Call to scrutinise history in schools
A hard core of history teachers refuse to teach the country’s colonial history, say two academics.
They’ve labelled those teachers ‘‘wilfully blind’’ and unprofessional and the pair are calling for a survey to find out how much New Zealand history is being taught and to what level.
Canterbury University senior lecturers Dr Richard Manning and Garrick Cooper, who call the education system racist for not teaching New Zealand’s colonial history, said the Government needed tools to audit schools.
‘‘What Richard found is history teachers are opting out of teaching New Zealand colonial history and now the Ministry [of Education] and the Government won’t survey its teachers to find out who is choosing teaching that stuff and who is not. We need more data on that as a very first step,’’ Cooper said.
On Thursday, he and Manning made a submission to the Ma¯ ori affairs select committee hearing into teaching history in schools.
It was in response to a New Zealand History Teachers’ Association campaign to ‘‘adopt an activist approach’’ to teaching our colonial history.
‘‘People out there don’t want to teach New Zealand history because it is seen as Ma¯ori stuff,’’ said Manning.
‘‘You can go right back to the Taha Ma¯ori and the curriculum reforms and I think people need to remember, as early as 1984, all round the country, Ma¯ ori students on a set day walked out of their classes in protest because they couldn’t see their reo or their Ma¯ ori histories reflected in the curriculum.
‘‘That was 1984, we are still having this debate. It’s wrong.’’
Manning and Cooper said that schools were failing to meet the requirements of the Education Act and a slew of policies that compel the teaching of New Zealand’s history.