Wayne Ryburn: Article 2 - Exposing History Curriculum Myths

This is the second of a series of eight articles exposing some of the myths about New Zealand's History, now being taught to secondary school students. 

The Level 5 workbook for Year 10 students on the "Treaty of Waitangi - Te Tiriti o Waitangi" was published and has been in use since 2014. The page numbers and headings in the text are referenced throughout the series of articles. 

Wayne Ryburn: Article 1 - Exposing History Curriculum Myths

This series of eight articles exposes some of the myths about New Zealand's History, now being taught to secondary school students. 

The Level 5 workbook for Year 10 students on the "Treaty of Waitangi - Te Tiriti o Waitangi" was published and has been in use since 2014. The page numbers and headings in the text are referenced throughout the series of articles. 

Some aspects, especially on the Taranaki and Waikato wars, are also re-taught in greater depth in the History curriculum at Year 13.

The series of articles was written as a critique to the editor of ESA publications, Jo Crichton and the author of the text book, F J Gibson. This critique was sent in October last year,to date there has been no reply.

Roger Childs: Having a Balanced History Curriculum

Most countries make learning about their past compulsory, so there was general approval when the prime minister announced in 2019 that our Year 1 to 10 students would study New Zealand history as a required part of the curriculum from 2022. The challenge for the developers would be in the detail – what would children from ages 5 to 14 actually learn about their country’s story, and what skills and understandings would they develop?

The coverage of our history over 10 years of schooling needs to be comprehensive, accurate and balanced. In looking at our past we New Zealanders have plenty to be proud of, but there have been darker times which students also need to know about.

Learners should study the Musket Wars as well as participation in United Nations peace-keeping missions; the extermination of the moa as well as establishing national parks; damaging the environment as well as building infrastructure; the Chinese poll tax as well as the Social Security Act; sweated labour as well as equal pay legislation.

Michael Bassett: Labour's History Curriculum

Ever since Jacinda Ardern announced that history would become a core subject in schools, Ministry of Education officials have spent millions of dollars devising a curriculum. They got advice from a very narrow range of the woke and well-meaning, and some serious barrow-pushers. They then seem to have sought a fig-leaf of respectability by asking for approval from the once highly reputable Royal Society of New Zealand. 

The results of all this were published yesterday. A finer assemblage of mumbo-jumbo it would be hard to find. A careful reader examining the underlying intention behind it all will conclude it is to re-name the country Aotearoa, eventually dropping any mention of New Zealand, making Te Reo compulsory for everyone, and handing control of the country’s identity and intellectual life to the Maori Council.

Michael Bassett: Teaching Early New Zealand History in Schools

 

The piece in the Herald on 21 December about teaching New Zealand history to all students confirms the fears of serious historians that the project risks becoming mere propaganda by those with axes to grind, rather than a teaching of the facts. 

Students will be given a lop-sided picture of our early history if the curriculum ignores or romanticizes the pre-1840 period where several Maori tribes went on annual marauding exercises to settle old scores. They killed between 40,000 and 50,000 Maori, approximately 25% of the total number of Maori in the country at that time, eating some, and enslaving others. 

Karl du Fresne: It's way past time to reclaim and honour our history

I remember almost nothing of the history I learned at secondary school. This is odd, because history interests me.

As a kid I would pore over my uncle Dick Scott’s illustrated history of New Zealand, Inheritors of a Dream. I still have it on my bookshelf.

At Central Hawke’s Bay College in the 1960s I was taught history by Brian Davies, one of the few teachers I remember with any affection.