KEY POINTS:
High school history students are more likely to learn about the reign of Elizabeth I than Maori-Pakeha relations. Of the two main history topics taught in Year 13 (seventh form), England 1558-1667 is more widely taught than New Zealand in the 19th century.
Limited school resources and lack of teacher specialist knowledge may be behind the finding, according to History Teachers' Association chairman Paul O'Connor.
Is there enough New Zealand history taught at schools? Here is a selection of Your Views:
China
Students need to learn mostly about New Zealand. Australia, the Pacific, and Asia should be no less important than England and Europe. I was born in 1968 and in Social Studies at high school I only remember learning about Mediaeval and Victorian England. I wondered how that could be relevant. Later, when I travelled, I met Americans and others who knew more about New Zealand history than I did. It was terribly embarrassing. What I know, I've learnt myself.
John (Auckland)
The purpose of studying history is to gain greater understanding of the human creatures that we are. Most of what we think and do today is the product of our culture, and is so immediate and real to us that we fail to see ourselves in any wider perspective. There is a case for studying New Zealand's history, but it is secondary to the study of humanity in general. Our attention should focus on the key events that shaped the world we live in, what pressures people were subjected to and how they responded to them. It is much easier to see this clearly when the object of our gaze is not directly related to us, and less likely to conflict with our contemporary self-image. Once we see others with greater understanding, we are then in a better position to examine ourselves.
Brigid Kelly
At 43, I know embarrassingly little about New Zealand history, apart from the fun modules I did in 1980 on the birth of the welfare state and integration. In retrospect, I realise this is very bad. Kids do need to learn more about New Zealand's history (though I'd be very sad if the Tudor topic disappeared entirely - I loved that one).
Rosina
I went to a school where Maori/Pakeha history was taught before World History. I enjoyed both very much. Knowing the history of my own country gave me a perspective on our place in the world so we need to know who we are first before looking at someone else's.
WhyNot?
Show them classic films. Eg Ben Hur, Braveheart, Ned Kelly, Rabbit Proof Fence, Oliver Twist, Alexander the Great, Once Were Warriors, The St Valentines Day Massacre, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbour, and Samurai. Immerse them in gore and reality. Let them see where they are descended from and the implications of such acts of "great" people and the effects of those actions on the common people around them. These were our ancestors. Not the deliverers but the common people looking for a hero. The common people who had to carry the long suffering burden of heroism and intransigence on their shoulders and are weighed down by the ramifications of world change at their expense. Teach them who carries the world and who bears the responsibility.
Carmel (Auckland)
It's ridiculous that NZ Secondary Schools continue to place a higher value on the history of England than they do on our own rich NZ history. And the unfortunate reality is, that even when NZ history is taught within secondary schools, you can pretty much guarantee that the only history discussed, is that which occurred post colonial settlement (as if this country was non existent before the white man came).
NZ needs to get real with their identity and start valuing our own stories. These types of attitudes, that see us elevating the histories and stories of such geographically distant places - are perpetuating an attitude of second rateness amongst New Zealanders. So many amazing things have happened within Aotearoa and across the Pacific region. Maori need to be recognised for the ground breaking things that they have done despite the colonial rule and the constant moves to squash their courage. I would much rather have learnt about how the Pacific was navigated, or how Maori brought their language back from the near brink of extinction or the real reasons why the Treaty of Waitangi came to be etc, than to learn about the Tudors.
Hayden Nash
When I was at high school, not so long ago, the history I wanted to know about:
Waitangi - How the treaty came to be. Thanks to TePapa, I found out all I needed to know about this.
NZ Wars - Who, what, when where and why. Many thanks to the Auckland Library for the many useful books they have on this topic.
Nuclear Free NZ - The basis for us becoming Nuclear free, and the breakdown of the ANZUS treaty shortly thereafter. The knowledge behind this has always served me well when the nuclear debate rears its head every year.
Vietnam - It's hard to escape Vietnam. Even now movies and TV shows still show Vietnam references. Moving into more modern history Iraq is a case in point. Embarrassing, costly, and most people don't want there to be a war. Sadly, we have lost our compassion and the marches of the 70s are no longer around.
Hitler - I couldn't have given two figs about WWI or WWII. Hitler was the main character I wanted my history lesson to be on. Such a fascinating creature, and the debates that could have been had in history if the discussions were centred around if he had never been born, killed in WWI, never been in the army etc.
Ummagumma (Melbourne)
I did all my schooling in New Plymouth and learned only the very basics of the so-called "Maori wars". Only in the past couple of years by reading James Belich, Michael King and Dick Scott have I come to learn the thrilling, fascinating and often appalling, history of my own country, and particularly events that took place in my own home town. I feel cheated that these things weren't taught me at school.
Mama Mia (Auckland)
Who cares about Elizabeth I? The most intelligent thing to do in New Zealand is to teach New Zealand students about New Zealand history first. Then after they can be taught about the European barbarians whom we always have to come and help when they have entangled themselves in numerous senseless wars.
Ipipiri (Bay of Islands)
NZ history should always have priority. At the moment most teachers would have a problem teaching this. Their knowledge is limited to what they got taught at school. As long as it is the truth and correct. Reading Greg's views, Greg some people do not want to hear the truth.
Te Taniwha
Pakeha teach the English history because they are English and that is where they are from. Simple. Maori, we should teach our history to our children because that is our reality.
Mother of Two
Local history should be taught first, but world history is well worth taking an interest in over a lifetime. If we do not learn history we are condemned to repeat the mistakes. We should endeavour to learn from it. I believe it should be a compulsory subject along with English, Mathematics, Science, Physical Education, throughout High School.
Madeleine
History never appealed to me as it was always about a) Te Tiriti or b) War. I agree with those that suggest that because it is covered in Year 10, students don't want to go over it again, even if it would be more in depth. They would prefer something completely new. I can't otherwise see how Tudor England would have any great appeal on its own. The history of colonisation in general would be quite cool - maybe looking at Africa or India. However, given that few in the rest of the world will ever study NZ history, perhaps it behoves NZ students to do so.
Andy
Learning history is actually worthless unless it leads to insights that show people, specifically, why their world is the way it is today. If it achieves the latter, then it can provide people with a more intelligent relationship with the world they live in - not just "believing that everything is the way it is, because that's just the way it should be". Hence, a good history course should be based on giving kids an understanding of the dynamics that created their world (today). The problem is that that kind of history education is actually quite dangerous (er, politically speaking) - it teaches people that things that may have seemed incidental happened for often very calculated reasons, so they start thinking for themselves and asking why certain things continue to happen even though their original purpose has come to pass. But in saying all this, who are we to prescribe somebody else's history education anyway?
Courtney
In 7th form I did the Tudor Stuart topic and internal assessment on the US in the 1920s. I went to a school of 2000 pupils yet my 6th & 7th form history classes only had 13 people in them. Part of the issue is getting more kids interested in history full stop. School history focussed too much on politics and skirted over social & cultural issues often in 1 lesson. However, by 7th form the topic should be secondary to the practice of history and historiography, so it can be developed further at university. The taste for histriographical questions that you get in 7th form is helped at university level with much more exciting New Zealand history topics that high school kids would also enjoy if given the opportunity (ie. sex, leisure, health). Moreover, the discipline of history is not simply 'facts' about the past as so many people seem to believe. Its purpose is to teach students to be critical thinkers, to weigh up evidence alongside historians debates and to form their own reasoned and supported arguments. It would be much more fruitful for 7th formers to do a series of case studies of history, focused on NZ, but also exploring other cultures and time periods based around a thematic question such as: is national identity the most useful way of organising history? Or, is class/race/gender a useful category of analysis?
Walter
History? When we are even not able to teach our children the reality?
Kelly
Reading some of the comments posted earlier, it is clear that we have to be careful about how we teach New Zealand history. Don Brash's infamous speech a couple of years ago proves that. Yes, it is important to know our history, and yes, the Treaty is important, but it is not the be all and end all of New Zealand. That's what has turned me off doing NZ history - the fact that the Treaty is constantly rearing it's heard. There are so many other aspects to cover. For example, Plunket. How many NZers were Plunket babies? Yet how many know the proper history behind it? I don't. Of course, that could be through my own ignorance. Another example - the scientific works of Lord Rutherford and Allan Wilson. (Do you know who Allan Wilson is and what he did?) Neither relates to the Treaty. At the same time, though, we cannot disregard Tudor-Stuart history. Undeniably, it is the basis of our political system. And many political systems in the world. History can be so fascinating. I do agree with others that say it should be made compulsory from an earlier age. That way, everyone would be kept happy because there would be more time to teach more history.
Adam
New Zealand history should take precedence over European history in our schools. It isn't a boring subject at all. I think it suffers from prejudices and a lack of courage in presenting our past honestly. For example, we don't like loosing or making mistakes. No one ever told me at school that our biggest military mistake was on 10 october 1917 at Passchendaele when we had about 5000 casualties in one morning. Mistakes were made and we got massacred because of it. We hear all about Gallipoli (we lost about 7000 men over 7 months) but not about this. It was so devastating that I suppose people didn't want to talk about it. But it's terrifically interesting and tragic. Events like this need to be brought further out into the open so that Kiwi's can see that we do actually have a history worth studying.
Paul
Of course it should be taught! The question is which version of NZ history is being taught. And it's ridiculous to believe there is only one version of history! Possibly the apathetic attitude towards learning NZ history is that what's being taught is out of step with popular beliefs or agendas, or it's perceived as a blinkered view of past events. Thus, the "why bother" attitude.
Sonia
Ian and Stuart. Maori people did not have knowledge of European fighting techniques during the New Zealand Wars. The fact is that they developed a technique of using trench warfare independently of what had happened elsewhere in the world. Thus they conceived it in their own society.
Ian
The fact that Sonia thinks that Maori invented trench warfare demonstrates the futility of only teaching a narrow, nationalist version of the past. Trench warfare was common in Europe three hundred years before the Maori were meant to have invented it here. It was how both besiegers and besieged dealt with the invention of the cannon. Hence Shakespeare refers to "trenching war, channelling our fields" (Henry IV Part1). That doesn't mean Maori weren't great military engineers. They were tremendously good at it. But no country's history should be studied in isolation, and particularly not the history of a very small country thousands of kilometres away from most others. Having said which, I don't think it should be a matter of teaching New Zealand kids either "Tudors and Stuarts" or the history of their own place. They should be taught both these subjects and much more, including the histories of our Asian neighbours, as part of an integrated narrative of our common human past. And perhaps there's a case for teaching 19th and early 20th century British history in some depth. After all, it was the Britain of Industry, Empire, Free Trade and Liberalism that helped shape much of our modern world. And, of course, that was also the Britain out of which New Zealand evolved and for which generations of Kiwis fought.
I'm sure there are quite a few things that could be chucked out of the school syllabus to make way for a more comprehensive approach to history teaching. There's also a need for a less episodic approach to the subject, so that young people are given some kind of map of the past. By the way, friends in the UK feel much the same about the way their kids are taught history. "Bring back the grand narrative!" seems to be a common cry.
Alan WIlkinson
The problem with history is that it consists of an infinite number of often-questionable facts and points of view, so that as soon as you decide to "teach history" you are into a game of selection according to personal or social biases. What needs to be taught is how to investigate facts and analyse opinions so that young people are not vulnerable to the biases of their elders. From that perspective it doesn't much matter what the subject matter is, although obviously if it is local and relevant it should have a head start in being interesting. I suspect the biggest challenge is that teachers who are prepared to suffer the mind-numbing bureaucracy of our state education system are probably the last people to have the independence of mind and character required to teach history properly.
Andy (London)
Children are in school for up to 12 years? They should be taught human history, from the Egyptians right up to how modern America and capitalism started. Glossing over 6000 years does not "teach" kids anything. They just become machines spewing out dates. They should learn everything about the Persian-Greek wars (and see the real reasons why the Middle East is at war with itself and the West), the founding of democracy and how we have gone so far from those principles, how Solon reinvigorated Athens and started the establishment of our "western" civilisation. They should learn the rise and real reasons for the fall of Rome (and how bad things were, not just the glory). Only by learning how previous civilisations collapsed and fell can we realise that humans have learned virtually nothing and are treading the same paths. Learning about a few Maori scraps with the British and how NZ became a nation is fine, but how about in a world context as well?
Stuart
Teaching of New Zealand history is something both necessary and desirable as the events of the past impact so much on our present, and for the same reason one cannot ignore our British heritage either. Oh, Sonia, your claim that Maori invented trench warfare: I would point out that such techniques have long been in evidence before firearms reached these shores, various European siege's over the centuries being a prime example.
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