Emeritus Professor Terry Locke (University of Waikato) has for many years made a study of teacher professionalism and curriculum reform especially in relationship to subject English. He has written widely on the teaching of literature, writing and grammar, and has led research projects on teaching literature in the multicultural classroom, developing the teacher as writer, and building a culture of writing in schools.

Here, he offers us a way to think about what has happened with the curriculum takeover, and a way to think about how we can respond.

At the 2021 World Conference on Ecological Restoration, Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation had this to say about repairing the broken relationship between land and culture: “Repair of ecosystem structure and function alone is insufficient – restoration of a respectful, reciprocal relationship to the natural world is also essential for long term success.” In Aotearoa, to cite just one example, the damage caused by forestry slash is but one instance of the need for restorative healing.  

The current crisis facing New Zealand education following the illegal takeover of the English curriculum development process by a small but powerful, ideological sect has produced another kind of “slash” and rupture. In this instance, the rupture has severed the relationship between what this sect is attempting to impose on the teaching profession and our students, and the best thinking and practice on offer from the traditional disciplines dealing with educational theory, knowledge and pedagogy. Despite this sect’s claim that they are offering a knowledge-rich curriculum, it is abundantly clear that what is actually on offer is knowledge impoverished – narrow in its scope, and selective and outmoded in its so-called scientific basis.

What is needed urgently is a concerted campaign to restore the time-honoured and practically tested wisdom represented by the body of scholars and practitioners, whose work over the last few years to bring about an authentic and widely-supported curriculum refresh is in danger of counting for nought. We cannot allow the curriculum refresh to become a curriculum whitewash. Our aim, therefore, is to make this authentic version of a refreshed curriculum available to all – to be discussed, modified and adapted. 

Emeritus Professor Terry Locke.

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I’m with Terry. Let’s campaign. Let’s gather. Let’s act, collectively, to restore a vision that was near to being realised but is now a ghost of what might have been. Let’s be the question that small sect can’t answer.

For we must keep in mind the version of education — what it is and is for — that is being rammed on us at speed is not the only valid one, despite the work of its advocates being so effective to date in conveying that impression. The curriculum refresh, prior to its takeover by the MAG, offered a distinctly different vision, one deeply rooted in this people and place. 

Was it perfect? Of course not, but it was thoughtful and representative and unique to us. It saw kids differently, more holistically. It was inclusive. It was explicit in Te Tiriti o Waitangi being our foundation. It respected the professionalism of teachers and school leaders. It was rigourous, drawing on a wide body of expertise. It offered scope for learning to be truly future focused. It, too, drew on science to inform its direction.

And so, here is that vision of what may have been: Te Mātaiaho, as at March 2023. It has been taken off-line, and so only exists in paper form or on the drives of those who downloaded the pdf version. It is a fundamentally different document to what we are now being presented with.

Terry and I present this ‘ghost’ curriculum as an act akin to restoration, to show what the full range of expert thinking and practice in our place had to offer before they were excluded from the curriculum development. 

Read it. Tell us, what do you see? What will you do?

Bevan Holloway.