Jun 24, 2013

Karakia in school - what's the fuss?

Can’t say I get the fuss over karakia in schools. Whether a school conducts karakia is a decision for the school. Personally, I wouldn't want my kids attending a school that started the day with  prayer to God. However, karakia can have nothing to do with religion. It's a misunderstanding to think that a karakia is equivalent to, say, a Christian prayer.

A karakia is a cultural act, though it can be infused with religion or spirituality. A karakia can be a prayer to a deity, but that’s not the rule. A karakia could involve – and I don’t think I’m stretching the definition – meditation or words to a no one or nothing in particular.

A non-religious or non-spiritual karakia is a way to include Maori students. Rejecting karakia further marginalises the most marginalised students. Karakia is part of being Maori – whether it’s religious, spiritual or secular. The line between religion/spiritualism and culture is blurred in Te Ao Maori, but that’s not a reason to reject karakia. Maybe this is why some Maori support charter schools?

Post script: Dave Armstrong has a good piece on this in the Dominion Post

9 comments:

  1. A karakia is vague, spiritual and usually not a "prayer to God" as such... more a message to wairua, or spirit like you've mentioned above...
    An Inoi however is a prayer to God.
    What's happened is that the two have become mixed up over time (karakia have become colonised by inoi)
    @ceejayjoe (twitter)

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    1. Interesting. I've heard a few people make the distinction between inoi and karakia, but only rarely (usually the old people).

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  2. what throws me a little is the Āmine at the end. I automatically associate it with a Christian pray ending. Different context?

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    1. Not all karakia end with amine. And like @ceejayjoe says, a prayer ending in amine is likely to be an inoi rather than karakia (or karakia as far as a traditional definition goes).

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    2. as long as peeps know what they are consenting to or contracting into ex ante, things should be sweet.

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  3. The ancient incantation (karakia or ruruku) was always a magical (spiritual if you like) appeal for supernatural intervention. Pretty much the same as the Christian incantation (karakia or inoi) Neither is/was at all "secular".

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  4. The specific karakia that started this dispute is a prayer, though. It may be wrong to extrapolate from this to say 'all karakia should be banned', but that is not what the original complaint stipulated. I don't want to put words in the teachers' mouths but I've seen nothing to imply that they wouldn't have been happy with an alternative wording. All the complaints have been about the content.

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    1. It was. The subsequent commentary, though, was 'ban all karakia', 'religion in school!' etc... That fudged the issue.

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  5. As an atheist Pakeha studying Maori at secondary school, I was always troubled by the amount of Christian content to the classroom/lessons (explicitly Christian karakia, translated Bible verses on the classroom walls, etc.) but I didn't feel it was my place to comment or complain. Karakia do not have to be Christian prayers but in my experience the ones I was exposed to almost all were - even when people didn't realise it. One secular Pakeha family I know did a karakia as a grace before meals...they never would have spoken a Christian prayer in English, but not speaking much Maori didn't realise what they were saying.

    As far as I can see, the best solution is for people to learn more Maori, so they can know what they're actually saying/having said to them or their kids - then the argument can be about the content, not the language. Right now they tend to be tangled together in an unhelpful way.

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