Kiwi Character

merican Professor Pulls No Punches

Kiwi Character Under Fire

By a Staff Writer

r What’s wrong with New Zealanders? [Enough things to fill a book, asserts an

irican professor, David Ausubel, who goes

td to prove it by publishing the book titled [Fern and the Tiki. It has just been released

vdney.

DFESSOR Ausubel collected his ammunition ruring 12 months in New Zealand on a Fulbright irant, and is not afraid to use it. ; is probably the most forthright criticism of New tnd character and the New Zealand Welfare ever written, and especially he doesn’t hesitate ot out the Sacred Cow of New Zealand race rela , and examine it publicly and at length.

gives a lay-it-on-the nose re >of the New Zealand character ji will startle most people, and irtain to generate a great deal :-ath in the New Zealand isles, o it will be a great surprise if nook is not going to be a best t.fessor Ausubel himself is in no ; that what he writes is going i; received in horror in some )ers, but he doesn’t apologise. ; even willing to have a crack •edicting future events, point out that there is no use him :mg over that prospect “since I ; already stuck my neck out too a interpreting the past and the nt.” lhat might I reasonably expect nd if, provided with a strong

bodyguard, I had the temerity to return to these shores in 1970 or 1990?” the professor asks, and happily he sees some hope for NZ’s future because of its youth. And anyhow, the “she’ll be right” habit of work will go by the board, and already “the honeymoon of prosper ously muddling through while reck lessly violating every known prin ciple of economics is over”.

But that is the future.

These are some of Professor Ausubel’s views on the New Zealand of today: • The approach of New Zealand mothers to their child rearing tasks is “more coldly impersonal and matter of fact and less spontaneous and relaxed” than the American approach, and like everything else that the New Zealand woman does “she is deadly serious about the business of mothercraft. The rear ing of children is not intended to provide enjoyment or emotional sat isfaction”.

Not Free Spenders • New Zealanders “could hardly be accused of being free spenders”. A disproportionate amount of mental and physical energy, even among well-to-do persons, is spent in planning and executing penny-sav ing operations and in fretting about petty over-charges that scarcely seem worth bothering about. The “do it yourself” dictum is carried to the point of fanaticism, possibly to save money. • New Zealanders appear to ex hibit a strong under-current of hostility towards foreigners, irre spective of whether they are Aus tralian, British, Dutch or American and he had “rarely felt completely welcome and wholeheartedly accepted in New Zealand homes”.

(Continued on page 141)

• Interpersonal relations in New Zealand seemed strained, tense, touchy and marked by a peculiar lack of graciousness, and the effects of a few drinks on NZ deportment is more drastic than in England or the US. • New Zealand school teachers

overgrown schoolboys them „ their chief trouble being that were never out in real life be- Lhey started teaching. One of results in the New Zealand I system is “one of the last [jints of Spartan discipline” and in need of a new 'However, any suggestion that /New Zealand school system H be run with a democratic Jline and genuine co-education irally unleash a torrent of de re and name calling reactions r\ w Zealand”.

Hew Zealanders have racial [ems, but not bad ones, with the s is, although it is the popular to deny it. He had been fed lith “all the pussy-footing and iance to call a spade a spade”, ad heard New Zealanders emit ide of venom and abuse against Maoris “that made the position Most American segregationists moderate by comparison”, tfessor Ausubel is Professor of utional Psychology at the Uni r;y of Illinois, and holds a cal degree, an MA and a PhD Fern and the Tiki was pub- Ji in Sydney in March by 3S and Robertson Ltd., who will ibly be pleased to have the i of the Tasman between New ind readers and their printing Ees.