So, when I first entered the public school system in South Auckland at primary age, the teacher put me and all the other maori children in the corner and told us to quietly do jigsaw puzzles while the whites did school work.
My brothers got the same treatment, so after a year of school in Auckland where hadn't been taught the alphabet and my siblings had gone backwards, my mother pulled us out of school and home schooled us, which meant she had to leave her job, which then meant we went hungry a fair bit.
That was the 70s, it is much worse for Maori families now. Anyway as you probably tell my mother taught us to read, taught us Shakespear, Dickens, the Brontes etc, at home, we returned to the school system when we were able to fend for ourselves in that system despite different treatment. My story is not unique. My best friend who was smarter than me pulled out of school when his mother couldn't afford the uniform. These are soft racial negative outcomes there were kids in our street getting hidings for failing at school. None of that behavior happens in Maori areas where the people have access to their land, farms, resources, the social resilience and community standing to be like everyone else.
