New curriculum takes politics out of history

“The school history curriculum will create citizens who know where they’re from, but also understand the world across the seas. No longer will it indoctrinate young people for political purposes, history education will be for the benefit of the children,” says ACT Leader David Seymour upon the release of the draft new school curriculum.

The curriculum delivers on ACT's coalition commitment to restore balance to the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum.

“School curricula should expand the mind, not some adults’ ideology," says Mr Seymour. "The previous 'Aotearoa Histories' curriculum, introduced under Labour, drove a simplistic victims-and-villains narrative. Its so-called ‘big idea,’ that ‘Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand,’ excluded most New Zealanders from the story. Its other ‘big ideas’ were not much better.

“The second ‘big idea’ that ‘Colonisation and settlement have been central to Aotearoa New Zealand's histories for the past 200 years’ set New Zealand up as a nation of victims and villains. The third idea, that ‘The course of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories has been shaped by the use of power’ only reinforced that idea.

“By the time the fourth ‘big idea’, ‘Relationships and connections between people and across boundaries have shaped the course of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories,’ came along, it was too late to expand young minds.

“I’m proud to say these dismal, divisive and overly political ‘big ideas’ are all gone.

“The relentlessly ideological and cynical history curriculum was turning kids off history. A review by the Education Review Office found children didn’t engage with history that was narrow and local. Yes, they wanted to know their own immediate past. They also wanted to be stimulated by ideas from afar that they might not otherwise engage with.

“The new history curriculum does that. Instead of gorging on a restricted diet of local history, students will now learn about Ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, through to the Victorian Age. We are teaching young Kiwis to look outward and engage with a world that has always been connected and always will be.

“The new curriculum restores balance, and celebrates the positives in our history while inviting critical thinking. It teaches that we’re all descended from people who crossed oceans – whether in wakas, steamships, or Airbuses – to build a better life together at the bottom of the world.

“ACT has delivered a step away from politicised education, and a step toward a shared sense of citizenship based on common history, equal rights, and mutual respect.”