SOCIAL STUDIES

IN THE

NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM

A Submission on the REVISED Draft

Education Forum
October 1996

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Education Forum acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of Dr Geoffrey Partington in the preparation of this submission.

Dr Partington's qualifications include B.A. (Hons), M.Ed. (Bristol University), P.G.C.E, Advanced Diploma of Education, BSc. (Hons) (London University), and Ph.D. (Adelaide University). He has been a history teacher, a secondary school headmaster and an inspector of schools in England, and a senior lecturer in education at Flinders University, South Australia.

His books include: Women Teachers in the Twentieth Century (1976) and The Idea of an Historical Education (1980), both published by the National Foundation for Educational Research/Routledge; The Australian Nation: its British and Irish Roots (1994), published by the Australian Scholarly Press, Melbourne; and Hasluck versus Coombs - White Politics and Australia's Aborigines (1996), published by Quakers Hill Press, Sydney. He has written over one hundred articles which have appeared in various journals including the British Journal of Educational Studies, the Oxford Journal of Education, Comparative Education, the Australian Journal of Education, the Canadian Journal of Education, the Journal of Moral Education, the Journal of Religious Education, the International Journal of Social Education, Quadrant, Encounter, Education Research and Perspectives, the Victorian Historical Journal, the Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Australia, and History of Education.

The submission contains a foreword by Kenneth Minogue, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of London. A New Zealander by birth, he was educated in New Zealand and Australia. For two years from 1951 he taught in a variety of London schools. In 1974 he published The Concept of a University, and he has reviewed and written for both The Times Education Supplement and The Times Higher Education Supplement, for the latter of which he was a regular columnist in the mid-1970s. He has written a variety of articles on the theory of education, and has recently lectured on education at the new College of the Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa.

The Education Forum is also grateful to Michael Irwin, Greg Lee, Reg Lockstone, Roger Sandall, and David Thomson for many valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this submission.

FOREWORD

Critics of the earlier draft curriculum raised the question of a 'rationale' for the teaching of Social Studies. They focused on the right question, but did not press it far enough.

The very word 'studies' sets alarm bells ringing because it evades the question of what discipline (or method, or logic) is involved. Social Studies here covers the entire range of the social sciences, which involve a number of distinct disciplines, and it is educationally a mistake not to distinguish them clearly one from another.

There is, in fact, one more or less closely related discipline to Social Studies: sociology. Sociology has, as Social Studies does not, a kind of method, and a literature worth the attention of students. The method incorporates science and philosophy, and literature by such people as Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, Durkheim, Weber, Dilthey, McIver, Daniel Bell and others. But this is a sophisticated literature, and is best studied at undergraduate level when students already have some knowledge of economics, geography and, especially, history. One central sign that any subject is worth studying is that one can produce a canon, a set of notably challenging works to improve the minds of pupils, even if at school they might not come directly in contact with it. I do not know of any literature which belongs to Social Studies, and no books are mentioned in this draft curriculum.

We may add, in passing, that the constitutive vice of school curricula the world over is the attempt to impose on children kinds of sophistication which can only be grasped in universities. Education must be taken in orderly steps. The curriculum we are considering is the specification for a kind of Renaissance Man (or Woman). It would make Leonardo da Vinci look like a narrow specialist.

In fact, the curriculum does covertly recognise real disciplines, but it disguises them. 'Social organisation and processes' bears some relation to sociology and what has sometimes been taught as civics. 'Place and Environment' is basically geography, while 'Resources and Economic Activities' is economics. 'Time Continuity and Change' is history wrapped up in obfuscating abstractions. 'Culture and Heritage' seems to have elements of anthropology and the history of religion, but is rather more of a ragbag even than the others.

The basic mistake of this curriculum is, then, that it runs helter skelter from one set of considerations to another, and could only produce students who had mastered a bit of patter but were basically confused. In an important sense, there is no such thing as Social Studies - sentimental waffle about 'people' notwithstanding. One may say at once that the best solution would be to reconstitute the actual subjects mentioned above, making history and geography perhaps compulsory, and economics an option. Sociology is best not studied at all in schools, merely taking time away from more basic studies.

Social Studies is not a subject, and as a consequence the vacuity at the core of the entire project invites filling with whatever comes into the heads of the authors as being a 'good thing'. This is why critics have seen 'ideological bias' stamped all over it. But it is also one reason why the authors of such an enterprise can only come out of it looking foolish. Consider, for example, the style in which it is written.

It is a compendium of clichés. Needs cannot arise, but must be 'urgent.' What sort of world do we live in? Well, a changing world. How changing? Oh - rapidly, of course. One might go on, but this will give the flavour. Very few sentences are clear and direct, because adjectives pile up qualifying several nouns trying to say the same thing (a notable result of committee compromise in drafting). The mind behind this is largely on automatic pilot. If the writer dozes, can the reader be far behind? Is this comment perhaps just a bit of scholarly pedantry? Not, I think, given that one of the skills the curriculum seeks to impart is that of communication. The writers of this proposal would not recognise a communication skill if they stubbed their toe on one.

One would be inclined to push this criticism further were it not that some elements, though by no means all, of what is incompetent in this proposal are less due to those who wrote it than to the defects of recent educational theory throughout the English-speaking world. This point can most clearly be seen in its emphasis on skills rather than knowledge.

Let us look at some of the propositions in the document in this light. One is that we live in a rapidly changing world. A second is that the relation between Maori and Pakeha is one of partnership. And a third is that New Zealand is essentially bicultural. As a matter of fact, the concept of partnership is an inexact term to describe the complexities of the Maori?Pakeha relationship since 1840; nor, I think, is the idea of partnership even entrenched in the famous Treaty. But the point of the Social Studies proposal in this area is not at all to emphasise how rapidly changing is the world; rather it is to entrench the idea of partnership between Pakeha and Maori, to such an extent that this at least will become one bit of the world which will not change. Here we have several elements of contradiction underlying the proposal, but they are drowned in the blandness of the jargon in which it is written. Yet this is a document setting up teaching which purports to develop the skill of critical thinking. And one feature of critical thinking is alertness to contradiction.

The 'skills philosophy' raises issues which go far beyond this particular report but must be broached. Until the second half of this century, education was concerned not with skills, nor with information, but with knowledge ? of English grammar, French irregular verbs, historical dates, names of rivers, and such like taught by people who were excited by their subject. The point of this education was to leave pupils alone to develop skills and attitudes according to their own thoughts and inclinations. Education was not a production line attempting to turn out creatures with fixed and determinate ideas.

The 'skills philosophy' was an attempt to invade the child's mind and to dominate it. It sought nothing less than to get inside his or her experience and take it over. No longer learning about communication in the playground, or about people in family and social life, the pupil was to have his or her responses guided by the teacher. This new philosophy could not even leave 'creativity' alone. That, too, was to be taught in schools, just as the present curriculum wants children to "try out innovative and original ideas" (p. 21). It seems that originality grows on trees. It would be nice to see just a little bit of it here in this draft.

The 'skills philosophy' is under serious attack in the rest of the world, and I hope the news will soon get to New Zealand. This is not just because it is a totalitarian exercise in mind domination, but because its incoherence produces children notably lacking in the very skills intended. The point is that children are not formless matter to be die?stamped by curriculum mongers, but have their own capacities for response which education respects and propaganda tries to destroy. Much in this curriculum proposal is propaganda: benign in its intentions no doubt, but certainly not to be confused with real education.

I have noted that the skill of critical thinking is debased by the very terms of the curriculum proposal itself, and it is worth looking at other examples of self?contradiction in the draft. These defects arise, it will be remembered, from the fact that describing a non?existent subject just draws in a set of incoherent 'bright' ideas. Hence on the one hand will be found the theme of immense tolerance of different practices and respect for the rights of others to hold different values, on the other a riot of prescriptivism about attitudes. Children must be taught to respect everything, yet their actual character in the playground is to be great condemners; it is indeed part of what they understand as criticism. And even their teachers are likely to agree in condemning Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, or practices such as suttee, cliterodectomy, and footbinding ? to name only a few uncontroversial targets.

On the other hand, inclusiveness of every kind is enjoined upon the luckless teacher. There is certainly no tolerance for exclusiveness or any other form of discrimination. The social studies curriculum will, for example, "ensure that both girls and boys take active and valued leadership roles in activities and have equitable access to resources, including teacher time, learning assistance, and technology" (p. 30).

Why should the curriculum include this and similar injunctions ? unless it believes that the schoolteachers of New Zealand are so ill mannered and barbarous, not to mention hopeless at their trade, that they treat children inequitably in the classroom? If the Ministry of Education really believes this, then it had better bring this national educational crisis out into the open at the earliest possible moment. If, as I presume, it does not, then why does it allow such patronising humbug into its document? The answer, no doubt, is that this curriculum document also functions as a kind of liturgy for the religion of political correctness.

And patronising is the point. Teachers are patronised. Children are patronised by the idea that they are lumps of clay who must be taught 'skills' by teachers. But perhaps the most interesting case is the recurrent term 'confident' in the draft. The aims of social studies education are "... to enable students to participate in a changing society as confident, informed, and responsible citizens" (p. 7). As against, presumably, diffident, ignorant and irresponsible citizens ? but we must not allow ourselves to be diverted by the gruesome prose. Why 'confident'? What business is it of teachers, or the Ministry of Education, to meddle with the inner lives of those it is charged merely to educate? The answer, we may guess, is that this is an idea carried over from Black American education theorists who feel that non?European peoples have a self?respect problem, and therefore that they must be equipped with a 'heritage' which makes them feel that their people have contributed as much to whatever we might admire as anyone else. The use of 'confident' thus picks up the emphasis on biculturalism and the importance of Maori themes.

I would guess that this fear is groundless. Maori have been a notably vigorous and self?confident set of people with a disposition to succeed in all sorts of conflict, including war and on the sporting field. My guess is that this theme comes from Europeans with their own exaggerated sense of the importance of their own heritage, who imagine that others must seriously feel the lack of it. But as the philosopher Hobbes put it, felicity consists in prospering, not in having prospered. It is present opportunities, not past records which are crucial here. In any case, for most actual Maori (certainly for those I have met), the achievements of all New Zealanders constitute a single heritage. But the consequence of this mistaken view is to patronise Maori in a quite intolerable fashion.

Patronising is certainly what we must diagnose when we see Maori culture being juxtaposed against something called 'Pakeha culture.' Certainly European New Zealanders live a variant on the Western culture they have inherited, but the basic point is that this whole exercise ? schools curricula, rights, language, motor cars for transport etc. are all part of a Western culture which the British have brought to New Zealand, and these 'cultural equivalence' remarks are unnecessary, obfuscating and unreal attempts to establish a Maori collectivity on an exact cultural parallel with the modern world. The first people likely to be derisive of this form of cultural egalitarianism will be Maori themselves.

It is as part of that mistake that the original document revealed its most spectacular piece of educational incompetence: in its account of five cross?strand perspectives, which moved from New Zealand to the Pacific to Asia and straight on to the 'Global Community'. The revised draft gave further evidence of the hidden dynamics of this remarkable project by including Europe but in no way distinguishing Britain. Why this extraordinary blindness to the most important heritage of all in a document devoted to piety about heritages? Was New Zealand to be presented as born fully formed from the brow of Jove, without antecedents?

Another error was to talk of 'Asia', an entirely European construct. India, China and Japan are very different civilisations, not to mention Indonesia and other countries in that geographical area. Merging these diverse countries and cultures into 'Asia' merely illustrates the dilettantism of the whole exercise.

But the most serious mistake is, of course, to leave out the British Isles, the source of most of the population, the law, the politics, and so on. This is so gross an omission that it is proof positive that this document is an attempt to advance specific political interests, and those interests would certainly be at odds with the inclinations of very large numbers of New Zealanders. Now this is a very serious matter. It means that the Ministry of Education has become the instrument of back stairs intrigue, taken over by a deeply unrepresentative set of people who are seeking, through the apparently merely educational concerns of teaching children about the world, to change the entire direction of the country, in a covert fashion.

My argument is, then, that this entire project is so flawed as to be impossible to salvage. Academically speaking, it would make New Zealand a laughing stock. Educationally, it reflects the declining fashions of the last half century which have resulted in a generation of children whose general incompetence is a major source of concern to Western governments. And above all, it is a political wolf in educational sheep's clothing.

Kenneth Minogue

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Despite the large number of adverse submissions on the first draft of the Social Studies Curriculum (hereinafter the Original Draft), the revision represents little improvement on the original. Some minor matters have been clarified, and a few concessions made (for example, there is now a faint reflection of New Zealand's British background). But the Education Forum remains concerned that the Revised Draft incorporates the serious failings of its predecessor. It proposes a Social Studies Curriculum that ignores or denigrates important aspects of this country's past and present, emphasises ill?defined skills, does not offer clear guidance on assessment, and presses a number of ideological agendas that are at odds with the opinions of a large number of New Zealanders. Students moving through the proposed study will emerge without a coherent or systematic understanding of their country's geography, peoples, history, economy, political system or core values, or of the place of New Zealanders in a wider global community.

Our main recommendation remains that the attempt to encompass history, geography, economics, sociology and all the other social sciences within an integrated Social Studies curriculum should be abandoned: no convincing case has been or can be made for it. If neither that recommendation nor an alternative approach such as the one outlined by the Education Forum in its submission on the Original Draft is accepted, and the Ministry of Education persists with an integrated curriculum built around the present structure, then the proposed strands should be reduced from five to three, by combining 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage', and 'Time, Continuity, and Change' into one. A Social Studies curriculum modified in this way should not, however, be made compulsory for schools. Instead, they should be permitted to construct separate history, geography and other relevant courses, with freedom of choice being even more vital for secondary than for primary schools.

The Revised Draft retains all the significant weaknesses of its predecessor. No adequate rationale is offered for Social Studies as a curriculum 'subject', nor for this particular version of a Social Studies programme, despite the promise to provide this in response to criticism of its absence from the original. The Revised Draft continues to reduce all modes of learning to 'skills', without showing how these can encompass the wider aspects of creative endeavour and intellectual inquiry. The Revised Draft also still lacks a coherent programme for skills development and assessment. The five proposed strands that form the basis of what is to be covered remain patchy and lacking integration, and would continue, as many remarked of the Original Draft, to foster a 'mish?mash', 'bitsy', 'pot?pourri', 'unconnected smattering', 'scatter?gun' approach rather than a learning plan.

Of the five proposed strands, 'Place and Environment' and 'Resources and Economic Activities' have some conceptual independence and coherence, and are the better structured, with some logical sequencing of topics. But there is no clear distinction between the concepts and content of the other three, 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage' and 'Time, Continuity, and Change'. Further, the striking feature of 'Time, Continuity, and Change' in particular is its failure to provide any continuity. No in?depth study of any society as a whole, not even of New Zealand, is offered until Level 8, that is until students are aged at least 15. Instead, it is assumed that particular aspects of human experience, such as leadership, inventions or household incomes, can be isolated and treated on their own. A confusion of time and place characterises this strand in particular, and no structured continuity of study emerges. The best thing would be to abandon the strands approach altogether: at the very least, these three problematic strands must be merged into one.

The Revised Draft implies wrongly that all opinions, feelings, thoughts, likes and dislikes constitute something called 'values', a term which is neither defined nor used consistently, and further that all such values be accepted in a nonjudgmental way as worthwhile or as good as any others. The obvious real?life contradictions to which this can lead, for the active and responsible citizens the authors of the Revised Draft aim to produce, are not explored or confronted ? for example, the contradictions between the traditional values of various cultures and the values embodied in present?day human rights legislation. Moreover, if one supports the right of individuals to hold different values and beliefs, one must in logic then have a higher regard, all other things being equal, for societies in which there is considerable freedom to hold different values than for those which lack such freedom. This relates closely to the first of the five criteria of significance which the Education Forum proposed in its submission on the Original Draft for selecting historical content for a school curriculum. They were freedom, equality, safety and security, human control over nature, and rationality and understanding.

After apparently rejecting the advocacy of particular values, and adopting the view that students should simply be encouraged to clarify whatever values they may hold, the Revised Curriculum then engages in ideological moulding of students' ideas and values. The Revised Draft's own implicit and explicit values do not reflect those of the majority of New Zealanders. For example, the Revised Draft disregards almost completely the contribution of Christianity to New Zealand society, and pretends that the British Isles were not the origin of the major part of this country's politics, laws, customs and sports.

Nor does the Revised Draft give any serious consideration to another of its own central planks, that is to what it might mean for a society to be both bicultural and multicultural, or to the ways in which New Zealand is, or is not, one or other of these. Biculturalism is an inappropriate expression for the Revised Draft to choose to describe its approach, since five of the six key requirements listed under that heading (p. 29) refer exclusively to Maori culture. Maori history and tradition should be known and their positive features respected by all New Zealanders, but not in such a one?sided way which fails to explore contradictions within them, or between them and other histories and traditions in New Zealand. The term 'bicultural' implies partnership and balance that are not evident here.

High priority should be given to systematic treatment of the historical development of Maori and British societies before the nineteenth century, and to relations between Maori and other New Zealanders during and since the nineteenth century. We offer in Appendix A some suggestions about topics that might be considered in this context. In the Revised Draft there are mere bits and pieces on these issues, which do not provide an adequate basis for students to understand the main differences between Maori, British and others. Non?Maori students are encouraged by the Revised Draft to take critical attitudes to their own traditions, when reference is made to them at all, whereas all are enjoined to respect and admire Maori culture and traditions without question.

The Revised Draft's suggestions on gender relations are not helpful. No structured studies of changes in gender relations in different types of society are provided. Instead, the Revised Draft urges that students "explore and value both traditional and non?traditional roles and the contribution and status of both women and men in different cultures, places, and times" (p. 30), even though some of those roles were and are exploitive and unfairly discriminatory. Once again, in preparing students for active and responsible citizenship as they claim to do, the authors of the Revised Draft fail to address the key question of how societies do, or should, address and resolve conflicts between competing sets of values or behaviours.

SECTION 1 SUBMISSIONS MADE ON THE
ORIGINAL DRAFT CURRICULUM STATEMENT

The Original Draft was greeted with much well-directed criticism, and the former Minister of Education, the Honourable Lockwood Smith, asked the Ministry of Education to redraft it. The present Minister of Education, the Honourable Wyatt Creech, decided that the new draft should be issued as a Revised Draft and further comment invited, instead of proceeding directly to the production of a final version.

The Report on Submissions on the Draft Curriculum Statement: Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum, (hereinafter Report on Submissions) issued in September 1995, gave some hope that a revised version would be significantly superior to the original. The Education Forum was gratified that its analysis was picked out as "a comprehensive submission" and that several of its specific criticisms were accorded at least formal consideration. Those acknowledged included "the politicising of content and the threat of indoctrination". Report on Submissions noted (p. 2) our view "that the document did not provide a structure for critical thinking about many crucial issues, but instead presented students with a predetermined political agenda on some issues", that its "aims and outcomes were designed to indoctrinate students", and that it "reflected a 'politically correct' stance that pervaded the whole document and created an ideological bias."

We argued in our submission that the Original Draft was an inadequate basis for the study of history, geography or economics in the senior secondary school. Report on Submissions admitted that "it was felt that the rationale behind the division and construction of the strands needed to be explicated" (p. 3), and that "many geographers and the Education Forum felt that spatial and practical mapping skills needed to be given more emphasis". Report on Submissions also advised that many history and economics teachers shared our concerns about history and economics within the Original Draft, and that many examples of 'sample learning contexts and settings' were dismissed as trivial. Words such as 'mish-mash', 'bitsy', 'pepper potted', 'pot-pourri', 'unconnected smattering', 'scatter-gun approach' and 'micro-content' were used by respondents to describe the contexts and settings it suggested. It noted that "another constant criticism" was "the lack of a clear and progressive sequence" in the 'achievement objectives' (p. 6). Another of our concerns cited in Report on Submissions was that the Original Draft did not meet the requirement of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework to be "sufficiently specific to provide students, teachers, parents and communities with clear information about what is to be learned and achieved during the years of schooling" (p. 6). Report on Submissions noted that "the issue of a 'core' of essential learning appeared consistently in the submissions particularly to help address repetition of topics between levels and to ensure that every pupil covered this essential learning during their school years" (p. 10). Our own submission gave many examples of repetition, mainly of 'politically-correct' themes, and of massive gaps in what has usually been regarded as core or essential knowledge, whether in integrated Social Studies courses or separate subject disciplines.

Many teachers criticised the Original Draft for the inadequacy of its guidelines on assessment, and because they feared that too much time might be taken up with the mere mechanics of assessment (p. 9). Some submissions called for different forms of evidence of assessment from those provided and for more examples. Our submission argued that the new modes of assessment, based on the unit standards now being introduced by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, show less clearly than in the past what students know and understand, despite all the extra time and effort forced on teachers by highly elaborate but ineffective procedures.

Report on Submissions also noted that some respondents held that the Original Draft undervalued the European cultural backgrounds and the European cultural heritage of all New Zealanders (p. 8), and feared that the "disparate, disenchanted and dispossessed" were emphasised at the expense of more positive and successful examples from New Zealand's Western cultural heritage (p. 7). Our submission on the other hand noted that two thirds of the objectives in 'Culture and Heritage' were confined to New Zealand itself, whilst the entire Draft strengthened rather than challenged parochialism of time and place. On the other hand, some respondents to the Original Draft praised it because it "helped to counter any Eurocentric tendency" (p. 4). This it certainly did: one could never have devined from the Original Draft that the main political, social, economic and educational institutions of New Zealand are almost entirely of British origin, and that immigrants from every continent come wishing to share in them.

Report on Submissions included our criticism that the Original Draft "tended to portray Maori culture in a more positive light than was the reality of historical and contemporary evidence" (p. 9), and mentioned our concern at Maori and other claims of 'group ownership' of knowledge and historical experience. Report on Submissions acknowledged the Education Forum's contention that "aspects such as traditional Maori society, initial contact, the Treaty and its subsequent history needed to be examined in an even-handed, critical and open-minded way" (p. 9). It also noted that there were dissenting viewpoints, including our own, which condemned the Original Draft's treatment of 'gender inclusiveness' and related issues as based on mere 'political correctness' (p. 9), although no attempt was made to examine whether those dissentients had a valid case to argue.

The Education Forum's submission on the Original Draft condemned assigning excessive weight in the Social Studies curriculum to students' existing experience. The response in Report on Submissions was that "This seemed to question a fundamental principle of learning - that students essentially make sense of new knowledge by connecting it to their existing understanding of the world" (p. 8). This comment reveals an inability to recognise the folly of restricting curriculum to the actual experiences of children, and the need to enable students to make sense of a wide range of vicarious experiences, often totally different in character from those of their everyday lives. Vast numbers of children's favourite stories and films concern places and people, real or imaginary, completely outside the range of children's direct experience. City children who may have never seen a pig warm to Babe.

Report on Submissions offered an occasional and uncertain defence of the Original Draft. It concluded (pp. 11-12) with the following list of "Main Issues to be Addressed":

• The criteria and rationale for the structure of strands and cross strands.
• The number of strands.
• The meaning of "balance" in the cross strands.
• Specificity in the wording of the achievement objectives and the inclusion of learning outcomes.
• The coherent sequencing of objectives over the levels.
• The flexibility of the curriculum vis-a-vis a core of essential learning.
• Conceptual development within the strands and achievement objectives.
• The treatment of Maori culture and its position in the curriculum.
• The place of European heritage in the curriculum.
• The place of environmental education, citizenship education and current events in the curriculum.
• The function of the sample contexts and settings and the fragmented and superficial studies that may be encouraged.
• The grouping of skills and the validity of a sequential hierarchy.
• The elaboration of research and inquiry skills.
• Ethical and critical thinking and its relationship to values and social action.
• The values-neutral approach vis-a-vis a commitment to accepted values.
• Political correctness and the claim of indoctrination in the curriculum.
• The relationship between economic studies and the Resources and Economic Activities strand.
• The potential assessment burden and guidelines on assessment.

This list comprised almost all the issues of substance in the Original Draft that had remain unexplored or which had been insufficiently considered. Such a comprehensive list of concerns and criticisms puts into question any intellectual legitimacy which the Original Draft may claim.

SECTION 2 TREATMENT IN THE REVISED DRAFT CURRICULUM OF SUBMISSIONS ON THE ORIGINAL DRAFT

The Foreword to the Revised Draft was contributed by the Acting Secretary for Education, who claimed that the submissions received on the Original Draft had been "analysed by the Ministry and the document has been revised accordingly" (p. 5). If such an analysis took place, it has not been published. It would be a matter of considerable concern if the Ministry is unable or unwilling to analyse submissions in a professional and substantive manner, and would raise serious doubts about the value of the consultation process.

Concern might also be raised about the value of the trials of the Original Draft in 12 volunteer schools between February and May 1995. The report of the trials ("Report on the Trials Schools Project", hereinafter Trials Report) raised a number of concerns and made several recommendations (summarised later in this section) which are similar to some of the concerns and recommendations made in this submission. Trials Report can be seen as an important submission on the Original Draft, representing the collective views and criticisms of teachers with considerable experience in providing New Zealand students with structured knowledge about human societies. It is not known why the authors of the Revised Draft did not take up many of the concerns and recommendations made in it.

Report on Submissions summarised the issues raised in the submissions but did not analyse the submissions and did not claim to have done so. The only document approaching an 'analysis' was issued by the ministry on 16 November 1995 under the title Specifications for the Revision of the Draft Curriculum Statement: Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum (hereinafter Specifications).

Specifications stated that "a rationale for social studies as a distinct 'subject' is to be developed at the beginning of the document to clearly outline the integrated nature of social studies and its relationship with the social science disciplines" (p. 1). This requires the development of a 'rationale' without, apparently, any prior attempt to find out whether one exists or whether such a construct would be intellectually robust. In any case, the attempt is made in the Revised Draft, but it is a failure, as our analysis below shows. Specifications also asserts that "a rationale and criteria will be specified for the subdivision of the strands" with which the Revised Draft persists. The inadequacy of the promised 'rationale and criteria' is also illustrated below. Specifications claims that the Revised Draft will include studies of European heritage in the 'Culture and Heritage' and 'Time, Continuity, and Change' strands, yet this claim proves to be very deceptive. Specifications suggests that "a statement should be included on the purpose and coverage of assessment with suggestions about how to integrate learning and assessment tasks and activities" (p. 3). The Revised Draft includes a short statement about assessment (p. 33-34), but it is of little practical assistance to teachers and pupils.

Specifications called for "a rationale for the use of 'Pakeha' ", and for "Aotearoa/New Zealand" to be used only in New Zealand's bicultural context (p. 3). The result has been that 'Aotearoa/New Zealand' is not used at all in the Revised Draft and 'Pakeha' is only used sparingly, without explanation.

The Foreword claims that "the revised draft is now presented in a more concise, user-friendly, and accessible format". It is shorter, reduced from 134 to 86 pages, but it seems very unlikely that users will find it more friendly, useful or accessible. Virtually no earlier inadequacies are rectified, and the changes made are mainly cosmetic.

Trials Report is written in a generally sympathetic vein to current practices in Social Studies and to the Original Draft. Many teachers, especially in primary schools, welcomed the openness of the Original Draft. Yet overall it represents a severe critique of the field and of the proposed curriculum. Notable omissions in Social Studies teaching among the various age groups represented in the 12 schools were a clear core curriculum and a common method of curriculum delivery. Some teacher criticisms quoted in Trials Report were similar to those made by the Education Forum including:

• lack of sequential concept development (p. 24)
• encouraging a " 'teach anything' approach which did little to address the problem of repetition of content between the various levels of the school system" (p. 24);
• "... the differences between the levels of achievement objectives were sometimes very slight or even obscure and did not seem to necessarily indicate a sequence to a more complex level ... " (p. 25);
• the claim that " ... some of the contexts were too vague, too obscure and too disjointed to be useful in planning ... they tended to encourage a superficial treatment of a fragmented, smorgasbord of topics ... " (p. 25);
• "... lack of a cross strand to emphasise the European heritage of many New Zealanders" (p. 27); and
• " ... the section on assessment was not useful ... mainly because it lacked details and examples"(p. 34).

Some of the 'General Recommendations' in Trials Report (pp. 41?43) are very similar to our own, although the wording is usually different. These include:

• "That consideration be given to including a core of knowledge, understandings and ideas ... ".
• "That the European heritage of Pakeha New Zealanders be specifically included in the achievement objectives of the 'Culture and Heritage' strand" and " ... recognised by the inclusion of a European cross strand perspective".
• "That more emphasis be given to New Zealand historical events and the contribution of pioneer families and people ... ."
• "That practical skills such as construction of models, displaying of materials, graphing, designing diagrams and mapping be given more emphasis".

As already noted, it is not known what consideration was given to these and the other views and recommendations in Trials Report or what analysis, if any, was made of them.

SECTION 3 THE IDEA OF 'SOCIAL STUDIES'

'Social Studies' first made an appearance in school curricula early this century in the United States where it formed part of the 'social efficiency' movement . All aspects of the curriculum, and none more so than humanities and social sciences, were to be judged by the test of social utility and relevance to what were supposed to be the 'real needs' of society. An important element was contributed by radical reconstructionist educators who viewed the main task of the schools as being to reform what they saw as social evils and stupidities.

A further element was contributed by that brand of child-centred educational theory which seeks to break down barriers between schools and the everyday world and to create a curriculum based on the interests and experiences which students bring with them to school. There was, however, less concern among the Social Studies movement with that other brand of child-centred educational theory which values a distinctive 'world of childhood', in which feature myth, legend, children's literature of the type written by Barrie, Stevenson, Carroll, Grahame, Grimm and Andersen, and histories of peoples long ago and in distant lands. How the 'loaf got to our kitchen' was held to be of more interest to children, as well as of more social value, than how the Dutch boy saved the dam, or how Joan of Arc led the conquered French to expel the English invader.

Social Studies entered New Zealand's schools as part of the compulsory 'core' of subjects in 1946 following the Thomas Report. Sustained chronological treatment of history and the systematic study of the geography of the continents were explicitly rejected (pp. 27-34, 1959 reprint), but several themes were advanced which provided some inner structure to the new Social Studies. These were a study of the local district, how people live in New Zealand, how people live in other places, and how people lived in other times. This was a catch-all and gave little guidance on what criteria of significance might apply in choosing content , but was more coherent than the five strands now proposed.

The authors of most Social Studies syllabuses everywhere find it very difficult to combine structures and modes of progression suited to both history and geography. Very able teachers who themselves had good grounding in both history and geography may create a rewarding Social Studies course, but teachers weak in history and/or geography, perhaps because they themselves experienced only Social Studies, may only be able to 'negotiate with their students' disintegrated, rather than integrated, Social Studies courses which are rarely satisfactory.

The promised rationale for Social Studies appears on pages 6-9 of the Revised Draft, but this raises a number of concerns. The Revised Draft claims that "social studies has its own integrity in its focus on people and on the ways in which people influence, and are influenced by, their environment, history, cultures, and life experience" (p. 6). Aims advanced include to "help students to understand their own lives, to broaden knowledge of their cultural heritage as New Zealanders, and to extend their experience in a rapidly changing world, ... to develop their respect for other people, ... enable them to examine the values of our society", and so on (p. 6). Any curriculum which includes even random bits of history, geography and sociology must provide students with something of potential value, but the Revised Draft is not remotely among the best ways of promoting these aims.

The further claim that the focus of Social Studies "on the complexity of social reality equips students well to continue their participation in life-long learning as citizens in a democratic society" (p. 6) is humbug. A big effort, perhaps a life-long one, will be needed before students taught along the lines of the Revised Draft gain knowledge that ought to be mastered before leaving school. The statement, under the heading 'Characteristics of Learning in Social Studies', that "Social Studies focuses on people" (p. 8) is simply banal, and appears to assign a special status to Social Studies which, in fact, might equally be assigned to literature, religion, philosophy, anthropology and archaeology.

Generic outcomes to which Social Studies may make a contribution are listed in the Revised Draft (pp. 8-9) and include:

• Social studies develops investigation and inquiry learning.
• Social studies fosters critical analysis.
• Social studies uses co-operative learning.
• Social studies involves debate and conflict.

Social Studies may make a contribution to the achievement of these aims, but any such contribution is certainly not unique. Furthermore, in each 'outcome' there is a conflation of 'is' and 'ought'. There is, in fact, potential for encouraging particular adherences under the Revised Draft rather than the fostering of careful and critical analyses.

Two of the other 'characteristics' claimed for Social Studies in the Revised Draft (pp. 8-9) are that:

• Social studies expands students' horizons through vicarious experience; and
• Social studies explores significant issues.

It is pleasing to see the importance of 'vicarious experience' being acknowledged, since the Original Draft focused narrowly on students' direct personal experiences. However, much more attention should be paid to considering what kinds of vicarious experience are most valuable and significant in the study of human societies. It is not enough to refer merely to "ethics, social justice, and the political and economic choices that a society makes" as being "significant issues" (p. 9). The point is that some times and places have been particularly important in the development of thinking about ethics and justice, social or individual. In addition, the range of choices available to 'people' is very different in free, or 'open', and in 'closed' societies.

It is also claimed that Social Studies develops respect for others (p. 9). It may do so. On the other hand, it may also reduce our respect for some groups and individuals, since our species is capable of great evil and foolishness in no way worthy of respect.

Finally, Social Studies is said to encourage active participation in the school and the community (p. 9). The relationship between studying Social Studies and active participation in the community is rather more problematic than this suggests.

SECTION 4 SOME KEY ISSUES IN THE REVISED DRAFT

4.1 Knowledge and Concepts in Social Studies

The Revised Draft (p. 18) shows only a vague understanding of what constitutes significant concepts in this field. The examples provided of concepts to be identified and developed are leadership, interaction, co-operation, conflict, tradition, change, scarcity, competition and interdependence. It might as well include life and death as most of the topics listed are generally understood quite adequately without benefit of schooling.

Among the neglected concepts which should be central are what might be called collective historic entities, or social formations and doctrines which often continue over centuries but have different concrete meaning at different times. These include social formations such as slavery, serfdom, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism, democracy, and indigenous society, and doctrines such as liberalism, conservatism, right-wing, left-wing, socialism, Marxism, imperialism and nationalism.

Students often resort to dictionaries to find what such expressions mean and some teachers stipulate definitions, but it is only through systematic studies that a student may come to understand continuities and discontinuities in such concepts. It makes sense to use the term Christianity to describe the early church at the time of St. Jerome, Anglican and Methodist missions in the nineteenth century Pacific, and Black Evangelistic movements in contemporary America. These differ very much in many important ways, however, and it would be unwise to attribute a characteristic of Christians at one time to all Christians at all times. Germans have a historical continuity as a people, yet it would be dangerous to assume that what was true of German society and thought at one time is also true of another.

Or to take another example, in the United States today 'liberal' in politics means much the same as 'radical' or 'progressive', two other historically changing concepts, whereas in contemporary Australia the term means much the same as 'conservative' or 'right-wing'. Neither current definition has a close resemblance to the beliefs of the British Liberal Party at the time of Gladstone, yet there are also likely to be some common elements which lead to continued use of such expressions. Students can only 'develop concepts' in a meaningful way, and make increasingly subtle and profound distinctions if they undergo systematic studies.

The concepts which need to be developed in any serious study of society are different in kind, broadly speaking, in generalising social sciences as compared with history. The main concern of history, for example, is to interpret particular actions and events and it has some characteristics of proverbial wisdom. From proverbial wisdom we learn that at some times many hands make light work, but that on some occasions too many cooks spoil the broth. We learn that on some occasions absence makes the heart grow fonder, but on others it is a matter of out of sight, out of mind. Similarly, we learn from history that sometimes (e.g. pre-1914) engaging in an arms race may contribute to the onset of war, that sometimes (e.g. pre-1939) failure to engage in an arms race in which another state is already running fast may also have contributed to the onset of war, whilst sometimes (e.g. 1947-1989) engaging in an arms race may contribute to the prevention of war. Each of these conclusions is contestable, but the point is that there are rarely unequivocal lessons from history. Its value lies in the accumulation of a rich store of 'histories' and the student will always have the task of pondering which history (or which historical interpretation) is most relevant to newly confronted situations.

Physical geography and theoretical economics, on the other hand, are much more concerned with establishing general laws, or at least regular patterns, than is history. In them, equally or even more so, there is need for structure and sequence, not random selection related to the passing interests of students, teachers or curriculum makers. Teachers need to be well-informed on the content and structure of knowledge, not mere 'facilitators', if they are to promote concept development. In geography, for example, in order to develop students' understanding of the concept of bearing in map reading, the knowledgeable teacher who has already analysed the concept will be able to break it down for students step by step. They will learn that compass readings are taken in a clockwise direction and practice taking such readings; they will learn that the amount of turn from one direction to another is called an angle and will have practice in measuring these in degrees. They will learn that bearings are measured in the horizontal plane and that the direction of a bearing is in relation to magnetic north, and be given practice in measuring bearings. It would be absurdly time-consuming if teachers took an extreme constructivist position and expected students to construct such understandings for themselves in the first place. But it would also be a mistake if teachers simply stated general rules, and students were not given the practice necessary to enable them to understand the relevant conceptual structures as well as master the specific skills involved in taking measurements. Such requirements have not been thought through in the consideration of what is Social Studies.

4.2 Skills

The Revised Draft follows its predecessor in categorising all modes of learning, including critical thinking, creativity and problem solving, as 'skills'. In its usual basic sense a skill implies a specific capacity which can be perfected through practice and exercise, such as juggling, throwing or dribbling a ball, neat handwriting, playing a note correctly, finding a place on a map given its latitude and longitude, and so on. There is certainly an important element of practice involved in critical thinking, creativity and other higher-order modes of thinking, but referring to them as skills may be extremely misleading. At the very least skills of a mechanical and specific practice type need to be differentiated from capacities developed in very different ways.

The development of critical thinking requires sustained periods of reasoning that conforms to rules of logic and standards of excellence. These standards are not generic but are intrinsic to distinctive forms of knowledge. A developed capacity for critical thought in mathematics does not make one critically thoughtful as a historian or a literary critic, for example. There may be some transfer and studies in formal logic, deduction and induction may be of some value. However, in general students cannot acquire critical thought in one form of knowledge by applying generic skills developed in other activities, but only through in-depth and systematic studies within that form of knowledge.

4.3 Attitudes and Values in Social Studies

The claim is advanced (p. 23) that "the content of the curriculum reflects what is valued by a society", but this generalisation is very defective and the Revised Draft overall is slippery and evasive on the whole issue of values. Often institutions are ideologically captured by groups which are not highly represented in society as a whole. This is so with the Revised Draft: it reflects values very different from those of many New Zealanders. For example, students will not learn through the Revised Draft what are the distinctive doctrines of Christianity, its main historical divisions in the present and in the past, or what have been its main contributions to New Zealand, including educational and charitable activities.

The Revised Draft claims that in Social Studies students "will learn to acknowledge the right of other people to hold values that differ from their own, while clarifying and critically examining their own values and perceptions" (p. 23). Students, along with all people, should seek to clarify their own values, so that we understand them better, relate them to each other, and consider how to apply them. However, it does not follow, as the Revised Draft implies, that all opinions, feelings and thoughts, likes and dislikes, constitute values which should be accepted in a non-judgmental way as worthwhile or as good as any others. Indeed, elsewhere the Revised Draft rightly endorses specific values such as tolerance, fairness, caring and compassion, and the curriculum must lead students to weigh such issues.

Let us consider tolerance as an illustration. Are all individuals and all groups in New Zealand, let alone in the wide world beyond, tolerant of each others' religion, politics and cultures? Of course they are not. Tolerance of other beliefs is comparatively recent in human history, and still rare in many parts of the contemporary world. New Zealand is fortunate in that it inherited a political system which allows governments to be changed by peaceful means and for political opposition not only to be tolerated but to be built into the structure of parliamentary government.

If we support the right of individuals to hold different values and beliefs, we must then in logic have a higher regard, all other things being equal, for societies in which there is considerable freedom to hold different values and beliefs than for those which lack such freedom. In other words, so far as this dimension is concerned (and we do not deny that other dimensions of judgment may come into play), open, pluralist or liberal societies should be valued more highly than closed or authoritarian societies, including both tribal societies and modern totalitarian societies.

It is also a central problem in every society, especially pluralist or multicultural societies, to decide what limits to place on people's freedom to express and act upon intolerant values and beliefs. The 'Paradox of Freedom' is that all of us would like maximum individual freedom to say or do whatever we would like, but all of us fear the consequences of the unbounded freedom of others. Students should study changes in tolerance over time and in the contemporary world, including problems which arise when the intolerant are tolerated and use their freedom to abolish freedom and tolerance. This type of thinking seems, unfortunately, quite foreign to the curriculum writers.

In our submission on the Original Draft we proposed five criteria of significance in selecting historical content for a school curriculum, and they have pertinence to contemporary societies as well. These criteria are value judgments that rate concern about human freedom, equality of consideration, safety and security, control over nature and technology, and modes of reasoning as fundamentally important in all humanistic studies. We would be surprised if many would disagree that these are first order concepts of deep significance.

Even at the second stage of asking which human experiences have been most decisive in effecting changes in first order concerns, wide agreement is found among scholars and in common sense judgments of ordinary people. For example, in any serious study of how people achieved greater control over their environments, there will be near consensus to include use of natural objects as tools, conscious tool-making, collaborative skills in hunting large animals, domestication of animals, horticulture, agriculture, and the development of abilities to make pots from clay, garments from animal and vegetable fibres, and to extract metals from rocks.

The third stage, which is more contestable, is to decide what to include among the many examples of great advances. For example, the capacity to sow seed and harvest crops developed independently in several centres. Time is not available for students to learn about all of these advances in detail, and contemporary cultural and geographical factors may properly influence our choices between them. Sometimes, however, a decisive change took place in one place at a particular time. For example, there had earlier been many places in which trade and commerce flourished and production of goods for distant markets was undertaken. Yet, until the late eighteenth century in Britain no society had 'taken off' into 'capitalism', or the modern market economy. This makes it of particular significance for any serious historian or economist, and so should figure in a Social Studies curriculum.

As another illustration of the complex realities which underlie questions of values, and which are avoided in the Revised Draft rather than confronted as they must be in Social Studies, let us consider equality of consideration. Irrespective of the wide range of contestable judgments about equality and inequality, almost all who have thought about human societies regard this dimension as a critical feature of social and political structures. In addition many people, including members of the Education Forum, hold it to be a first order ethical principle that people should be treated with equal consideration, unless there are powerful countervailing reasons to treat them otherwise. Often, of course, there are such reasons. We treat children, because of their vulnerability and inexperience, differently from adults, both in looking after children more carefully and in denying them some choices we might extend to adults.

In most societies women have been treated differently from men, and sometimes the reasons for these differences seem laudable and of benefit to women. Women have usually been excused from conscription for war, even when all or most men have been conscripted. In factory legislation during the nineteenth century in many newly industrialised countries women were often given greater protection than men, for example in the number of hours they could work.

The Revised Draft still picks out only 'sexism' and 'racism' as unmitigated evils in the area of values. Yet the reason for condemning 'sexism' and 'racism', whatever concrete meaning may be invested in those terms, is that they conflict with general principles of equity. The relationship between 'sexism' and 'racism' and broader matters of equality should be considered. In general, the societies in which women have enjoyed greatest equality with men in terms of access to employment, political rights, property rights and protection against domestic violence, have been modern western ones, especially among 'middle class' or 'bourgeois' groups. These societies and groups may leave much to be desired, yet it would be hypocrisy to emphasise this and to overlook the much greater restrictions on women in many traditional societies, often continuing into the present day. These include marriage by purchase, abduction and other forms of force, female circumcision and other physical impositions on women, wife beating, and divorce at the whim of the husband. Or again, it might be salutary, if unsettling, to compare the incidence of domestic violence against women in New Zealand among its various ethnic groups. Is it 'racist' to make such comparisons? Or is it 'sexist' to draw attention to the differences between men and women in the various crime statistics? Social Studies cannot simply ignore such matters.

Thoughtful educators, besides others, are rightly fearful of two positions on moral judgment. They wish to avoid a moral absolutism which refuses to take circumstances into account at all, but also to avoid moral relativism or 'anything goes'. We would commend what may be termed contingent moral relativism, or perhaps contingent moral absolutism. This combines a principled adherence to first order moral values such as freedom or equality with appreciation that these have emerged, or at least have been refined and developed, over time. For example, slavery should always be abhorred in comparison with personal freedom, yet enslaving defeated enemies may be seen as an advance, if the earlier custom had been to kill them painfully. 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' would be a moral relapse if introduced in New Zealand today, yet in the famous code of the Babylonian King Hammurabi it represented an ethical advance on earlier forms of indiscriminate vengeance. 'Values' in Social Studies is about all these things.

4.4 Bicultural Perspectives

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (p. 7) states that:

The school curriculum will recognise and value the unique position of Maori in New Zealand society ... . The school curriculum will acknowledge the importance to all New Zealanders of both Maori and Pakeha traditions, histories, and values.

The Revised Draft (p. 29) continues:

Students of Social Studies will explore the unique nature of New Zealand society and its bicultural heritage, including the status and the culture of Maori as tangata whenua and the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi as the founding document of New Zealand - the document that established the partnership of Maori (as tangata whenua) and other settlers (who were represented at that time by the British Crown).

When we examine what this entails, it does not seem that 'bicultural' is the appropriate expression, since five requirements of the Social Studies programme listed out of six (p. 29) refer exclusively to Maori culture, namely:

• include Maori perspectives, ensuring that they are represented accurately and, where appropriate, in accordance with the views of the iwi kainga;
• recognise whanaungatanga;
• recognise mana whenua;
• recognise mana tangata; and
• recognise that te reo Maori and nga tikanga Maori are taonga and are integral to the social studies curriculum.

Objections to this perspective may be briefly summarised as follows:

• All peoples and cultures can be considered to be unique, and there is no good reason to consider some unique in a sense that others are not.
  
  
• The Treaty of Waitangi is of considerable historical and contemporary importance, but should not be regarded with uncritical and unreflective veneration. In particular, it should not be assumed that one interpretation of the Treaty is sacrosanct and privileged - interpretations are of course changing constantly. Maori are stereotyped within the Revised Draft and an unhistorical picture is suggested of a homogenous and unitary Maori society before 1840, just as the wide range of other New Zealanders are stereotyped as 'Pakeha', a term offensive to many.
  
  
• The inference that local Maori groups may possess censorship rights over the teaching of Social Studies is utterly at odds with the rhetoric of critique and reflective thought employed elsewhere in the Revised Draft . Just as obnoxious would be inferences that non-Maori groups had such censorship rights.
  
  
• This view of a bi- or two-culture society dismisses one of the two parties to insignificant status.

The meanings of biculturalism and the complexities and implications of making it work must be addressed openly and honestly, as does not appear to be envisaged in the Revised Draft.

In any serious study of claims about the bicultural nature of New Zealand society, high priority would be given to systematic treatment of the historical development of Maori and British societies before the nineteenth century and the relationships between Maori and other New Zealanders during and since the nineteenth century. Instead there are mere bits and pieces which do not provide an adequate basis for students to understand the main differences between Maori and British. Once these differences are fully understood, some Maori will wish to go their own way, and some may want to build a common way, but such decisions will be based on knowledge and not ignorance. This same point is valid for all New Zealanders. In Appendix A we offer some topics which if pursued and developed might assist in this context.

4.5 Multicultural Perspectives

Under this heading the Revised Draft claims that it recognises and values "the traditions, histories and languages of the cultures within New Zealand" (p. 30), but none of these is given any treatment comparable to that accorded to Maori culture. There is no serious consideration of what it means to be a multicultural society and in what ways New Zealand is, or is not, multicultural. Nor is the thorny issue tackled of the claim that New Zealand is at once a bicultural society and a multicultural one. Are these contradictory? How do we reconcile the two? The Revised Draft simply asserts that New Zealand is both, and offers no guidance to teachers or students on examining them further. Does recognising New Zealand's multicultural nature mean more or less than, for example, giving equal time in a study to every group in New Zealand laying claim to being a 'culture'? Again there is no guidance.

The suggestions for curriculum content at the end of the Revised Draft (p. 66f.) offer teachers no clue as to ways in which some cultures, histories or languages fall into significant groups, how they relate to each other, or what arguments might be advanced for different choices of examples of cultures to be studied or of particular sequences which might be adopted.

4.6 New Zealand and Britain

The Education Forum described the Original Draft in its submission (p. 21) as rather like a synopsis of Hamlet which omits mention of the Prince of Denmark. The Revised Draft is likewise. Its proposed content for 'Learning about New Zealand' and 'Settings beyond New Zealand' fails to mention the names of Britain, England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, or the names of the peoples inhabiting those lands. We have, indeed, 'Europe' as being one of three areas chosen for 'Settings beyond New Zealand'. Although it is very true that parts of continental Western Europe, and not Britain alone, played an important part in enlarging human understanding of the interconnections between different societies and cultures, it was not Europe or even Western Europe as such that created most that is distinctive in New Zealand's way of life. The language spoken by most New Zealanders is not called 'European'.

Under the 'Europe' heading students "will investigate the concepts of law, government, democratic processes, and cultural expressions and customs that have derived from European systems and ideas" (p. 16). Just what can these be, one wonders? What concepts of law has New Zealand derived from Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria or Romania? What democratic processes from Russia - Czarist, Soviet or contemporary? Just how many cultural expressions and customs familiar to most New Zealanders originated in Scandinavia, Poland or Hungary? Dalmatians, Greeks and many other ethnic groups from continental Europe have made contributions of great value to New Zealand culture, but it must be conceded that even added together their influence is (and was) far less than that of Britain.

This attempt to write out not just the Crown but the entire United Kingdom and British inheritance from any specific mention in a New Zealand Social Studies curriculum is a bold bid for political correctness indeed. Close to it comes its refusal to list among 'Settings beyond New Zealand' America, whether the United States alone or North America, which is of critical importance in the development of New Zealand, particularly since 1941.

New Zealand's political and legal institutions and its overall way of life today did not primarily originate among the Maori, the Pacific Islanders, the Germans or the Russians. Yet there is no reference under 'suggested studies' for strands 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage', 'Place and Environment' and 'Resources and Economic Activities' which might give teachers a hint of where they did originate. On the one hand, in Level 6 of 'Time, Continuity and Change' students may learn of 'Emmeline Pankhurst and women's suffrage' (p. 58): in learning that women had not hitherto had the franchise, students may gather that some men had votes, and learn what was involved in parliamentary government. On the other hand forcible-feeding may well occupy centre stage. 'Chartism' is also a suggested study in Level 6 (p. 58), so students may learn that the institution the Chartists wished to reform during the late 1830s and the 1840s had by that time already had a lengthy existence. There is a suggested study of Magna Carta (level 4, p. 57), but only as one of several treaties to be studied along with the Treaty of Waitangi. With these exceptions, the Revised Draft almost totally ignores the importance of England as the mother of parliaments. This is a travesty, and simply not acceptable.

4.7 Gender Perspectives

The Revised Draft has fortunately omitted the absurd demand in the Original Draft that teachers "ensure that the programme has overall and equitable gender balance". Whether we like it or not, many important aspects of the human past were not influenced equally by men and women and gross distortion follows if one fails to acknowledge this. However, the Revised Draft urges that students be encouraged "to explore and value both traditional and non-traditional roles and the contribution and status of both women and men in different cultures, places, and times" (p. 30). Should students value unreservedly all these traditional and non-traditional roles, including those which were or are exploitative and unfairly discriminatory? No criteria are offered to help teachers to identify key differences in relations between the sexes historically and in contemporary societies. Instead, we have the familiar mishmash and lack of sequence and structure. Appropriate criteria and examples of how to go about examining these issues should have been provided.

It might be sensible to start with the sexual division of labour in two or three tribal or hunter-gatherer societies. Attention might first be drawn to the need for long periods of intensive care for the human child as compared with the relatively brief period of dependence of other mammals, to the physical vulnerability of our species, and to the large amount of knowledge and skills our offspring need to learn since it is not available to them by instinct. Then the position of women in two or three ancient civilisations, such as Greece and China, might be considered. Why was it that the position of women relative to men declined in some of these civilisations, compared with apparently cruder societies? In modern times we might concentrate on discussing the role in enlarging opportunities for women played by advanced technology which substitutes dexterity and brainpower for sheer muscle power, or reproductive technology which makes it far easier for women to enter and remain in the workforce outside the home and at the same time live a full sexual life. Much else is, of course, pertinent, but what is lacking in the Revised Draft, as in its predecessor, is adequate conceptualisation rather than mere rhetoric, and structured learning rather than isolated bits and pieces.

4.8 Inclusive Perspectives

Here we are told that "programmes should be consistent with human rights legislation" (p. 30). What this might mean is hazy and how this requirement is to be made consistent with some others in the Revised Draft is unclear, but alarm bells begin to ring when we read that 'writer and educationalist' Kelvin Smythe wrote to the Race Relations Conciliator to complain that the Revised Draft fails to confront racism and prejudice . He is reported to have claimed that the lack of direct reference to countering racism was itself a sign of prejudice "given the need to challenge racism and social prejudice". While one can readily sympathise with, and share in, his concern to counter racism and other harmful prejudices, it is also of concern that critical and reflective stances should not be restrained by law.

The Revised Draft requires that "Social studies programmes should value, acknowledge, and include the interests, perspectives, and contributions of all students, regardless of gender, culture, and social and religious background" (p. 30). What meaning can this sentence have? Is it really supposed that each teacher should carry out a survey of all the interests of each student which may be connected with 'society' and then include them in a Social Studies programme? Every game and sport? Every pop star and screen idol? Every fashion and passing sensation? Every perverse or evil interest?

4.9 Assessment in Social Studies

The Revised Draft requires that "Knowledge, skills and attitudes should all be assessed" (p. 33). It is right that knowledge and skills should be assessed, though how this is to be done needs some specifying. But it is surely wrong to assess 'attitudes' since it may encourage indoctrination and assist thought control, and can militate against genuine inquiry, discovery, critical awareness and reflexiveness. Furthermore, there are considerable difficulties in establishing reliable assessment procedures for attitudes. Once students know that this forms part of assessment, they also know which attitudes are preferred by their teachers. It is sometimes claimed that simple standardised testing of knowledge is fraught with dangers and should not to be undertaken, yet teachers are enjoined to assess attitudes, which is an infinitely more difficult and perilous task.

Strong support is also given to "self assessment and peer assessment" (p. 33). These have some place in assessment, but are rarely of much value in enabling students to understand where they stand in relation to the aims and standards stipulated in a course, unless followed by an independent assessment and cross-checking. One sensible point made is that "Evidence of increasing competence in the range of skills can include work samples ... and appropriate test results" (p. 33), although these may also provide, of course, evidence of a lack of increasing competence. Unfortunately, work samples are often very difficult to locate or inspect in New Zealand's educational institutions. It may be considered that privacy legislation makes it dangerous to keep work samples, let alone reveal them to outsiders. However, many students might be happy for samples of their work to be retained for purposes of comparison, either over the years or with other institutions, but it is not known whether students have been asked for such permission. The reduction of terminal or summative tests, together with this lack of examples of continuously assessed work, makes difficult any accurate judgments of whether standards are improving, remaining constant or deteriorating.

SECTION 5 CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES

In our submission on the Original Draft, we argued for the abandonment of the attempt to encompass history, geography, economics, sociology and other social sciences within an integrated Social Studies curriculum - a call we repeat in this submission. However, we did consider how Social Studies might be rescued from disintegration into social therapy and injected with a higher degree of intellectual rigour and coherence.

We pointed out that a rational curriculum must be based on a clearly stated and defensible view of what is important in human societies. This is, obviously, highly contestable. Nevertheless, we suggested five criteria of importance, although there would be room for much debate about their ranking, interpretation and evaluation in particular societies at particular times. The suggested criteria were:

freedom;
equality;
safety and security;
human control over nature; and
rationality and understanding.

In two appendices to our submission on the Original Draft we provided a justification for these criteria and some possible lines of development, including the sorts of studies to which the five criteria might lead. We acknowledged that there might well be other matters of considerable interest and importance not subsumed by these criteria.

Clearly, there is room for discussion about any proposed set of criteria. What is of concern is not that the authors of the Revised Draft have produced a different set but that they have offered no justification for their choice, and that the criteria chosen do nothing to provide the intellectual rigour and coherence essential for rational curriculum development. Their chosen criteria (p. 32) are:

• Which studies are the most appropriate and relevant to meet students' interests and needs?
• Would the study build on the students' understandings and cultural backgrounds, including concepts they have already developed in their Social Studies programme?
• Will the study expand the students' horizons and help them to move into new areas of learning?
• Would the study help to achieve a balance, within the year's programme, between the various strands, settings and perspectives?
• What achievement objectives would be the focus for the study?
• What achievement objectives would be the focus for assessment?
• What resources are available to support this study?
• What learning activities clearly relate to the achievement objectives and the balance of the skills the students need to practise?
• How should assessment procedures be developed to reinforce learning in this study?

Some of the proposed criteria are second order considerations, for example those about resources, assessment and the need to build in a sense of progression in learning. These criteria, while undoubtedly important, do not provide coherence or any direction as to what should constitute Social Studies. Other criteria such as those relating to student interests, needs, understandings and cultural backgrounds raise more issues than they resolve, and are not specific to Social Studies. Matters of considerable interest may have little immediate or obvious value and significance to students. Relating material to the cultural background or experience of students may, in fact, deprive those children from different cultural backgrounds of opportunities to transcend their culture and thus may reinforce pre-existing inequalities. Regarding the reference to "balance of skills", it is a displacement of means and ends to think we choose something to study in history or contemporary societies in order to develop certain study skills. On the contrary, we require the skills in order to know something worth knowing in its own right.

In referring to the achievement objectives in the selection criteria, the authors of the Revised Draft assume, presumably, that those objectives already provide coherence and intellectual integrity. But the objectives are haphazard - as are the strands, settings and perspectives. Moreover, the authors also seem to assume that the selection criteria will provide the necessary coherence and integrity - which they don't. So we end up with a circularity problem - the objectives depend for coherence on the criteria and the criteria depend on the objectives. Thus there is no solution to the vital question about how to select material in a way that ensures a coherent and rational Social Studies curriculum.

This failure of the Revised Draft to answer this key selection issue is fundamental. Without a satisfactory solution to it there can be no hope for the rescue of Social Studies from haphazardness and social therapy, and its transformation into a coherent and educationally valuable part of the school curriculum.

SECTION 6 INADEQUACIES IN THE
FIVE LEARNING STRANDS

6.1 Introduction

The five learning strands in the Revised Draft are exactly the same as in the Original Draft, but they do not function any more effectively as organising structures than before. The five are:

• social organisation and processes;
• culture and heritage;
• place and environment;
• time, continuity, and change; and
• resources and economic activities.
  (Revised Draft, pp. 12-13)

There is considerably more confusion in, and overlap between, 'social organisation and processes', 'culture and heritage' and 'time continuity and change' than is the case with the other two strands. Although the whole structure should be discarded, it would be some improvement if the strands were reduced to three. Then some distinctive and defensible sequence might be organised for 'place and environment' and for 'resources and economic activities', whilst the other three could be combined with some hope that some logical structure might be created there. For such a combination of these three strands, one workable approach might be to make a simple distinction between past events, to be dealt with in a broadly chronological way, and contemporary affairs, including students' own experiences, which might be dealt with as in 'expanding circles' models. Although this is far from ideal, it would be a significant improvement on what is currently on offer.

6.2. Social Organisation and Processes

The claim is made (p. 36) that from their study of Social Organisation and Processes students will:

• understand the roles, rights, and responsibilities of people as they interact in families, communities, and wider groupings;
• understand the diversity of types of groups, organisations, and institutions that are formed to meet different purposes, their functions and procedures, and the ways leaders are chosen and operate; and
• be able to participate effectively in New Zealand's democratic society.

It is also claimed that students learn, inter alia, "to recognise the interdependence of people and nations and develop a respect for justice and an understanding of human rights" (p. 36).

Level 1 is concerned with groups which the students belong to and groups performing community services. Level 2 requires students to describe their responsibilities in groups in which they participate, or to imagine what they might have to do in emergencies in other places, such as bushfires in Australia and cyclones in the Pacific. One of the 'Sample Learning and Assessment Activities' is "A Cyclone in a Pacific Island" (p. 68). It contains very detailed suggestions for relevant teacher and student activity, although it would be better still if a reading from Conrad or a comparable source were also suggested.

Level 3 requires students to consider why new groups may be formed and how leaders are chosen in various groups. Suggested leadership studies are class representatives, school principals, local councillors, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and leaders within traditional Pacific communities. It does not seem to be understood in the Revised Draft that leadership often cannot be separated from other aspects of social and political organisations.

Similar disassociation from sequenced structure arises in Level 4, which largely returns to the Level 2 consideration of crises and emergencies. A jumble of suggestions includes coping with water shortages, the Great Plague and the 1919 influenza epidemic, civil defence and wartime regulations, and natural disasters on land and sea. Each seems to be free-standing and detached from broader contexts of time or place.

A Levels 3 and 4 study in this strand, 'Rising to the Challenge', increases unease. It stipulates that students considering a crisis can "track the event or issue as it develops over the next few days or weeks" (p. 71). This is difficult unless the matter is very local. It seems unlikely that students can "apply the same inquiry process to a current or past crisis, such as a natural disaster beyond New Zealand" (p. 71) unless media and other resources allow.

Reluctance to carry out basic teaching about the fundamentals of past and present societies leads to fanciful claims about enabling students to be creative scholars. It is not merely a matter of getting children to run before they can walk. Unrealistic requirements may be used as a defence for ineffective teaching.

Some 'suggested studies', such as 'A Greek city state' at Level 5 (p. 40), are relevant to basic criteria of significance, as are suggestions at Level 7, such as 'United Nations Declaration of Human Rights', 'International Humanitarian Law' and 'Human Rights Commission' (p. 41), but only achieve significant effect if taught as part of an organised sequence and in a logical order. In some of these suggestions it is unclear what sorts of understanding are sought. For example, do human rights include a right to be educated in a school? If so, this human right has only been available to peoples very recently in human experience. But if the informal education and initiation of adults as practised in traditional societies satisfy the requirement of human rights, when and why did attendance at schools become a human right? Are Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian and many other Asian politicians wrong when they claim that some human rights claims relate only to western societies and are irrelevant to their 'needs'?

Misgivings arise, too, with a Levels 5 and 6 study: 'People and Laws' (p. 74). This is said to relate to three strands: 'Social Organisation and Processes', Resources and Economic Activities', and 'Place and Environment', but its content refers no more and no less to the other two strands as well. Current environmentalist interests no doubt helped to focus this study on the protection of natural resources. Perhaps it could be organised in more than one way, but the 'Greenpeace way' seems the most likely one and the suggested steps to be taken by students make this evident. They are:

• identify a natural resource in New Zealand;
• investigate the regulations or laws that apply to the resource and the implications of these for people's interaction with the resource and for the resource itself and find out who enforces these rules and laws and what penalties exist for breaking them;
• imagine and describe the attitudes and values of different individuals or groups towards this resource;
• consider whether these people would agree or disagree with the rules and laws and what changes they would like, checking (where possible) whether any changes have been suggested or implemented;
• make a flow chart showing the steps one of these individuals or groups would have to go through in order to change the rules or laws;
• evaluate the possible outcomes of a particular change and decide whether it should be supported or not; and
• identify any action they could take to follow up this decision.

Why is it suggested here that imaginary examples should be studied, when abundant direct evidence is available about conflicting attitudes and values expressed in many actual disputes about uses of natural resources? Perhaps use of actual disputes would expose students to uncongenial opinions, such as those of forestry workers, fishermen or miners, and their families and local communities, who feel adversely affected by policies urged by environmentalist educators? In an 'imagined' situation, as against a real one, it is much easier to manipulate, misrepresent or suppress points of view which at least get a hearing in democratic politics.

6.3 Culture and Heritage

The claim is made (p. 42) that from their study of Culture and Heritage students will:

• understand and appreciate the bicultural identity and heritage of people in New Zealand and the cultures and heritages of communities within New Zealand's multicultural society;
• recognise the impact of external and internal pressures on people's cultures and ways of life; and
• appreciate how people's heritage affirms and supports their culture and identity.

Three concerns arise immediately from these claims. The first is the convoluted and unexplained relationship between the 'bicultural' and 'multicultural' concepts. The second is that heritage and culture are always to be understood by the authors of the Revised Draft as benign. There is no suspicion of the damnosa hereditas or of 'the tyranny of culture'. The third is that 'cultural identity' is seen as something fixed and given, not as something people may wish to change and in open societies are often able to do so in many different ways. Forced marriages, including child marriages, and female circumcision are but a few of many inherited cultural forms that men and women may sensibly wish to see ended for ever. The concept within liberal education and the open society that learners may wish to adopt an enormous variety of ideas and ways of life, as well as occupations, is as alien to the Revised Draft as it was to the Original Draft.

The suggested studies in the early Levels generally avoid contested areas. Level 1 deals mainly with festivals and folk stories (p. 44), Level 2 with games and the significance of different costumes, and Level 3 with music and dance, especially for ceremonial purposes (p. 45). Level 4 is concerned with forms of communication, whilst Level 5 seems conceptually sharper in its focus: names and stories of presumably a more demanding character than those in Level 1. Level 6 returns to arts, crafts, dress and artefacts, again presumably at a higher level than presented in Levels 2 and 3. In Level 7 students deal with different "cultures" such as corporate, popular, teen, rural, Asian in New Zealand, Amish, impact of tourism on indigenous cultures in the Pacific, and global culture resulting from commercial franchises in societies around the world (p. 47).

Finally, in a strange mixture, we have in Level 8 two Maori studies: "Maori tribal identity and attitudes to pan-Maori organisations" and "Specific features of New Zealand's everyday life that have influenced, and been influenced by, Maori language, art, protocols, and architecture". This is followed by "Special contributions to New Zealand's language, art, ways of life, and identity by other cultures", which omits the very names normally applied to the dominant culture in New Zealand. It is simply subsumed in "other cultures". The speech of New Zealanders may, by this account, owe equal amounts to the English and Samoan languages, the art of New Zealand to Montevideo and London, its sports and games as much to Korea as Scotland, and its 'identity' to that of Chinese or Malays as to that of Britons or Australians.

Level 8 suggestions also include "Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism within specific countries, for example Islam in Malaysia or Christianity in the Pacific Islands", and then, standing strangely on its own, the Crusades (p. 47). Was the idea behind this last suggestion to study, say, the Christian kingdoms of Jerusalem or Acre when they were surrounded by Islamic states? Or was it as part of outlining "the characteristics and beliefs of major world religions and present evidence to illustrate the impact they have had on national identity and cohesion and on international relationships", which is an 'achievement objective' for Level 8? But a study of the Crusades would be an unusual context for explaining to students the main beliefs and characteristics of Christianity or the "national identity and cohesion" of any country. One possibility is that it is a deliberate attempt to marginalise Christianity, as well as the English language and the general 'Britishness' of New Zealand, by overall neglect, punctuated by 'suggested studies' well suited to hostile treatment.

Quite apart from political correctness run mad, the fragmentation of cultures, societies or peoples is even worse in this strand than the others. No sense of historical progression can be acquired from, nor any serious study of contemporary societies constructed on, such foundations.

6.4 Place and Environment

The claim is made (p. 48) that from their study of Place and Environment, students will:

• recognise and understand the changing patterns of relationships between people, places, and the environment;
• understand how and why people perceive places and environments differently; and
• recognise and evaluate the ways in which people modify their environments.

Again, there is the difficult problem of assessing how or to what extent such ambitious understandings have been achieved by students. This strand makes some concessions to the criticisms made by the Education Forum and many geographers of the lack of structured development of geographical skills in the Original Draft (Report on Submissions, p. 5). The preamble claims that students will have in this strand "particular opportunities to develop and practise information skills of research, especially in fieldwork and in organising and interpreting a range of sources, including maps, graphs, pictures, artefacts, and models" (p. 48).

The Level 1 Study: 'Our Place' gives some detailed and helpful suggestions to teachers. For example, children are to draw a picture or model of the areas around the school, and the teacher is then to get children to name various places. Next the teacher is to draw a map including these features, and finally students are to draw a second map (p. 67). Comparison between their first and second efforts will indicate how much has been learned. The teacher's map can remain on display and extra detail may be added as and when a topic of local interest arises. This suggestion is simple but sensible. However, in the 'suggested studies' as a whole there are few references to basic geographical terms and concepts and processes, such as physical regions, map projections, scale, latitude and longitude, contours, determinants of weather and climate, atmosphere, winds and pressures, currents and tides, shoreline cycles, soil types, mineral resources and their distribution, landforms, glaciation, erosion, land use and patterns of settlement, and towns and their formation. These omissions seem strange in the light of emphasis elsewhere on the importance of skills.

The 'suggested studies' lack structure or obvious sequence. In Level 1 we have, reasonably enough, studies of places where students live or go on holiday (p. 50). Level 2 is concerned mainly with how peoples gather and store food, but the 'suggested studies' might as well be 'choose any place you like where people gather and store food', which excludes very little of the earth's surface (p. 69). Level 3 is concerned with interactions with the environment other than to gather and store food. Again the 'suggested studies' might as well be 'choose any place at any time' (p. 70). The ones suggested are: forestry, goldmining, the use of farming technology, lifestyles of Maori in the fifteenth century, living in a nineteenth century town in New Zealand, Europeans in California or farmers in Australia, and groups in isolated environments, such as Canada or Central Asia (p. 51). Any place, any time and, perhaps, anyhow, seem to be available for selection.

Level 4 is supposedly more advanced than Level 3 in that it deals with changes over time in people's interactions with the environment (p. 51), and thus could be in 'Time, Continuity, and Change'. Examples suggested are: people and the Antarctic ecosystem (are there permanent inhabitants there?); the native American peoples; industrial development in China; the effects of roading and transport in New Zealand; interisland shipping in the Pacific Islands; leisure activities that use the environment such as hiking and fishing; and conservation perspectives about places such as historical sites. Just how these are related more to changes over time than those in Level 3 remains a mystery.

The Levels 3 and 4 Study, 'Settling Here', purports to deal with regional settlement and adaptation (p. 70). Activities suggested include constructing timelines and identifying natural resources which may have been put to use in particular places and at particular times. However, there are usually very real investigative problems in gaining access to local newspapers, registers of births, marriages and death, and other sources of information about local population changes. The Revised Draft does not warn of these problems, let alone suggest how they may be surmounted. It moves instead in the direction of 'investigating' recent major incidents within living memory, together with other types of oral history (p. 70). Any serious study of immigration requires attention to conditions in the lands of emigration, but little help is given to teachers on how to help students accomplish that task. In other words the suggestion seems too vague, and lack of specific advice will probably make its effective implementation very difficult.

Level 5 also focuses on how "the movement of people and ideas can affect the interaction of people and environments" (p. 52). Close analysis of the Level 5 Study, 'Changing Places' (p. 73), reveals no conceptual difference or significant change in difficulty compared with the Level 3 Study, 'Settling Here', (p. 70). No other reason is given to explain why some content is at the one level and some at the other. Suggestions in the Level 5 study include: movements from rural to urban areas; refugee movements; movements caused through famine or flood; a comparison of Pacific Islands communities in the islands and in New Zealand, Australia, or the US ; the concept of turangawaewae; and establishing a sense of identity in a new location (p. 52). Many of these suggestions would be sensible if placed in an integrated and structured framework, but are of limited help to teachers as they stand here.

Level 6 moves in scattergun fashion into contemporary environmental issues such as: applying the Resource Management Act of 1991 in New Zealand; regulating people's actions in Singapore; local by-laws; spraying crops; perceptions relating to land ownership; environmental issues; tourism; and recreation (p. 52).

Level 7 is concerned more with density and isolation of populations and allied aspects of location, but is again haphazard in its suggestions. These include changing spatial patterns, such as iwi boundaries or the sphere of influence of the local shopping centre (p. 53). We then have included for study remote areas such as the Australian outback, Tokelau, the Chatham Islands, or the Andes, high density areas such as Bangkok and Tokyo, and commercial centres such as Hong Kong, London, Auckland, or Shanghai (p. 58). This distinction is curious, since all the high density areas are also commercial centres, and vice versa.

Level 8 gives us a selection of contemporary environmental issues, such as current issues from the Pacific Forum, disposing of nuclear wastes, preventing acid rain, transport of oil and hazardous material internationally and within New Zealand, and global warming (p. 53). Some of these issues are extraordinarily complex - a fact which may well make it very difficult for students to meet with any degree of success the requirement that at Level 8 they will "propose possible solutions to problems, and evaluate the effectiveness and consequences of each proposed solution" (p. 53).

6.5 Time, Continuity, and Change

We are assured unwarrantedly (p. 54) that from their study of 'Time, Continuity, and Change' students will:

• understand that relationships among people, events, and places change and develop through time;

Comment : Does one need to attend a school to know this? Moreover, there is little reason to suppose that this understanding will be much deepened by pursuing the studies suggested.

• understand that people influence, and are influenced by, the events, significant people, and beliefs of their times and that they interpret their own times, and those of others, in the light of their own experience.

Comment : The first part is merely a truism. On the second, there is little exposure of students in the proposed curriculum to changing interpretations of the past. It would be a huge improvement if, as an example, New Zealand students were given some insight by this Revised Draft into how the New Zealand generations who helped to defeat the Kaiser, then Hitler and Japanese Imperialism, interpreted their past and took pride in it, or why New Zealanders now might look upon these things differently .

• recognise how significant areas of human concern and activity have developed and how these have shaped and changed people's lives;

Comment : This is fine as a general statement, but no criteria are offered for identifying significance in history. The suggestion of the Education Forum that five key criteria are changes in freedom, in equality, in safety and security, in human control over nature and technology, and in rational understanding, has been substantially ignored.

• recognise the different perspectives of women, men and children and of different cultures and families.

Comment : No examples are provided of ways in which men and women have differed in their beliefs about the human past, or about how societies should be organised. Or again, in some societies there may be identified a 'World of Childhood' in which interests and perspectives are significantly different from what those children will think about as adults, but this idea seems foreign to the authors of the Revised Draft.

• understand concepts of time within which human experience can be recorded and interpreted.

Comment : This is a worthwhile and vital aim. Many peoples such as the Australian Aborigines never developed any sense of historical time, as this is understood in western societies for example, but knew only a continuous present contrasted with a mythical Dreamtime. In this system no human ancestor was remembered beyond the third generation back. The ideas of different societies on the antiquity of the human race as a whole, and of their own society in particular, are fascinating to study. Students find comparison of, say, Chinese, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Christian, Islamic and French Revolutionary time systems and calendars to be of great interest. Unfortunately, little in the Revised Draft suggests ways in which concepts of time have significantly changed over time.

The key feature of 'Time, Continuity and Change' is the disconnected nature of the subject matter suggested and the consequent failure to provide any sort of continuity. This is true of other strands, but they at least do not have 'continuity' in the title. Equally disturbing is the failure of this and the other strands to provide students with in-depth study of any society as a whole at any time. It is assumed that particular aspects of human experience, such as leadership, inventions or household incomes, can be isolated and treated on their own.

In the past there have been serious discussions on these critical issues between supporters of different kinds of structure for historical studies in schools. The 'lines of development' method took a particular aspect of life, such as food, clothing or transport, and used it as a way into wider social and political structures. The method provided continuity at least along the particular line of development. In England Edward Blishen advocated a reverse chronological syllabus, starting with the present and going back a generation at a time. Students noted what was not there in their parents' time with which they were familiar, but found out also about customs and technologies unknown to them. They found out when and perhaps how motor vehicles and televisions appeared on the scene, and when family entertainment around a piano or horse-drawn transport on the streets disappeared. The method had the merit in the eyes of child-centred educators of starting with the known and children's own experience. It provided some serious structure and sequence. Most syllabuses were, of course, of a forward moving chronological character. The point about the Revised Draft is that no structure of any sort is discernible.

'Suggested Studies' under the strand 'Time, Continuity and Change' start at Level 1 with familiar events in a student's own life such as starting school and moving house, then consider childhood in grandparents' time and children's experiences during World War II (p. 56). Level 2 deals with changing technologies for preparing food and keeping warm, both of which are dealt with in other strands as well, together with a motley assemblage of innovators, pioneers, inventors, community leaders and sports leaders. These may come from any time and place and have no necessary connection with each other.

Level 3 deals first with settlement of the students' own regions (p. 57). It is hard to conceive how this can be carried out effectively only in local terms, without reference to influences and ideas that quite transcend particular localities. Then follows the study of any "walled city, seaport, religious centre, seat of government, or trading centre" at any time, anywhere.

Level 4 firstly occupies itself with Treaties (p. 57). It assumes that they can best be understood by somehow comparing them with each other. The Treaty of Waitangi, first in the list, is to be compared with Magna Carta and/or the Tokelau Act, the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, or the US Declaration of Independence. The notion that an understanding of any of these treaties could only arise from a considered and structured study of its specific antecedents is entirely alien to the authors of this strange document. Together with treaties in Level 4 we find explorers, from any time in any continent, Maori explorers, James Cook, Mary Kingsley, Marco Polo, Columbus, Drake and Raleigh. They were placed in that strange order, but then any order would apparently do.

A Level 4 Study, 'Making Agreements' (p. 72), epitomises some typical weaknesses in the Revised Draft. The study is a combination of two very different matters. One concerns the question why any groups of people might make or seek to make formal agreements with each other. The other concerns the Treaty of Waitangi. There are no suggested prior studies at Levels 1, 2 and 3 which could give students a coherent understanding of British colonisation before 1840 or of Maori political organisation at that time, or of the ferocious internecine Maori wars of the 1830s. It is assumed, nevertheless, that students could readily pick up this information in sufficient depth to engage in role play of persons who signed the Treaty, and present their findings about "records, reconstructions, and accounts of the signing" in various ways, such as "in a flow chart, a drama, or through audio and visual media", presumably ones created by the students rather than hired commercially or from educational resources (p. 72).

It is difficult to believe that those who promote such activities have actually engaged in historical studies with school students at this level. It is easy enough to 'role play' a generalised peasant, bad baron or fierce warrior, but very difficult to 'role play' any concrete historical situation without considerable specific knowledge. 'Role playing' an early nineteenth century British colonial administrator or naval officer, is much harder than playing at being a peasant, baron or warrior, all of which roles have been seen on film on many occasions by students.

How much more sensible it would be if students were simply given some accurate information about relevant Maori and British history, and if the Treaty of Waitangi was encountered at the appropriate point of a structured course. The best in the traditional approach did not entail mere pouring of facts into the heads of inert students. It required, as R.G. Collingwood put it , "getting to the inside of the historical action", not merely relating a sequence of events as though they were part of a predetermined process or the result of the working out of some natural laws. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the authors of the Revised Draft received advice from working historians or, for that matter, from sociologists, geographers or economists as to how understanding is achieved in these humanistic disciplines.

Level 5 (p. 58) considers leaders, once more isolated from any general treatment of movements and nations which they may have led. We have traditional leaders in the Pacific, Kingitanga, Indira Gandhi (but not Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the wrong sort of female political figure?), Abraham Lincoln, Fascism in Europe, and Communism in Asia (but not communism in Europe, even though the study of Mao and Ho might profitably be preceded by Marx, Lenin and Stalin). An even more mixed bag than usual supplements these leaders: the Treaty of Waitangi again, land issues in 19th and 20th century New Zealand (detached from their general political context), Atlantic migrations, civil wars in Africa, the Treaty of Versailles (but no World War I apart from a special study of Gallipoli), the space race, and the Mau uprising in Samoa.

Level 6 is protest time. Students will engage with a range of protesters, reformers and revolutionaries, the topics suggested being the French Revolution, Sonja Davies and the union movement, Te Whiti and passive resistance in Taranaki, Gandhi and passive resistance, Rosa Parks and racial discrimination, Emmeline Pankhurst and women's suffrage, conscientious objectors, the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites, the Easter Rising, Chartism, child labour and industrial reform, the Sweating Commission and labour laws (country unspecified), penal reform, and the movement against blackbirding in Australia and the Pacific. In the middle of these sits, with exceptional incongruity, 'the breakdown of feudalism', although what feudalism was or meant in different times and places has not come as yet to students' attention in earlier levels. Nor are we told which continents or centuries the curriculum writers had in mind.

This looseness continues in level 7 (p. 59) in which anything goes if it involved change, and that excludes very little indeed. 'Suggested Studies' include the history of universal adult franchise (everywhere or just in New Zealand?), the impact of steam power, impact of telecommunications, growth of universal education, development of human rights, penal reform (perhaps an inadvertent repetition from Level 6), life expectancy, levels of education (as distinct presumably from 'growth of universal education'), household incomes (where and at what times?), family and household sizes (ditto), and classifications of work.

In Level 8 (p. 59) there is a change of tack. The main 'Suggested Study' is what would until recently have been considered a 'normal' looking agenda: "the early period of Western contact with New Zealand, including missions; New Zealand 1840-1860; the first Liberal government's reforms; and New Zealand in the 1930s". Why the gaps and why this study is not placed at a much earlier stage are still puzzling matters. This relatively traditional offering of New Zealand history is supplemented in Level 8 by France and Britain 1760-1850, Britain and Japan 1850-1920 and Britain and the United States 1830-1900. How these dates were chosen is by no means obvious, nor is it clear what the suggested content might be (pp. 76-84). The logical inference is that the foreign or global policies of each pair of states, particularly the relationship of the one to the other, is the key content envisaged. In that case the choice of dates is particularly puzzling, none more so than for Britain and the United States. One might have thought that some greater knowledge of the political structure of these countries should precede a study of their inter-relationship at seemingly arbitrarily chosen times.

6.6 Resources and Economic Activities

Two aims of the strand are of the usual indeterminate character:

• understand how and why people value, use, and develop resources;

Comment: This vacuity fails to acknowledge that many peoples in many places fail to use and develop potential resources, or that many comparatively wealthy countries are somewhat deficient in natural resources while some comparatively poor ones possess many.

• understand the interdependence of people, resources, the environment and society.

Comment : It is not clear what different roles people and society play in this concept.

Two other aims are more determinate, and one could use them in a coherent way in curriculum construction:

• understand that resources are usually limited and that their use and management involve opportunity costs and choices;

Comment : These are fundamental matters in any serious study of economics. However, we would note that, strictly speaking, no resources are infinite.

• understand the relationships, rights, and responsibilities of consumers and producers of goods and service.

Comment : Assuming that rights refer to legal rather than simply to supposed 'natural' rights, these are also fundamental matters in any serious study of economic policy.

Level 1 in this strand points students to their direct experience of supermarkets, medical centres, wholesalers and service stations in a sensible enough way (p. 62). In addition, however, we have mere randomness with the following list: immediate or extended family; a Pacific Islands family; and a family in the Netherlands, South Africa, and Taiwan. The opportunity is lost to begin with structured development of different types of family in terms of historical economic development and change. The level 1 Study headed 'Family Purchases' requires that "students will identify the needs and wants of their family and describe the ways in which these are met" (p. 66). It seems strange to assume that all wants are met, or ever could be. On the matter of student assessment we learn that "teachers could assess students' ability to gather information and to classify that information in different ways". Indeed they could, but they might well like detailed guidance on how such assessments should be carried out.

Level 2 introduces students to productive processes such as handcrafting, clothing manufacture and baking bread, together with raising funds for schools, clubs or disaster relief - all justifiable studies in themselves, if thrown together rather randomly here (p. 62). The same problem of randomness arises in Level 3, in which local studies of supermarket operations and the cost of providing community services are accompanied by an assortment of modes of exchange at any time or place (p. 63). These include meeting needs during wartime (war and countries unspecified), markets in a Pacific or Asian town or city, medieval markets, tribal communities in Africa, and traditional Maori communities before contact with Europeans.

Level 4 turns to the concept of work rather than exchange (p. 63). Again there are first local contexts, such as school, businesses, community services, and work within a Pacific Islands church group. A resources ragbag follows: goldmining; tropical rain forests; national and marine parks and reserves; and historic and cultural sites.

Level 5 purports to consider choice (p. 64). Suggested studies include purchasing decisions in households and going on a holiday. This is followed by an impenetrable combination of "access to resources in relation to households and producers, income and services from government sources, barter, payment in kind, iwi authority leaseholds, mortgages and loans" (p. 64). This mixture of major theoretical issues in economic history and theory will take a lot of unpacking before a teacher can utilise it.

Level 6 (p. 64) combines specialisation and international markets with protective legislation for workers and consumers. International interdependence will be considered through a major integrated industry, such as motor manufacture (including the oil industry), tourism or telecommunications. Just what type of understanding it is expected to generate is, as in all these suggestions, without explication. Level 7 (p. 65) concerns "employment, unemployment, and underemployment and the factors that affect people's opportunities in the workplace", and then "the role of voluntary and unpaid work in the provision of goods and services", which students are to evaluate "in economic terms, and analyse trends in people's use of time", and finally to consider "the role of small businessmen in the New Zealand economy and in international trade and development". These are important matters, and one wonders how well equipped the typical Social Studies teacher is to teach them. Will the typical student be able to 'analyse' factors in employment levels, changes in people's use of time, and the role of small business nationally and internationally, or merely to give trite descriptive statements?

In Level 8 (p. 65) we return, it seems, to the first part of Level 6, with study of "a major production industry, such as forestry, dairy, meat, steel, or wool", but this time "in terms of development of assets, ownership, employment, trading patterns, innovation". Again, this is a very tall order for the typical Social Studies teacher, if the study is to be undertaken in a coherent, rigorous and well informed way. Scattergun takes over for the remainder of Level 8 with governmental budget cycles juxtaposed with the Antarctic Treaty, the role of government in China, and industry in Japan, Britain or the United States (p. 65).

6.7 Summary

The material listed under the proposed strands contains some useful and interesting elements, but the overall presentation suffers from very major defects including:

• lack of sequencing;
• randomness in the selection of topics and their isolation from their contexts and/or historical antecedents;
• lack of clarity in various concepts advanced for discussion e.g. bi- and multi-culturalism;
• overlap and confusion in the coverage of the five strands, especially between the 'Social Organisation and Processes, 'Culture and Heritage', and 'Time, Continuity, and Change' strands;
• lack of emphasis on structured knowledge as a basis for critical engagement with underlying ideas and concepts;
• bias in selection, notably the absence of clear references to New Zealand's British (and wider European and western) cultural heritage; and
• vagueness as to implementation and assessment.

As discussed in Section 5, a fundamental flaw in the Revised Draft (as in the Original Draft) is that the proposed criteria for selection of studies do nothing to provide intellectual rigour and coherence for rational curriculum development. Given that situation, the inadequacies in the strands as discussed in this Section, including openness to ideological bias, were entirely predictable.

SECTION 7 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

7.1 Conclusions

Report on Submissions noted a wide range of fundamental criticisms of the Original Draft, and Trials Report raised many serious concerns among teachers trialling its implementation. It might, therefore, have been expected that the Revised Draft would represent a significant improvement on the original. This is not the case. Its chief failings are of two different kinds: weak internal structure, and ideological bias.

Internal structure

This Revised Draft does not offer an adequate rationale for the Social Studies approach. Its assertion that "Social Studies focuses on people" is no more true for Social Studies than literature, religion, philosophy, anthropology or archaeology. Unlike the Original Draft it acknowledges the importance of vicarious experience, but pays inadequate attention to what kinds of experiences beyond the immediately personal are most valuable and significant in the study of human societies. The Revised Draft does not grasp what constitutes significant concepts in this field.

The Revised Draft reduces all modes of learning to 'skills' (pp. 19-22). At the very least skills of a mechanical and specific practice type need to be differentiated from capacities developed in very different ways. Failure to make such differentiations casts doubt on the Revised Draft's support for critical and reflective thinking. Such thinking requires sustained periods of reasoning conforming to rules of logic and standards of excellence. These standards are not generic but intrinsic to distinctive forms of knowledge. Although there may be some transfer, and while studies in formal logic, deduction and induction may be of some value, students cannot acquire critical thought in one form of knowledge by applying generic skills developed in other activities. Critical thought is developed through in-depth and systematic study within a particular form of knowledge.

The Revised Draft makes it difficult for teachers to evaluate progress made by their students. Although mention is made of assessment in Social Studies, the recommended evaluations of student discussion and group activities of various sorts are very hard to carry out with any accuracy, whether for diagnostic, formative or summative purposes. Many students are likely to hold Social Studies in contempt, as a field in which there seem to be no answers better or worse than any others. Although there is necessarily much contestability in many aspects of history and social sciences, there are also requirements concerning knowledge and understanding which are grossly neglected in the Revised Draft.

Integrated Social Studies courses are not the best way for students to learn history, geography and economics , yet for many students Social Studies will be the only way in which they encounter these disciplines in school. Very different sequences and structures are best suited to history and geography, and those appropriate to studies of students' own experiences and cultural environments may be different again. Some Social Studies courses, usually based essentially on the sequence best suited to just one of the social sciences, will undoubtedly be better than others. However, the Revised Draft is among the worst possible ways of setting about Social Studies.

The five strands do not provide an adequate basis for the Revised Draft. In particular there is no clear distinction between the concepts and content which might be appropriate in three of them: 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage', and 'Time, Continuity, and Change'. The whole structure should be discarded, but if it is to be maintained in some form it would be less unsatisfactory if these three strands were reduced to one. This would at least reduce consequential confusion. 'Place and Environment' and 'Resources and Economic Activities' have a degree of conceptual independence, allowing some more logical sequences to be created in each of them if only two instead of four other strands had to be taken into account.

If 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage' and 'Time, Continuity, and Change' were reduced to one, a simple distinction might be made within it between past events, to be dealt with in a broadly chronological way, and contemporary affairs, including students' own experiences, which might be dealt with as in 'expanding circles' models. Historical considerations would feature much more prominently than they do under the Revised Draft.

Ideological bias

The Revised Draft wrongly implies that all opinions, feelings and thoughts, likes and dislikes, constitute values and should be accepted in a non-judgmental way as worthwhile or as good as any others. Yet if one supports the right of individuals to hold different values and beliefs, one must then in logic have a higher regard, all other things being equal, for societies in which there is considerable freedom to hold different values and beliefs than for those which lack such freedom. After seeming to reject advocacy of values in favour of the view that students should simply be encouraged to clarify whatever values they may hold, the Revised Draft then engages in ideological moulding of students' ideas and values. Its own values may well not reflect those of the majority of New Zealanders. It almost completely disregards the contributions of Christianity to New Zealand and pretends that the British Isles were not the font and origin of its politics, law, customs and sports. It gives no serious consideration to what it might mean for a society to be bicultural or multicultural or in what ways New Zealand is, and is not, bicultural or multicultural.

Systematic treatment is needed of the historical development of Maori and British societies before the nineteenth century and relationships between Maori and other New Zealanders during and since that century, not the haphazard episodes suggested in the Revised Draft. Once these different courses are fully understood, some Maori will wish to go their own way, and some may want to pursue a common path, but such decisions will be based on knowledge and not ignorance. This same point is valid for all New Zealanders.

Compared with the unbalanced treatment of New Zealand's Maori and British inheritances, in particular the attempt to marginalise the latter, other aspects of political correctness in the Revised Draft seem less important; but its suggestions on gender relationships are not helpful. They urge that students be encouraged "to explore and value both traditional and non-traditional roles and the contribution and status of both women and men in different cultures, places and times", even though some of those roles were and are exploitative and unfairly discriminatory. No structured studies of changes in gender relations in different types of society are provided. The Revised Draft, under the heading of 'Inclusive Perspectives', requires that "Social Studies programmes should value, acknowledge, and include the interests, perspectives, and contributions of all students, regardless of gender, culture, and social and religious background" (p. 30). This is impossible in the classroom context and, even if possible, would be undesirable educationally unless critical perspectives were allowed.

7.2 Recommendations

Our recommendations must in essence be those we offered in our submission on the Original Draft, since no improvements of serious note have been made. They are as follows:

1 The attempt to encompass history, geography, economics, sociology and all other social sciences within an integrated Social Studies curriculum should be abandoned.

2 If, in spite of the powerful arguments for total abandonment, the Ministry of Education persists with an integrated Social Studies curriculum, and if it continues to reject the Education Forum's proposals for the drafting of such a curriculum as included in its recommendations in its submission on the Original Draft, the present strands should be reduced to three by combining 'Social Organisation and Processes', 'Culture and Heritage', and 'Time, Continuity, and Change'.

3 If an integrated Social Studies curriculum is to be introduced, it should not be made compulsory for schools. Instead schools should be permitted to construct separate history, geography and other relevant courses. This freedom of choice is even more vital for secondary than for primary schools.

4 Inquiry should be undertaken into what seems to be attempts, whether deliberate or based on ignorance, to remove from children's school knowledge the British cultural, political and social contribution to New Zealand's way of life. There should be open public debate about whether such a revolution in values and so complete a rejection of the mainstream tradition should be undertaken by the nation's schools.

5 Vigilance should be exercised to ensure that separate and compartmentalised curricula, based on what some conceive to be distinctive cultures, are not encouraged by the central government in ways which make it unnecessarily difficult for students to encounter traditions and values other than those of a particular ethnic or cultural group with which they identify. Despite that admonition, we urge further decentralisation of curriculum decision making in terms of school-based curriculum choice and, as a necessary corollary, of parental choice of schools.

APPENDIX A

MAORI AND BRITISH: SELF-CONCEPTS AND MUTUAL CONCEPTS

Early in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, set in the 1890s, when European imperial expansion was at its height, four old sailors are talking on a yacht moored on the River Thames near Gravesend. They reflect on the many voyagers who had set out from London in the past for far-off lands over the seas, full of dangers. One of the old sailors, Marlowe, then remarks, "And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth". He expands thus:

I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - the other day ... . Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine - what d'ye call 'em - trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north ... . Imagine him here - the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina - and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages, - precious little to eat fit for a civilised man, nothing but Thames water to drink.

Marlowe then reflects on the conquests of the Romans two thousand years earlier and of the general nature of conquest:

They grabbed what they could get just for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea ... .

No theme in New Zealand historical education is of greater intrinsic value or practical relevance than to enable students in a systematic way to gain a deeper understanding of how Maori and British have judged their own societies and judged each other's society. Maori considered themselves tangata whenua, the people of the land by right of birth. The concept of tangata whenua is sometimes held in the extreme form of holding that a people has always lived on the lands it occupies at present. On the one hand, some Australian Aboriginal groups, for example, claim that their ancestors arose out of the rocks during the 'Dreamtime', so that it is impossible that they could have been immigrants from what is now Asia or Indonesia. On the other hand most Maori myths of origin tell of the voyages of the great canoes from an ancestral land far to the north of New Zealand, so that the belief that they had always occupied a country was not open to them.

The Maori tikanga, their customs and protocols, were dominated by the ascendancy of male warriors. On the one hand, this was the main type of society known to them at the time of contact with Europeans. On the other hand, when the French and British sailed into the South Pacific and on to New Zealand in the late eighteenth century, their scholars and historians were well acquainted with warrior cultures in the European past. They knew that their ancestors, the Gauls and Britons, had stood in relationship to their Roman conquerors as many peoples of Africa and the Pacific stood then in relationship to Europe. In holding an historical and a comparative perspective, eighteenth century British and French were following in a long western tradition, although not one that had usually been dominant.

Herodotus, who is widely regarded as the first 'western historian' we know about, often praised enemies of the Greeks, such as the Persians, whilst criticising many Greek actions. The Roman historian and political commentator Tacitus, writing at the time recalled by Conrad's Marlowe, compared the tribal Britons and Germans favourably with effete and decadent Romans. England's greatest historian of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, a contemporary of James Cook and Joseph Banks, took a less favourable view of the German warriors of Tacitus' time. Gibbon wrote:

The care of the house and family, the management of the land and cattle, were delegated to the old and infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy warrior ... consumed his days and nights in the animal gratification of sleep and food ... the sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear. It roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and by strong exercise of the body, and violent emotions of the mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his existence.

Yet Gibbon tried to be fair about the relative merits of the tribes and the Roman citizens, just as he did when comparing Christians with non-Christians.

When Bougainville, Cook and Banks sailed into the South Pacific in the eighteenth century, they knew much about the European past, as well as about many peoples they had encountered on their voyages. Their vicarious as well as their personal experiences coloured their impressions of Polynesian societies. Banks gave Tahitian chiefs the names of Greek heroes. He was influenced particularly by the Iliad, which tells of men, especially Achilles in his rage, who were in some ways very like Polynesian warriors. The first British administrators in New Zealand knew that successive conquerors of England - Anglo-Saxons, Danish Vikings and Norman knights - had had many similar characteristics to those of Maori warriors and they in no way disdained Maori racially. Cook, Banks, and those who succeeded them believed that they had advanced beyond the restrictive bonds of warrior society and that it would be of great advantage to Maori if they, too, followed the path of civilisation, along which so many other peoples had trod. The highly destructive effects of firearms when used against them by other Maori, together with other factors, such as missionary preaching and the apparent danger of annexation by France, convinced some Maori that this was the best path to take.

Another issue in western thought over many generations, which is of great potential interest to Maori and all other New Zealanders, is whether homo sapiens emerged at first only in one place and then moved around the world, or whether different human groups developed or were created at different times. The first idea is termed monogenesis, and is advanced in Genesis in the stories of Adam and Eve and the descendants of Noah. It is also current orthodoxy in anthropology, with Olduvai Gorge in East Africa as the favoured centre of human origins. The second idea is termed polygenesis and is held by many indigenous peoples, but also by some contemporary scientists. The question is part of the wider problem of the one and the many: that human beings share many features in common, yet also have many significant group, as well as individual, differences. It is therefore not surprising that it is often difficult to asses the relative importance of common and distinctive characteristics.

The mind-set of British administrators and missionaries in the early nineteenth century was decisively monogenetic and uniformitarian. Christians and sceptics alike held that the characteristics all humanity shared were far more significant than their differences, which they explained on environmental and experiential grounds, so that in their view each people could and should advance along an oft-trodden road to reason and modernity. The Scottish philosopher Lord Kames, for example, argued that :

Hunting and fishing in order for sustenance were the original occupations of men. The shepherd life succeeded; and the next stage was that of agriculture. These progressive changes, in the order now mentioned, may be traced in all nations, so far as we have any remains of their original history ... it was agriculture which first produced a regular system of government.

Like many of his contemporaries, Lord Kames celebrated "the change from the hunter to the farmer, from the destroyer of animals to the feeder of pigs" and then to division of labour and the creation of cities. Kames and other commentators hoped to extend what they conceived as the blessings of progress to all parts of the world. They may have been mistaken about the advantages of towns and cities over the traditional life of hunters and nomads, but they were undoubtedly sincere, as were many Christian missionaries, that they had something of great value which they wished to share with others.

The opening of the Pacific greatly stimulated new comparisons, scholarly and popular, between human societies separated both in time and space. At the beginning of his 1784 preface to the official account of Cook's Third Voyage, Canon John Douglas, greatly impressed by what the explorers had written about Polynesian rituals, argued that:

A feeling of imagination will probably be more struck with the narration of the ceremonies of a Natche at Tongataboo, than of a Gothic tournament at London; with the contemplation of the colossuses of Easter Island, than of the mysterious remains of Stonehenge.

Eighteenth century European accounts of the Pacific usually praised its peoples and compared Europeans adversely with them. Charles Le Gobin, a French priest, extolled in 1700 the happy life the Pacific Islanders must have lived before Magellan sailed among them. They lived then, he wrote, "in the most perfect freedom and independence, subjected to no laws, but every man lived as it best pleased himself ... exempt from cares and solicitude for the future." The first voyage of Bougainville in 1768 raised this idealisation to new heights. Bougainville believed that he had found in Tahiti "hospitality, ease, innocent joy, and every appearance of happiness".

Captain Cook's voyages into the Pacific also at first strengthened enthusiasm for societies in which, in Sydney Parkinson's words, "ambition, and the love of luxurious banquets, and other superfluities, are but little known". George Forster, sailing on Cook's second voyage, praised Tahiti for offering greater ease of life and equality of condition than could be found in Europe. He feared the impact of Europe upon these people, and concluded :

... if the knowledge of a few individuals can only be acquired at such a price as the happiness of nations, it were better for the discoverers, and the discovered, that the South Sea had remained unknown to Europe and its restless inhabitants.

George's father, Johann Reinhold Forster, in a similar vein, thought that "our civilised communities are stained with vices and enormities."

By the 1790s, however, British admiration for Pacific societies and interest in how such virtue and happiness had been secured over the centuries had faded. Although Cook and Banks admired Maori strength, bravery and honesty, they were dismayed by the overwhelming evidence of their cannibalism. Cook came regretfully to the conclusion that "the New Zealanders must live under perpetual apprehensions of being destroyed by each other". He found it difficult to understand why a people at such a comparatively advanced cultural level should practice what seemed to be an abomination to all Europeans. As Pocock puts it:

If the people practising it had been miserable and inarticulate cave-dwellers, it would have been easier to bear; but they were sociable, communicative and friendly ... and anthropophagy among them was a deeply disturbing anomaly to the Enlightenment mind.

Pocock notes that Cook and Banks tried to find excuses for Maori cannibalism by "invoking hypotheses of protein deficiency and sympathetic magic to account for it". Cook, for example, remarked of Maori even after they killed and ate the crew of the Adventure, "I always found them of a brave, noble, open and benevolent disposition, but they are a people who will never put up with an insult."

As well as knowledge of a range of warrior societies, the British brought with them to New Zealand knowledge of many ways in which peoples and land were related to each other. They had developed in the form of English Common Law rules concerning land ownership fraught with massive consequences, for good or ill, in many parts of the world. Perhaps the most important feature differentiating English Common Law ideas about land from those of traditional Maori society was that the former did not include any ownership rights invested in informal communities. The last remnants of such rights were rapidly disappearing with the completion of Enclosure Acts that converted 'rights of common' in manorial custom into individual property rights.

A second key idea was that all tenure derived in the last instance from the Crown. Even British socialists of the early nineteenth century, such as Robert Owen, assumed that a revolutionary government would appropriate the powers of the Crown and declare all land to be state property. They did not entertain the notion that any tangata whenua in Britain or anywhere else might have property rights which could be maintained against such a revolutionary government. When such radicals thought about Canada, Australia or New Zealand, they considered the power of the Crown could and should be used to declare large tracts of land 'free' for settlement by British emigrants. It was more conservative figures, such as Earl Grey at the Colonial Office, who argued for the protection of indigenous interests in the land.

A third key idea was that ownership of disputed land in situations in which no written documents existed, as was the case in New South Wales and New Zealand, had to be shown by demonstrating that land had been appropriated by regular use, especially agricultural, and that there were fixed dwellings. It was not because the British thought that no people lived there, but because no such evidence of regular land usage could be discerned by them, that New South Wales was declared terra nullius. In New Zealand by contrast the practice of horticulture provided such evidence, leading Lord Glenelg to write that the chiefs and people of New Zealand "are not savages living by the chase, but tribes who have appointed the country between them, having fixed abodes, with an acknowledged property in the soil". This evidence of prior appropriation and of political authority led to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, whereas the British found no one in Australia whom they identified as a political authority with control of any defined area and with whom they could make any treaty. Without a basic knowledge of concepts of land ownership both in Maori custom and English Common Law, neither the Treaty of Waitangi nor much else in New Zealand's history can be understood properly.

Peoples often adopt different arguments according to their own historical situation. If, for example, New Zealand students were presented with the Arab-Israeli conflict as an example of two peoples regarding themselves as tangata whenua, but looking to totally different periods in history to justify their claims, then both that conflict and the situation in New Zealand might be much better understood by them. Ireland, another pertinent case, was the first place in which traditional tenures of a tangata whenua were extinguished by English Common Law enforced by English soldiers. Irish patriots have often over the generations denounced the original English conquest. Yet the Irish in the British Empire, whether in North America, Australia or New Zealand, were as ready as their English conquerors to extinguish the concept of tangata whenua there, just as Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama Maori were very ready to extinguish tangata whenua and the Moriori inhabitants themselves in the Chatham Islands in the 1830s, just before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. It is generally thought that the Moriori were descendants of the early Maori population of New Zealand, who had been forced to leave the mainland by competing Maori groups.

Maori and non-Maori alike might well ask what length of time was needed to make their occupation of parts of New Zealand that of tangata whenua. Were they tangata whenua before, say one hundred and fifty years of occupation had elapsed, the length of time some British New Zealand families have lived here? Some Maori groups invaded and conquered other groups and extinguished them as tangata whenua. Problems have arisen in recent years with Maori migration from one part of New Zealand to another, and these may become more severe if there are substantial financial settlements of treaty-related land claims. Can Maori migrants ever become tangata whenua in territories of iwi other than the one to which they belonged initially? The basic issues are whether there can be any legal compatibility between affirmations of tangata whenua and contemporary property rights, or any moral compatibility between tangata whenua claims based on first occupation and equal civil rights for all citizens of New Zealand.

More widely, all peoples have done evils in the past, and the current policy of ignoring those committed by Maori whilst highlighting those committed by British New Zealanders is no better than past policies of praising everything British and denigrating Maori. All students should learn that Maori exterminated several native species, including moas, ducks and swans, enslaved captured women and children and sometimes ate defeated warriors. They should know that the Ngapuhi chief, Hongi Hika, and other warrior chiefs, were invaders of the lands of others, as were British settlers in New Zealand, but Hongi Hika and Maori conquerors offered no treaty to the defeated. Students should also know how and when provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi were ignored subsequently by British governments and their local representatives.

It is important for all students to also know that the British once burned old women and their cats as witches, carried out the barbarity of hanging, drawing and quartering, and engaged massively in the African slave-trade before becoming the main agents of abolishing that trade. This last point reminds us of the worthy and exemplary in the British tradition. Much in Maori tradition, too, deserves respect and admiration, but respect and admiration can be fully accorded only to what is fully known. British New Zealanders are more easily able to draw attention to deeds of their ancestors, since these were so often recorded in writing. This is more difficult in oral traditions; a reality that makes it even more important that Maori, if they wish for full mutuality of respect in a bicultural or multicultural New Zealand, share with their fellow citizens the treasures of their cultural heritage.

APPENDIX B
EDUCATION FORUM

The Education Forum has been formed to contribute to education policy through research and debate on the current issues, structures, and expectations at all levels of New Zealand education.

The Forum believes that New Zealand education requires an approach to learning and achieving which encourages all individuals to reach their full potential, and which will take New Zealand to the leading edge of international performance and achievement.

The Forum is an association of individuals who have a common concern for the future direction of New Zealand education. The membership is drawn from primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of education, together with leaders of industry and commerce.

The principles incorporated in the above statements include the following:

A commitment to excellence and high expectation in all human endeavour, based on a lifelong desire for learning.

The belief that the community/government should ensure that all young New Zealanders have access to quality education.

The teaching of values and life skills which will preserve the dignity of the individual and the integrity of the family.

The acceptance of healthy competition for both individuals and the education sector.

The encouragement of cooperation, creativity, adaptability and enterprise.

The encouragement and recognition of personal responsibility, goal setting and achievement in all endeavours, through self discipline and hard work.

The acceptance of a compulsory core curriculum in primary and secondary schools.

The necessity for high standards of assessment of student performance and of accountability of teachers and institutions.

The promotion of a New Zealand cultural identity.

The key involvement and responsibility of parents in their children's education.

The emphasis on the value of parental choice and the self-management of education institutions.

The development of closer links between education institutions and industry.

PO Box 22-012 Auckland 6
Telephone: 09-276-7059 Facsimile: 09-276-0670

APPENDIX C
MEMBERS OF THE EDUCATION FORUM

Mr Simon Arnold
Chief Executive Officer
New Zealand Manufacturers Federation

Mr John Boyens
Principal
Meadowbank School

Mrs Alison Gernhoefer
Principal
Westlake Girls' High School

Professor Peter Gluckman
School of Medicine
University of Auckland

Dr John Hinchcliff
President
Auckland Institute of Technology

Mr Roger Kerr
Executive Director
New Zealand Business Roundtable

Brother Pat Lynch
Executive Director
New Zealand Catholic Education Office

Mr John Morris
Headmaster
Auckland Grammar School

Mr Phil Raffills
Principal
Avondale College

Mr Theo Simeonidis
Chief Executive
Federated Farmers of New Zealand

Mr John Taylor
Headmaster
King's College
Auckland

Ms Claudia Wysocki
Headmistress
St Margaret's College
Christchurch