SOCIAL STUDIES

IN THE

NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM

A Submission on the Draft

Education Forum
August 1995

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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), 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, and The Australian Nation: its British and Irish Roots (1994) published by the Australian Scholarly Press, Melbourne. He has written over one hundred articles which have been published 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, and Encounter.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Social science has always been a controversial part of the curriculum. This is because economics and politics, the values we live by, our historical experience as a nation, and the efforts we have made to understand society and to bring about a better world, all converge in its several disciplines. Its subject matter is the stuff of controversy. Because of this, it is all the more important that careful attention be given to any proposed changes in the way the social sciences are presented in our schools.

It is the considered judgment of the Education Forum that the Draft Social Studies Curriculum Statement (hereinafter 'the Draft') has grave deficiencies. It trivialises serious and difficult educational issues; it is distorted by ideological preconceptions throughout; it is vague on the critical question of assessment; it demeans our laws and government by undervaluing their European inheritance; it makes impossible any coherent or systematic understanding of subjects which are the basis of geography, history, and economics - indeed, on the evidence of the Draft, a student who had taken the Resources and Economic Activities strand throughout his or her school career would end up with only the shakiest idea of how a modern economy works, and perhaps no idea at all.

The word "skills" is repeated over and over as if it possessed magical power. This trivialises the very real cognitive difficulties involved, and is symptomatic of a tendency found throughout the Draft. Students are to acquire numeracy skills, information skills, self-management and competitive skills, communication skills, not to mention skills in critical thinking, creative thinking, decision-making, values exploration, and so on. The word skill is obviously appropriate for such matters as communication: in public speaking, for example, practice makes perfect. But learning the principles of statistical method in the social sciences, or developing one's powers of logical analysis, or reaching an understanding of the causes of World War II, is not like learning to ride a bicycle. The cerebral cortex is very much more involved.

The Draft assumes, and rightly, that schools should, where possible, build upon students' life experiences. But it wrongly assumes that what is not within students' direct life experience will be of little interest to them. This exaggerated emphasis on the here-and-now undermines the proven instructional value of the lessons of history and literature. The Draft assumes, again rightly, that learning is an active process and not just a passive filling of the mind. But it also goes well beyond this in implying incorrectly that self-directed activity by unprepared students, without the clear guidance of well-informed teachers, is the most effective way in which knowledge can be acquired. Whatever else might be said about the pros and cons of an emphasis on student interests and activities, two things are plain: when carried to excess it reduces the time available for learning the foundations of the subject, and the teacher becomes more an institutional minder than an educational force.

The Draft could at several points lead to consideration of longstanding grievances and inequalities suffered by the Maori people, and there is certainly a proper place for such material. The wrongs of the early colonists in the 19th century need examination, and the one-sidedness of early accounts should be corrected. Yet it is also important to recognise the risk that an unbalanced concern for redressing wrongs may lead to new grievances which are just as troublesome. This is the case regarding the view of New Zealand history the Draft contains. There appears to be a reluctance to confront the unattractive features of traditional Polynesian culture, the grave limitations of pre-industrial cultures everywhere, and the positive (as well as negative) aspects of European settlement. It is unfortunate that the authors of the Draft have not taken advantage of the opportunity to display genuine independence and to present a detached perspective of a vexatious matter, not neutral between values but impartial in respect of persons and groups.

In this submission we have chosen to examine two of the five learning strands as representative. These are Place and Environment and Time, Continuity, and Change. The serious failings they show are typical of the other three strands as well. It might be argued that the defects in Place and Environment (i.e. geography) are even more glaring than those in Time, Continuity, and Change (i.e. history). The latter's eccentric selection of historical events might conceivably be justified on some grounds, even when, as in the present Draft, those grounds are unstated and invisible.

But nothing can be said in extenuation of Place and Environment. Despite all the talk about "skills", this strand excludes even the basic verbal equipment needed for geographical understanding. Out go such terms and concepts 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, and mineral resources and their distribution. In their place come "people's perceptions of different environments and the reasons for these perceptions", something to be illustrated by such topics as "television images in the USA", "mining in Nauru", and "lifestyles of Maori in the fifteenth century". Out go landforms, glaciation, erosion, land use, and patterns of settlement. In come "implementing recommendations from the Earth Summit", "uranium mining in Australia", "resolving claims arising from the Treaty of Waitangi", and endless discussion about whether the world is getting hotter and how big the ozone hole is. It goes without saying that there is no systematic development of skills in drawing time-lines and charts, or indeed any other devices for strengthening a sense of chronology and an understanding of both geological and social evolution.

We conclude that the Draft is much too deeply flawed to be salvageable. The next question to be faced - and it should be faced - is whether Social Studies deserves to continue as a separate subject within the social sciences learning area, or whether there should be a vigorous attempt to re-establish such disciplines as geography and history. The conclusion reached is that the attempt to encompass a wide range of social sciences within an integrated Social Studies curriculum should be abandoned, and that delivering them through separate subjects is to be preferred.

However, if a new integrated Social Studies curriculum is to be introduced, it is vital that it be constructed in a radically different way from that proposed in the Draft. It should be intellectually coherent, systematically presenting an established body of knowledge which is capable of realistic assessment and, as far as possible, resistant to takeover by political zealots. Only if this is done will the curriculum help teachers to teach well, and attract social science students of high quality. However, even if the Social Studies curriculum was upgraded in this way and with a much improved selection of themes and topics, we believe the study of geography should be presented separately.

In two Appendices some suggestions are provided for an integrated Social Studies curriculum on types of content almost completely absent from the Draft. In Appendix A an alternative form of "strands" is suggested, in which are linked five great perennial themes concerning human thought, organisation, and interaction with the material environment. Appendix B outlines important aspects of New Zealand's European and British heritage - matters almost entirely missing from the Draft.

SECTION 1 SOCIAL STUDIES AND THE
NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK

Some of the weaknesses identified in the draft Social Studies curriculum (the 'Draft') arise in part because of inadequacies in the overall New Zealand Curriculum Framework (hereinafter Framework), the aims of which it is intended to meet. Other weaknesses arise from a failure to meet certain aims outlined in Framework.

Examples of inadequacies within Framework include:

• an apparent tendency to reduce of all forms of knowledge and understanding to skills (pp. 5, 14, 17-20);
  
  
• an assumption that "social justice" and "the welfare of others" (p. 14) are agreed and uncontested concepts, rather than matters of ongoing debate and often disagreement over the generations and from one society to another. No persons will be found to admit that they believe in social injustice, or are oblivious of, or hostile to, the welfare of others. However, there is by no means agreement among equally thoughtful people as to how social (or individual) justice is constituted, or what particular forms of social action are most productive of the welfare of others. Agreement reached at the level of generality often breaks down once specific proposals are put forward;
  
  
• a claim that "assessment will recognise the differences in gender, culture, background, and experience that students bring to their learning" (p. 24). Objectivity and a sincere concern for groups whose attainments may be lower on average than those of some others require that assessment be based on the internal requirements of a subject or discipline, quite independently of any socio-cultural attributes of the learners. It is difficult, if not impossible, to strive effectively to overcome educational disadvantage if one uses faulty instruments of measurement which conceal or distort the real situation. Disadvantaged people do not become the fastest sprinters in the world by running 80 metres and calling it 100 metres, or by deducting one second in ten from their times.

Examples of failures of the Draft to satisfy the requirements of Framework include:

• Framework states that " ... schools will provide for learning in social studies, history, geography, and economics" (p. 14). But as it stands the Draft seems to be intended to supersede the last three disciplines mentioned. It certainly does not provide initiation into their content, structure and methods;
  
  
• an inadequate conception of what it is that might be required by society and its economy (p. 1) and what learning is required to enable young people "to participate effectively and productively in New Zealand's democratic society and in a competitive world economy" (p. 3);
  
  
• an inadequate coverage of any of the cultures, apart from that of the Maori people, which contribute to "New Zealand's bicultural identity and multicultural society" (p. 1). The Draft in no way ensures that "the experiences, cultural traditions, histories and languages of all New Zealanders are recognised and valued" (p. 7), because students, after pursuing the proposed Social Studies course, will be left with insufficient knowledge on which to base value judgments about histories and significant cultural traditions. One cannot genuinely value what one does not understand;
  
  
• a failure to provide "consistency in classroom programmes ... [in] ... a coherent and balanced way" (p. 3), and with a "sense of perspective" (p. 14), or adequate "direction for learning and assessment" (p. 6), or to define clearly "the achievement objectives against which students' progress can be measured" (p. 6). Furthermore, the eight level conception is not implemented in any meaningful way . It may be that some thematic sequences do not lend themselves to specific levels. In history, for example, although some themes may only have meaning and significance to older students, it is possible for most themes to be treated in a way appropriate to level eight as well as level one. Geography and economics, however, are examples of disciplines in which many of the themes and topics are sequential and appear in order of difficulty, and thus lend themselves more readily to specification of outcomes at different levels. Most of the concepts which form such sequences are, unfortunately, absent from the relevant strands of the Draft;
  
  
• a failure to provide a structure which might enable students "to think clearly and critically about human behaviour, and to explore different values and viewpoints" (p. 14). There is a double failure here. First, the Draft as a whole and the types of activity it recommends are insufficient to promote critical understanding and clarity. Second, the content proposed is so ideologically biased as to discourage adequate exploration of different values and viewpoints. Despite one or two formal exercises purporting to compare "different interpretations of the past" (p. 14), almost every interpretation, implied or overt, in the Draft comes from an easily identifiable, narrow range within the ideological spectrum; and
  
  
• a lack of grounds for believing that this Draft "will challenge all students to succeed to the best of their ability" (p. 17). It avoids difficult skills tasks, such as those connected with physical geography, which can be assessed easily so as to establish knowledge or its absence with some certainty. The implied lengthy periods given to unstructured class or group discussion might be assessable by a Socrates with his young disciples but, in the contexts envisaged here, is unlikely to result in systematic challenging of students' errors in fact or reasoning. Most of the Draft is not challenging, and must serve to reduce still further the prestige of the social sciences among both students and teachers with unfortunate consequences for subject choice at the tertiary level.

SECTION 2 THE AIMS OF THE DRAFT CURRICULUM

There have been major changes in, and frequent debate about, the content and design of Social Studies and other related syllabuses and curricula in New Zealand and similar countries over the last twenty years. Given the wide disagreements among social scientists about what constitutes significant knowledge about societies, it is necessary to look first in a Draft of this type for criteria which provide clear guidance about what content is most relevant and appropriate. These are not provided.

Instead of providing clear criteria of significance as a guide to content, the Draft simply and inadequately defines Social Studies as being "about people" and how, and why, in diverse times they

-think, feel, and act;
-organise their way of life;
-interact with others and their environment;
-initiate and respond to change; and
-meet their political, social, economic, legal, and spiritual needs (p. 7).

Of course, all human beings think, feel, act, and so on, but not all types of thought, feeling, and action are of comparable importance in understanding societies. Since we can choose for study only a very small part of all thought, feeling and action, we require explicit and argued grounds for selection. Little is added by the statement that:

The aims of Social Studies education in New Zealand are:

-to enable students to develop understandings of people, their actions, and their activities;

-to enable students to contribute to a changing society as confident, informed, and responsible participants (p. 9).

Human beings inevitably develop understandings or, quite often, misunderstandings of other people in the normal course of life. What is needed, therefore, is a clear indication of what sorts of understanding can best be promoted through organised study in a Social Studies curriculum. As the examples of Germany under Hitler, the former Soviet Union and many countries today - North Korea for example - amply demonstrate, many young people may feel confident that they know the truth, accept as certain the information or misinformation they have been given, and feel a sense of responsibility to the leader, the party, or the state. But their confidence may be seriously misplaced and their sense of responsibility wrongly, even dangerously, directed.

Little clarification about criteria of significance is provided by a further list of five objectives which state that students will:

-develop understandings of the unique nature of Aotearoa New Zealand's bicultural heritage and multicultural society;

-examine the ways in which people from diverse cultures, times and places make decisions and meet their needs;

-explore and clarify their own values and beliefs, while acknowledging the right of others to hold different values and beliefs;

-develop general and specific skills relevant to Social Studies; and

-develop an awareness of the ways in which they can contribute to their own and the wider community (p. 9).

Important inadequacies are also revealed in the claim that this Social Studies curriculum has been organised in five learning strands, which are:

social organisation and processes;
culture and heritage;
place and environment;
time, continuity, and change; and
resources and economic activities.

Some reasons why this scheme of organisation is inadequate are given below under separate headings but, like the earlier lists, this one provides no coherent guidance on how teachers are to choose relevant content. Furthermore, it is obvious that these are not five conceptually distinct areas and that a large number of activities would fall under two or more of the five. This is confirmed by the enormous amount of repetition among the suggestions for curriculum content in the second half of the document. A prime example is actually provided in the introductory statement about the five learning strands, in which "Understandings of the contributions and achievements of women, men, and children, as individuals and as members of groups, in both traditional and non-traditional roles ... " (p. 10) is placed under Social Organisation and Processes, but could just as easily be placed under Culture and Heritage or Time, Continuity, and Change. This happens again and again in the more detailed suggestions for content in the second half of the Draft.

One counter-argument is that this overlap is nothing new, and that each strand is based upon one of the old 'subjects':

Time, Continuity, and Change is History.
Resources and Economic Activities is Economics.
Culture and Heritage is Anthropology.
Social Organisation and Processes is Sociology.
Place and Environment is Geography.

Perhaps the writers of the Draft had such a correspondence in mind. But, in so far as each of the five disciplines cited was represented in a traditional pre-Social Studies humanities curriculum, coherent criteria of significance were to a large extent derived from the disciplines themselves. If and when there was inadequate cross-referencing either between disciplines or subjects (history and geography were the main examples of this) or excessive overlap of material, these faults were usually easy to detect and amend. In the Draft, however, the strands are insufficiently articulated to enable such correction to take place.

SECTION 3 THE TREATMENT OF KEY CONCEPTS
IN THE DRAFT CURRICULUM

3.1 Introduction

Several key terms and concepts are used in the draft curriculum as though their meanings were universally agreed upon by all people of goodwill. Unfortunately this is not the case. 'Rights' is one prominent example of a significant concept treated very inadequately.

3.2 Rights

People's rights, together with their roles and responsibilities, are accorded a key role in the achievement objectives at all eight levels of the Social Organisation and Processes strand (pp. 34-51). Within the Culture and Heritage strand the samples given suggest that students are to learn the "Rights of minority groups in the U.S.A.", together with "Human rights legislation around the world" and "Institutionalised racism in an industrialised nation" (p. 68). The Draft suggests that Social Studies teachers consider ensuring that students' files of clippings about world events feature issues such as "indigenous land rights, language issues, or political rights" (p. 69). It is acknowledged that these are samples only; however, the selection gives a clear indication of the bias of the curriculum proponents. The study of human rights issues and racism among non-industrialised groups such as Malays in Malaysia or Fijians in Fiji, to say nothing of the racism which characterises most of the African continent, is not suggested.

The key problem with all these examples is that nowhere is the contestable nature of human rights raised. Nowhere is it suggested that what we could mean by 'rights' should be explored, where they come from and, crucially, what political processes are best able to ensure their observance. Two traditions are worth mentioning in this regard. On the one hand Jeremy Bentham described talk of abstract rights as being nonsense and of indefeasible rights as 'nonsense on stilts'. Bentham had in mind the language of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, itself derived from John Locke and the social contract theory of the late seventeenth century. Bentham's key point was that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are not rights which are natural to humanity, or guaranteed by providence or nature, but depend on the construction of particular relationships, institutions, and laws. Similarly, Edmund Burke argued that rights are the privileges of living in a particular society at a particular time (Baker 1995). Another tradition is that of 'natural rights' which sees human rights as arising out of our nature as human beings by virtue of having a right to self-ownership and freedom from coercion.

The crucial point is that both these traditions share a common understanding that government has a role in protecting these rights. But not all types of government protect individual and corporate rights, and on this point a serious omission from the Draft becomes apparent. It is only in the conditions made possible by the commercial and industrial changes which took place first in Western Europe and North America in the eighteenth century, and which subsequently were imitated by, or imposed upon, other parts of the world, that it has been possible even to dream of adequate satisfaction of what are now claimed to be basic human rights. Those developments were not in themselves sufficient for the flourishing of human rights, but do seem to be necessary for it.

When we live in a society based on the rule of law, internal violence and crime may be brought under control, life itself become more secure, and prosperity and amenities grow. In this climate there is every point in looking to the law for the protection of individual and corporate rights, including those of religious bodies, trade unions and professional organisations. The successful pursuit of rights requires a political structure which makes their attainment feasible. It can also be argued that a civic order in which such rights can be upheld requires citizens to accept the principle of duty and their obligation to sustain the order (Selbourne 1994).

An example of a 'right' currently given much attention in New Zealand and elsewhere is that of 'the right to education'. On the one hand, if we simply mean by 'education' the natural care which human parents generally give to their children and the basic process of initiation into the ways of a particular people or society (i.e. socialisation), then we cannot claim that children are being denied their human rights by not being able to attend a school or undertake other formal education. On the other hand, if attendance at a school is part of children's human rights (i.e. 'the right to education' is treated as synonymous with 'the right to be schooled'), most children in most places and at most times were denied that right. In the case of New Zealand and many other countries, any right to education in the form of formal schooling only became possible after colonisation by peoples who had developed such institutions.

It would be very valuable if students were enabled to understand the different ways in which conceptions of rights have been held in different societies at different times. Teaching and learning could include the change from the specific rights and freedoms claimed by the orders, ecclesiastical and secular, and cities and historical communities of medieval Europe to the general claims of rights developed by Locke and taken over by the American colonists in 1776, to Bentham's annoyance, and by the French Revolutionaries in 1789. That would be an excellent case study, as would be the failure of the American colonists to give slaves the right of citizenship. These rich sources of significant human experience are tapped in the type of thematic syllabus outlined in Section 6 and expanded in Appendix A, but largely ignored in the Draft. The defective state of human rights in much of Black and Arab Africa and in South Africa during Apartheid would be another excellent case study which might include consideration of the potential effects on the rest of Africa of the new post-Apartheid South Africa.

Rights in 'open' and 'closed' societies

The Draft wants students to avoid making value judgments about different cultures and societies. But this would necessarily avoid recognising the critical distinction between 'open' and 'closed' societies. The Draft gives students no inkling that in closed societies, such as those in which most indigenous peoples lived until very recently, there is no possibility of the exercise of human rights, and especially of political rights as these are now understood. They don't exist in, for example, Ruanda, Ethiopia, and Cambodia, and under traditional regimes they never did. It is not simply that in such societies there was no press, free or unfree, or civil institutions such as political parties or trade unions. The absence of the ability to exercise human rights is reflected in the much deeper sense that what was true and lawful had already been determined in the distant past and continued to remain unproblematic. Consequently, in such societies, there was no opportunity for open discussion of any significant questions about human ends and purposes. Sir Karl Popper probed more deeply perhaps than any other thinker of the twentieth century into the relationship between closed and open societies. It is a melancholy reflection that a Social Studies curriculum in New Zealand, where once he taught, should be unaffected by his thought . If all societies are to be seen as of equal value, the prospects of human rights observance will be severely undermined.

3.3 Resources

In the Draft's discussion of the Resources and Economic Activities strand, we are given the question-begging formula that "Resources are used to meet physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs" (p. 11). The key question of how something became a resource when it had not been one before is overlooked. The Draft provides no reason whatever for thinking that its authors understand the nature of a modern market economy. It has virtually nothing to say about the real world of production, distribution and exchange, and regularly implies that a variety of goods and services should be available to everyone as a 'right'.

An important resource is land. Human beings, like many animals, are highly territorial, so that it is right and proper that a Social Studies curriculum should pay considerable attention to territoriality and attitudes to land. The Draft features land rights frequently in its samples, although only those claimed by, or attributable to, indigenous peoples are mentioned. Students will learn about Australian Aboriginal rights and South American tribal rights (p. 66), and it is suggested that they should "develop a theory about why indigenous people throughout the world are asserting their rights. They collect information about an issue related to indigenous people's rights and evaluate their theory" (p. 67). Students are encouraged to "recognise and value mana whenua" (rights to, and authority over, land in Maori custom) (p. 19), but not to recognise and value freeholds, leaseholds, joint stock companies, or any of the other devices for owning or using land which have enabled western societies to become so much more prosperous than others during the last four centuries.

Without any sense of irony the draft curriculum gives as its first example of 'values exploration skills' "Recognising discriminatory practices and behaviour" (p. 31). But the Draft implicitly commends discrimination in favour of indigenous as against non-indigenous peoples, irrespective of whether any of the indigenous are wealthy and prosperous or any of the non-indigenous poor and needy.

Many groups of indigenous peoples claim close bonds to their land, and each group tends to proclaim its own special bond to be unique. 'Uniqueness' has come to lose some of its dictionary meaning. The earliest human invaders of whom we have knowledge saw no need to provide any justification for trying to conquer territories of other groups. Population pressure, deterioration of resources in established habitats, the greater greenness of the grass on the other side of the river, and many other motives, may have led to invasions. Many early invading peoples, such as the Vikings, Tartars and Mongols, seem to have displayed the attitude to aggression attributed by Sir Walter Scott to the highland clans of Scotland:

For why? Because the good old way
Sufficeth them: the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.

Of particular interest in the context of New Zealand social studies would be an consideration of how Maori people traditionally viewed land. As in many other societies, whether a Maori group could hold its land depended on its military strength. In 1791 Captain Broughton, captain of the first British ship to visit the Chatham Islands, estimated its Moriori (or Maruiwi) at about 1,600. Recent scholars (Richards 1972; Sutton 1980) estimate that there were around 2000 Moriori pre-contact. These scholars estimate that, despite epidemics of influenza and measles and the rapid reduction of seal numbers by European sealers, there were still over 1600 Moriori in 1835, the year of the invasion by the Ngati Awa Maori (see also King, 1989, p. 50). This invasion took place after two Maori on a British ship took back to the North Island news of the abundance of fish and birds on the Chatham Islands. In 1835 alone 226 Moriori were killed by Ngati Awa warriors in their initial invasion (Simmons 1964). In 1848 Bishop Selwyn found the Moriori reduced in number to 268, and by 1920 only two 'full-blooded' Moriori survived.

Authorities such as Richards and Sutton, with Davidson (1984) dissenting, hold that the Chatham Islanders were descendants of early Maori groups forced to leave the South Island by competing Maori groups making their way southwards. What is certain is that it was at the hands of Maori, not the British, that the Chatham Islanders suffered destruction and death. The Maori made no inquiries about Moriori land rights, nor offered any treaty. Unlike most Polynesian peoples, the Moriori had become pacific as well as Pacific Islanders (Shand 1911; Sahlins 1958). Their fate is a tragic illustration of Hilaire Belloc's (1954) satirical couplet:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

Sutton (1980, p. 68) considered that "the death of the Moriori should now be seen as one of the major events of New Zealand history. It was an episode of the same magnitude as the extinction of the Tasmanians or the Feugians." Their fate should not be neglected through short-term considerations of political correctness. All peoples should take account of the evil, as well as the good, committed by their ancestors.

A good Social Studies curriculum will offer students many opportunities to study different types of claim to land. Many myths demonstrate how anxious peoples were to prove that they were the original occupants of particular land. In ancient Greece the Thebans considered themselves the 'sown men' whose ancestors sprang from the soil. Many myths of Australian Aborigines depict their ancestral spirits transforming themselves into the landscape. Some peoples who were obviously not the first occupants developed arguments as to why it was by right, not merely by superior might, that they came to hold the land. The children of Israel, for example, claimed that a Covenant with Jehovah gave them the land of Canaan, described as flowing with milk and honey, although the Canaanites doubtless, like contemporary Palestinians, saw the matter very differently. Both Christians in various crusades and Moslems in various jihads justified their expansion into other lands as being necessary to bring true faith to infidels and pagans. Alexander the Great, the Romans, and the British were among the empire builders who justified their conquests by claims that they were extending civilisation to barbarians and savages. The French revolutionaries sought to justify their conquests by the need to free subject peoples from the oppression of kings and emperors. The Russian revolutionaries similarly claimed that the Red Armies were saving the proletariat and peasantry from exploitation.

It should be noted in any discussion about rights to land that during their period of expansion, Marxists in Russia, China, Vietnam and elsewhere strongly rejected any notion that indigenous peoples had any individual or group land rights. As a result their land was put under state ownership as soon as it was politically possible to do so. In Russia, the origin of the bitter dispute in Chechnya which now perplexes Mr Yeltsin lay in Stalin's attempt, during World War II, to destroy the Chechens by deporting them from their home territory to labour camps. This happened to several ethnic groups at the time - Kalmucks and Tatars among others. Western Marxists are often enthusiastic about land rights for indigenous peoples, but in some communist countries, including China, indigenous peoples are still denied those rights.

The whole question of land is one of many important aspects of human society that are sadly neglected in the Draft, except in relationship to a limited and impoverished ideological agenda.

3.4 Values

The Draft claims that Social Studies should encourage students to respect the rights of others to hold different values, while exploring and clarifying their own values. The discussion of the Draft's understanding of values (p. 17) is very brief, but appears to follow the ideas of the American Values Clarification school. The intention is that students, indeed all citizens, should seek to clarify their own values, so that they understand them better, relate them to each other, and consider how to apply them. It is important in Social Studies to understand the values of others. But the main weakness of the Values Clarification approach is that it holds that all opinions, feelings and thoughts, likes and dislikes, constitute values which should be accepted in a non-judgmental way as being worthwhile or as good as any others.

'Values Clarification' and the 'moral dilemma' system of Lawrence Kohlberg gained their appeal from the truth that in real life two or more moral values or virtues often come into conflict. Yet, although it is often very difficult to know what the right moral decision might be, there are usually several possibilities which ought to be ruled out as being morally inadmissible. There can be no serious sense of a moral dilemma in children's minds unless they are genuinely attached to prima facie moral values. In response to Values Clarification dilemmas children may conclude that if one moral value has to be discounted or even discarded, it may not matter very much if they ignore all of them. The premature and systematic presentation of difficult cases may lead to moral cynicism or nihilism.

Another danger in Values Clarification exercises is that they can be used as a propaganda tool. At times it seems as if its practitioners used a two-stage operation. In the first stage students were told that the values they had received from families and churches were merely matters of opinion from which they were entitled to diverge, since right and wrong, truth and falsity are arbitrary distinctions, and students would show independence and initiative by diverging from traditional values. Once students were emptied of these traditional values, stage two began and they were assured by the same teachers that some things were really right and some so wrong that the whole class should write to the government to protest about them. Moral relativism can be a tactic used in preparing for a corrupt moral absolutism, and this possibility must be guarded against.

Lawrence Stenhouse (1975) tried to resolve the dilemma that some shared values at least are needed to enable approaches such as Values Clarification and Lawrence Kohlberg's courses in value-free cognitive development to function. Stenhouse sought to differentiate between 'substantive' values, which teachers were not to propound, and 'procedural' values, including "freedom, toleration, fairness, respect for truth and respect for reasoning", which teachers must foster, since it was contended that "these key values are those which underpin democratic society" (Stenhouse, 1975). This is an improvement on the apparent value neutrality of the Draft. But, like the writers of the Draft, Stenhouse paid inadequate attention to the critical facts that most societies have not been democratic, that many still are not democratic, and that they therefore make no provision for students or anyone else to develop or express values and opinions contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy. Since the procedural values listed by Stenhouse emerge and flourish only in open societies, a genuine concern for these values entails a clear preference for open over closed societies, not neutrality between them.

The Draft also follows the American style Values Clarification approaches of the 1970s by combining (for example on p. 17) apparent value freedom with the injunction to "uphold social justice". To imagine that uncontested agreement exists as to what constitutes social justice is to betray a gross misunderstanding about the nature of social and political thought. As the works of such diverse people as Socrates and Confucius indicate, political discussion has, since earliest recorded times, constantly confronted the questions of what constitutes justice, what are the rights of individuals and groups, and how to arbitrate between claimed rights when, as is inevitable, they clash. Just what might be due to people, and in what their rights or needs consist, are questions that have occupied successive generations of thinkers. Philosophers from the time of Plato and Aristotle have wrestled with such questions and will continue to do so. The Draft simply assumes, however, that we already know the answer to these fundamental questions and does not, as it should, require students to address them.

Some values which the Draft extols are by no means universal, and these include concern for the welfare of others and acceptance of collective responsibilities (p. 17). Tolerance of other beliefs is a comparatively recent notion in human history and unknown in many parts of the contemporary world. That they are not commonly held may be all the more reason for educators to foster these values. Professor Stead has noted that "most of us are trapped inside our own system of beliefs," and pointed to studies in English literature as a way of opening the "windows on the wider range of human possibility" (Education Forum 1994a). The social sciences, defined and undertaken properly, can do likewise.

The Draft contradicts itself by implying that some commonly held beliefs and values should be opposed and suppressed, namely those it deems to be racist or sexist (e.g. pp. 20-21). On the one hand, traditional gender roles which, until recently, were part of the heritage of New Zealanders of British descent are discounted, and schools are called upon, at least by implication, to reject them. On the other hand, comparable traditional values and roles among New Zealanders of Maori and Pacific Island descent are treated with veneration as being a valued heritage to be sustained through the school curriculum. Teachers are enjoined (p. 19) not only to "recognise" but also to "value" whanaungatanga (traditional Maori family relationships), but they are not encouraged to value in the same way the typical nuclear family of New Zealanders of British stock.

There may be good reasons for this application of different standards for Maori and non-Maori, but none are provided or even hinted at. The wholesale application of double standards is made very easy by the absence in the Draft of any coherent principles or criteria of significance taken from any of the social science disciplines or from any known type of unified social science. The final line in the section on 'Format and Presentation of the Curriculum' perfectly illustrates this lack of coherence and of any identifiable meaning. It says, "Social action must at all times be consistent with the aims of Social Studies" (p. 18). The next time we see persons engaged in an anti-social action, our correct response is, presumably, to upbraid them with the words, 'Stop that! It is inconsistent with the aims of the Social Studies curriculum'.

One of the central political problems in every society, but especially in pluralist or multicultural societies, is how to decide what limits to place on the freedom to hold, or at least to express and act upon, different values and beliefs. The 'Paradox of Freedom' is one of the central problems in any serious study of human societies. All of us would like maximum individual freedom to say or do whatever we like, but all of us fear the consequences of the unbounded freedom of others. We cannot, and should not, seek to persuade students to acknowledge the right of all others to hold every possible value and belief. At the simplest level we cannot encourage the belief that rapists have a right to rape, or thieves to steal, or murderers to murder, since these acts seriously infringe on the morally superior rights of others.

A related point is that if we support the right of individuals to hold different values and beliefs, which the Draft properly endorses, 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 - and this is a crucial point - we must then value open or pluralist or liberal societies more highly in general than closed or authoritarian societies, including both tribal societies and modern totalitarian societies. Yet the Draft makes no such logical distinctions. In calling for respect for "the rights of others to hold different values" (p. 17), it appears to uphold equal respect for all societies and cultures, whether or not they protect the right of individuals within them to hold, and act upon, different values and beliefs.

3.5 Gender Inclusiveness

The Draft moves quickly from the unexceptionable and predictable statement that the curriculum should "include the interests, perspectives, and contributions of both women and men in programme content, resources, and the methods of teaching" to the much more problematic demand that it should "ensure that the programme has overall and equitable gender balance" (p. 20). It is hard to see what this stipulation means. However, if the intention is to bring about the same amount of attention to recorded female and male activities in present and past societies, its realisation can be achieved only by massive omissions and purges of major areas of human experience, since the overwhelming bulk of activity recorded in many fields of human endeavour has been carried out by males.

European voyages of discovery were organised and undertaken usually in the first place by adult men, not by women or children. Inventions, contributions to scientific, political and economic theory and the like, and leadership of states and peoples have been until recently overwhelmingly male provinces. Professor Stead, with reference to the draft English curriculum statement, noted that balancing the choice of school texts between male and female authors would "misrepresent literary history since ... women writers were relatively few prior to the twentieth century". He went on to observe that deploring this fact does "nothing to supply a shortfall of good pre-twentieth century texts by women" (Education Forum 1994a). The dominance of male leadership has been the case with trade unionism and with national independence movements during the twentieth century.

Some branches of Social Studies, such as family studies, ensure virtually equal concern for male and female roles, irrespective of whether societies were patriarchal, patrilineal, matriarchal or matrilineal. But it would be very limiting if Social Studies were confined largely or exclusively to those areas in which anything like equal male and female influence has prevailed.

If a serious study is undertaken of movements during the last century and a half to secure first extended and then equal rights for women, it will be found that particular attention has to be given to those western societies whose contribution to human progress is resisted so tenaciously in the Draft. It was not in Asia or the Pacific Islands that the first effective struggles for women's franchise, any more than for men's, first took place, or that significant inroads were first made by women into what had been male preserves previously. In New Zealand, a world pioneer in women's rights, it was the British New Zealanders, not the Maori, who played the decisive part in effecting changes which could flow on to Maori women and women of other ethnic origins.

The Draft goes through the formal motions of urging that "both traditional and non-traditional roles" of men and women should be valued by students as a result of their Social Studies (p. 20). However, traditional gender roles in Maori and Pacific Islander societies are to be valued without apparent reservation, whereas this does not seem to be the case for roles in western societies.

3.6 New Zealand's Bicultural Heritage and Society

On several occasions the Draft refers to the "unique" nature of Aotearoa New Zealand's bicultural heritage and multicultural society. In one sense all societies are unique, and in another sense the country in which we live or were born is unique for each of us. But the repetitive claim is made that there is something unique to New Zealand in being multicultural. This is simply wrong. India, Mexico, Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore are all multicultural societies. India (which has a greater variety of peoples and religions than any other nation on earth) has been one for a very long time indeed. The Eastern Mediterranean under the Roman Empire is a notable historical example of a multicultural society which lasted hundreds of years. Thoughtful students may, at the end of a well constructed Social Studies course, conclude that New Zealand's cultural mix is in some peculiar sense unique; but they should not assume this is so before they have read a few books on the subject. Otherwise, their assertion will merely express that parochial ignorance and ethnocentrism which the authors of the Draft appear to hold in contempt.

Among the requirements the Draft makes of schools is that they should "recognise and value the unique position of Maori in New Zealand society" (p. 19). Once again one is faced with a problem about uniqueness. To be sure the Maori are unique in New Zealand society, but so are other New Zealanders. Those of British descent are different from their ancestors or their co-descendants in Australia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Many of the Pacific Islanders in New Zealand have developed distinctive characteristics which differentiate them from their relatives in the places they have left. In any sensible study of New Zealand society such salient facts will no doubt emerge. Perhaps students should particularly value one group and the ways of life associated with it, but the justification for this should arise only from a course of study, not be postulated as a pre-condition of that study. Similarly any serious study of New Zealand history will pay due attention to the Treaty of Waitangi (which is mentioned far more often than any other treaty or, indeed, any other event in the whole of human experience), but its particular significance should emerge from study and not be proclaimed before it.

The Maori as a group have a distinctive demographic character and differ from the non-Maori population in patterns of employment, income, housing, health, family life, education, crime and delinquency, but it is important not to over-generalise or stereotype. In general, the draft curriculum places great emphasis on aspects of life in which Maori and other New Zealanders differ and little on those which they share. A thoughtful student might justifiably decide, as a result of personal experience and after a Social Studies course, that the dissimilarities between Maori and other New Zealanders are more substantial than those things they share, but such a judgment should not be built into such a course as a necessary assumption. Similarly, the determination of the curriculum writers to ignore significant differences between non-Maori groups - Fijian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian amongst others - describing them by the collective label of "pakeha", seems both an ideological decision and an attempt to pre-determine the direction of student investigation. It is both indefensible and absurd, and makes nonsense of the oft-repeated claim that the course seeks to encourage independent and critical inquiry.

Especially worrying is the requirement (p.19) that all Social Studies programmes "must include Maori perspectives, ensuring that wherever these are represented, they are accurate and in accordance with the views of te iwi kainga" (the local Maori community). Even interpreted generously, as meaning that Maori perspectives must not be misrepresented, this statement comes over as patronising. For there are wide disagreements in every ethnic group on most issues. It is insulting to those concerned to assume that any group in modern society holds monolithic opinions determined solely by the race or culture to which their members belong. Among the Maori, as among other ethnic groups, there is not just one, but a number of perspectives. To suggest otherwise is degrading of human experience.

A less generous interpretation of the requirement would be that only Maori perspectives on Maori culture are valid. Of course, social science may be aided by enlisting local resources to provide oral history or opinions on contemporary features of social life. But it cannot agree to subject its findings to the approval of every group with some interest in the matter - an interest which may involve suppressing the truth. Returned servicemen's associations should not have powers of censorship over studies into past wars. And no group, Maori or otherwise, should be given the right to prohibit others from interpreting their culture or history. It is well known that a report may be accurate and true and, at the same time, fiercely resisted by the community to which it refers.

Under the heading of 'Social Studies and the Many Cultures of New Zealand' we are told that the curriculum will "ensure that the experiences, cultural traditions, histories, and languages of all New Zealanders are recognised and valued" (p. 20). It then proceeds, rather like a synopsis of Hamlet which omits mention of the Prince of Denmark, to "acknowledge the place of the Pacific Islands communities in New Zealand society, and New Zealand's relationships with the people of Asia and the South Pacific". The language in which the document is written was, of course, neither derived from the Pacific Islands or Asia, nor is it that of the Maori.

It is, of course, entirely proper that schools should assist students from minority cultures to live in two cultures - that of their own ethnic origin and that of the majority culture of New Zealand. However, as Tate (1995) points out, difficulties arise when the response to cultural diversity is to aim for a "watered down multi-culturalism from which all the component cultures - majority and minority - lose out. He goes on to argue that the "best guarantee of strong minority cultures is the existence of a majority culture which is sure of itself, which signals that customs and traditions are things to be valued and which respects other cultures." The Draft seems likely to lead to an unbalanced understanding of some minority cultures and an almost total disregard for the western cultural and intellectual heritage which underpins the political institutions and the majority culture of New Zealand. This disregard indicates a deep uncertainty and lack of confidence in the traditions which, while not to be accepted uncritically, help to bind the community together, to ensure continuity across the generations, and to provide a frame of reference for viewing the world about us (Tate 1995).

The main political institutions of New Zealand owe nothing to those of the Pacific Islands or Asia; nor do they owe anything to traditional Maori practice. Indeed, an important reason why Pacific Islanders seek to enter New Zealand, and Asians seek to migrate here rather than go to other parts of Asia, is that they regard our political institutions as preferable to those elsewhere. New Zealand, like Australia, is attractive to many peoples precisely because of the cultural inheritance from the United Kingdom and from western civilisation as a whole. They value the law, liberty, and economic prosperity which New Zealand and Australia offer. No student would ever find this out from the materials in the Draft. Yet many know it to be true, and most of them, irrespective of racial or cultural background, will continue to act upon that knowledge. In this, as in many other areas, the obfuscation of the Draft can only have the effect of casting doubt on its credibility since it so strikingly contradicts well-known and publicly acknowledged facts.

There are also major omissions and serious understatements in the way in which the Draft deals with traditional Maori culture. Students are not likely to learn that Maori, like Europeans, were heavily destructive of fauna and flora. They, together with the dogs and rats they introduced, exterminated the moa and some twenty other species of birds, including ducks and swans (Sinclair, 1988, p. 15; Davidson, 1984, pp. 39-41 and 134-147, Salmond p. 39). Moa hunting appears to have involved extensive forest clearance by burning which not only destroyed flora and fauna but also changed soil conditions and caused erosion (Cumberland, 1981, p. 44-63) . There is no reference to the enslavement of captured women and children or the eating of defeated warriors, to the incessant cycle of violence ensured by obligations to repay real or imagined insults and injuries, or to polygamy and its lowering of women's status.

There is a case for arguing that excessive morbid interest in Maori cannibalism was once shown by Europeans, especially after the French captain Marion du Fresne was killed and eaten by Te Koroa men in 1772 and after the British crew of the Boyd at Whangaroa suffered the same fate in 1809. But that is no reason for the even grosser perversion of the truth in failing even to mention cannibalism. The reflections of James Cook and Joseph Banks indicate the range of European responses to Maori cannibalism and, more generally, how people can perceive events quite differently. On the one hand, Banks could not for a long time accept the implications of evidence of the practice, but was overwhelmed with horror once he was compelled to accept its truth. On the other hand, Cook accepted the reality in a very matter-of-fact way as being just another example of the variations in human beliefs and customs (Salmond, 1991, pp. 179, 228, and 243-4).

Recent information about the history of cannibalism among the Maori makes the subject one of even greater general historical interest. One view that has been advanced is that evidence of cannibalism begins to appear in horticultural regions about AD 1500 (Salmond, 1991, p. 39). From that period increasing population pressures and competition for resources appears to have led to sharper political conflicts between chiefs and more intensive warfare which may have contributed to the resort to cannibalism as well as to the construction of stronger fortifications. What does seem to be generally accepted is that by the 1750s cannibalism had become a significant part of Maori custom and religion (Best, 1927, p. 142, 144, 155 and 164, Sinclair p. 45).

The arrival of Europeans and their weapons intensified the ferocity of inter-tribal wars among the Maori. The campaigns of the Ngapuhi chief, Hongi Hika, were on an unprecedented scale. He led two thousand Northland warriors as far south as Kawhia and Rotorua, forcing the Ngati Toa of Kawhia and sections of Te Ati and the southern Waikato southwards where, in their turn, they came into bloody conflicts with the tribes in Taranaki, Hauraki and the South Island. Massive population losses through warfare and introduced diseases seem to have been among the reasons why many Maori turned to the Christian missionaries for help. Similarly these circumstances - and not just the widespread dislocation and resentment arising out of the improvident alienation of their land - appear to have contributed to the view among many Maori that British sovereignty would be preferable to a continuation of the existing level of disorder . The story is a tragic one, but its true significance is lost if distortions of the historic record are made to safeguard the susceptibilities and political interests of any racial or ideological grouping.

The Treaty of Waitangi which, as noted earlier, is given so much prominence in the Draft, should also be considered objectively and in the light of the historical record. The reference to the partnership between "Tangata Whenua and Pakeha" in the context of the Treaty (p. 11) seems calculated to utilise the past to reform the present and, whatever else it does, will not introduce students to the "task of history which is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must be given full respect in its own right" (Elton 1967 cited by Openshaw et al. 1993). Study of, and judgment on, the inability through changed circumstances or culpable unwillingness to carry out this Treaty and later agreements between the Crown and Maori should be even-handed, and not concentrate on breaches on one side only.

If the Draft provided wider historical knowledge, rather than a partisan selection of isolated fragments of the past, the fragile nature of all treaties might be better understood by students. If students study the British and New Zealand constitutions adequately, they will understand that these are based on the sovereignty of Parliament, and that it is very difficult for any law or agreement to bind later Parliaments. Students should be made aware of the problems which would emerge if Parliaments and the people they represent were bound permanently by past laws and agreements.

One of the central problems concerning the rule of law is the relationship between rights established or sanctioned by existing laws and agreements and the rights of elected bodies or courts of law to make new dispositions in the light of changed circumstances. The Treaty of Waitangi and its subsequent history should be an excellent study in depth for New Zealand students, given the provision of a proper context and a critical and open-minded approach. A predetermined judgment is not conducive to the enhancement of students' understanding; rather it will encourage the adoption of a uni-dimensional approach or interpretation, and a distortion of history.

SECTION 4 TEACHING AND LEARNING
IN THE DRAFT CURRICULUM

4.1 Concepts and Generalisations

The failure of the authors of the Draft to identify the sorts of questions and hypotheses which are potentially most productive in the study of society is merely one example of a wider inadequacy. The Draft refers to "building concepts, and formulating generalisations" (p. 15), but there is little examination of what might be entailed in undertaking this kind of work in the social sciences. It does not seem to be understood that some of the conclusions one can draw from the social sciences are much more similar to those of proverbial wisdom than to the physical sciences or mathematics, in which establishing generalisations is of central importance.

From proverbial wisdom we learn that sometimes many hands make light work while at other times too many cooks spoil the broth, and that sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder while at other times it is a matter of out of sight and out of mind. Similarly, we learn from Social Studies that sometimes (for example in the period prior to 1914) engaging in an arms race may have contributed to the onset of war, that sometimes (for example before 1939) failure to engage in an arms race in which another state is already running fast may have contributed to the onset of war, while at yet other times (for example in the 1947-1989 period) engaging in an arms race may have contributed to the prevention of war. Each of these conclusions is contestable, but the point is that there are rarely unequivocal lessons from history.

Social knowledge does not make us feel certain about what we ought to do, but may provide insights into different possibilities. It enables us to ponder our situation and to compare it with those of other places or other times with a view to gaining pertinent and instructive perspectives.

4.2 Students' Existing Experience

The Draft writers adopt the view, still fashionable among many educators, that "new content and ideas" should be "linked to the varied experiences of students" (p. 18). This is only a half truth and its limitations should be clearly understood. What is true is that the new educational experience should be capable of being related by students to their existing structure of experience and understanding. That is, of course, one of Piaget's first principles in child development. What is not true is that new content and ideas need to be closely related to the actual social and cultural conditions of students' lives. If that were the case, there would be little possibility of overcoming educational disadvantage, and all of us would be prisoners in a closely-meshed cultural cage. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Very often the traditional lore of children concerns realms of the imagination which bear little relationship to their actual conditions of life. The cinema and television have built on the historical legacy of the fairy story and children happily follow the adventures of cowboys, even if they have never sat on a horse, or of spacemen, even if they have never been in an aircraft. The phenomenal success in western countries of the TV serial Monkey, the story of a Buddhist monk and three magic animals on a pilgrimage from China to India, shows that such influences are by no means unidirectional.

Nor should Social Studies educators be discouraged unduly because some aspects of social and political structures are of interest to adults rather than children, and because in some cases not much can be done to make them any more interesting. Encouragement should be drawn from the truth that many basic political and social issues ultimately relate to concerns and sentiments shared by children and are implicit in many stories which they read or view.

From their very early years children understand the dangers as well as the attractions of absolute freedom, and can grasp the paradox of freedom and the problem of quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Even more than adults, children seek safety and security, yet they also know that for some of them the greatest dangers lie in the very sources to which they look most for protection and care. One of the reasons why many children respond to fairy tales such as Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel, to Aesop's fables, to modern stories such as Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' and to films such as Star Wars or Dr Who, is that these invoke basic human concerns about legitimate authority and illegitimate power, courage and cowardice, and loyalty and betrayal. The Draft neglects the power of story in Social Studies.

In general the Draft severely underestimates the capacity of students to make use of vicarious experience. Instead, there is a fusion of the 'expanding circles' ideas of the Social Studies curriculum (starting from the home and the child's immediate experience and working out from there) along with a repeated refrain about the uniqueness of New Zealand society. A limiting 'presentism' often seems to be implied by this. Teachers are to ensure that students " ... discuss, compare, and consider the ideas they meet in relation to their own situations" (p. 21). But in order to gain significant benefit from studying a past society or a contemporary society in another part of the world, students need to get away for some time from their habitual assumptions: not everything has to be related to their everyday experience.

The best history and Social Studies courses seek to provide students with a broad perspective which might enable them to place their own society in historical time and as one of a number of distinctive political, social or economic systems in the contemporary world.

4.3 Inquiry and Discovery

The Draft abounds with fashionable terms about child-centred learning, such as the notion that "students accept responsibility for their own learning" (p. 18). What can it mean for students to accept this responsibility? It is certainly true that it is only the individual student who can make a decision to work in a serious and responsible way, although some of the other progressive phrases used in the Draft such as that "the learning styles of individual students vary" (p. 18) and that teachers must "cater for the range of learning styles of their students", suggest that individual students may lack this capacity. What is not true, however, is that only the students have responsibility. What Social Studies teachers, like all other teachers, must decide and be able to explain rationally and clearly to parents and public is what they are contributing to students' learning and what they are expecting students to do for themselves.

The claim is made that "There are two learning approaches which are particularly appropriate in Social Studies" (p. 18). These are said to be co-operative learning and inquiry learning. One of the fears that this discussion raises is that the curriculum is seeking to undermine teacher professionalism and dictate their teaching methods. That this is not the intention should be made clear. But what of the methods indicated? Social Studies is claimed to be "ideally suited to encourage the development of co-operative learning skills" because of "its focus on people" (p. 18). Why this should be so more than in physics or chemistry or in any of the separate social sciences is not further explained, nor is reference made to any evidence of the superior achievement in Social Studies of students engaged in 'co-operative learning'. We are told, in addition, that "positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, collaborative skills and group reflection, are always planned for and incorporated into group activities" (p. 18). Behind the smokescreen of edubabble, this sounds very much like a commercial for the superiority of new and improved brand Y over brand X but, once again, no evidence is forthcoming.

The claims for 'Inquiry learning' are also overstated. This type of learning is said to involve students "taking responsibility for their own learning, developing and testing hypotheses, gathering evidence for themselves, forming conclusions, acting on their conclusions, and evaluating their learning " (p. 19). This appears to skirt around the considerable literature about just which aspects of a subject might best be studied by students, either individually or in groups, carrying out independent inquiries, and which by students with teacher guidance, exposition and interpretation.

4.4 The Concept of Skills

The Draft could be interpreted as suggesting a common, but widely criticised, tendency to categorise all modes of learning, including critical thinking, creativity and problem solving, as 'skills' (Barrow, 1990, pp. 88-9)). In its usual basic sense a skill implies a specific capacity which can be perfected through specific practice and exercise, such as juggling, throwing or dribbling a ball, eye-contact (or its deliberate avoidance in some cultures) in conversation, 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 the rest, but referring to them as skills may be extremely misleading. At the very least, if the word 'skills' is to be used in a very wide sense, then skills of a mechanical type which can be achieved by practice need to be differentiated from others which are developed in very different ways.

The development of critical thinking implies thinking of some quality and requires sustained periods of reasoning that conforms to rules of logic and standards of excellence. The danger inherent in the Draft's approach is that it could be interpreted as undermining the need for the systematic study of structured knowledge within the disciplines of the social sciences. A developed capacity for critical thought in economics, for example, does not make one critically thoughtful as a historian or a literary critic. It is true that formal logic introduces all who study it to general principles, such as the valid form of the syllogism, the distinction between validity and truth, the law of the excluded middle, and so on. It is also true that critical thinkers have to be able to follow these and similar rules and principles. It is not necessary, however, to be able to give the technical name to a rule of logic in order to recognise it or to apply it in appropriate cases.

What is necessary for the application of logic is appropriate understanding of a given discipline, not prior study of formal logic, although there may be a case for such a course of study in secondary schools. One cannot display critical thought in an area one does not understand. What is needed for the social sciences is not so much teaching critical thinking per se as educating people to think critically about history, economics, sociology, and the like. To advance in critical thought in the social sciences, it is vital for students to gain a wide, systematic and structured knowledge of the main ways in which key aspects of human life have been organised in societies of different kinds. Later they should be introduced to the main theoretical interpretations offered by significant thinkers about these different modes of human organisation - how and why, for example, one replaced another, and what their present relationships may be to each other.

The approach advocated is, in essence, what is suggested later in this submission (Section 6 and Appendix A) in respect of key aspects of social life such as invention and control over nature, distinctive modes of reasoning and conceptualising the world, expansions of and restrictions on human freedom, changes in individual and group equalities and inequalities, and differing ways to resolve problems affecting human safety and security. For all students, considerable thought about a large number of key situations, past and present, is a precondition for genuine critical or creative thought in the social sciences.

Another crucial shortcoming of the Draft is that it offers no advice to teachers as to how students' suggestions or 'hypotheses' should be evaluated. It seems to have a cavalier disregard for systematic, organised content, along with any criterion of success or failure. Such a disregard is very rarely allowed to proceed too far in mathematics and the sciences, and its prevalence in the social sciences is an important reason why they are now held in such low esteem in many western educational systems.

Further, the Draft provides no guidance as to what it means by creativity in Social Studies. In the most banal sense almost anything that a child or adult creates may be described as being the result of creative activity. But, in any serious sense, creativity and imagination are related to knowledge and understanding, and are not merely routine and repetitive, or fanciful or whimsical. Creativity, like critical thought, is not generic but related to particular activities and practices: a Mozart is rarely a creative painter, or a Rembrandt a creative poet or musician. Certainly, there are multi-talented people, 'Renaissance' people of the Leonardo type, but they, too, have first to be seriously initiated into each of the different fields in which their talents could be exercised. Their talents did not arise from an automatic transfer of creativity from one field to another, let alone arise ex nihilo.

The Draft often reads as though its authors believe that most students are likely to be creative in a significant, non-banal sense. But once we define a creative person as being one who intentionally and with some consistency produces work of originality and intrinsic value in a significant field, we are less likely to agree. If we judge almost everybody as 'creative', how can we identify those who really do deserve that description? If we are serious in encouraging as many students as possible to move as far along the critical and creative path in the social sciences as we can, we shall not provide them with anything resembling the Draft, despite its frequent claims to be aiming at fostering 'critical thinking skills' and 'creative thinking skills' (for example at pp. 11, 21 and 27).

SECTION 5 INADEQUACIES IN THE
FIVE LEARNING STRANDS

The five so-called learning 'strands' do not function effectively as organising structures, and are poor substitutes for the systematic bodies of knowledge, or 'subjects', they have replaced. The levels are only very loosely related to the conceptual requirements of the 'sample learning contexts and settings' offered. Lack of internal logical structure means that the strands would not satisfy a simple 'scatter test'. In other words, if the individual items in each strand were thrown into the air it would make little difference how they came down since they are not linked within a coherent sequence.

While it is accepted that the sample learning contexts, settings and activities are offered as examples only, the choice seems to reflect a distinct political agenda and a propagandising approach which should be anathema to anyone seriously concerned with education.

Several of the strands seem to be influenced partly by the 'child-centred' approach of 'expanding circles' (family, district, country, world), popular in the United States of America during the 1950s, and partly by an interest in the exotic and unfamiliar such as Antarctica, Nepal, Australian Aborigines (who feature much more than the majority Australian population) or Peru. The Draft finds it difficult, however, to leave the immediate and familiar for very long, whilst the exotics are weakly integrated into any wider geographical or cultural context. To avoid an excessively lengthy critique, only two strands are discussed below. They are Place and Environment and Time, Continuity, and Change at levels 1, 2, 7 and 8.

5.1 The Place and Environment Strand

This strand may have been intended to enable students to understand geography, a basic precondition of any informed judgments on environmental issues. The sample learning contexts and settings at Level 1 generally relate to experiences which most students of the relevant age will have had outside school. The Level 1 and 2 contexts and settings are:

Level 1 Level 2
going on holiday to the beach having a knowledge of turangawaewae
staying at a camping ground relating to your birthplace
visiting relatives living in a place over a length of time
holidays overseas being with family and friends
living near a river or beach fishing in the Cook Islands
living near a mountain gathering kaimoana
living in the bush shopping at supermarkets
using local recreational facilities hunting in the bush
going to the markets in Avarua (Rarotonga) as a person adjusting to retirement
going to school as a teenager
using the playground in your local area as a parent
going onto a marae as a kaumatua or kuia
belonging to a kohanga reo the number of persons living in a house
living in your local neighbourhood living in the South Island high country
belonging to an area or region living in Singapore
gaining a national identity seasonal changes in population at a ski resort or beach
living in mountainous Nepal
working in Antarctica
hunting for food in a desert place
living on an atoll in the Tokelau Islands

The suggested learning activities at level 1 include:

• Students collect photographs and souvenirs of holiday places overseas, from various sources. They suggest various reasons why people visit these places, identify one they would like to visit, and explain why.
  
• In groups, students visit a local river and observe how people use the river and how the river influences the activities of people.

During such activities, we are told, there could be assessment of students' ability "to combine ideas in a creative way to show themselves in a special place" and "to collect information about holiday places overseas, make decisions, and give reasons" (p. 73). These activities are claimed to contribute to 'Creative Thinking Skills', 'Social and Co-operative Skills' or 'Critical Thinking Skills'.

Sample learning activities for Level 2 include:

• Students share ideas in groups and make a chart to identify things they like and dislike about the local area.
  
• Students plan questions, and ask them, to gain information about people's perceptions of the local area.
• Students examine pictures and videos of the natural features of an area in Nepal and suggest how these features may affect the way of life of the people living there.

These activities are said to contribute to 'Creative Thinking and Social and Co-operative Skills' and 'Critical Thinking and Values Exploration Skills'.

A few general features of these sample learning contexts and settings and of the related sample learning objectives can be identified clearly. They include:

• an inability or unwillingness to distinguish between activities which are based on simple observation, such as staying at a camping ground, visiting relatives, gathering kaimoana or shopping at supermarkets, and those requiring far deeper understanding, even at an elementary level, such as gaining a national identity and relating to your birthplace. The key point here is that the simple inquiry and discovery approach which may be appropriate for student responses to the first type of activity is completely inadequate for the second type;
  
  
• a lack of any sense of the relationship between geographical influences, given that this strand is intended among other things to provide adequate geographical knowledge, and historical and other cultural influences on a place or way of life. For example, the mountain scenery in Nepal has not changed much over the last century, but the way of life of the Nepalese has changed very significantly;
• 
  a deep aversion to any straightforward provision of relevant information to students. Provisions of 'facts' and 'information' are, perhaps, seen as evils connected with a dreadful past of rote learning from which enlightened thinkers have emancipated the New Zealand educational system;
  
  
• the failure in references to assessment to identify any grounds on which students' conclusions, for example about why some places are more popular for holidays than others, are to be judged as sound and accurate, or their questions to the public about their 'perceptions of the local area' are to be considered appropriate ones or to have been interpreted accurately;
  
  
• the lack of any sense of relationship between one activity and another in the samples; and
  
  
• the improbability that Levels 1 and 2 will lay the foundation for systematic geographical knowledge.

These weaknesses continue throughout all the Levels in the strand. For example, at Levels 7 and 8 (pp. 84-87) the sample learning contexts and settings are:

Level 7 Level 8
reducing school bus services issues arising from the Pacific Forum
rationalising health services implementing recommendations from the Earth Summit
opening of the Channel Tunnel inEurope environmental policies in political manifestos
building bridges in Nepal thinking globally, acting locally
reducing airlinks within the PacificIslands resolving claims arising from the Treaty of Waitangi
Air services in Australia religious beliefs in Kashmir
the sphere of influence of the localdairy and supermarket the Kanaks' movement towards self -determination
iwi boundaries the break-up of Yugoslavia
being part of Oceania resources in Kuwait
central and outlying parts of theCook Islands energy development in New Zealand
moving between villages, towns andcities in China uranium mining in Australia
experiencing rural and urban livingin New Zealand land development in Brazil
travelling from a village communityto Port Moresby disposing of nuclear wastes
receiving supplies on the ChathamIslands reducing ozone depletions
schooling in the Australian outback preventing acid rain
health care in a mountain areaoverseas slowing the rate of global warming
Andean communities
air and shipping links in the PacificIslands

Related learning activities at Level 7 include:

• Students investigate how changes to local bus services have affected accessibility to schools, identifying the implications of this for students and their families and preparing recommendations for any improvement needed.
  
  
• Students devise and apply a theory about the relationship between location, distance, and accessibility to air and shipping contacts, for selected Pacific Islands .

At Level 8, related sample learning activities include:

• In groups, students use a range of technologies to research and report on the factors which led to the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait conflict, and to determine the implications of the conflict for people and their environment .
  
  
• Students prepare for and take part in a debate about issues related to acid rain, and possible solutions to the problem of acid rain.

Again, a few general features of these sample learning contexts and settings and of the related sample learning activities can be identified clearly. They include:

• an ongoing failure to equip students with the basic geographical knowledge required to solve relatively simple problems, let alone adjudicate on issues strongly contested among experts such as rates of global warming, depletion of ozone layers, or the comparative environmental advantages of nuclear and alternative sources of energy;
• the ongoing lack of structural relationships between suggested activities; and
• some of the items seem to represent one particular side of a complex issue about which there might be several legitimate points of view. For example, there is reference to Kanak wishes for self-determination, but none to the desire of a very large part of the population of New Caledonia for ongoing citizenship in the French Republic.

None of the sample learning contexts and settings contains any reference to basic geographical terms and concepts 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 massive omissions seem strange in the light of emphasis elsewhere on the importance of skills.

Many of the missing concepts would, if studied in a serious way, require practice in skills such as latitude and longitude work, interpreting contours, relating one scale of map to another, and so on. Of course, a well qualified teacher may supply these deficiencies when facilitating students' inquiry and discovery about 'living here' or 'visiting there'. We are told that students will "mark on a map their favourite shops and recreational places in the local area" (Level 1), so that some mapping skills are to be picked up in some way. Later, at Level 7, students will "plot the location of dairies and supermarkets on a map of the local area".

There are frequent references to Antarctica and other regions with highly distinctive physical features, but no indication of how or when students will be helped to understand their structures geographically or geologically. That is all there is of a specifically geographical character. Students following this Draft bid fair to being more ignorant geographically than any generation in New Zealand since compulsory education began. Yet they have time to draw cartoons, discuss endlessly, and make decisions about the most complex environmental problems of the day. Overall, there are no grounds for believing that this strand constitutes a sensible or defensible way of organising geographical knowledge and promoting geographical understanding within an inter-disciplinary or integrated syllabus for Social Studies or social sciences. Geography cannot be learnt in this way.

5.2 The Time, Continuity, and Change Strand

Level 1 seems to start on the 'concentric circles basis', which means in terms of time moving backwards from the present, although not in any systematic way. It certainly starts with the here-and-now.

The Level 1 and 2 sample learning contexts and settings are:

Level 1	Level 2
hearing grandparents' memories	providing light and warmth in the home
starting school	women, men, and children using technology
sharing anniversaries	cooking and sharing food
preparing for a special family event	how knowledge about food-gathering was passed on in nomadic times
moving to a new place	girls and boys in the past
changes in the family	learning a trade in medieval times
planning for the future	people in pakiwaitara or pu waitara
games played in the Pacific	inventors
roles of women, men, and childrenin ceremonies	pioneer women
Chinese New Year	evacuation of European children during the Second World War
gathering the harvest	refugees from civil war in Africa, Asia or Europe
Ramadan	Egyptian hieroglyphics
Christmas	pictures of the past which tell a story
myths and legends of the TangataWhenua	Aboriginal Dream-time
myths and legends of the Pacific,Asia, and Europe	Maori carvings
developing a new skills	clothing for war in European, Asian, and Pacific settings
saving for a special occasion	clothing in Victorian England
finding ways to help others	clothing which expresses cultural identity through time
coping with a personal challenge	nomadic groups in Africa
Australian Aborigines high country life in New Zealand castles in Europe pyramids in Egypt pataka in New Zealand temples in Asia

 

Level 1 sample learning activities suggested include:

• Students listen to an older person's past memories and ask questions, to gather information about people's lives in the past.
  
  
• Working in groups, students compare pictures of events in their family lives and discuss the significance of these events.

Both of these activities are said to contribute to critical thinking skills, but whether students will be made aware of some of the pitfalls of oral history or encouraged to challenge any accounts they are given is not stated. Nor is it clear what will constitute adequate understanding by students of various events reflected in pictures or photographs.

Sample learning activities provided to hone critical thinking skills in Level 2 (p. 93) include:

• Students use information from a variety of sources to construct a model illustrating ways a group of people who lived long ago cooked food.
  
  
• Students participate in a shared book experience about girls and boys learning a trade in medieval times. In a group they discuss the main ideas and present these in a role play.

Critical comments of two general types must be made on both the fundamentals and several particulars of this approach. First, at both these Levels there is mere randomness in selection of possibly suitable material, without any interconnecting rationale whatsoever being apparent. It is possible and defensible, for example, although by no means necessarily the best approach, to organise much of students' introduction to the human past on a basis of 'lines of development'. This means that some significant themes are chosen, such as transport and communications, clothing or habitations, which are used to open up understanding of related aspects of particular ways of life. This seems to have been in the minds of the Draft's authors when they considered how knowledge about food-gathering was passed on in nomadic communities, girls and boys learning in the past, and learning a trade in medieval times. Yet this is not followed in any systematic or sequential way.

Second, in addition to the more general points made earlier about critical skills, one must ask what particular critical skills are involved in constructing a model illustrating ways a group of people who lived long ago cooked food? How does the phrase 'information from a variety of sources' add to the matter? How many teachers, let alone students, will have the slightest relevant archaeological knowledge on specific cooking equipment or processes? Why not just say that the children will make an entirely general all-purpose model of a group of people cooking food? There is even greater pretentiousness in the phrase that students "participate in a shared book experience about girls and boys learning a trade in medieval times. In a group they discuss the main ideas and present these in a role play" (p. 93). A series of questions thus arise. For example, will any authentic sources about medieval trades and apprenticeship be used? How many names of, let alone any specific knowledge about, medieval trades (tanners, fullers, drapers, masons, smiths and wrights of many varieties, and so on) will be typically acquired? How many of these trades is it thought were open to girls as well as boys? What is the use of role plays if students know nothing in any depth about the roles and their historical context? It is idle to suppose that anything more than the merely banal could come from role playing based on lack of appropriate knowledge.

When we go on to Levels 7 and 8 we find the following sample learning contexts and settings:

Level 7 Level 8
nuclear issues in the Pacific differing cultural perspectives of a history (for example, the history of the New Zealand Wars, the American Revolution or the American Civil War
resource exploitation issues inNauru and the Amazon rain forest the suffrage movement from different gender perspectives
law and order issues revisionist histories of major political or social movements
changing family structures in NewZealand ways of widening historical records (for example, oral history and social history)
population pressures in Asiansettings perceptions of gender roles within histories
military regimes in Africa and SouthAmerica women in politics
civil disobedience in the USA in thenineteen sixties children's rights
activities of aid agencies education and skills
trade embargoes Maori politics
military invasions children's work and leisure activities
family histories using technology
histories of children who lived inVictorian England international policies and decisions
community histories in NewZealand environmental issues
whakapapa famine
women's histories conflict
changing systems of representationin New Zealand and Fiji political change
development of the Westminsterparliamentary system
influence of political lobby groups

Suggested sample learning activities at Level 7, which are said to contribute to Social and Co-operative Skills and Creative Thinking Skills, include:

• Working as a group, students investigate a controversial issue and, through a method of their own choice, they present the history of the issue and ways people have responded to it.
  
  
• Students create and facilitate a simulation game, with a group of students, to demonstrate an understanding of the impact of an invasion on the lives of people.

Activities said to contribute to Communication Skills include:

• Using information technology, students design and produce a pamphlet on the history of a political lobby group and its impact on people and government.
  
  
• Students interview a person who is involved in collating a local history. They present a report that outlines the reasons for that person's involvement and the challenges encountered in the project.

Level 8 sample learning activities, said to contribute to Critical Thinking Skills, include:

• Students investigate a global problem. In a report they suggest and examine possible solutions to the problem.
  
  
• Students interview a person about the ways that person has changed his or her interpretation of an event in the past, seeking an explanation for this change.

Activities said to contribute to Creative Thinking Skills include:

• Students evaluate the possible long-term positive and negative impacts of technologies currently used in people's daily lives, and plan a campaign to promote constructive decision-making about the use of technologies in the future.
  
  
• Using both primary and secondary sources, students research a history of children's work and leisure activities, and present a report outlining the main issues related to researching histories of children.

It would be wise to learn to walk before running too far. In particular it is essential to provide an adequate knowledge of geography, history, economics and, for some topics, the natural sciences before some of these topics could be adequately dealt with. Some of the individual items, especially at level 7, would provide an excellent basis for in-depth development, but it is quite unclear how this is to be achieved.

It is difficult to believe that this strand's strange basket of items could be considered to be a defensible basis for the major component of a Social Studies curriculum intended to introduce students to some coherent view of the human past. One strange anomaly given the title of the strand - Time, Continuity, and Change - is that it is very unlikely to provide students with any sense of chronology, let alone inform them that very different dating systems have been invented in different cultures.

For all the talk about skills, there is no systematic development of skills in drawing time lines and other types of chart which would help to strengthen a sense of chronology and an understanding of the comparative development of societies. Similar weaknesses are found in the other three learning strands which are not considered in any detail in this submission.

SECTION 6 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 Conclusions

It is no doubt the case that there are Social Studies teachers who have an extensive knowledge of the relevant social sciences and a deep understanding of the concepts and ways of thinking that need to be taught. They will for the time being continue on their present course and are unlikely to be deflected significantly by a curriculum such as is proposed in the Draft. Even exceptional teachers, however, may not be able to disregard the new curriculum when finalised. All teachers of Forms 5 to 7 face the dismal prospect of having to deliver to Unit Standards based on the achievement objectives set out in the new curriculum statements in line with the government's proposals for the development of the National Qualifications Framework .

The Draft poses an even more substantial and particular threat to weak and inexperienced teachers who understandably look to a curriculum statement for solid support and guidance. They may see the Draft as being the answer to their needs but they will be mistaken - it provides neither a prop nor real direction. The seductive smorgasbord of interesting topics, activities, discussion, and group interactions will easily fill such time as is provided for Social Studies, but will not satisfy or arouse intellectual curiosity. Abundance of passion about any and every issue of the day may substitute for depth of knowledge and the rigours of the traditional subject disciplines, but offers no answers to the deep questions facing humanity now and in the future. Student performance will be easily assessed by reference to the less rigorous strictures of political correctness and not by the hard task of examining the extent of knowledge gained and disciplined, intelligent interaction with it.

In fact, the Draft requires very little in the way of specialist knowledge among teachers. The main requirement of the teacher is to be able to guide student discussion and other types of inquiry and discovery. It does not appear to matter very much what conclusions are reached in discussion, provided that some non-assessable clarification of values has taken place, or something results from inquiry and discovery. Since each student could have a unique and non-commensurate set of interests, there is no determinate substantive knowledge which could reasonably be required of the teacher.

The approach of the authors of this Draft to Social Studies contrasts strongly with the usual approach to other subjects such as reading and writing, mathematics and sciences. Most educators in these other subjects concede the possibility of there being right and wrong answers, or at least that some answers are more accurate than others. Thus generalist primary school teachers, and certainly the more specialist secondary school teachers, are still expected to have acquired some definite knowledge. One unfortunate effect of the Draft may be to erode the time provided in teacher education to produce teachers with significant substantive knowledge in history, geography, economics or any other discipline-based social science.

It will be abundantly clear from the analysis in this submission that the Draft cannot be rescued by some minor surgical procedures - or even by major ones. The patient's condition is terminal, and threatens the educational health of all but the most resistant. A speedy demise is what must be hoped for. Existing syllabuses should continue until the exercise has been carried out again in a more satisfactory, more rigorous, way.

A basic assumption in the preparation of the Draft, and one that needs to be re-examined, is that Social Studies should continue to be taught as a single, integrated subject. The issue is complicated by the fact that Framework and the Draft appear to have quite different views about what constitutes Social Studies. Framework (p. 14) and the Draft (p. 8) list Social Studies along with history, geography and economics as falling within the social sciences essential learning area. However, Framework gives little guidance as to the structure of the subject, and seems to suggest that it consists of what is not within one of the three disciplines listed and includes global issues, values clarification, social justice and the welfare of others, and environmental issues. Herein lies much of the problem with Framework's conception of Social Studies: it has no intellectual coherence, is defined by exclusion, and results in, to use a description commonly used by teachers, a 'ragbag' of issues which schools think should be covered somewhere but which have no clear place within the traditional subject areas.

The Draft, however, and in contradistinction to Framework, appears to take the place of history, geography and economics for students from J1 to Form 4 for whom it will, apparently, be compulsory. Moreover the Draft (pp. 7-8) is intended to provide a basis ("sufficient background") for students studying these "specialist social science subjects" from Form 5. Thus it is not wholly surprising that the Draft presents considerable confusion about what it sees as the real nature of Social Studies.

Even with a much improved thematic structure, the study of geography in the secondary years would be more effective if separate. The logical sequence for learning about human as well as physical geography is very different from that for history and, as the Draft provides eloquent testimony, it is extremely difficult to combine them in a single structure without losing more than is gained. It is unlikely that, even reformed and improved, a unified Social Studies curriculum can be devised which would be as valuable as two history and geography syllabuses of average competence. For these and other reasons, delivering the social sciences through separate subjects is much to be preferred.

The authors of the Draft were challenged (Irwin, 1994b) to establish the criteria by which the components of a Social Studies curriculum should be selected in order to provide the balance and coherence which, as Framework rightly notes (p. 3), are very important to education at the school level. They have evidently not taken up this challenge. If an integrated Social Studies curriculum is an unalterable ministerial decision, it is vital that the challenge is taken up and such criteria are established and publicised as soon as possible. This would result in a very different curriculum structure to that employed in the Draft, and one which would provide intellectual coherence and challenge, less scope for ideological capture, and attraction for a wide range of students including some of the most able.

The development of a new curriculum is a complex task and should be approached with caution. It should be based as far as possible on what has been tried and proved over a period of years to have been successful. This stipulation adds weight to the argument for reversion to the separate disciplines of history, geography and economics which meet this test. However, in the event that it is decided to proceed with an integrated Social Studies curriculum, consideration should be given to the suggestions provided in two Appendices on types of content almost completely absent from the Draft and which might be included. In Appendix A an alternative form of 'strands' is suggested, in which are linked five great perennial themes:

(i) the level of human technological control over nature and the effect of this on material existence and economic organisation;

(ii) the main distinctive forms of reasoning and conceptualising about the world and the place of humanity in it;

(iii) freedom or lack of it;

(iv) equality or its absence; and

(v) safety and security: how all societies protect themselves from internal disorder and external threats.

The Appendix suggests how such a curriculum might be fleshed out. A second Appendix - Appendix B - outlines some salient features of New Zealand's cultural heritage from Europe and Britain - matters almost entirely missing from the Draft.

With attention to the concerns expressed in this submission and the suggestions in Appendices A and B, it should be possible to develop a unified Social Studies curriculum of a defensible character. However, separate geography courses would be needed at all levels of schooling as it would prove impossible to integrate this subject satisfactorily with the other subjects. Senior Secondary students should have a choice between a unified Social Studies curriculum and separate History, Geography and Economics curricula.

If the alternative approach to the development of a Social Studies curriculum outlined in this submission were adopted, a thorough overhaul of teacher education would be required. The future generalist primary school teacher would be required to have a more extensive historical and geographical knowledge than at present. If an integrated or inter-disciplinary Social Studies curriculum of a reformed character were to be retained in secondary schools, its future teachers would be required to demonstrate a more extensive knowledge of economics and sociology, as well as of history and geography. Much better still would be to attract teachers who had specialist knowledge in a particular subject - history, geography, economics or sociology - combined with a good general understanding in one or more of the other social sciences. They would also need to demonstrate a willingness to share specialist knowledge with appropriate colleagues to ensure fruitful ongoing cross-fertilisation across a discipline-based curriculum. It is understood that the lack of such cooperation between discipline-based teachers in secondary schools has been one reason for the extension there of primary school type Social Studies, with generally dismal effects for secondary school students.

It should also be noted that some other experiences with cross-curricular approaches to curriculum delivery have not been encouraging. The Education Forum's submission on the draft technology curriculum statement noted that the broad, cross-curricular approaches to technology education in England and Wales led to low levels of achievement and poorly motivated students (Education Forum 1994b, Section 8). As a consequence of low achievement, the recent trend in England and Wales has been towards an increasingly sharper focus in technology to improve the standards. The Education Forum's comment that "Without some clear idea of how technology is to fit in, it may have a 'now-you-see-it, now-you-don't' quality, and while apparently taught and assessed it may be difficult to identify the substance" might equally apply to an integrated approach to the social sciences.

6.2 Recommendations

The conclusions of this submission lead to the following recommendations:

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

2 separate history, geography and economics curricula should be developed in a way that would allow incorporation of some wider issues of relevance to New Zealand e.g. the development of parliamentary democracy within history;

3 if, however, some form of integrated curriculum is to be made mandatory:

- a complete redrafting of the Social Studies curriculum should be undertaken. The task should be undertaken by a small group of people who share the concern expressed in this submission to rescue Social Studies from disintegration into social therapy, and who seek to inject a high degree of intellectual rigour and coherence into the curriculum based on a solid core of relevant knowledge and skills;

- the historical and contemporary political components should be strengthened, and topics categorised more rigorously (Appendices A and B provide possible lines of development);

- a separate geography course should still be provided as it would prove to be impossible to satisfactorily combine this subject with the other subjects;

- senior secondary students should have a choice between an integrated Social Studies curriculum and separate history, geography and economics curricula.

4 if there is to be an integrated primary school Social Studies curriculum, all teacher trainees should receive a strong grounding in history and geography; and

5 if there is to be an integrated secondary school Social Studies curriculum, well-informed specialist teachers in history, economics and sociology will be needed (and in geography if this subject is not to be given separate treatment) to ensure that adequate disciplinary knowledge is built into integrated teaching. Such graduates should possess one of the social science disciplines to a significant level and have at least a basic knowledge in each of the other disciplines before they are allowed to teach an integrated Social Studies curriculum.

APPENDIX A

An Alternative 'Strands' Approach

Criteria of Significance

A rational curriculum in Social Studies must be based on a clearly stated and defensible view of what is most important in human societies. This is a highly contestable question, but the criteria of significance offered here for an alternative approach are at least explicit and a justification, necessarily brief, is offered for them. By contrast the strands in the Draft provide no rationale or coherence and no intellectual basis has been offered for their selection.

Five criteria of significance are proposed. They are changes in:

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

Not many people would claim that the identification of key changes in the past and of the chief differences in the contemporary world in any of these five dimensions is a trivial matter or even of only minor importance. There is room for much debate about what is most important and how to evaluate changes. On such matters we can expect substantial ongoing disagreement, within, as well as between, different types of society. It may well be, of course, that other matters of considerable interest and importance cannot readily be subsumed under these criteria. But it is not claimed that they are exclusive, only that they are central and vital to understanding human societies now and in the past.

Because each criterion is itself essentially contestable (Gallie 1968), very different substantive evaluations may be offered of the consequences for, say, freedom, equality or safety and security during the twentieth century, of industrialisation, trade unions, colonialism, the two world wars, the Russian Revolution and the Soviet State, the Fascist and Nazi States, nuclear weapons and the balance of power, recent successes of political democracy, and so on. Yet few would deny that these events or movements have powerful claims for inclusion in a course of study guided by the criteria. Considerable objectivity is possible in selecting events and movements which have most influenced each of the five dimensions of life picked out by the criteria, even though their evaluation may be fiercely contested.

No order of precedence between the five criteria is suggested. Furthermore, each of the five is frequently in conflict with one or more of the others, as is notoriously the case in the troubled relationship between freedom and safety. It is not suggested that there should be different formal strands corresponding to the five criteria, since it is often their interaction which is most important for social understanding.

Agreement on what types of difference in social structure or culture are most important does not entail a standard world curriculum. If the five first-order criteria are adopted, there then remain major decisions as to which are the most important examples relevant to a particular country or people. It is entirely justifiable that national and local considerations should strongly influence this second-order range of questions. Knowledge of how hunter-gatherers established their ways of life is a vital element of historical understanding, but the particular people(s) to be studied will rightly be much influenced by geography. How civilisations, in the sense of life in cities with state organisation and division of labour, arose is similarly vital, but again a choice between civilisations such as the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese and Mayan would also very reasonably be affected by location and specific cultural influences.

In some cases specific national experiences claim universal precedence: there can be no serious study of the origin of liberal constitutionalism, 'civil society' and the rule of law, as Montesquieu, De Tocqueville and many others have acknowledged, which does not have the historical experience of Great Britain at its centre. No study of mass democracy, totalitarianism and modern nationalism which neglects the French Revolution can have much value. No understanding of communism in action can be gained without serious attention to the Russian Revolution and the rise and fall of the Soviet system.

One of the main differences between criteria of significance of this type and the five strands of the Draft is that on the basis of each criterion, whether applied historically or to the contemporary world, disciplined structures can be developed, whereas the five strands could, and did in the examples provided, produce merely haphazard sequences. Many different syllabuses could be constructed on the basis of the five criteria, since in many cases there are second order criteria relating to cultural contexts which would legitimately influence choice of specific content. A syllabus for Chinese schools based upon the criteria would be very different in much specific content from those for, say, France, Nigeria or New Zealand. There would, however, be significant common elements, since some events and movements have had a major influence on the whole world and every people or civilisation within it.

It is not suggested that an adequate curriculum for an individual subject such as geography could be constructed on the basis of these five criteria. What they do form is a suitable basis for the historical, sociological, anthropological and economic elements of an integrated social studies curriculum, if such an integration is to be policy. The following paragraphs expand, with some examples for illustrative purposes, the five suggested criteria of significance.

Human Control over Nature

Human control over the forces of nature has varied widely from one culture to the next, and from one epoch to another. It is of enormous historical importance, since it intimately reflects the evolution of social systems, the growth of human knowledge, and the technological developments of modern civilisation. One important division between thinkers over the generations, especially over the last few centuries, concerns the relationship between ideas and matter, words and things, particularly whether changes in thought preceded or followed changes in actual conditions of human life, such as changes in the 'mode of production' or class relationships. One does not have to be a Marxist or an economic determinist to consider the level of human control over nature to be of enormous influence in every aspect of human life.

Some of the features of this dimension, and some of the stages through which humanity has passed, are as follows:

• life in hunter/food gatherer cultures of different types - Inuit, Australian Aborigines, and Kalahari Bushman. These societies are both economically and cognitively static;
• the environmental conditions which made the domestication of animals and agriculture possible, and how this momentous increase in disposable food and energy took place in some representative societies;
• cultures in which, despite a comparatively large food surplus, city life and the division of labour did not develop. In such cultures wealth was exchanged or distributed, but not accumulated. The problem of distance inhibiting trade, as it affected the peoples of the Pacific, might be discussed here;
• the emergence of civilisations where life in cities is combined with a complex division of labour. The most relevant for New Zealand are those of the Middle East, but the universal importance of irrigation and its associated engineering works makes India and China other candidates for study;
• some of the great inventions and their gradual spread from place to place, for example calendars and time measurement, the wheel, writing and metallurgy;
• damage to the environment caused by human activities in traditional societies: human beings as over-efficient predators; the extinction of species long before the industrial age; Maori and the extinction of the moa; the Australian Aborigines and their possible role in the extinction of the giant kangaroo, macropus, and other megafauna;
• developments in navigation and map-making: Ptolemy, the Polynesian voyagers, the age of western expansion from Columbus and Diaz to Cook;
• steam power, the industrial changes of the eighteenth century, and the men who made them: Newcomen, Arkwright, Boulton and Watt;
• the growth of science, developments in physics and chemistry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emergence of the chemical and electrical industries;
• inventions and advances in transport and communication: Stephenson, Brunel, the Wright brothers and Henry Ford;
• the energy requirements of modern life: electrical power and methods of generation - hydro, thermal, coal, oil, gas, and nuclear fission, all having a place in the modern energy 'mix'; and
• modern technology and its relation to economic progress; 'externalities'; the environmental costs of industrial growth; the trade-off between development and prosperity on the one hand and conservation and regulatory controls on the other; market and regulatory solutions to environmental problems.

Changes in Modes of Thought

Some of the broad categories of human thinking about the world include:

• animism and sympathetic magic: how human beings first tried to make sense of the world about them;
• myths and legends: extended explanations of the origins of one's own people and of the world; Maori and Pacific Islander beliefs could be given prominence here, and Greek beliefs, perhaps through the Odyssey;
• monotheism and universalistic religions: how Judaism developed from belief in a tribal God; Christianity as a universalistic religion; and the development of Islam;
• logic and formal reasoning in philosophy: how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle developed ways to assist and structure the growth of reason; the doctrines of scholasticism; and
• the development of the natural sciences: Francis Bacon and the use of observation and experiment; and Galileo, Newton, and Darwin.
  

Freedom, Equality, Safety and Security

Suggestions for suitable content relating to these three criteria are combined below.

• use of fables and other stories to illustrate some basic problems in understanding their fundamentally important concepts, e.g. many of Aesop's Fables such as 'Belling the Cat', 'The Kite and the Pigeons', 'The Frog King' and 'The Wolf and the Lamb', provide insightful introductions to the relationship between freedom, equal justice and safety;
• chieftainship in warrior societies such as the Maori. The hierarchy of prestige in such societies (and the low status of women) related to success at fighting, hereditary status, and the semi-sacred nature of the tribal chiefs;
• slavery in Maori society, in Polynesia more generally, in ancient civilisations, and its incompatibility with modern, democratic, industrial societies. The slave trade and the anti-slavery movements of the nineteenth century;
• feudalism as a compromise between fear of outside attack and dislike of servile status. The serf obtains security, but at the price of freedom. The psychological cost: populations unable to assert initiative, and locked into an inert dependency;
• the rise of powerful monarchies. Centralised power replaces the dispersed arrangements of feudalism: the Tudors in England, the Bourbons in France, the Romanovs in Russia;
• the emergence of parliaments in medieval Europe which act to restrict and finally to control monarchic power. The establishment of parliamentary government and the rule of law in England as a forerunner of representative government and universal franchise - in both of which lie the origins of New Zealand's system of government;
• the ideas of the 'rights of man', and their relation to liberation movements, including the twentieth-century movement for equal political, social, and economic opportunities for women. The concept of civic society and of the responsibilities of citizenship;
• the expansion of European empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the different reasons for this expansion - mercantile, strategic, colonial settlement - and the rise of anti-colonial movements from the American War of Independence on;
• the rise of socialist and other collectivist movements in the twentieth-century - Communism in Russia, Fascism in Germany and Italy - and their failed attempts to replace market economies with the command economies of the centralised, bureaucratic state; and
• different conceptions of law and justice: tribal justice and the right and duty of family revenge; chiefly law; retributive justice (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in the code of Hammurabi); patriarchal laws; Roman law; feudal law, including trial by ordeal and by battle; juries; Magna Carta and the English common law; the 'law of nations' and international law; and the law in twentieth century totalitarian systems.

APPENDIX B

New Zealand's Heritage from Europe and Britain

Apart from the extreme inadequacy of basic geographical knowledge in the Draft, its greatest single weakness lies in its shameful neglect of New Zealand's European and British heritage. David Malouf (Civics Expert Group 1994 p. 25) recently spoke about school curricula in Australia in terms which also apply to New Zealand:

Can I suggest some aspects of our form of government that we take for granted but which are very rare? The first is that we actually believe in government; believe that a government can be fairly elected and, once there, will act in our interest, whether or not we actually voted for the government in power. Most people in the world do not trust their rulers, whether elected or not. Their distrust is blood-deep and based on bloody experience. We might also ask our young people to study our system of government and the law, comparing them with the way things are managed elsewhere. ... A study of the development of our system of government, of course, will involve our students with the study of a good deal of English history; and we ought not to be afraid of that. It will not hurt young Australians to discover that much of what is best in our system we did not make ourselves.

The following features of New Zealand's western heritage are among the many deserving of representation in a Social Studies curriculum for New Zealand, some of which have already been touched upon in looking at ways in which the five criteria of significance might be applied (Appendix A). The lists of events, themes and questions under each of the following six headings are not, of course, exhaustive. They are intended to be illustrative of important features missing from, or inadequately dealt within, the Draft. The extent of their significance, their interrelationships and so on are properly matters for ongoing research and debate.

Christianity

It is impossible to understand the development of New Zealand without understanding the religious beliefs shared by most of the colonists, especially the missionaries, but these are seriously neglected in the Draft. Aspects of Christianity which would have shaped the thought of New Zealand colonists and the development of their institutions include:

• the belief that human beings partake of the divine and yet are constantly tempted towards wrong-doing;
• the doctrine of original sin which discouraged millenarian extravagance, while belief in redemption guarded against despair at human wickedness; and
• the universality of Christianity: its availability to all people, irrespective of race, class and status, gender, or past conduct.

Openness to the Spirit of Inquiry

It was in Western Europe that successful civil or 'open' societies emerged. The reasons for this could usefully be explored. Topics for examination in this context might include:

• the comparative and enquiring perspective within the Classical Greek strand of western thought including the contributions of Herodotus, the 'father of history', Julius Caesar, Tacitus and others;
• the medieval conflict between Empire and Papacy, and the significance of the failure of either one to subdue the other for the ability of religious dissenters to find places of refuge from charges of heresy;
• the work of the medieval universities in which Christian theology interacted with Greek philosophy and science, and the disputes about the acceptability of pagan knowledge and thought (for example between St Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard - the former would gladly have snuffed out the universities);
• the destruction of the brilliant Islamic intellectual movements in Iraq and Spain, and, more generally, the crushing of Islamic secular scholarship which largely explains why modern science emerged in Europe and not in Islamic lands;
• the interest of some Christians in alien cultures, for example the Jesuits in China in the seventeenth century;
• the work of western Europeans, notably the British, in:

  - exploring languages and other cultural attributes of peoples in every continent;

  - rediscovering Ancient Egypt when Arabs and their Turkish rulers had no interest in the Pyramids or their contents; and

  - producing dictionaries and books in many languages, including Maori.

• the significance of the feature of western cultures noted below by Bernard Lewis (1994 p. 51):

The other great civilisations known to history have all, without exception, seen themselves as self-sufficient, and regarded the outsider, and even the sub-culture or low status insider, with contempt, as barbarians, Gentiles, untouchables, unbelievers, foreign devils, and other more intimate, less formal terms of opprobrium. ... By contrast, the special combination of unconstrained curiosity concerning the other, and unforced respect for his otherness, remains a distinctive feature of Western and Westernised cultures, and is still regarded with bafflement and anger by those who neither share nor understand it.

Universalism and the Transcendence of Ethnocentrism

The development of a comparative, or critical, standpoint made the leading British and other Western European thinkers far less ethnocentric than earlier human generations. It created a capacity to criticise one's own society, as well as those of others, from the standpoint of universal values. Issues that might be examined in this context include:

• slavery as a feature of almost every society after the development of agriculture which enabled slaves to be put to work at a profit for the first time;
• serfdom in medieval Europe and slavery in pre-Columbian America or Africa;
• the triangular slave trade between West Africa, the Americas and Western Europe, including Britain; and
• the effect of the Enlightenment period in Western Europe in the eighteenth century on, first, the slave trade and then slavery itself, and on its eventual denouncement and abolition. Is Bernard Lewis (1994 p. 50) correct in saying "Western technology made slavery unnecessary. Western ideas made it intolerable"?

Parliamentary Government

The development of parliamentary government was a critical leap forward in human history and one yet to be made in many countries. Its development in Britain, Europe and elsewhere is of enormous significance, and some of many significant elements in this development which might be usefully examined include:

• England's representative system compared with those of other European states;
• the Magna Carta and other constitutional landmarks which placed limits on the powers of the Crown and established legal rights against arbitrary arrest or seizure of goods;
• Henry VIII's alliance with parliament when he broke with Rome and its effect on the institutions of the monarchy and parliament at the end of the English Reformation;
• the contrast between England's parliamentary system and the medieval States-Generals and Parliaments which became associated with feudal discord and civil strife and were often suppressed by absolutist monarchs supported by peasants and townspeople seeking peace in their time; and
• the seventeenth century civil wars in the British Isles, and the apparent tension between political liberty and national power which was eventually resolved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Religious Toleration

The development and spread of religious toleration was another feature of British and western European history of great significance to New Zealand. Some key aspects of this development for examination include:

• the failure after the Reformation of Catholics and Protestants to crush each other;
• toleration in the form of quis regio eius religio (whose realm, his religion) which enabled different faiths to co-exist, if only on opposite sides of frontiers;
• religious conflict during the Civil Wars of the 1640s in Britain, and with the lack of final resolution the emergence of religious, and with it political, tolerance;
• the development of limited, constitutional monarchy; and
• the elevation of religious toleration from a painful and temporary expedient to a valued principle.

Individual Rights and Duties under the Law

The idea that individuals ought to have rights, even against governments, churches and families, came to maturity in Britain during the two centuries preceding the colonisation of New Zealand. It is a precious part of New Zealand's heritage and much envied by the many peoples who seek to migrate here. Key contributions to this development for examination in the context of a Social Studies curriculum might include:

• the relationship between the concept of the individual as a rational autonomous agent and

  - the Christian idea of the soul and the accountability of each person directly to God, and

  - the idea of the inquiring mind in Greek philosophy;

• the growth of the idea that the legitimacy of government was based on the free consent of individuals, and the contribution of Locke and Hume in Britain to this strand of thought;
• the significance to this revolution in political thought of the individualism of the English and their willingness to leave their home areas to seek work and marry outside their parishes of birth;
• the relationship between this concept of the importance of the individual with the willingness of the English to go overseas as colonists (McFarlane 1978); and
• the importance, within this English concept of the mobile individual, of the existence of uniform rules and laws, first within England itself and then in its colonies - individualism and the common law being symbiotic, not antagonistic.

APPENDIX C

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 D

MEMBERS OF THE EDUCATION FORUM

Mr Simon Arnold
Chief Executive Officer
New Zealand Manufacturers Federation

Mr Michael Barnett
General Manager
Auckland Chamber of Commerce

Mr John Boyens
Principal
Meadowbank School

Mrs Alison Gernhoefer
Principal
Westlake Girls' High School

Mr John Graham
Company Director

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 Steve Marshall
Chief Executive Officer
New Zealand Employers Federation

Mr Phil Raffills
Principal
Avondale College

Mr Conor English
Policy Executive
Federated Farmers of New Zealand

Mr John Taylor
Headmaster
King's College
Auckland

Ms Claudia Wysocki
Headmistress
St Margaret's College
Christchurch

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