Assimilation, rebranded for 2025

The term ‘knowledge-rich’ — the latest buzzword driving education reform — suggests a curriculum enriched by many ways of knowing. But, in practice, writes secondary school teacher Erica Hamilton, it’s about narrowing the focus of education to traditional western knowledge structures.

 

Teachers are used to hearing about new ways to “transform” education — whether it’s Modern Learning Environments or Positive Behaviour for Learning. The term being thrown around today, promising transformational change, is “knowledge-rich”.

This phrase echoes through education announcements and political speeches, but without any clear explanation of what “knowledge-rich” actually means.

According to Elizabeth Rata — the academic who sits like Iago on the shoulders of education minister Erica Stanford — a knowledge-rich curriculum is a standardised curriculum where students receive “high-quality knowledge”.

This knowledge comes in the form of academic subjects, where content is selected for its “value” and justified on the basis of its “veracity”. In other words, knowledge-rich means a return to the traditional way of teaching and learning, and assumes that a one-size-fits-all approach will work for all students.

It doesn’t take much digging to see that “knowledge-rich” is a sort of discursive inversion — a deliberate manipulation of language to mislead or persuade. The term suggests a curriculum enriched by many ways of knowing. But, in practice, it’s about narrowing the focus to traditional western knowledge structures.

We see this in discussions around removing subjects like outdoor education and tourism, because they don’t fit the “traditional” idea of what counts as knowledge.

Rata argues that since the 1990s, there has been an “emptying out” of knowledge in New Zealand curriculums. She suggests that traditional education based on disciplinary knowledge is an equaliser.

But in doing so, she chooses to ignore the reality: generations of Māori have been failed by this very system. We also know that these standardised approaches underserve our neurodivergent ākonga (students) and those with additional needs.

The new curriculum presents New Zealanders with a false binary: You can have a “knowledge-rich” curriculum, or you can have other ways of knowing and learning — but not both.

Rata’s claim that “a decolonised curriculum does not provide quality content” points to the real intent behind a “knowledge-rich” curriculum: assimilation, rebranded for 2025.

Western, colonial education systems may be out of favour in 2025, but call it a “knowledge-rich” system, and somehow it’s more acceptable — despite being arguably the same thing.

We can see this in multiple ways: the removal of te reo Māori from primary school readers, the proposed new English curriculum that elevates 19th-century texts over Māori writers, and even the axing of funding for Te Ahu Reo programmes that supported teachers to upskill in te reo Māori.

Another way in which assimilation is quietly simmering in the background is through the repeated statements about our new curriculum being “in line with the best in the world” and “internationally comparable”.

We all want our education system to be nationally strong, but what defines “the best in the world”? Who are we comparing our curriculums with?

When the draft English curriculum was released, it was suggested that we should look at the curriculums of Singapore, Australia, and British Columbia to see what ours could look like.

British Columbia’s curriculum refresh has seen a more child-centred approach, strongly informed by Indigenous perspectives. Since 2022, all students must take a course in Indigenous studies.

Presumably, these aren’t the comparisons that Rata and the ministers were after.

Australia’s senior secondary curriculum is also explicit in its expectation for students to “develop their understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and their contribution to Australian society”. Again, not exactly in line with the direction being taken in Aotearoa.

While it might be confronting for many of us to admit that education has long been used as a tool to assimilate Indigenous people, we don’t have to repeat that history.

It’s entirely possible for curriculums to retain elements of ”traditional” knowledge — grammar, chemical equations, the square root of pi — while also embracing the way mātauranga Māori can enrich our learning.

As literacy professor Alison Arrow points out, education is not just about the skills needed to function in life or tertiary study. It’s also about preparing our young people to engage in a world that is not culturally neutral. Enriching our curriculums with mātauranga Māori does just that.

Phase 3 of the mathematics and statistics curriculum reflects this, with the whakataukī: “Te aro atu ki te ao whānui me te kōkiri kaupapa hei hāpai tahi i ētahi atu.” (Seeing ourselves in the wider world and advocating with and for others.)

The draft English curriculum also suggests that mātauranga Māori belongs in our schools: “We learn best when we experience a sense of belonging in the learning environment and feel valued and supported.”

By valuing different knowledge traditions, mātauranga Māori gives ākonga of all ethnicities the opportunity to see themselves in the wider world, and to learn at their best.

Standardising education doesn’t equalise it. And it’s not a choice between “knowledge-rich” or nothing. Only by recognising this can Aotearoa build a curriculum that is genuinely “in line with the best in the world”.

If we refuse to embrace other ways of knowing and learning, we’re asking students to leave who they are at the school gate — and that is not what education should be about.

 

Erica Hamilton (Ngāti Whakaue, Pākehā) is a secondary school teacher who is studying for a Master of Education, specialising in Māori education. She is a recipient of Te Rau Angitū Postgraduate Award, and is inspired by Graham Hingangaroa Smith’s “ringa raupā” method, which holds that research should have tangible and transformative outcomes.

E-Tangata, 2025