Life in A Maori School, 4 Summary and Analysis

Holidays

Sylvia makes a Maori belt for her coat which proudly displays unity for the blended cultures. Wearing it around town, Sylvia receives a lot of positive responses, especially from the Maoris. One of the white children, Dennis, is experiencing psychological problems due, at least in part, to the harsh upbringing by his mother. Another white child, June, has been away from the schools also suffering from emotional problems. Sylvia wishes she could work with some of these neurotic white children.

Another professor complains about Sylvia's messy classroom but she takes no offense. To Sylvia, her students with perfect penmanship are the least creative and those with the greatest creativity are failures with pencils. Sylvia is concerned when she sees some of her newer writers composing disjointed stories with no cohesion. During the...