People at school are racist to me . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman Today, we began recording every student in our school speaking their name. The recordings – all 1250 of them – will be individually uploaded to KAMAR, our student management system. When they are saved there will no longer be a reason why any student in the school should have their name pronounced incorrectly. It will take time but it is worth it because it matters to our students. We are not the only school to think it matters. As we began the project I reposted a Facebook story by the NZ Human Rights Commission featuring a group of students at Holy Family School in Porirua talking about why mis-pronouncing their names is racist. In the Facebook clip their Principal Chris Theobold says; ‘I believe there is racism in the New Zealand education system and that it manifests itself in lots of different ways. If you have simply not bothered to learn that name because it’s a language different to your own then I think that’s where the racism issue comes into it.’ It is not the first time this week I have heard students in New Zealand speaking out about their experiences of racism. As I write this I am reading a report entitled Education Matters to me: Key Insights. It is published jointly by the NZ School Trustee’s Association and the Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft – whose credentials in listening to the voices of young people in New Zealand are hard to dispute. The project collates the voices of over 1600 children and young people from Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch on the subject of their educational experiences. There are 6 key insights under which the voices are collated: 1. Understand me in my whole world 2. People at school are racist to me 3. Relationships mean everything to me 4. Teach me in the way I learn best 5. I need to be comfortable before I can learn 6. It’s my life let me have a say
The term racism is deliberately used throughout the report – in preference to terms like discrimination and bias – because this was the word the children and young people used. Perhaps for this reason the report has been widely discussed across all media in New Zealand this week. ‘Children and young people told us they feel burdened with negative stereotypes, and they believe the stereotypes impact on the way teachers treat them. They talked about sensing that teacher’s assumptions about them affect their relationship from the outset.’ (Education Matters to me: Key Insights p19) The report makes for tough reading for anyone involved in education. I hope that the response from us as educators will do justice to the students who spoke up and those who took the
time to listen. The response from the media was certainly to sit up and take notice. Radio New Zealand’s story entitled ‘Racism in schools we need to face up to that’ interviewed spokespeople from all of the major teacher representative bodies. Whilst it is tempting to hope that Jack Boyle of the PPTA is right when he said that, ‘teachers were “ahead of the game” in terms of addressing racism and avoiding unconscious bias against their students’ the report very clearly shows that this just isn’t the case. Lynda Stuart president of NZEI talks more candidly about the mono-cultural nature of our education system and as Lorraine Kerr, president of the NZ School Trustees Association says, ‘We can talk about the kind of experience we are trying to give our children and young people. But only they can talk about whether that is what they are actually getting.’ At our first Staff Only Day of the year we heard from Ann Milne, author of Colouring in the White Spaces. It was really hard to hear her talk in similarly stark terms about the work to be done here in New Zealand. She spoke about hegemony and the need for us to talk honestly about New Zealand history in our curriculum and about the legacy of colonisation. Her message is repeated in the report: ‘We heard about the dominant culture for most schools in New Zealand. Foryoung people who come from different cultural backgrounds, they are constantly searching to see themselves reflected in the culture of their educational environment.’ (Education Matters to me: Key Insights p21) Whilst there is much to be done it is heartening to see leaders in our community standing up with the willingness to be held accountable. In a Waitangi speech widely referred to as historic, our Prime Minister spoke of the distance between our two houses, Pakeha and Māori, and asked those assembled to: ‘Hold us to account. Because one day I want to be able to tell my child that I earned the right to stand here. And only you can tell me when I have done that.’ I hope that this year, as educators, we are prepared to ask honest questions about racism in our schools and to be held to account by the children and young people we serve. References Education matters to me NZSTA Office of the Children’s Commissioner January 2018 www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/101007218/students-tell-ofracism-in-study-of-how-they-view-the-education-system https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/349365/racism-in-schoolswe-need-to-face-up-to-that