Hill. — The Maoris To-day and To-morrow. 181 



the recognised head man with some executive authority- 

 drawn from the Maori Council. 



As the question of organization is the most pressing matter 

 in the regeneration of the Maori race. I shall give here a 

 summary of the proposals recommended by me six years 

 ago. :;: These proposals were : (1.) The establishment of a 

 system of internal local government. (2.) The opening of 

 cottage hospitals for nursing the sick in various centres, 

 where native gilds conld be trained in the art of nursing and 

 healing, and, it should be added, cooking. (3.) An improved 

 scheme of native education, so arranged that pupil-teachers 

 and assistants might be selected from the native race for 

 native schools. (4.) A system of scholarships for the speciali- 

 sation of native studies adapted to native wants. 



The first recommendation included all those measures that 

 tend to the physical, social, and moral advancement of the 

 people, such as (a) the regulation of buddings, (b) sanita- 

 tion, (c) executive powers in case of epidemics or local forms 

 of sickness, (d) regulation of stores, and (e) regulation of 

 accommodation-houses and places of amusement. Attempts 

 have lately been made to carry out the regeneration of the 

 Maori by following along several of the lines indicated above ; 

 but there has also been introduced the plan of establishing 

 a " special settlement " and starting technical schools. No 

 one is more desirous than I am to see success crown the 

 efforts of friends who would rescue a noble and intelligent 

 race like the Maori, but technical schools on lines such as 

 those shown in the Annual Eeport on the Native Schools 

 are doomed to failure, for the simple reason that they fail 

 in the initial step. Here are commenced among a people 

 just emerging from barbarism, and from conditions alto- 

 gether different from the twentieth-century civilisation, the 

 system and the training such as are found in the most ad- 

 vanced kindergarten schools of commercial peoples to-day. 

 In other words, a high type of modern utilitarian education 

 is presented to a people whose minds have been moulded for 

 generations along planes of objective training with nature 

 as the great teacher, and who view things in a different 

 way from what they are viewed by colonists and by the 

 people at Home. Native children are imitative. They 

 are copyists, and will imitate whatever is put before them, 

 either m paper, plasticine, or paint ; but is imitation to 

 be the end of training? I take it that training is directive 

 and suggestive. It aims to bring out characteristics of the 

 individual. The bent of mind, the creative faculty, the ap- 

 plication of one set of life phases to the regulation of conduct 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxix., art. x., p. 150, et seq. 



