Pacific Island Polynesian Attitudes to Child Training and Discipline in New Zealand: Some Policy Implications for Social Welfare and Education

Penelope Schoeffel, Malama Meleisa

This paper summarises the findings of a study based on interviews with twenty-five Pacific Islands families in the suburb of Otara in South Auckland during 1994. The aim was to investigate cultural attitudes regarding the socialisation and discipline of children. From experience, it seemed to us that the cultural values of the various Pacific Islands communities about the family, child raising, child discipline and how “parenting skills” should be defined were at variance with those of European New Zealanders.

We present a summary of the results, then discuss and compare Pacific Islands and New Zealand values, especially in relation to parenting skills and educational achievement. We believe the findings of our study are relevant for evaluating the policy significance of recent negative reports by the Education Review Office of South Auckland secondary schools in which the majority of students are of Pacific Islands ethnicity.

If the socialisation practices of Pacific Islands families contribute to difficulties their children have with interactive teaching techniques, this suggests that more emphasis needs to be placed on developing the interactive learning abilities of Pacific Islands children in primary and junior secondary schools.