251 research outputs found
Schooling for 'lesser beings'
No full textUsing Edward Said’s notion of ‘lesser beings’, it is argued that the political culture of schooling for Maori was and still is part of a pervasive Western European intellectual climate and culture which has a quite recent history, and which provided powerful support for the notion of Europe possessing a categorical superiority over all other continents, which in turn justified imperialism or neo-colonialism as civilising missions.
Racism and violence were endemic in colonialism and, despite the claimed moral high ground, were endemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand. War was eulogised in the Native School system more than once. The rise and demise of the World War II Maori War Organisation is illustrative of the rejection of Maori aspirations. There were still no Maori in the senior echelons of the Maori Department in 1972.
The Native, later Maori, School system was overtly designed to 'Europeanise' Maori children and therefore Maori society. Individualism was deeply embedded in English and set-tler thinking, whilst communal, ‘communist’ Maori society was to be destroyed.
The thesis examines images of colonialism, empire and imperialism in fiction and non-fiction, New Zealand and British, for adults and children, and notes the attitudes of think-ers like J S Mill and Darwin, of children’s authors Jules Verne and G H Henty, and of New Zealand author William Satchell. The images continue, pervasive and endemic, in recent adult novels. Science also played a role, as did history.
Ranginui Walker, who is Maori, is the only historian to have written a history of New Zea-land which addressed the issue of waste lands, an issue on which Pakeha historians have a blind spot. New Zealand encyclopedia do not index ‘waste land’ or ‘confiscation’. Only two Waikato histories deal adequately, or even accurately, with confiscation, the central episode in the history of the Waikato. Tourist material is equally illustrative.
The Native Schools section of the Education Department ran the Native Schools like a fiefdom, operating in legislative and regulatory black holes for the first thirty years and for much of the time after that. Teachers were moved around at will.
The practice of James H Pope, the first inspector of Native Schools, is closely and critically examined, and negatively assessed. His official writings were consistently derogatory of Maori, and his decisions in respect of Te Kopua Native School were at times detrimental to the pupils. Pope was a product of his times.
The Te Kopua record is closely scrutinised, and the practice of the Education Department is frequently found wanting. It is probable that the establishment of the school was aimed to destabilise King Country Maori, not to benefit the children. It is a story of Maori co-operation and contribution.
Part Two is a detailed partial biography of Te Kopua, it being argued that until there is a significant corpus of studies of Native Schools a valid history of the Native/Maori School system and of schooling for Maori is not possibl
Development of advanced nanosized molecularly inprinted polymers via surface-initiatied 'living' radical polymerisation
No full textSurface-initiated photo-iniferter mediated controlled polymerisation was used as a technique for the development of advanced and smart materials. Molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) shell nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesised in this way from PAMAM dendrimers, used as a graftable core, in 2 min irradiation time. Surprisingly the so-synthetised NPs were around 200 nm and had a cubic shape. Cont/d
Synthesis of controlled polymeric cross-linked coatings via iniferter polymerisation in the presence of tetraethyl thiuram disulphide chain terminator
No full textA “grafting from” approach has been used for controlled deposition of cross-
linked polymers by living radical polymerisation. Borosilicate glass was
modified with N,N-diethylaminodithiocarbamoylpropyl(trimethoxy)silane, in order
to confine the iniferter reactive groups solely at its surface, then placed in
solution with monomers and cross-linker. The polymerisation was initiated by UV
irradiation. Formation of the cross-linked polymers was studied in terms of time
course of the reaction, type of monomers incorporated and influence of oxygen.
Grafted surfaces were characterised by AFM, FT-IR, ellipsometry and contact
angle measurements. The ability to control the grafted layer improved
dramatically when the chain terminator agent, N,N-N′,N′-tetraethyl thiuram
disulphide (TED) was added. Upon irradiation TED increases the concentration of
passive capping radicals and decreases the possibility of recombination of
active macro-radicals, thus prolonging their lifetime. In the absence of TED the
thickness of produced coatings was below 10 nm. TED added at different
concentrations assisted in the formation of grafted layers of 10–130 nm
thickness. Iniferter chemistry in the presence of TED can be used for growing
nanometre-scale polymer layers on solid supports. It constitutes a robust
general platform for controlled grafting and offer a general solution to address
the needs of surface derivatisation in sensors
Patterned gallium surfaces as molecular mirrors
No full textAn entirely new means of printing molecular information on a planar film,
involving casting nanoscale impressions of the template protein molecules in
molten gallium, is presented here for the first time. The metallic imprints not
only replicate the shape and size of the proteins used as template. They also
show specific binding for the template species. Such a simple approach to the
creation of antibody-like properties in metallic mirrors can lead to
applications in separations, microfluidic devices, and the development of new
optical and electronic sensors, and will be of interest to chemists, materials
scientists, analytical specialists, and electronic engineers
Extraction of domoic acid from seawater and urine using a resin based on 2-(trifluoromethyl)acrylic acid.
No full textA new solid-phase extraction (SPE) matrix with high affinity for the neurotoxin domoic acid (DA) was designed and tested. A computational modelling study led to the selection of 2-(trifluoromethyl)acrylic acid (TFMAA) as a functional monomer capable of imparting affinity towards domoic acid. Polymeric adsorbents containing TFMAA were synthesised and tested in high ionic strength solutions such as urine and seawater. The TFMAA-based polymers demonstrated excellent performance in solid-phase extraction of domoic acid, retaining the toxin while salts and other interfering compounds such as aspartic and glutamic acids were removed by washing and selective elution. It was shown that the TFMAA-based polymer provided the level of purification of domoic acid from urine and seawater acceptable for its quantification by high performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (HPLC–MS) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without any additional pre-concentration and purification step
Dormant radical technology synthesis of materials and potential applications
No full textThis research was focused on the study of the polymer dormant radical
systems, species containing free radical structures that have longer lifetimes
and greater stability than radicals in general.
In order to understand the nature and reactivity of the dormant radicals,
polymeric systems capable of producing dormant free radicals were
synthesised.
In addition, the use of these novel polymeric materials in a range of applications
were studied. Those applications exploited the nature of the dormant radical
groups and included controlled modifications in the polymeric structure,
heterogeneous catalysis and chromatographic separations
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