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.
Along the way, our modern Ministry of Education reveals that it is woefully ignorant of historical facts. For example, far from rushing to add New Zealand to the British Empire, Britain was extremely cautious before dispatching William Hobson; the Colonial Office was seriously worried that the Musket Wars between Maori had reached the stage where nothing short of military intervention would protect Maori. The Ministry’s paper makes elementary grammatical mistakes with its presentation, failing sometimes to get its nouns and verbs in agreement. I have only a few words of Te Reo. I wonder if all the Maori explanations that will be understood by only 2 to 3% of the population are more accurately expressed?
The content of the Ministry’s presentation is utterly depressing. Fancy selecting those three “big ideas”! Translated, the first one is that Maori history is fundamental to understanding everything about New Zealand. The second one, translated, is that the consequences of unstated, but implied, wicked colonization continue “to influence all aspects” of our history. The third is that colonists’ power exerted over the years has invariably inflicted damage, injustice and conflict on Maori. Nothing about economic development which lifted New Zealand after the Treaty from a state of anarchy where 25% of the entire Maori workforce between 1810 and 1840 had been killed and eaten, and others enslaved. The development of the modern economy is of no account in the Ministry these days where no one seems to give a thought to where their salaries come from. And, as I predicted, there’ll be no mention of the Musket Wars in the new curriculum. The government is intent on sanitizing our history, presumably in the hope that henceforth we’ll all “be kind”.
Superficially, we can blame those tasked with devising this mumbo-jumbo curriculum, but I think the rot goes far deeper. This report follows on from those recent ones about falling literacy and numeracy in our schools. The rot lies at the heart of the Ministry of Education. It has not been renowned for robust leadership since the days of Peter Fraser and Dr Clarence Beeby. In the early 1970s the Ministry was led by a rather sad old guy called Ned Dobbs whom Prime Minister Norman Kirk nick-named “Dobbin”. A lack-lustre set of ministry heads and ministers followed. Scientifically sound methods of teaching reading were pushed aside, School Certificate was abolished, and all sorts of nostrums and fads have accounted for New Zealand’s steady decline in international educational standards.
There is a pattern here. Educationally, New Zealand has lost its way. Right now, the Minister of Education is grossly overloaded with Covid responsibilities, having doubled for much of last year as Minister of Health, the two most onerous social portfolios. We can charitably assume that Chris Hipkins didn’t have time to read, let alone think carefully about the pernicious nonsense the Ministry of Education has served up to him. Coming on top of the alarming reports about our educational performance overall, what is proposed is just another piece of evidence that substantial segments of the country’s bureaucracy, and the ministers who control it, aren’t fit for purpose.
What is going to happen is that the flight to private schools and those that follow overseas curricula will speed up. And there won’t be the teachers to teach the new fangled history in schools anyway because the proportion of students doing university history has been dropping now for decades. In the 1960s, History was the third largest department at the University of Auckland. Fads and frolics by foolish people reduced the numbers to the point where large chunks of history are no longer taught. Unless someone has the intestinal fortitude to challenge this new proposed curriculum, history is a doomed subject. Certainly there is nothing in it to enthuse today’s students who prefer action, learning about the wider world, new ideas, wars and international affairs. And despite protestations from the woke, New Zealand’s political history always filled class rooms.
Michael, I suggest you get a group of historians together and write your own History of New Zealand curriculum as a book of social history, and publish it in explicit competition with the official history.. It will sell well. Michael King's did - and that was without the publicity of a History War.
Whilst I agree in large part with your commentary re: history curriculum, I disagree with your characterization/character assassination of the Royal Society of NZ (RSNZ). They are a measured and excellent body, in general. Of course, my primary knowledge of them is through the hard sciences and biomedical sciences. COI statement: I am not a fellow, but one of my PhD advisers (from when I was a PhD student) is a FRSNZ.
I see that Shiraz33 has retired from the field 'hurt'. No matter. Although I attended the same school as Shiraz almost 10 years earlier and suffered the teaching of 'Fish' Edgar who informed my 6th form history class that our text 'A Short History of the United States' wasn't short enough and proceeded period and after period to read aloud from 'The Good Soldier Schweik' - so that we never did read anything about US history. But poor teaching is hardly unique and our concern here is I think the poor curriculum and why it has been developed in the way it has and what are its implications for our country in the future. My recent discussions with some you…
Dail
The Indians do not forget their history. They are V proud of their Regiments which were raised by the HEIC in the early 1700's and the Senior Cavalry Regt was Skinner's Horse raised as an Irregular Regt in the early 1800's. Look up Skinner and Hogdson's and Probyn's Horse.
I have ejoyed History as it has been taught in Pakistan (ex Britisn India course), in NZ in 1961-1963 and early in this century.
The study of History was the backbone of my School studies from the History of India as a 8-9 year old at the Garrison School , Quetta, and a 10-15 year old for Cambridge O Levels at the Karachi Grammar School Pakistan -Yes all those English Kings and Queens.Then at 15-16 years old at St Pauls Auckland in the 6th form from mid -March 1960 it took me through sitting and passing UE , my best subject result. Then in 1961 a job at the Court and partime study at Auckland University at 16 taking Hist…