Unconscious Being: Settler Girls, High School and Colonialism in Interwar New Zealand

Abstract

Historically settler and Indigenous childhoods have been defined in educational terms. However, scholarship has tended to focus on policy, curriculum, gender and the place of Indigenous Māori children as colonial education subjects, with less emphasis on settler children’s experiences or responses. This article explores this through a case study of two high school girls in interwar New Zealand, coinciding with centennial celebrations in 1940. British culture remained pervasive, especially through curriculum and school cultures. These two girls represent a teenaged cohort that was still relatively unreflective, for whom a non-European narrative was largely absent. The article uses two key sources, one educational and one literary. The girls’ thoughts, feelings and experiences of school are analysed within a broader matrix of documentary evidence. The article argues that, for these girls, imperial and colonial processes were experienced unreflectively, perpetuating euro-centric attitudes about what was societally important 100 years on from initial colonisation.