Caleb Anderson: Dare to be a Daniel

The words below will be familiar to those who grew up in Christian homes. Whether you view Daniel in truth, or in archetype, his story bore/bears witness to the willingness of some to stand for principles in spite of the cost.

Elizabeth Rata: Letter to the Minister of Education

Sent 22nd June 2025

Hon Erica Stanford
Minister of Education
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

Dear Ms Stanford

I write to ask if you would re-consider the inclusion of Section 9 and Section 127 in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) 2025 on the basis that they are not relevant to the regulation of the education system. (See the Coalition Agreement’s statement about Treaty relevance.)

Professor Elizabeth Rata: Submission to the Select Committee on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) 2025

Submission to the Select Committee on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) 2025

LEGISLATION AND HONOURING THE TREATY OF WAITANGI

Introduction

Elizabeth Rata: Extracts from Submission to the Consultation on the Draft English Curriculum

Language and Trust in the Curriculum

Political interests control the curriculum’s language when disciplinary authority is usurped by ideologies. This happened to the New Zealand curriculum from the 1990s. Within a tightening straitjacket of permitted language, words were disconnected from meaning. George Orwell described this ideological tactic as thought corrupting language and language corrupting thought. The solution was to let meaning choose the word.

The Te Matawai Maihi Maori Strategy and Implementation Approach launched by Cabinet Directive in December 2018 illustrate what happens when words choose meanings to serve ideologies. Te Maihi Karanua’s three Audacious Goals were to drive the meaning of public policy. The goals were truly audacious with ‘Aotearoatanga’ intended as the outcome for Audacious Goal One – a transformation of what New Zealand is as a nation.

NZCPR Newsletter: Transforming Education

Education has been described as a passport to the future - as endless generations of New Zealanders can testify. Its transformational powers have the ability to pivot students from lives of disadvantage to futures of opportunity and prosperity.

That’s no doubt what was in the mind of Nelson Mandela, when he said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

But that’s also why extremists attempt to turn education into an indoctrination machine to radicalise children with their brand of social justice poison.

Graham Adams: University backs down in sex-gender debate

As Auckland University continues down the path of transforming itself into a seminary for Māori nationalists and others with “progressive left” views, it is perhaps inevitable that it would try to force fashionable views about sex onto academic staff members.

Unfortunately, it made a tactical error by trying to bully Elizabeth Rata, a professor in the Education Faculty. Anyone who followed the fallout from the Listener letter in mid-2021 signed by seven Auckland professors — including Rata — would have been aware that she is not easily intimidated.

Professor Elizabeth Rata: A Knowledge Rich Curriculum for New Zealand

The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum allows teachers and schools to decide what to teach. In this localised curriculum there is no prescribed content, no nationwide standardisation nor effective quality control. The result is increased inequality. Students in schools committed to high quality academic subjects continue to achieve. Students in schools that offer little more than socio-cultural beliefs and practices are denied the education needed for full inclusion in modern society.

Professor Elizabeth Rata: Oral Presentation to the Parliamentary Justice Committee on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill

What is the best title given to any New Zealand legislation? My money is on the 1877 Education Act – 'An Act to make Further Provision for the Education of the People of New Zealand' – the People of New Zealand. So as early as the 1870s there's the commitment to a united people who belong to, and benefit from, the nation 'New Zealand'. Nearly 150 years later that commitment is under serious threat from those who would replace liberal democracy with tribal sovereignty and, by doing so, create a racialised society – apartheid.

Elizabeth Rata: Ngai Tahu Ambitions for the South Island

History and the Treaty

The discussion surrounding the Treaty Principles Bill reveals two very different ways of understanding history.

An ahistorical understanding gives a sacred quality to human events, imbuing them with a spirit of timeless authority beyond human intervention. The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and the post-1986 partnership principle are given this spiritual authority. It's seen in such phrases as the Treaty speaks to us today and in the fruitless search for a definitive Treaty meaning.

Elizabeth Rata: The Treaty and Neotribal Capitalism

This paper was published in “Public Sector, The Journal of the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand”, Vol 26, No 3 September, 2003, pp. 2 - 6

The Treaty of Waitangi has become a talisman for a bicultural New Zealand. Such a leap from prior obscurity to ‘oracle’ status (Sharp, 2002) can be explained in a number of ways. The orthodox explanation is that Maori have overcome colonial-imposed subordination for the economic and political partnership promised by the treaty. In this paper I propose a different interpretation.

Michael Johnston: How content-rich curriculum would help our children learn

During my years as an education academic, Professor Elizabeth Rata of the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland always stood out as a model scholar. She has always argued calmly for her ideas, using logic and evidence. And although she has been a frequent target of unfair personal attacks by ideological opponents, I have never known her to respond in kind.

I recently asked Rata for her view of the single most important thing we could do to improve our ailing education system. She answered without hesitation, “Reform the curriculum”.

Elizabeth Rata: The Decolonisation of Education in New Zealand

Revolutionary moves to decolonise mainstream education are outlined in two Ministry of Education documents. 

‘Te Hurihanganui  A Blueprint for Transformative Systems Shift’ confidently asserts that ‘through decolonisation of the education system Māori potential will be realised’ while the Curriculum Refresh also prescribes a hearty dose of the same medicine.  

Decolonisation, according to Te Hurihanganui ‘means recognising white privilege, understanding racism, inequity faced by Māori and disrupting that status quo to strengthen equity’. There will be opportunities for an expansion of the decolonisation cadre as ‘Māori exercise authority and agency over their mātauranga, tikanga and taonga’. 

The Curriculum Refresh, meanwhile, proposes that ‘knowledge derived from Te Ao Māori will sit at the heart of each learning area, along with other knowledge-systems that reflect the cultural uniqueness of Aotearoa New Zealand.’

Elizabeth Rata: Ethno-Nationalism or Democratic-Nationalism - which way ahead for New Zealand?

With the sudden emergence into our political life of the revolutionary report He Puapua, it is clear New Zealanders are at a crossroads. We will have to decide whether we want our future to be that of an ethno-nationalist state or a democratic-nationalist one.

Ethno-nationalism has political categories based on racial classification – the belief that our fundamental identity (personal, social and political) is fixed in our ancestry. Here the past determines the future. Identity, too, is fixed in that past. In contrast, democratic-nationalism has one political category – that of citizenship – justified by the shared belief in a universal human identity.

These two opposing approaches to how the nation is imagined, constituted and governed are currently in contention. We will have to choose which form of nationalism will characterise New Zealand by 2040.