My 12 year old son reads beautifully in both his languages but never picks up a book out of choice. Just before the holidays a colleague mentioned they were considering Pōrangi Boy by Shilo Kino as a new text. The book is about Niko, a 12 year old Northland boy and his relationship with his elderly koro whom many label pōrangi|crazy. The story is based on the 2002 Ngāpuhi protests over the building of the Ngawha Prison. Manu and I started reading it together last night, after two chapters he took over the reading because my pronunciation was making him laugh and when it was time to sleep, he told me to take it out of his room overnight because he didn’t want to read on without me. Thank you Shilo Kino!
Reflecting on the importance of storytelling in our teaching of history, I am reminded that most of our Kiwi teachers have grown up without being taught our own stories. Until Jacinda Ardern’s announcement in 2019, we were the only country in the OECD that does not mandate the teaching of its own history.
Young people have led the way in championing the movement for our histories to be taught in schools. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students Leah Bell and Waimarama Anderson petitioned Parliament for a National day of commemoration for the New Zealand Wars. In their petition, they suggested the New Zealand Wars ought to be compulsory teaching. In July 2019 Youth MP Christian Dennison challenged the Government to introduce compulsory teaching of ‘accurate domestic’ New Zealand history. These calls have been vociferously supported by the New Zealand History Teachers’ Association.
If you need any further persuasion that our young people really care about learning the history of our country, listen to the speeches of rangitahi participating in Race Unity Speech Awards (Zimbabwe-born Takunda Muzondiwa’s calls for educational institutions to place a greater emphasis on language, culture and history) Ngā Manu Kōrero (Te Ariki Te Puni of Palmy Boys’ High shows his knowledge of Aotearoa history in his 2015 speech) or Ngā Manu Pīrere slam poetry awards (check out ’s powerful slam poetry on Te Pakanga o Pukehinahina | the battle of Gate Pā).
Yet whilst the imperatives are clear, the challenges are significant. Findings from the 2021 school engagement on the draft ANZH curriculum content indicate that schools feel these are the greatest challenges across all year levels:
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Finding the time to develop and implement an engaging programme and being supported with appropriate resources and professional support.
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Delivering with authenticity and pitching delivery and content at an appropriate level to make it engaging and understandable for young learners; addressing teacher unconscious (or conscious) bias; and finding specialist teachers at secondary level.
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Building and strengthening relationships with the local community (parents, whānau, hapū, iwi, marae) and breaking down prejudices and racism in the community.
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Building upon learner’s prior knowledge, empowering learners to engage in and share their inquiries, developing critical thinking skills and having the confidence to teach the curriculum with integrity including pronouncing te reo Māori correctly
While most schools will have already begun to tackle the curriculum content – this being part of a familiar curriculum planning process – we may not have talked about how we will deal with the racism that has inevitably become part of our own thinking and will likely be voiced by students in our classrooms. Young teacher Airana Ngarewa talks about his experience as a student of high school history:
It was a platform for prejudice, every misinformed idea given a microphone in the spirit of open debate. It was not uncommon to hear my peers describe tangata whenua as gangsters and criminals. It was more common to hear them label my tūpuna savages and suggest Māori were lucky Pākehā came along before they wiped themselves out.
Just as our LGBTTIQ+ young people need to hear teachers support them when homophobic language is used in our classrooms, our tauira need to hear us speak out against racism. The Unteach Racism tools provided by the Teacher’s Council would be a good starting point for having these conversations in the staffroom.
Obviously, the fact that history is uncomfortable is not a reason to avoid it and we are certainly not the first nation to grapple with this challenge. American studies professor Ben Railton quotes Carter Woodson, the educational pioneer who founded Negro History Week (the predecessor to Black History Month), ‘We should emphasize not Negro history, but the Negro in history.’ Railton goes on to add*, ‘Of course adding Black history to American curricula was and remains a vital step for Black students, to see themselves better represented in their own education. But it is even more crucial for white students . . . recognizing that Black history is American history.*’
Returning to my current reading, Shilo Kino wrote The Pōrangi Boy, ‘for kids like me who struggle to see themselves in stories. For those who feel like they are on the outside watching, observing, but never quite belonging. I wrote it for people like me who were forced to learn about their own culture through the eyes of the coloniser. I wrote this for people who think Māori activists are pōrangi for fighting for our land back, land that belonged to us in the first place.’
For all New Zealanders, we have a responsibility to take the time to get it right. As Airana Ngarewa wrote, ‘Fortunately, teachers have a year to prepare for New Zealand history in schools. We have a year to plan how we might work alongside local iwi who remain the keepers of so much rarefied history, a year to determine how we might ensure our classrooms remain a positive learning environment, and a year to think through how we might manage the misinformation and disinformation young people are inundated with online and at home.’
It is time to have some brave conversations about what we have done so far and what we still need to do so that our young people grow up understanding Aotearoa history and we can together walk backwards into the future with our eyes fixed on our past.