Asking the Ministry of Education to draft a compulsory New Zealand History curriculum for school children was always fraught with risk.
The Ministry has disavowed knowledge-based curricula – to the extent that the much-vaunted National Curriculum fits on a scanty 64 A4 pages. It covers the entire social sciences for years 1-13 in a single page.
As educationalist Briar Lipson revealed in her 2020 book,
New Zealand’s Education Delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading
school system, overwhelming evidence suggests the Ministry’s anti-knowledge
stance is behind the decline in Kiwi students’ educational outcomes over the
last two decades. Consequently, the shift to a knowledge-based curriculum at
least for teaching New Zealand history is a welcome development.
But how would the Ministry cope with designing a curriculum
that does justice to New Zealand’s rich history?
Not well, is the answer. As everyone knows, there are many
sides to history. Yet few would have predicted the Ministry could have produced
such a loaded, myopic and politicised account of New Zealand’s past as the
draft curriculum released for consultation in January.
To be fair, Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories in the New
Zealand Curriculum is not all bad. Its ultimate goal is enabling students to
“make an informed ethical judgement about people’s actions in the past, giving
careful consideration to the complex predicaments they faced, the attitudes and
values of the time, and [students’] own values and attitudes.” No one would
quarrel with this aim. Surely that is precisely the goal of studying history.
“The” or “a”?
Yet, despite the draft curriculum’s reference to plural
“histories,” the curriculum’s first of three “big ideas” that all students are
expected to understand prescribes a much narrower learning outcome. After 10
years of compulsory study all students are expected to understand that “Māori
history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand.”
Precisely what the words “foundational and continuous” mean
is not clear. The pages of most New Zealand history books stretch back millions
of years before any human foot stepped on Aotearoa’s shores.
Indeed, humanity arrived late to New Zealand – by most
accounts, a little under a thousand years ago – more than 50,000 years after
Aborigines settled in Australia and more than 200,000 years after the first
human footprints in Africa. In the absence of human and other mammalian
predators, New Zealand developed its unique bird-dominated fauna, including the
wondrous Moa (not to mention the humble Kiwi).
Māori history is undoubtedly the first human history of
Aotearoa. But the country has a rich history before settlement by homo sapiens.
But even ignoring the country’s pre-human history, the
“first big idea” is loaded with a second problem: Māori history is not simply
“a” foundational history; it is claimed to be “the” foundational (and
continuous) history.
Yet surely the history of a country formed by a treaty
signed between two peoples is founded on two histories? Indeed, until the
arrival of British settlers in the early 1800s, there was no “Aotearoa New
Zealand.” Māori were tribal, rather than organised as a nation state.
The “foundational” histories of the new nation that emerged
from the signing of the Treaty are the meeting and blending of two histories:
those of Māori and the British Crown. Both histories have rich tapestries, with
their own mythologies, customs and culture. And both histories have chequered
pasts, including injustice, warfare, and slavery.
Since the birth of New Zealand, the country has added its
own history to the histories it inherited. For good and for bad. A history of
civil war during the 1860s, followed by unjust confiscations by the state from
Māori. Of leading the world with the grant of voting rights to woman. Of
triumph on the sporting field and in the laboratory. Of creating one of the
world’s first welfare states (and thereby providing the blueprint for “mother”
Britain’s National Health Service). Of consistently ranking in the top echelon
of countries for human development, prosperity, economic freedom and freedom
from corruption. And of bi-partisan support for settling historical grievances
from past injustices to the nation’s first settlers. Along the way, New
Zealand’s initial history of biculturalism has been supplemented with a modern
history of tolerant multiculturalism.
Māori history is foundational to New Zealand history. But
teaching children in 21st century New Zealand that it is “the” foundational
history of the nation is simply wrong.
Colonialism and power
The second and third “big ideas” all children are expected
to understand from their 10 years of compulsory history study are also
erroneous – or at least exaggerated. The other two ideas are that:
• Colonisation and
its consequences have been central to our history for the past 200 years and
continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand life (emphasis added); and
• The course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history has been shaped by the exercise
and effects of power.
It is true that colonisation is central to New Zealand’s
history. That New Zealand is predominantly English-speaking, has a Westminster-style
democracy, and a legal system based on English common law is a direct
consequence of the treaty signed by Māori chiefs with the British Crown in
1840.
It is also true that colonisation has seen a litany of
injustices to Māori. And not just the confiscations of tribal lands. Who could
have conceived, for example, that the Crown would assert the right to make
planning decisions over iwi landholdings?
All Kiwi children should learn about the confiscation of
taonga, harm to iwi institutions and consequential loss of mana these
injustices involved.
Yet the notion that “colonisation and its consequences
continue to influence “all aspects” of New Zealand society is exaggerated.
There are many aspects of New Zealand society that owe
little or nothing to colonisation and everything to human nature and human
enterprise: familial love, romantic relationships, the enjoyment of art and
culture, friendship, recreation, industry and trade, and even everyday work.
The idea that the struggle for power (above all else) have
shaped New Zealand history, with power[1]wielding “victors”
and powerless “victims,” is also flawed. This view is predicated on Marxist
notions of class warfare. Of different individuals, groups and organisations
engaging in a perpetual contest to decide who gets the biggest share of the
spoils.
At critical times in New Zealand’s history, power structures
have had a profound effect on social justice and social outcomes. And never has
this been more true than during the New Zealand Wars and their aftermath.
But New Zealand’s history is much more complex than can be
explained by the exercise and expression of power. It involves a spirit of
community and shared values, reinforced by our small size and geographic
isolation. It has been shaped by both bold and foolhardy political leadership.
It has been buffed and buffeted by world events, including two world wars and
periodic global financial shocks. It has been forged on the sports field, in
the science lab and elsewhere by great New Zealanders performing on the global
stage. And it has been enriched by immigration and multiculturalism.
At significant times, relations between Māori and Pākehā
have involved a profound struggle for power. But for all its chequered past,
New Zealand’s history has been shaped not just by conflict but by consensus and
by a sense of common humanity.
Sadly, the drafters of the New Zealand Curriculum seem to
have misplaced theirs.
Roger Partridge is
chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative - see HERE - and is a
senior member of its research team.
3 comments:
Re-writing history has been the hall mark of totalitarian dictatorships throughout history. The current administration is following the Pol Pot agenda.
As we well know, this re write for schools will portray the Maori people as a peaceful, united, spiritual and tranquil race of arboreal natives. The settlers will be portrayed as invaders who cruelly imposed an alien domination upon the poor natives.
All of the current social and health problems that currently show up in Maori statistics will be blamed upon "colonial" invasion.
In the teaching of our history I would have thought that Queen Victoria's Charter which was signed on 16/11/1840 should be included in the curriculum and given some prominence as this is the country's true founding document.
In the book "1984", the motto of The Party was "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past".
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