Post by Kiwi Frontline on Sept 18, 2016 9:25:56 GMT 12
The Editor, (Sent to the Wanganui Chronicle 16/7/16)
Dear Sir,
It is disturbing to see so many well-meaning but deluded people advocating the compulsory learning of Maori language in our schools. If there were any real wisdom remaining in outer society it would be known that " for all things there is a season", and that no power on earth can stop the Maori culture and language from eventually passing away. We call it evolution.
Maori culture, in the real pre-colonial sense, has indeed already long since passed into history. Human cultures and societies are at every moment in a natural process of dynamic metamorphosis, even without the influence of more advanced colonising civilisations.
If we had an education system worthy of the name, it would be general knowledge that scores, perhaps hundreds of cultures and languages in the course of history have become extinct, or have changed beyond recognition by blending with other cultures, the both becoming the richer for it.
Let us not forget that even the mighty Roman empire, the dominant and leading culture of the then known world, has, together with its language (Latin), passed away. How many past civilisations, races, and languages have synthesised and evolved to become the modern language and culture we know as English? And this too shall pass, " in its season". Ideally, the demise of ancient cultures should be neither be hastened nor prolonged, but be allowed to pass in dignity and gratitude and not be kept artificially alive as humiliating caricatures of their former reality.
If the part Maori supremists and their very silly white patrons possessed any remnant of common sense they would know that it is the fruits of the past which we carry forward with us into the future, not the trappings. Such agitators have no wish to arrive at the truth since they subconsciously know that this will not be to their advantage. They only wish to
win the argument.
All that was true and beautiful in past civilisations and cultures, including that of the Maori, we carry on with us as qualities of soul. Nothing of true worth is ever irretrievably lost, thus mankind progresses.
C R
Dunedin
Dear Sir,
It is disturbing to see so many well-meaning but deluded people advocating the compulsory learning of Maori language in our schools. If there were any real wisdom remaining in outer society it would be known that " for all things there is a season", and that no power on earth can stop the Maori culture and language from eventually passing away. We call it evolution.
Maori culture, in the real pre-colonial sense, has indeed already long since passed into history. Human cultures and societies are at every moment in a natural process of dynamic metamorphosis, even without the influence of more advanced colonising civilisations.
If we had an education system worthy of the name, it would be general knowledge that scores, perhaps hundreds of cultures and languages in the course of history have become extinct, or have changed beyond recognition by blending with other cultures, the both becoming the richer for it.
Let us not forget that even the mighty Roman empire, the dominant and leading culture of the then known world, has, together with its language (Latin), passed away. How many past civilisations, races, and languages have synthesised and evolved to become the modern language and culture we know as English? And this too shall pass, " in its season". Ideally, the demise of ancient cultures should be neither be hastened nor prolonged, but be allowed to pass in dignity and gratitude and not be kept artificially alive as humiliating caricatures of their former reality.
If the part Maori supremists and their very silly white patrons possessed any remnant of common sense they would know that it is the fruits of the past which we carry forward with us into the future, not the trappings. Such agitators have no wish to arrive at the truth since they subconsciously know that this will not be to their advantage. They only wish to
win the argument.
All that was true and beautiful in past civilisations and cultures, including that of the Maori, we carry on with us as qualities of soul. Nothing of true worth is ever irretrievably lost, thus mankind progresses.
C R
Dunedin