“A must-read for all educators genuinely interested in building learning success for students of color!”
-Distinguished Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith
This book examines the struggle against racial and cultural inequity in educational systems, presenting the case study of a New Zealand school and its community's determination to resist alienating environments.
If we look at a child’s colouring book before it has any colour added we think of the pages as blank. But they’re not blank, they are white, and the lines on the page dictate where colour is allowed to go.
When our children are small, they don’t care where they put the colours, but as they get older we teach them to colour within the lines. That’s what happens in schools - children learn about the place of colour and the importance of staying within those predetermined boundaries and expectations.
To challenge such whitestreaming, this book offers the example of a community that defied and rejected this environment in favour of a culturally-located, bilingual learning model of education based on secure cultural identity, stable positive relationships, and aroha (authentic caring and love).
This journey is juxtaposed against pervasive deficit-driven, whitestream explanations of inequity and purported “achievement gaps” of indigenous Māori and Pasifika students. This story chronicles the efforts of the Kia Aroha College community on its quest to step outside education’s “white spaces” to create a new space for learning and to reclaim educational sovereignty where individuals have the absolute right to “be Maori”—to be who they are, in school.
This year, I have been using your text, "Coloring in the White Spaces" as a central element of our readings in my teaching methods courses. The impact that it has had is significant and I hope that these teacher candidates hear your words and the voices of the students of Kia Aroha reverberating in their minds long into their careers. You are an inspirational educator! I want you to know that your work continues to transform the present and future of education for the sake of a better, more authentic, more inclusive world.
Kevin J. Stockbridge, PhD,
Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, Member, Paulo Freire Democratic Project, Chapman University, Orange, CA,USA
EXCERPT FROM THE FOREWORD BY JEFF DUNCAN-ANDRADE, PHD
Associate Professor, Raza Studies & Education,
San Francisco State University
Founder and Board Chair, Roses in Concrete Community School
“When I recommend readings for educators that are thinking about how to develop school cultures that are community and culturally responsive, this is the first book I will tell them to read.
“While I certainly have not been to every school in the United States, I can say that none of the schools I have visited (and that’s quite a few) have accomplished what Ann Milne and the staff at Kia Aroha College have achieved. This book provides profound critiques of existing colonial models of education and viable alternatives that value the language and culture of those young people and families that have largely been demonized and pathologized in “white”stream models of schooling. It does not need to be this way. If we are ever to achieve the levels of cultural pluralism necessary to achieve pluralistic, multi-racial democracies we must reconsider the ways in which we school our children. For my money, this book is the primer for schools and systems of education in post-genocidal colonial societies like the United States and New Zealand to finally come to grips with the harm it has been doing to children from outside the dominant culture.
“Nothing is more important in this next generation than a fundamental rethink about how we educate our children, and no book that I have seen should be more influential than this one in those efforts.”
WHAT OTHERS SAY…
“This book examines the ongoing struggle for students of color—predominantly Maori and Pacifica students— to extract a ‘fairer go’ from the NZ education and schooling system. Milne applies critical insights to expose how schooling and education (re)produce and maintain dominant power and interests while simultaneously entrenching inequalities that can suffocate the learning potential of culturally different students. What is unique here is that Ann Milne not only describes what and why things are going wrong – she also documents the remarkable struggle to transform an urban schooling site in order to demonstrate that public schooling can deliver learning success for all students, including the culturally different. A must-read for all educators genuinely interested in building learning success for students of color!”
-Distinguished Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith, Director of Te Pourewa Arotahi (The National Institute for Post-Treaty Settlement Futures), Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi
“Important Book With Global Relevance Especially Now Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2020.
“I was told to check out this book from a good friend of mine who is a veteran in critical education. After reading it, I know why he recommended it. This is probably the best book I have read in at least three years that applies critical, creative and culturally sustaining theory into practice in an actual school setting. This book is highly relevant for education leaders, school staff, educators, and even youth. There are sections of the book that I plan to share with students, as the notion of warrior scholar is exceptionally relevant in equipping young people to "name the world and change the world". During a time where public education lies in the thralls of much uncertainty (during Covid-19). Ann Milne solidly delivers on ideas that can help us navigate a new way forward, a way where schools acknowledge and develop the cultural capital of youth, and redefines academic success with youth and community.”
- (Amazon reader review)
“What does education look like that is richly culturally responsive and sustaining, refuses colonization, and embraces critical hope, self-determination and achievement? In this revolutionary counter-narrative about schooling, Ann Milne weaves the story of Kia Aroha College, whose development she led and I have visited, with its firm theoretical groundings and evidence of the centrality of cultural identity to academic learning. Anyone concerned about schools not working well should read Coloring In the White Spaces.”
- Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita, California State University Monterey Bay
“Coloring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools is a major achievement. It is the story of a collective journey of three schools that eventually merged into one school over a three-decade period. It tells of the struggles and the victories of the administrators, teachers, students, families, community, and school board members in their journey to fulfill the dream of responsive schooling. The realization of that dream is tied to the collective belief that it is possible to make education fit our children’s needs in spite of the presence of fierce opposition at every step. This book tells the story of a New Zealand school. But the story has global implications. It addresses the most fundamental issues of our times: issues of power, social justice, identity development, and school change through a critical pedagogy based in whānau and Māori and Pasifika values and beliefs. This book tells the story of the power of a community’s determination to create a school where historically marginalized students could realize their full potential and develop into informed advocates for social justice, critical thinkers, and activists for social change. In this book these issues are treated with the depth and the detail they deserve. Most important, this book provides evidence that we can change our educational landscape for the better.”
