Teaching New Zealand History

The Education Gazette asked me to comment on the recent announcement that New Zealand history will soon be taught in all schools.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


The announcement that New Zealand’s histories will be taught in all schools by 2022 is a crucial step in ensuring future generations leave school with at least some level of understanding of our nation’s past – including “the good, the bad, and the ugly”, as Rahui Papa of Waikato-Tainui said at the time.

But it also opens up important discussions around what exactly should be taught and how.

For me, a vital first principle is that iwi and hapū are at the forefront of those conversations.

Connecting with mana whenua history will empower rangatahi to better understand the places they call home.

Speaking to students at Otago Girls' High School, October 2019


Begin close to home

Students should be encouraged to engage with the histories of their own communities, but without forgetting the wider context.

Rangatahi in the Gisborne district, for example, should learn about the 1865 siege of Waerenga-a-Hika. But they should also be equipped with the skills to understand how this fits in with the bigger picture of the New Zealand Wars as a whole.

Those conflicts were defining ones in our nation’s history and deserve to be prominent in The New Zealand Curriculum. Many other areas also warrant attention.

Let the conversations begin.

Importance of critical thinking

In terms of how these different topics are taught, it is less a case of filling young minds with endless lists of dates and other facts than equipping them with the critical thinking skills to understand how broad historical processes played out in New Zealand.

Knowing exactly when particular events took place is ultimately less important than understanding why they still matter today. Analysing and critiquing historical sources, primary and secondary, should be a core part of that.

Site visits to places of importance and inquiry-led student activities are also important.

Many dedicated teachers are already leading the way with the teaching of New Zealand’s histories in innovative and inspirational ways.

The challenge now is to put the systems and support in place to roll this out across all schools. We know that many rangatahi have been calling for this for some time.

Now is the time to deliver.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sexual Frontier - Contrasting Māori and European Attitudes towards Sex and Nudity in the Colonial Era

Image
In pre-contact Māori society young unmarried men and women had a high degree of sexual freedom. With the exception of a few high-born women who were ceremonially bethrothed, pre-marital sex was considered socially acceptable, though blatant promiscuity was frowned upon and a certain level of discretion expected.   Sex was considered a normal and healthy part of every day life, with no particular taboos around it. Copulating couples were depicted in carvings and bawdy stories and waiata concerning sexual exploits or the size of men’s penises were common. Te Puawai o Te Arawa, 1905, 1/1-003279-G, ATL That relative openness extended to same-sex relationships, of which there is ample evidence from waiata and other traditional sources. Tutanekai, for example, who famously swam to Mokoia to be with Hinemoa, was also known to have had an initimate male companion known as Tiki. (By contrast, in the eighteenth-century Royal Navy death was the mandatory penalty for anyon...
Read more

'I am an Irishman': Irish and Māori Historical Connections

Image
Just as exceptionalism has formed an enduring strand of American historiography, New Zealand history has its own variant of this. In New Zealand’s case, this rests largely on the notion that the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 between representatives of Queen Victoria and more than 500 Māori chiefs represented a unique experiment in benevolent and humanitarian imperialism. Allied to this is often the notion that subsequent relations between the indigenous Māori tribes and incoming settlers were, after a few early hiccups, vastly superior to other white settler dominions. For much of the twentieth century Pākehā New Zealanders liked to boast that their country had the ‘greatest race relations in the world’. It turns out Māori had a different story to tell concerning the history of their relations with the newcomers. In recent decades New Zealand historians have played their own part in deconstructing these myths. Most historians now acknowledge that the Treaty of Waitangi had much ...
Read more

A Stain Upon History: The Ngatapa Massacre, January 1869

Image
Imagine this: somewhere between 86 and 128 people, captured or surrendered at the end of a siege, are stripped naked, lined up against the side of a cliff, and summarily executed without trial by government forces. Couldn’t happen here, many people would probably say. But it did, and the story behind the worst massacre in New Zealand history deserves to be more widely known. In July 1868 Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and nearly 300 other mostly East Coast Maori escaped from the Chatham Islands (Wharekauri) and made their way back to the mainland. This group, known as the Whakarau, had been held at Wharekauri since 1866. None of their number had been tried, and the government admitted that they were being held as ‘political offenders’ while arrangements were made to confiscate their lands back home. Judith Binney suggested that Te Kooti had been included among those illegally imprisoned at Wharekauri because he was regarded as a threat by rival traders back in Gisborne (Turanga). Te Koo...
Read more