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# Rodney Hide: English class used to push Te Ao Māori worldview
- URL: https://goodoil.news/rodney-hide-english-class-used-to-push-te-ao-maori-worldview/
- Published: 2025-02-16T09:50:43.000Z
- Updated: 2025-02-16T19:43:35.000Z
- Description: “Once the Pākehā government was established here, from there the desire grew to exterminate the Māori people.”
- Author: Centrist
- Tags: News

Summarised by [Centrist](http://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news)

**Rodney Hide argues that New Zealand’s education system is prioritising ideological indoctrination over traditional learning, using his 13-year-old’s English class as an example.** 

**The class, titled *An Introduction to Culture and Identity in Literature*, included a** [**video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uemvzee6S1U&ref=goodoil.news)**, *How colonisers went from learning te reo Māori to trying to exterminate it*, featuring Victoria University sociolinguist Dr Vini Olsen-Reeder.** 

**In the video, Olsen-Reeder states: *“Once the Pākehā government was established here, from there the desire grew to exterminate the Māori people.”*** 

Hide calls this an extraordinary claim made without evidence, yet students were not encouraged to question it. Instead, the exercise focused on analysing mood and tone, reinforcing a Te Ao Māori perspective without room for debate.

MP Rawiri Waititi appears in the video, stating: *“We were taught everything we were doing was bad and everything they were doing was good. That white was right.”* Hide sees this as part of a broader trend in which traditional subjects, including grammar, punctuation, and classical literature, are sidelined by a “supposedly conservative-led government” in favour of a curriculum shaped by Critical Theory-–where society is viewed through a mostly one-sided racial lens.

Hide places responsibility on the Ministry of Education and the National-led government. He argues that Education Minister Erica Stanford, who studied political science and Māori studies, is unwilling or unable to challenge this ideological shift. 

*“She can’t argue it or defend it. But she doesn’t need to. She has power. That is all that counts,”* he concludes.

[**Read more over at Bassett, Brash, and Hide**](https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/rodney-hide-schooling-through-a-te-ao-maori-lens?ref=goodoil.news)

Image: [jumpyjodes](https://openverse.org/image/collection?source=flickr&creator=jumpyjodes)

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