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Summarised by Centrist
Professor Elizabeth Rata argues that New Zealand’s curriculum has been hijacked by ideology, and Education Minister Erica Stanford is trying to take it back.
For years schools have operated without a standardised curriculum, allowing teachers to push sociocultural beliefs over academic subjects.
Rata says the result has been widening inequality, with some students excelling while others are fed propaganda.
Rata argues that Stanford’s proposed knowledge-rich curriculum is as significant as Peter Fraser’s post-war education reforms. It would ensure all students receive the same rigorous academic foundation, built on proven knowledge rather than political agendas.
But the backlash is strongest in subjects like English, where radical academics push decolonisation over actual learning.
Rata cites a troubling example: a junior English class shown a video declaring that “the Pākehā government” sought to “exterminate the Māori people.” Such inflammatory content would never survive in a curriculum that requires content to be justified for its truth and value. Yet universities, now dominated by decolonisation ideology, dictate what is taught in schools.
The push to indigenise education threatens to replace critical thinking with emotional responses.
Rata notes that while some seek to “decolonise the nation by removing English, that dangerous language of the Eurocentric coloniser from the school curriculum,” the reality is that “New Zealand’s democratic institutions, social practices and universalist values were developed in English.”
