said to me as I’m diving into what I now know is one of my yoga positions - “I’m going to take great delight in this Rankin. I can say that I have now caned both the father and the son.” Until that moment I had not known that my father had attended Auckland Grammar. I can’t recall when the cane was banned but I do accept that I got what I deserved.
We had a useful first XV that year coached by Graham Young who went on to become a long serving principal at Tauranga Boys.
The team’s composition was a reasonable reflection of the school community at the time with an equal number of Māori and Pākehā. We had a couple of useful props, Arthur Pumipi and Thomas Webster.
In those days they were “big units” but by today’s standards they would be “puppies”. There were the Te Hira brothers, Ned and Tiri. We had a brilliant half-back, Bruce Clarke, and a skinny Pākehā, Gary Kemble, who went on to play fullback for the Kiwis and had a distinguished league career in the UK.
I was captain and beat all of the other schools and even played against and beat Auckland Grammar in a friendly. It was the first year that the Counties Rugby Union had allowed St Stephens, or “Tipene” as they are more commonly referred to in Māori circles, to play in the secondary schools’ competition.
Tipene had a great team coached by the late Awi Riddell, a renowned teacher and educationalist and captained by Darrell Waiti who went on to become principal of Te Aute College, another prestigious Māori boys’ school in the Hawke’s Bay.
Tipene vs Te Aute battles were legendary, akin to a Grammar vs Kings rivalry with the modern versions, including school haka.
With Tipene vs Te Aute there was the “game battle” and then there was the “haka battle”. These haka battles had been in existence since the beginning of time and with the greatest of respect to the All Blacks’ haka, well, there is no comparison. It was like war battalions with the stakes being the highest imaginable, “the mana of each school”.
We played Tipene twice that season and lost both. We had a home game first and lost that 30-28 and I think they were perhaps, a little complacent. I say that because there were no haka. The second time we played was at Counties Stadium and this time there was haka and no sense of complacency. We lost 14-nil.
The silver lining to these defeats is that we had an awesome Counties Secondary Schools team that year comprised mainly of Tipene and James Cook players and we managed to defeat Auckland in the final to win what was then known as the Northern Regional Tournament playing for the Hughes and Cossar Shield.
Sir Selwyn Parata investiture at Uepohatu Marae in Ruatorea on Saturday, June 22, 2024.
Tipene had so many great players and notable among them was Sir Selwyn Parata who has served as chair of the Ngati Porou tribal authority Te Runananganui o Ngati Porou since 2014. E mihi ana kia koe e te rangatira.
There have been so many great Māori leaders to come out of Tipene from the 1974 era, many of whom I have had the pleasure and honour of meeting.
Hone Harawira.
Hone Harawira is one. He is commonly referred to as a Māori activist. Despite that tag, his voice is necessary and describing him simply as an “activist” misleads people into thinking that what he has to say is extreme, radical and at the lowest point ignorant. It is none of those things. It is vital, sincere and earthed to the mana of his people. His speech at Waitangi this year is representative of that. I concede that perhaps there were a few paragraphs of mischief but it was entertaining.
NZ First MP Shane Jones.
Shane Jones was around in those years. He is a gifted orator in both te reo and English. Scotty MacPherson was the principal of Tipene at this time, another gifted Māori educationalist. Rawhiti Ihaka, a delightful man and respected teacher also taught at Tipene. Whaikorero (oratory), waiata (songs) are essential to the lifeblood of Māori culture and Shane is someone who from a young age had a love for the art. My father was fortunate enough to judge the Tipene whaikorero competition. He described Shane Jones as “special”.
Te Aute College students perform a haka at the Waitangi Day event. Photo / Paul Taylor
These were the halcyon days of Māori education. Tipene and Te Aute had full rolls. The schools had incredible leaders and educationalists who wanted boys to become men who took an active and positive role within our community. Families could afford to send their boys to these famous schools, parents were employed.
It’s hard to believe that a public service that included iconic institutions such as the Ministry of Works, Post Office, State Forestry was the backbone of Māori employment and that its dissolution could have, perhaps in part, had such a detrimental effect on Māori communities and the welfare of our people. Perhaps it’s a telling commentary on the importance of employment as a foundation for family.
Fast forward 26 years. It’s 2000. Te Ururoa Flavell is principal of Tipene. He’s an old boy so he knows what the great times looked like. His last year was 1973 so it wasn’t until I started playing for the University 3rd grade rugby team in 1975 that I got to meet Te Ururoa. The school roll was 83. The then Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, embarked on a consultation process to consider the closure of the school. I was appointed to lead that consultation process.
The school land is held in trust under the control of the Anglican Church and as such the Bishop of Aotearoa, who at the time was Whakahuihui Vercoe PCNZM MBE, became a crucial part of the consultation process. He was a quietly spoken man. He was one of those men whose presence you felt, you did not see it in his physical form, neither did you hear him remonstrate forcefully, but what was clear was that he understood what was at stake.
The bishop was an integral part of the consultation process and I was able to spend a lot of time with him during that process outlining to him the ministry’s position, the results of consultation and clarifying for him the issues that concerned him.
Ultimately, the minister determined after consultation that for a number of reasons including; a governance model he would not work with, a lack of quality in the curriculum, poor infrastructure and facilities and a low standard of education being delivered, the school was to be closed. The catalyst for the process was bullying. The bishop accepted a decision to close with a promise from the government that it would work towards a reopening.
Thanks to one of the men from the Tipene class of 1974, Joe Harawira, his determination and leadership has led to the reopening of Tipene for the first cohort in 2025.
Education can be viewed in a number of different ways. The basket of knowledge for us all and our future leaders of commerce, politics, sport and society. As a means to upward social mobility.
Sadly many of our schools face daunting challenges today, borne out of a society struggling to deal with the consequences of poverty, crime, drugs, gangs, homelessness, poor mental health.
A staggering 648,800 New Zealand householders are in financial difficulty while a further 739,000 have low/no reserves and are vulnerable to financial shocks, according to the Commission For Financial Capability Report (CFFC) - October 2020.
Norman Kirk in full cry at the opening of the Labour Party election campaign in the Auckland Town Hall in 1969. Photo / NZ Herald
It begs the question doesn’t it? In 50 years how far have we come as a nation really?
In 1974 Norman Kirk, the 29th Prime Minister who died in office, said: “There are four things that matter to people. They have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear and they have to have something to hope for.”
Not much has changed in terms of what people need but what has changed is the number of households with little hope.
For those in serious financial difficulty, hope has possibly abandoned them. For those in some difficulty, they are hoping they still have a job. For those exposed to financial shocks, they are probably hoping something bad doesn’t happen and for those who can meet their obligations, they are probably hoping it doesn’t rain while they are on holiday.
Whaaia te maatauranga hei oranga mo koutou (Seek after learning for the sake of your wellbeing).
