The remembrance of some aspects of the past are encouraged, whereas others are rather forgotten. Also History in secondary schooling has contributed to a forgetting of New Zealand history, as it suited the country’s understanding of itself at certain times. Especially in Māori-Pākehā affairs, but also in international relations, its omission of history has helped to present a favoured picture. Judith Simon has suggested that Social Studies in New Zealand is the cultivation of social amnesia. ‘Exactly because the past is forgotten, it rules unchallenged to be transcended, it must first be remembered.’ Jacoby has coined the term ‘social amnesia’ to describe the ‘social loss of memory’ that occurs when memory is ‘driven out of mind by the social and dynamic of society.’ If society does not remember, it will forget the reason for why things are as they are. What happens if a society does not nourish the remembrance of its past? Society is not static, it has become what it is today through developments that have taken place over centuries. But the present can only be understood as a result of past events. The past is left behind, and what comes later is necessarily better. Russell Jacoby has explained that modern societies have developed the belief that what has been can be stored and forgotten. In 1975, 24.1 per cent of 5th Form students took History, which fell to 15.2 per cent in 1989. Over 90 per cent of all boys and girls chose ‘History and Civics’ in 1930. The eclipse of history in New Zealand schools is enforced by the declining popularity of the optional subject History in secondary schools. Keen found in 1977 that only 25% of older pupils felt that Social Studies had given them any insight into history. According to the teachers, after eight years of Social Studies the pupils had “no idea”, they knew “not even the basics like the names of Prime Ministers this century” and it was “best to assume total ignorance of history in all pupils entering Form V”. The responses made clear that ‘“Social Studies is about the present” and a picture of New Zealand past “is not the point of the course”’. Low-Beer’s survey of teachers in 15 Wellington Junior schools asked whether students at the end Form 4, that is at the end of the compulsory Social Studies course, had an overall view of New Zealand human history. The framework of Social Studies in the 1980s, like today, was sociological, based on general conceptions of human nature and interaction. In 1986, Ann Low-Beer, a visiting British historian, reported that the majority of Social Studies teachers had no training in history, and historical material like primary resources hardly existed. History as such plays a minor part in this. With little changes in formulation its aims have been to prepare children for life in New Zealand society, to introduce them to democratic institutions and make them eligible citizens. The main objective of Social Studies since its introduction in 1947 has not been to teach history. The underlying assumption here is that ‘any school curriculum, regardless of its composition, is invariably a political instrument.’ Openshaw and Archer have shown that even Social Studies, which have been regarded as unbiased and value-free, are as indoctrinated as history syllabi of the early 20th century. It looks for patterns within the curriculum content that indicate certain ideological directions at the time the curricula were written, and for changes in these patterns over time. It concentrates on the one hand on content that refers to race relations in the country, to see what information was included or excluded to draw a certain picture of race relations on the other hand it looks at how New Zealand interprets its links to other countries, to find out where it places itself culturally and politically in the world. This essay analyses the content of the New Zealand Social Studies and History syllabi of the past 55 years. Secondary Sources (in alphabetical order) Introduction Relations in the South Pacific and Asia and Studies of Imperialism The monocultural nature of the 1961/1981 syllabus The 1981 reassessment of the 1961 syllabus
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