History in schools a welcome move
History always seemed to be something that happened elsewhere, on the bloody battlefields of Europe or in dusty English palaces. Generations of New Zealand schoolchildren grew up learning more about Italian unification than Parihaka, more about the Tudors than the Treaty of Waitangi.
Recent efforts to introduce a compulsory New Zealand history curriculum into schools have largely focused on the New Zealand Wars. The efforts started with a grassroots campaign that struck many as inspirational, after students at Otorohanga College in King Country were amazed to learn that sites of 19th-century battles and skirmishes between English troops and local Ma¯ ori were just a short drive from their homes.
A petition led to the creation of a national day on which to remember the
New Zealand Wars, although there continued to be reluctance by the previous National Government and the current coalition to formally require schools to teach the wars. As recently as 2018, Education Minister Chris Hipkins resisted making the teaching of the wars compulsory. The word ‘‘compulsion’’ often scares governments.
What has changed in the year since that caused Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to announce on Thursday that all schools and kura are expected to teach our history by 2022? There has been growing public pressure, including a push by the New Zealand History Teachers Association. Historian Vincent O’malley’s accessible account of the wars has been on our bestseller lists since May. We have also seen delayed repercussions of the wars play out at Ihuma¯ tao, south of Auckland.
As if to illustrate the popular dictum that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, the Ihuma¯ tao occupation is impossible to
understand without at least some knowledge of the Crown’s confiscation of Ma¯ ori land in the 1860s. It was confiscated within a military campaign aimed at neutralising the Kı¯ngitanga movement formed in response to the rapid loss of Ma¯ ori land.
This history does not seem remote. Instead, it is urgent and continues to inform everyday life for many in New Zealand in 2019. The dominance of Auckland in the national economy has been directly attributed to its proximity to the wars. Yet the disparity in funding between New Zealand Wars events and those marking World War I was vast.
The curriculum that will be taught from 2022 is broader than the New Zealand Wars. It is also expected to include the arrival of Ma¯ ori in New Zealand, the first encounters between Europeans and Ma¯ ori, the Treaty of Waitangi and its history, colonisation of and immigration to New Zealand, evolving national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries and our role in the Pacific. These subjects remain enormously relevant. We are on the verge of marking 250 years since Captain James Cook and the Endeavour first encountered Ma¯ ori in New Zealand. The fact that the official programme, known as Tuia 250, is intended to commemorate those complicated and often violent encounters rather than merely celebrate the achievements of Cook, shows history is contentious and often reinterpreted according to contemporary values and evolving cultural knowledge.
Taking an honest view of our history, rather than painting a rosy, nationalist picture, requires some painful conversations. Some old myths and stereotypes must die hard. But as O’malley has said, ‘‘we need to know our own history, warts and all. It’s what a mature nation does’’.
This history ... is urgent and continues to inform everyday life for many in New Zealand in 2019.