“I am utterly convinced that Shakespeare’s works can thrive alongside mātauranga Māori. This is not a competition. It’s a reclamation of narrative power,” writes teacher Tania Roxborogh. Pictured are Jason Te Kare as Oberon and Reuben Butler as Puck, at the Pop Up Globe’s performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2018. (Photo supplied)

The new draft English curriculum proposes making Shakespeare compulsory for senior high school students.

While there’s nothing wrong with Shakespeare, there is a problem with setting his work up as the only pinnacle of excellence, writes teacher Tania Roxborogh.

“Why are you making us do this, Miss?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over my years as a teacher whenever I presented my students with a new topic or one that had a bad rap — grammar, punctuation, Shakespeare.

And, always I would answer: “Trust me. You’re gonna love it.” I knew that they would, because I knew them.

Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti aroha o tātou mahi.
Let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.

There is power in the classroom — kids learn texts and topics that are almost always chosen by some adult. In most classrooms here in Aotearoa, the choice is made by the teachers and kaiako who understand what will work for the young people in front of them. There are restrictions of course, or guidelines, made by the head of department, the senior leadership, perhaps the community, and more generally from the Ministry of Education and NZQA.

It’s not a perfect system but it’s been heading in the right direction toward a more inclusive, relevant and appropriate way of preparing our students and ākonga for the future. Or, it was.

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In 2018, I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Pop-Up Globe. All the fairies spoke in te reo Māori. In one scene, Oberon told Puck: “Kapua te pō”, a translation of the Shakespeare line, “Overcast the night.”

That phrase was a lightbulb moment for me. In English, the word “overcast” suggests a flatness, but “kapua” evokes swirling mist and uncertainty. And te pō is not just darkness — it’s the fertile space where thought and form take shape before emerging into the world of light and understanding, te ao mārama.

Suddenly, I saw how Māori knowledge is a standard of excellence against which the accepted classics can be measured, not just the other way round.

Later that year, I was learning about kōrero tuku iho, the knowledge handed down from our ancestors, and I came across this metaphorical phrase:

Me te manu taupunga ka noho mataara i te wā e kai ana te kāhui.
Like the sentry bird who stands guard while the flock is eating.

The very next day, in my Year 12 class, I was teaching Macbeth — specifically, the lines where Banquo praises the “temple-haunting martlet” for choosing to nest at Macbeth’s castle. Shakespeare uses this bird to symbolise false safety. Something in me clicked. Both Shakespeare and our tīpuna used birds to teach the listener an important lesson about the way the world works. Both were using nature to reflect human behaviour. And yet only Shakespeare was lauded in our classrooms as the pinnacle of excellence.

Around the same time, I spoke with Professor Meihana Durie about the possibility of doing post-graduate study. I shared my frustration that Shakespeare was still upheld as the pinnacle of English literature, while Māori storytelling — equally rich in technique, insight, and depth — was still marginalised. He said: “If you pull this off, you will add to the validation of Indigenous knowledge.”

That line became my purpose.

When I first began my doctoral research, I had planned to explore metaphors — specifically, how Shakespeare and our tīpuna both used them. I love how Shakespeare uses imagery to elevate the ordinary into the profound, and I saw echoes of that same brilliance in whakataukī, pūrākau, and kupu whakarite.

I used to joke with my students during some random moment of uncovering a weird fact about grammar, or the use of milk in cinematography: “Someone will have done a PhD on that” We would laugh about the absurdity of PhD topics, smug in the knowledge that, of course, we’d only ever embark on investigating worthwhile things like curing cancer or the best way to create community.

I didn’t understand, really, what a PhD was except that maybe if I had one, I wouldn’t feel so dumb. Cos, when you grow up with few prospects and you’ve grasped at education and learned to haul yourself out of poverty and neglect, you always feel stained by the sense of never quite being good enough.

The topic I was considering doing for a PhD felt like a tidy research project. My plan was to compare and contrast, admire the elegance of each, and move on. But then I was challenged by Professor Graham Smith. At a wānanga, he asked us: “As Māori researchers, how will your research be transformational?”

That question cut through my comfortable plan. I realised that what I intended to do wasn’t enough. Not when I finally acknowledged that, despite what I was able to do in my own classroom, on the whole our students experience a curriculum that centres one knowledge system over another. Not when Māori narratives are treated as optional, while Shakespeare’s stories are held up as essential.

It was time to shift the focus. I decided to broaden my topic and focus on the ways that teachers can imbue their teaching of Shakespeare with mātauranga Māori in order to celebrate the complexity and excellence of both.

Tania Roxborogh at Word festival in Wellington in 2020. (Photo supplied)

Now, just as I’m about to go through confirmation of my PhD, the draft English curriculum has been released. Among its most striking proposals is the suggestion that Shakespeare’s plays should once again be made compulsory for senior secondary students.

Last year, Professor Elizabeth Rata explained the draft English curriculum to RNZ. The aim, she said, was to create a “knowledge-rich curriculum,” where every child has access to “the very best English language and literature.”

But what does “the very best” mean? Who gets to decide? Whose worldview is being privileged?

A decade ago, Te Ururoa Flavell spoke to Māori students at Otago University and I asked him his thoughts about making te reo Māori compulsory in schools. He said he was against it because he didn’t want someone with little experience and knowledge teaching his mokopuna our language.

Back then, I thought: But if you make it compulsory, surely you show its value. Then, as I continued on my reo Māori language journey, incrementally, read more and saw more, I came to understand his position — and that of Tā Tīmoti, who talked of drawing people into te ao Māori. The idea is that if people fall in love with the language, they will pass that love on to their students, ahakoa kei hea rātou, no matter where they’re from.

Many of us feel the same way toward making Shakespeare compulsory. Of course, we want all the people to learn about all the plays, but many teachers are not yet equipped to present them in a way that is accessible to students.

If the teachers themselves don’t possess passion and understanding, making them teach a topic they are inadequately prepared for risks loading more onto their already over-burdened backs.

In fact, I have a fundamental issue with making anything compulsory — especially as this current curriculum draft was created without the support and input of the New Zealand English Teachers Association — because it signals a lack of trust in the professionalism of teachers to know what is best for their students.

This isn’t just about Shakespeare. It’s about what — and whose — knowledge is considered essential. For generations, western literary traditions have occupied the top tier of the hierarchy in Aotearoa classrooms. Shakespeare’s works have been studied, performed, and celebrated in ways that reinforce the idea that English literature is the standard against which everything else must be measured.

And that’s a problem.

The two texts the missionaries brought to New Zealand were the Bible and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. For over a century, Shakespeare was a compulsory part of the syllabus, embedded in a curriculum that sought to supplant Māori knowledge and language with British cultural norms.

His works were used as tools of assimilation — to make all New Zealand students believe that only texts by English authors counted as “good literature”. As I said in a recent interview: “[This proposal] suggests that texts like Shakespeare remain central to defining what constitutes the very best. And in doing that, it basically positions Indigenous or non-western literatures as secondary or supplementary.”

These texts don’t exist in a vacuum. They’ve been used to justify and reinforce racial and social hierarchies, and have become instruments of cultural dominance. Around the world, Shakespeare has served a dual purpose: as a literary icon and as a symbol of empire.

So while I love Shakespeare and would love everyone to have a chance to “meet” his works and dig into the depths of his utter brilliance, it’s important to acknowledge that his legacy has been shaped by systems of power. And here in Aotearoa, those systems have historically positioned Māori stories as supplementary, if they’re acknowledged at all.

Shakespeare’s plays are not inherently the issue. It’s how we teach them. And what gets excluded when we centre them. Here in Aotearoa, and around the world, there has been a wonderful, progressive shift within the English teaching community to include Indigenous works. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside many teachers who are passionate about upholding mana ōrite mō te mātauranga Māori in education.

But, with a change of government and education minister, it feels like all the progress being done to whakamana ngā mea Māori, to uphold the mana of this knowledge, has been sidelined.

The whiplash that our kaiako, our teachers, are experiencing as a result of the change of direction is disheartening to see.

Insisting on making Shakespeare compulsory, but no other voices, is problematic. When we position Shakespeare as essential, but treat Māori literature and oracy as enrichment, we reinforce colonial hierarchies. When we treat te reo Māori as decoration rather than as a central vehicle of thought, metaphor, and philosophy, we diminish its power.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. I am utterly convinced — and this is backed by research and classroom experience — that Shakespeare’s works can thrive alongside mātauranga Māori. This is not a competition. It’s a reclamation of narrative power.

When taught through a kaupapa Māori lens, Shakespeare’s works can foster critical conversations about identity, power, and cultural exchange. They can also provide a platform for validating mātauranga Māori within the classroom. What makes the plays of Shakespeare amazing is their adaptability. His works can resonate with any culture, provided they are taught with care and attention to context. Reclaiming Shakespeare within a Māori framework is not only possible — it is a model for transcultural dialogue and creative reinvention.

Shakespeare is the whakapapa of English story — and that’s amazing. I would love to see him reimagined in Aotearoa New Zealand as a bridge between Eurocentric ideals and other cultural perspectives.

That work doesn’t require perfection. But it does demand intention, reflection, and courage.

As English teachers, we are in a powerful position. The stories we teach, and how we teach them, shape how students see the world and their place within it. This is not about adding more to an already heavy load. It’s about changing how we carry it — and who gets to decide where we’re going.

Shakespeare has survived 400 years of reinvention. He can handle this. And so can we.

Tania Roxborogh (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri, Irish and Scottish descent) is a veteran educator and award winning writer. In between her PhD research on ways to help kaiako imbue their teaching of Shakespeare with mātauranga Māori, she works as a writing mentor. 

E-Tangata, 2025