Michael Bassett: Teaching Early New Zealand History in Schools

The piece in the Herald on 21 December about teaching New Zealand history to all students confirms the fears of serious historians that the project risks becoming mere propaganda by those with axes to grind, rather than a teaching of the facts. Students will be given a lop-sided picture of our early history if the curriculum ignores or romanticizes the pre-1840 period where several Maori tribes went on annual marauding exercises to settle old scores. They killed between 40,000 and 50,000 Maori, approximately 25% of the total number of Maori in the country at that time, eating some, and enslaving others. 

https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2020/12/michael-bassett-teaching-early-new.html?m=1

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