Bruce Jepsen: Let the experts do their job

As another school year comes to a close this week, Dale catches up with Bruce Jepsen, a former school principal who now leads Te Akatea, the national association of Māori school principals and leaders. In their kōrero, they cover Māori achievement, the constant political tinkering in education, the kind of education every child deserves, and why He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be woven into the fabric of our education system.

 

Tēnā koe, Bruce. I wonder if you might tell us a little bit about yourself and the Jepsen crew. Often parents feature strongly in the morals and ethics we carry in life. Would you be kind enough to share some kōrero about your whānau and where you grew up?

My full name is Bruce Anton Jepsen. I whakapapa to Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa, and Tainui. Pikiahu-Waewae is my hapū.

The Jepsen name comes from Horsens, a city on the east coast of the Jutland region of Denmark. Our family connection goes back to my great-grandfather Anton Martin Jepsen, who came out to Aotearoa in 1843, on the Halcione bound for Wellington. He married a Māori wahine named Minnie Ellen Wade. She’s my whakapapa connection to Tainui and the Wade whānau.

On my mother’s side, her father was Tūwharetoa, and her mother was Ngāti Raukawa. We whakapapa to “The Valley” in the Rangitīkei, the southernmost parts of Tūwharetoa, and to Raukawa through Parewahawaha in Bulls.

I was born in Palmerston North but was first raised in Kuku and attended school in Levin. As you said, my parents have played a massive role. They’ve been the biggest influences on who I am as a person. My father’s passed, but my mother is still thriving.

I’ve often thought how privileged I am to have so many strong whānau connections, and to be able to wander the land and feel at home. When you talk of all these places, you can go to Kāwhia and feel at home, you can go to Rangitīkei and feel at home. It’s a great privilege afforded us as Māori, this lovely intertribal connection that allows us to feel at home in many different places, nei?

Āe. And I must say, my schooling was predominantly in English-speaking kura, which they used to call “mainstream” back in the day. My exposure to things Māori and the connection to whenua was in experiences like tangihanga or going to hui or wānanga at the marae.

It was like living in two worlds, because my experiences in school and sports and other parts of life weren’t so connected to whenua. The realisation of identity and culture and reo and connection to whenua happened later, from university onwards.

But I understand exactly what you mean about the important connection that we as Māori have — the privilege that we’re afforded to whakapapa to whenua, to get that deep sense of belonging, and to connect through our people and our tūpuna in that way. I’m far more aware of that now as an adult than when I was a young person. And I’m really grateful for that. I think that, as Māori, our whakapapa is our ultimate superpower.

Would it be fair to say that yours is a whānau of educators?

Yes. One of my aunties is a principal, another one’s a teacher, and my wife is a deputy principal as well. My brother’s a teacher, and my wife’s sisters, four or five of them, are educators. My mother-in-law is a Doctor of Education. So, yes, we’re a whānau of educators. And some of the conversations at our dinner table — well, it’s a lot, to be honest!

I guess you were destined to at least consider a career in education. But before we get there, you know, early in life, sometimes we see or hear from people, or we read books or see movies or visit places that inspire an interest in an area, and I wondered whether there was anyone or anything that stands out in that way?

My father, John Anton Jepsen, was a massive influence on me and my siblings. I’ve got three brothers, Martin, Eric and Shane, and a younger sister, Lyneesha. So there’s five of us.

We grew up on a farm, and from a very young age, we were taught the importance of mahi. If we weren’t working at home or helping out at a woolshed up the road, or with some other farmer with his cows, we were at the market gardens working for our neighbours. So we have a fair understanding of what hard graft is. We got that through our father, who worked his entire life.

My mother, Puti (nee Williams), was also very hard-working. I remember her working three jobs to keep things going for the whānau, and then being out on the farm as well. Both our parents were working-class people who did their very best to put food on the table and to have us clothed well and housed, and we were really spoiled. They worked hard so that we could get the best opportunities that life could provide.

My mum was a real advocate for education. She’d left school early and went to work as a seamstress, yet she recognised how important it was for us to become educated, and she cleared any barriers. When I was near the end of my secondary school education, my father said: “Here’s your future. We can lay it out like this. You can either run the farm, or you can go off and get educated.”

From an early age, I’d done milk runs and market gardening. I picked spuds, weeded onions, milked cows, mended fences, docked sheep — done all sorts of things. And after all those experiences, I decided that my pathway would involve education.

Once I’d made up my mind, my parents were always behind me, supporting me. And that went for all of us children.

Nowadays you’re trying to help tauira, students, whose parents haven’t had that privileged run with work and a strong work ethic. How much empathy does it develop in you when you recognise that the privilege of coming from a family where hard work was the norm isn’t replicated everywhere — and that some are trying to pick up the pieces of intergenerational unemployment and the like?

I think where education comes into play these days is around providing equal opportunity for our tamariki, and it goes far broader than reading, writing and maths. It’s important to take care of the overall wellbeing of our tamariki, whatever role model or example they’ve had. For me, that highlights the importance of educators today.

Kids learn in different ways. As teachers, is it your role to get them across the line with educational achievement or is it to help them develop character, or both?

Education has a responsibility to make sure that every learner, all our rangatahi, are the best they can be. Not everyone’s built to write poetry or be an orator, and not everyone’s the best mathematician in the world — and neither should they be.

We have a responsibility to every child, whatever their background or language, to make sure they’re the best version of themselves. And that’s a version deeply rooted in their cultural DNA, in who they are. Whatever we do, we have to develop children in their fullness.

Achievements come when we have a good sense of ourselves, and when we’re not trying to please someone else or be someone we’re not. It’s then that we reach our potential.

So I suppose my thinking around that is that we do anything and everything required to enhance the sense of self, so that every child knows who they are. And we work really hard to give children that sense of grounding.

We talked earlier about being able to walk the whenua and have a connection. Not all our tamariki have that, but we go as far as we possibly can to give them a sense of belonging and identity.

For Māori, a big component of identity is also a connection to our reo. There are so many of us who aren’t fluent in the reo. But just making a start and growing along that continuum is the path to having a good sense of self, a good sense of belonging, and knowing you’re important, valued and loved.

You’ve had an extensive involvement in so many different areas of education. But what comes across to me is your enthusiasm. It’s infectious. And I’m wondering, while we’re trying to get it right for Māori students, celebrating our culture and unique identity, the same could be said of all peoples, couldn’t it? As a leader within schools, how important is this aspect of prioritising a respect for culture?

For me, that’s clear and obvious. But it’s not clear and obvious for everyone.

My feeling is that anyone we come into contact with, whatever their background, we should respect who they are, listen to what they have to say, and do our very best to understand them.

Obviously, I connect to a particular worldview, my Māori worldview, and I’ve seen how people thrive when we ensure that their identity, culture and reo are front and centre. The same could be said for other cultures, and I think that’s what Te Tiriti always had in mind. Looking back to understand how we came to be who we are today and how it is that we stand in Aotearoa today, is important for everyone.

A long time ago, I came up with a way of working with tamariki, which is summed up in the phrase: “Know me before you teach me.” That could be applied to anyone. It means that you contextualise the learning in relationship to who they are, their beliefs, background and culture.

So, there’s an opportunity to do all sorts of things to educate tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti. And there’s an intended true balance about that.

In the media, sadly, we’ve been exposed as people to nearly 200 years of negative stereotyping. And so, while I’m tempted to talk about Māori underachievement, I’m going to flip it the other way around and talk about Māori achievement and its potential. In acknowledging that potential, do we learn differently?

I think we do. I think Māori are exceptional learners. I think Māori are out the gate if we are provided with the right conditions to learn. Māori are overachievers. We could navigate the oceans before all these other people.

There’s a lot of evidence to show how amazing our people are, in the stories of the whenua, hapū and iwi, but we don’t necessarily know or learn about this rich history and Māori brilliance in our schools.

There have been too many stories about Māori underachievement, and we can lose sight of the brilliance because we’ve been reminded for so long about the deficits.

But every day now we’re becoming more and more aware of the brilliance of our people. We’re seeing it with our musicians, we’re seeing it with our artists, we’re seeing it with our scientists, we’re seeing it with people who are dealing with sustainability in the environment. And we’re seeing it with our educators. It’s across the board.

I think the tide has turned. I think we’re in a whole different generation of outstanding young people who are becoming more and more aware of who they are and how brilliant their tūpuna were. I see far more belief in ourselves as a people when we learn about the Māori-determined solutions that have gone on before colonisation and post-colonisation. That’s what I call Māori mana motuhake.

You’ve been able to achieve tremendous results in the mainstream kura settings you’ve been working in. But at the same time, we’ve seen the spectacular results achieved in Māori language learning environments, kura kaupapa Māori.

I’m a bit nervous about people my age and older dictating how schools should roll. So while politicians say it’s reading, writing and arithmetic that needs to be focused on, the ever-evolving landscapes in education might suggest otherwise. How might education be rolled out in the years ahead?

I’ve got a simple view on it: Let the experts do their jobs.

At the moment, we’re being politically interfered with. But we need educators who are experts in leading education into the future. It’s not for politicians to be dictating whether we should be getting out textbooks, which seem a bit behind the times in my mind.

My thinking is that every Māori child in this country is entitled to a world-class Māori education. And that means every Māori child in every educational setting.

If we took away the titles — kura ā iwi, kura kaupapa, kura auraki — every child should be able to go to any school in New Zealand and learn their reo. Every child should be able to have a good sense of who they are. And every child should be exposed to and have an understanding of the importance of tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti.

Touch on your Danish whakapapa for a moment, because in the Scandinavian countries, education is seen as a societal right throughout life. I wonder whether we as Māori have allowed ourselves to think that education stops when we leave high school or leave university, instead of thinking of education as a lifelong journey. Is there something we could learn from the Scandinavian model?

I think the Danish have more to learn from us. I don’t think, in our country, we’ve even scratched the surface of our ability to educate through a te ao Māori lens. You only have to look at the amazing results in kura kaupapa settings for the 3 percent of Māori who attend those kura.

And I’m not really surprised by that, because of the environment, the culture, the people, the teachers that our tamariki are exposed to, and all the whānau, hapū, iwi connections that contribute to a strong sense of self. We can’t say the same occurs in all English-medium schools. In fact, we see disproportionate underachievement.

As for Denmark and Sweden and Norway and Finland and their approach to education, I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations, but I suppose the difference is because of the generally monocultural context in those countries, and the impact of colonisation here. In bicultural Aotearoa, we don’t have a great understanding in our country yet of the back story of colonial racism. It’s not openly taught in our histories, and it’s always up for debate.

So I don’t think we’ve reached our potential in our own country. There’s no need to look for answers overseas. We have the answers right in front of us. There’s an opportunity to educate, to grow understanding, so that people’s eyes are opened, and we see the emergence of a truly bicultural Aotearoa.

I was thinking of the success stories of our wāhine who’ve attended Te Wānanga o Aotearoa or other institutions in their late 20s, early 30s, having had tamariki, and then having outstanding results in getting degrees and beyond. Yet in high school, it was assumed that they weren’t capable of anything like that.

That’s one of the systemic flaws in our system. Sometimes it’s a struggle for our people in their formative years and as students in our system to experience success because of all the struggles that go on with identity and culture and language. Adults can feel a bit more equipped or ready for that.

It’s sad to think that we’ve got so many people who can come out and achieve amazing things, yet they’re doing it later in life. It should happen earlier. It speaks to Māori capability once again: our brilliance, our flexibility, our ability to adapt and to endure.

We touched on being dictated to by Wellington and by politicians in the curriculum. Do you think that we engage our tamariki and our rangatahi enough? Are we getting enough feedback from them to know what they’re hoping for and what they’d like to see prioritised?

What I’m seeing is that we need to include our tamariki, our whānau, our hapū and iwi, more than we ever have before. If we’re thinking about a brighter future, we’ve got to engage our tamariki, because what we adults think might be the best way forward might be a little bit out of time. We might be lagging behind.

What I’m practising more and more is when I’m going into important situations or hui, I’m taking younger leaders with me to help guide, steer, and grow, so that we’re in tune with one another and with the times.

Our rangatahi need to be a part of decision-making, and I don’t mean a token inclusion. I hate it when I go into these situations and there’s one rangatahi and 20 old people like myself. We need a balance of people and contexts, so that we’re being led by the people.

I also want to highlight the absolute importance of real engagement with whānau so that we’re making sure that the aspirations of our people are being maximised in the things that we do. Not as a tack-on, or an afterthought.

A lot of these young people will need to be agile with their skill sets because, as the saying goes, the jobs that they’ll fulfil haven’t even been invented yet. These are challenging times for educators. When you look back at your career thus far, are there any names you’d share that have been an integral part of your confidence in the sector you’ve worked in?

My current mentor Distinguished Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith offers sound advice, support and kindness. And iwi leader Turi Ngatai is so generous with his time and sharing his wisdom.

I’m thinking Puti (nee Williams) Jepsen, that’s my mother who has always been a massive influence on me and my ongoing learning, and in my life and the trajectory that’s taken. And my father, as I mentioned earlier. I can’t honour them enough for the opportunities that they’ve provided me.

Within education, I was at Canterbury University and had a lecturer by the name of Tom Rangi, who pointed out to me the small number of teachers who were Māori tāne. He gave me a lot of support and encouragement to make sure I saw it through.

In Māori spaces, when I was teaching in Te Puke, I decided I wanted to be a tumuaki, a principal, and I was going to get there as fast as I could. I had some wonderful mentors, such as the late Bob Harper, who was my deputy principal, and Bruce Dalgety, a principal who helped steer me in the right direction and at the right pace. These people helped me make the right choices about where I wanted to go and how to get there.

My first post as a principal was Rangiuru (Tapuika), 23 years ago. I was there for six or so years and was fortunate to be supported by Edith Sykes and Hinga Marsh. It was rare to have a Māori principal at that time. I think I was the only one who wasn’t in a Māori medium kura in the Western Bay of Plenty.

So I was sort of a lone soldier. But I’ve really enjoyed seeing those numbers skyrocket here in the Bay of Plenty.

And I can’t acknowledge enough the support that mana whenua have given me. I’ve leaned on them heavily, and I think it’s been a reciprocal relationship where they’ve had expectations of me. But they’ve been a major contributor to the success that I’ve had.

As a tumuaki, I always wanted to ensure that our Māori tamariki were achieving equitable rates, and the way you do that is through a Tiriti o Waitangi lens. And I don’t see how you could ever achieve that if you’re not working with your hapū and your iwi.

The comprehensive book on the history and future of Māori education perhaps still hasn’t been written. Might be something for you to look at, Bruce.

There are a couple of things that still need to be done in this country, so my work’s nowhere near done. We’ve got to ensure that te reo Māori becomes one of the curriculum subjects in this country, not an additional tack-on language that doesn’t hold its unique and rightful place.

We also need to ensure that this country’s foundational documents, He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti, are at the forefront of all things and are woven into the fabric of our education system.

I was on the hīkoi last week, and as I looked around at my fellow walkers, I could see that we were experiencing the emergence of bicultural Aotearoa — living and breathing together, walking side by side, unified. I don’t think anyone marching in that hīkoi would be averse to Māori education being woven into the fabric and fibre of our emerging nationhood.

Beautifully said. I could talk to you for a long time, but I’m going to wrap it up now with a question that I ask all our guests, because a lot of our conversations are about what we do rather than what we love. And I know you love your work, but sometimes we need to do things a little offbeat to keep ourselves fresh and enthused about the important mahi that we do. Are there some quirky things that you get up to that keep you in good stead and ready to fight the good fight?

I don’t do anything quirky. I just do really cool things. I live on a lifestyle block. I’ve got a couple of beefies and a couple of sheep out here, and I’ve got my chickens. And I’m out in the garden every bit of spare time that I have. I’ve always had green fingers ever since working in market gardens as a kid. It reminds me of my dad and gives me a lot of peace.

Some of the work we do is quite draining, so when I’m on the whenua and with the animals, that restores me. I also play a bit of tennis on the side. So, you know, I act my age, and now that we’re heading into the summer season, I like to get in the water and paddle my longboard and have a bit of a surf.

So, nothing too quirky, but definitely a connection to the whenua and being out there in the moana as well. And, of course, being surrounded by my whānau, my children. I hope they stay here forever. I love our whānau unit. That’s what gives me peace and happiness.

Tēnā koe. Do you want to mention their names?

Yeah, I do. I’m married to a beautiful wahine, Claire. Her whakapapa is Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua. She’s the rock in our whānau. My eldest boy, Mikaere, is living in Sweden. My daughter Moana is about to make me a koro for the first time. My other son, Wiremu, is teaching at Te Puke Intermediate. Kobe’s a computer science technician. And then I’ve got a young one who’s just finished high school, Isaiah. They’re my whānau. And my mother Puti, who’s still with me.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

E-Tangata, 2024