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The New History Curriculum Must Tell ‘Our Story’
WAY BACK IN THE 1970s, Second Wave feminists came up with a new word: “herstory”. Women, they argued, had been written out of the historical narrative by male chauvinist historians. What young New Zealanders were being taught in the country’s schools and universities was “his-story”. The past according to men. Now it was time for “her-story”. The past as seen through women’s eyes.
They had a point. When historians weren’t extolling the virtues of great men, they were singing the praises of great classes. Sturdy working men, that is. Staunch fellows like the Tolpuddle martyrs. Women did feature, of course. It’s pretty hard to ignore an historical figure as significant as Elizabeth I! But, generally speaking, they were treated as anomalies. Useful principally for adding a dash of colour – like Louis XIV’s many mistresses. What a mensch!
For nearly fifty years female historians have been rebalancing the historical scales. Herstory is being told in all its extraordinary variety and complexity. Slowly but surely, the study of the past has been forced to accommodate that half of humanity which, for far too long, it had ignored, passed-over, excluded, or, even more shamefully, suppressed. And the historical narrative is all the better for it: bigger, broader, more intelligible, and definitely more exciting. Herstory, which started off as a reproach, has become a powerful restorative. Not his-story, or her-story, but our-story.
Will the introduction of New Zealand’s new compulsory history curriculum produce a similar enlargement of human understanding? Will our kids be treated to a narrative that includes all the actors in this country’s historical drama – not just the ones who arrived in sailing ships wearing tall boots and funny hats – and be all the better for it?
From what I’ve seen so far, I’d have to say I’m doubtful.
The new curriculum, at least in its draft form, is less an opportunity for historiographical enlargement than it is an exercise in historical exclusion. Far from welcoming Maori into a bigger, broader, more intelligible and exciting explanation of New Zealand’s past, the new curriculum seems determined to deny Pakeha any role in the drama except that of colonialist villain.
The four or five hundred years during which the Maori had these islands to themselves will provide the central focus of study. Our children will learn that Polynesian settlement was planned and executed by boat-builders and navigators of rare talent and fortitude. They will be taught how great was the ruin inflicted upon the culture of Aotearoa by the agents of European imperialism. The speed and extent of the destruction wrought by the settlers who supplanted the indigenous population will be described, and the ruthless betrayal of the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi explained. In its essence, the historical narrative of Aotearoa-New Zealand will be re-presented as a Maori story. While Pakeha may have driven the history of the past 250 years, it is not theirs.
At the heart of this radically revised history of New Zealand is a key conceptual shift. Rather than viewing the collision of Maori and Pakeha as being the result of historical forces too vast for blame and too permanent for guilt, the historians responsible for the new curriculum appear to be arguing that the country’s direction of travel, historically speaking, is towards a political entity which will eventually be more Maori than Pakeha. The processes of cultural assimilation which, for 200 years, have attempted to transform Maori into brown Pakeha will be reversed. The colonisers will, in effect, become white Maori.
Outrageous? Fanciful! Perhaps. It will, however, be difficult to persuade Pakeha that this is not the core message of the curriculum. When their children start asking them questions about being the descendants of swindlers, thieves and murderers, tempers are likely to fray and angry accusations fly. Politically, things could very quickly go from bad to worse.
When voters start turning up at Labour MPs’ electorate offices with “dissident” histories, and articles downloaded from the Internet, demanding to know why their kids aren’t being taught these “facts”, the reassurances received from “progressive” historians, the Minister of Education and their Maori colleagues may begin to ring a little hollow.
As anyone who remembers the vicious arguments about politics in sport, abortion rights, and homosexual law reform will attest, conflicts rooted in deep-seated and strongly held cultural beliefs can be extraordinarily divisive. So divisive that they cause people to shift their political allegiances. Political scientists don’t call them “wedge issues” because they bring people together!
What’s more, the new history curriculum is being rolled out in a cultural environment characterised by rising levels of unease at what many construe as direct assaults on their identity as New Zealanders of European descent. The increasing use of the name “Aotearoa”, alone and unhyphenated, is a case in point. As the veteran political journalist, Richard Harman, pointed out only last week, the Climate Change Commission’s report to the Government is the first public document he can recall in which the name “New Zealand” does not appear at all.
New Zealanders are entitled to ask: “When was it decided to dispense with what is still this country’s official name?” It’s a question that, in an earlier time, would have been asked with considerable force by the news media. That the change is being accepted without demur by so many of the nation’s journalists only reinforces the popular perception of the news media as an eager partner in the steady “Maorification” of New Zealand. This perception will only be strengthened by the introduction of a school history curriculum in which two-thirds of the population find themselves cast as “baddies”.
In this fraught atmosphere it is easy to see people seizing upon controversial “factoids” that do not appear in their kids’ history homework. Factoids such as the recent assertion that at the time of the Waikato Invasion (1863) roughly half of the Maori living in New Zealand were either quietly sympathetic or actively (i.e. militarily) supportive of the Crown’s campaign against the Kingitanga “rebels” and their allies. If true, this claim would more than justify re-characterizing the conflicts of the mid-1860s as a New Zealand civil war. A dramatic revision that would undermine completely the whole thrust of the new school history curriculum.
The feminists who insisted upon the writing of “her-story” as well as “his-story”, expanded and enriched the discipline of history. If New Zealand’s new history curriculum is to do the same, it will need to be radically re-conceptualised. Our country’s story is the work of two peoples engaged in the creation of a single national narrative. Though the number of singers multiplies, the song remains the same.
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