Dedicated to improving the lives of women and children
Geraldine McDonald researcher/teacher b 1926 d November 26, 2018
Geraldine McDonald was a researcher, academic, teacher, political activist, mentor and mother who worked, as she expressed it, ‘‘to improve the lives of women and children’’.
She was born Geraldine Player, in Wellington in 1926. Her father was a public servant, whom she recalled as clever and artistic. Her mother was a clerical worker who made gorgeous outfits for herself, Geraldine, and eventually her three grandchildren. Geraldine inherited traits from both her parents.
She started at Hataitai primary school when she was nearly 7. The Depression meant that schools were closed to 5-yearolds. By then she could read, from studying signs on Manners St. She learned to write from her father, who wrote and illustrated stories for her. She was awarded the dux medal in her final primary school year.
She went to Wellington East Girls’ College in 1939, a significant year. She has written of how the war was interpreted by the school: ‘‘informing us what we should think about it (right was on our side), how we should feel about it (indignant but proud), and what we should do about it (make the kind of things that were useful in World War I).’’
When she was 13, her father died. She and her mother were taken in by relatives, one of whom was terminally ill. This was a difficult time and explains her next choice: to go to Dunedin Teachers’ College for home craft teacher training. At 16 she had achieved university entrance but was too young to enter university and she wanted to leave home.
After graduating she taught at Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College, studied for a BA part-time, with course choice dictated by what she could fit around teaching, and, in 1949, newly married, taught in London for a year.
Starting in 1952, her three children came along. In between childcare, she pursued a variety of activities. She authored the first textbook for School Certificate clothing in 1959, You and Your Clothes. In 1960 the family went to Indonesia for three years under the Colombo Plan. The experience of living in a different culture led her to reflect deeply on the norms of New Zealand culture.
In 1969, she graduated with a masters. Her research was a study of association among the members of two playcentres in Wainuiomata. She met Ma¯ ori mothers of pre-schoolers and became interested in te ao Ma¯ ori. She was forming ideas about what were to become her lifelong interests: education, feminism, equity, community.
Her research covered an array of issues, prominent among them education of young children and their families, especially their mothers. Ma¯ ori mothers and preschool education, published in 1973, was groundbreaking both as a research topic and in its use of interviews and observations. She advocated the importance of self-determination for Ma¯ ori when establishing groups within communities and developing policy affecting pre-school education. In 1975 she published An early Wellington kindergarten, based on interviews with kindergarten teacher Ted Scott. Both works are still used by early childhood students and researchers.
McDonald joined the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) in 1973. She set up an early childhood unit, directed research projects, organised seminars, published prolifically and served as assistant director from 1977 to 1992. She continued to push for the educational experiences of women and girls to be seen as important research topics. At the same time, she was inserting women’s issues into the educational policy agenda. She helped organise the Education and the Equality of the Sexes Conference in 1975 for the Education Department, and later worked to implement its recommendations.
Somehow, she made time to be the founding president of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education in 1979 and was active in the New Zealand Women’s Studies Association.
Research was not an end in itself; it informed her work for systemic change. She advocated fearlessly for better access, quality, and funding for the early childhood education sector. In 1985, at the Early Childhood Forum held at Parliament, she told the ministers and members the forum was about ‘‘cake . . . about wanting a share of the cake, needing a larger cake, but actually getting crumbs and leftovers’’.
She chaired two major policy think tanks on early childhood education. From 1975, she chaired the State Services Commission working group on childcare, which recommended that government fund up to 50 per cent of childcare costs. The radical proposal was tabled in Parliament and then shelved by prime minister Rob Muldoon in 1980.
In the 1990s, McDonald chaired the Speaking Directly project, which brought together community early childhood organisations. The recommendations from the 1996 project report were adopted by the Labour Party in opposition and enacted during its term in office. McDonald’s tenacity, and knowledge of the sector, was a crucial factor in crafting recommendations for political purposes, which in the longer term were realised.
In 1993, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by Victoria University, and was made a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to educational research in 1997.
Her powerful insights were used to address popular beliefs. An example was her interest in explaining the Flynn Effect; whether the fact that IQs seem to be rising over time means we are becoming more intelligent. IQ tests use an age-based scoring system, and McDonald argued that the rise reflected the fact that the age of children in each grade in the school system had changed over time.
Another was in 2001 in a case the Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission took, successfully, against the Hong Kong Education Department, which was selecting boys for prestigious secondary schools ahead of girls. McDonald was called as an expert witness, and drew on research to debunk predictions of boys’ future academic performance used to support this policy.
McDonald was at the forefront of education feminism. Her legacy continues in her extensive publications list and the memories of those to whom she offered tutelage, guidance, and support. – By
Dinah Vincent