Call for Maori language lessons in all New Zealand schools

New Zealand’s Green Party has called for all public school students in the country to be taught the Maori language.

Announcing the policy, the party’s Maori development spokesperson Marama Davidson said that: “We have a responsibility to ensure that our indigenous language not just survives, but thrives in Aotearoa, and introducing all children to it at school is one of the best ways to make that happen.

“Learning a second language has proven benefits for children, as does Maori students being immersed in their own culture.”

The Maori language is an official language of New Zealand, but according to the Greens, only 3.7% of the population speak the language, and the percentage of speakers within Maori communities is falling.

The Greens are the third largest political party in New Zealand, with 14 MPs.

Recently, Cambridge linguistics professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett called for British people to learn minority community languages such as Polish, Urdu, and Punjabi, to boost cultural understanding.

Gilles Grenier has written for IZA World of Labor about the economic and cultural benefits of linguistic diversity. He writes that: “Learning the dominant or common language is a good investment in human capital, but people also value their native language and want to preserve it. There is a trade-off between the two objectives, but they can be pursued together if more people become bilingual or multilingual. In highly educated societies, part of the education curriculum should be to encourage the learning of foreign languages and cultures.”

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The value of language skills by Gilles Grenier
Impact of bilingual education on student achievement by Aimee Chin
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