thoughts

I have been listening to the RNZ podcast with my child. Even if she was not homeschooled, I feel it is my duty as a citizen to ensure she learns the history of the country she is part of. Just like we will be watching the RNZ Citizenship programme. In the video of the hahana kids and the big problem with the treaty of Waitangi one of the kids says they ‘know something is not right and they are just a kid’. Is this why we have not been teaching history in NZ? There was no doubt in my pākehā child that this was not right. She is very sure that the te Reo version of the treaty is the one we should,d be honoring as that was the one that was signed! There was an experiment shown in that Nigel Latta show which had babies watching a show of shapes/colours telling a basic story where one was “helpful” and one was “mean” and then the babies got to pick what toy they wanted to play with and they choose the nice one… It is obvious to me that we need to be taught to submit to the dominant ideas of institutional racism and this process can be so subtle – just like the side effect of  WALT (we are learning to) means that children learn that what the teacher wants them to learn is more important to what they want to learn. That we are swotting for the test.

I am disappointed that I didn’t know about Rua Kenana and was only brought up to have Gandhi, Bob Dylan, Parihaka, Pete and Peggy Seeger, and Archibald Baxter as heroes. And now I have David Grace to listen to…

Were my generation not taught NZ history because to do so is to look back and see injustice perpetrated by our kin and that to not look back meant pākehā could pretend it didn’t happen and not feel horror at what our ansestors believed. And that, to ask the question What is my place in Aotearoa? is actually a hard confronting question, with an attached fear of not being able to belong – Maslow places this just above security and safety… with love!!