Running the Gauntlet: A Gifted Māori Learner's Journey Through Secondary School
Introduction
Jill Bevan-Brown
Paper presented at the Now is the Future Conference, held by the George Parkyn Centre Charitable Trust for Gifted Education, Auckland, October 2000.
The title of my presentation is "Running the gauntlet: A gifted Māori learner's journey through secondary school". I chose the analogy of running the gauntlet as I feel it aptly describes what schooling is like for many gifted Māori learners. Today I am going to share a number of stories with you that illustrate this situation. Unfortunately these are not "isolated instances". For 12 years now I have been involved in a wide variety of research projects relating to Māori learners with special needs and abilities and in that time I have collected a substantial, empirical database of many such instances. I would also like to make the point from the outset that while this presentation deals specifically with gifted Māori students, the four barriers I will be discussing today apply to all Māori students whatever their level of ability.