She’s 86, but Kura can’t stop learning
Despite reaching the highest level of education, Kura Taylor has no student loan and didn’t go to her graduation.
Instead, the doctor of philosophy celebrated her achievement dressed in her regalia at her Taranaki rest home – she is 86.
‘‘Once I got onto the university truck I saw little point in stopping there,’’ Taylor said.
On Saturday, Taylor was awarded her graduation certificate from Wellington’s University of Victoria surrounded by wha¯ nau and friends at New Plymouth’s Jean Sandel Retirement Village.
This was her third graduation, but she couldn’t attend the official University of Victoria ceremony because she has mobility issues.
Taylor has been retired for more than 20 years, which was part of the reason she decided to do a PhD.
‘‘I might as well fill some time.’’
She’s escaped student debt after spending more than 60 years on-and-off studying while working as a primary school teacher and financing herself the whole way through.
The fees were costly, Taylor said, but it was all worth it for her thesis, which was a New Zealand study focusing on her life navigating Maori and Pakeha worlds.
‘‘It’s my life story using highlights of my experiences in the education system,’’ she said.
‘‘It was all just me. That’s how I saw it, a token of me.’’
After graduating from teachers’ college in 1952, Taylor worked in primary schools in Auckland until she was 60.
When she started working, people called her by her middle name Marie because they couldn’t pronounce her first – Kura.
‘‘I chose Marie because they couldn’t say my first name.’’
She became involved in the New Zealand Educational
Institute (NZEI), and was the first Maori woman president of the Auckland branch in 1974 and then first Maori woman fellow in 1983.
She also did a Master of Philosophy of Education at the University of Auckland in the 1990s.
The former New Plymouth Girls’ High School prefect was born and bred in Waitara but only moved back to the region in June to be closer to her family.
Taylor’s colleague and friend of more than 40 years, Johanna Cogle, said the thesis wasn’t your usual academic document.
‘‘When you teach children of the primary school age group you become a really good storyteller,’’ Cogle said. ‘‘Her writing is a story which is quite different from long, boring academic writing.’’
She said it described how Taylor jumped between Maori and Pakeha worlds and brought them together.
‘‘For the latter part of her teaching career she put her more Maori side into the Pakeha world, and that’s a transition that’s taken place in primary teaching,’’ Cogle said. ‘‘And Marie ensured that greater recognition given of Maori tikanga, Maori teachers and their way of looking at the world.’’
NZEI president Lynda Stuart said when she first got into education Taylor was in a senior teaching role. She was one of those teachers who Stuart looked up to. ‘‘She was a very strong woman who really paved the way in education in New Zealand.’’
Stuart thought the fact that Taylor continued learning herself showed what was truly important to her. ‘‘It signifies her love of education.’’