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How to Destroy New Zealand: Part One

Waitangi must be front runner for the least celebrated ‘national day’ in the entire world. That the vast majority of New Zealanders treat it with indifference is entirely reasonable given the absurd political grandstanding it always occasions. But it’s a damn shame. Fetishising 1840 may be an obsession of Maori grievance merchants and their urban elite enablers, but it has effectively robbed us all of a decent day of gratitude for getting to live in one of the greatest little nations on God’s earth.

Having screwed up our national day, the same people are aiming to do even more damage to our country by perverting the teaching of our history.

Last week saw the arrival of the draft curriculum for the newly-created ‘New Zealand History’ subject compulsory in schools from next year.

As feared, it is a blueprint for activist, politically-slanted teaching of our past that will, I believe, endanger our very future as a viable nation.

As is the fashion these days, the draft comes with its own teaser video. A Maori nana taking in a view of the Auckland Harbour Bridge with her grandkids. Apropos of nothing she informs them she marched across the bridge once. As grandmothers’ tales go, it’s a bit lame – I’m sure they’d prefer something about tani-whas. But in making an obvious reference to a hikoi (either the 1975 land march or the later seabed and foreshore one) old nanny Hohepa is tipping us off to what, according to the Ministry of Education, is really important in New Zealand History.

The slogan beneath it makes plain the activist approach: “If we want to shape Aotearoa New Zealand’s future, start with our past.” As does the M.O.E. introductory note. “The purpose of the Social Sciences learning area is for students to understand ‘how societies work and how they can participate and take action as critical, informed and responsible citizens.’” (My italics).

Yes, history is now part of the ‘social sciences’, keeping company with such reputable subjects as sociology and gender studies. When I studied for a bachelor’s degree in history it was considered one of the arts. It is somewhat ironic that this move from art to science has been accompanied by less respect for precision and hard evidence, rather than more.

As to the actual document, let’s start with the title: Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories.

Let’s skip over the M.O.E.’s renaming of our country to ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’ without consulting the rest of us and land on ‘Histories’. Histories? A nation has only one history. There are different perspectives on that history, sure, but it’s still a single national story. If we want to be pedantic, it can be defined as all the events that have occurred in a nation since its first human habitation.

So why the illiteracy?

The title sets up the theme for the entire document – an obsession with division.

Just a note for those of you who have not come in contact with our education system since running out the school gate the last day of your final year. Curriculum documents do not, as would be reasonable, contain any detail of what students will in fact learn of a given subject. Oh no, they are inevitably nebulous creations full of bullet-pointed, jargon-heavy vagaries. But one like me, trained in pedagogical bullshit (I’m an ex-primary school teacher), can make a few stabs at what it all actually means.

The M.O.E. website is explicit about this: “The draft curriculum content doesn’t state day by day what should be taught. It includes ideas (known as ‘big ideas’) that are specific to Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories that students will explore.”

So what are the big ideas?

Well there are three and here they are from bad to terrible:

1. Maori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand.

First ‘bad idea’: that ‘Maori history’ is entirely separate and separable from New Zealand history. That ‘Maori history’ is ‘the’ foundational history of NZ is indisputable (well, until someone finds an Egyptian pyramid buried in Central Otago), that it is ‘the’ continuous history of New Zealand is a dodgier notion. In New Zealand, ‘Pakeha history’ is also continuous (1769 to now, if we absent the lost Dutchman). As is ‘Chinese history’ or ‘Morris-dancing, cross-eyed dwarf history’ for that matter. The use of the definite article seems pointedly aggressive.

2. Colonisation and its consequences have been central to our history for the past 200 years and continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand society.

Seems reasonable. Yes, colonisation happened. And yes, it is ‘central’ to our history – arguably none of us would be here without it. It is the last clause of the sentence that is troubling. Making ‘colonisation’ something that is happening now assumes (again) that New Zealanders can be divided into two groups – Maori and, presumably, ‘the colonisers’ – which is manifest bollocks considering most, if not all, Maori are themselves descended from the ‘colonisers’.

It gets worse when you read the explanatory note on this ‘big idea’:

“In its varying forms, colonisation – including privileges deriving from it and the enduring assertions of tino rangatiratanga and mana Maori – continues to evolve.”

No prizes for guessing what ‘privilege’ they are talking about here. How would this look in a classroom? All the white kids atoning for their ‘privilege’ by doing the brown kids’ homework? This is crazy – they’d be better off with the Asian kids doing it.

3. The course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history has been shaped by the exercise and effects of power.

For those seeking the source of 90% of the madness that bedevils our times, look no further than Michel Foucault. This miserable French intellectual (aren’t they all?) viewed individuals as the playthings of ‘power relations’ – basically competition between different groups in society. He is the major influence on the radical identity politics of the present day. And the reason this ‘big idea’ is going to be taught to our kids. One could find other lessons from history – the importance of cooperation between groups, how individual genius has benefitted us all, that societies that are the freest flourish most – but these wouldn’t have the necessary seal of approval from the misanthropic French salon.

This far-left focus on division and group power struggles can be seen in some of the notes on ‘key knowledge’. “Aotearoa New Zealand has a history of selective and discriminatory practices to control migration, with little negotiation with Maori as tangata whenua” and “Immigration policy has been used to exclude some peoples and to restrict conditions for entry and citizenship.” I’d like to know which countries the authors think haven’t ‘excluded’ or been ‘discriminatory’ when controlling their borders. They could have just as easily written ‘New Zealand has been uncommonly welcome to migrants of all kinds’ but that wouldn’t have fit their politics.

A stew of left-wing activism, post-modern intellectual theory and racial essentialism, this curriculum couldn’t be more radical if Hone Harawira himself had scribbled it on the back of a Rothman’s packet.

So what’s the agenda of the authors and why are they pushing it?

I’ll cover that in part two.

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A contribution from The BFD staff.