The Kiss and the Ghost: Sylvia Ashton-warner and New Zealand

Marc Notes: Includes chapters by Maaori teachers and others who worked with Sylvia, as well as recollections of her son, Elliot Henderson. It reprints her Teaching Scheme that was originally published in New Zealand in the 1950s--Back cover.; Includes bibliographical references and index."Publisher Marketing: Sylvia Ashton-Warner, novelist and educationist, was extraordinarily famous in the 1960s. She maintained that young children best learn to read and write when they produce their own vocabulary, especially sex words - like 'kiss', and fear words - like 'ghost'. Educators lauded her. Her autobiographical novels about teaching in remote schools, and being culturally abandoned in a remote country, New Zealand, attained enormous international popularity in both literary and educational circles. But she had an intensely ambivalent relationship with the land of her birth. Despite receiving many accolades in New Zealand, she claimed to have been rejected and persecuted by her homeland. In her darkest moments, she railed against New Zealand and New Zealanders, even stating in one television interview: "I'm not a New Zealander!" This is the first book to make Sylvia Ashton-Warner's passionately difficult relationship with New Zealand its central focus. Its contributors argue that, rather than stultifying her, the country she decried produced Sylvia and her work. In addition, infant schooling in New Zealand in the post-war years was relatively radical and progressive, and education officials seemed to welcome Sylvia's ideas about literacy. The edited collection includes chapters by M ori teachers and others who worked with Sylvia, as well as recollections of her son, Elliot Henderson. It reprints her Teaching Scheme which was originally published in New Zealand in the 1950s, and it celebrates her novels as brilliant and angry evocations of life in the wildness of New Zealand. Contributor Bio:  Jones, Alison Alison Jones is Reader in Law at King's College London. Brenda Sufrin is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol. Contributor Bio:  Middleton, Sue Kathleen Weiler teaches at Tufts University. She has co-edited a number of works, including (with Madeleine Arnot) Feminism and Social Justice in Education. She is the author of Women Teaching for Change (1988) and California Schoolwomen (1998). Sue Middleton has taught at the University of Waikato since 1980, where she is now Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies. She has published widely in New Zealand, Britain, and the United States. Her books include Educating Feminists (1993) and Disciplining Sexuality (1998), both from Teachers' College Press.