Intense debate over the school curriculum symptomatic of social crisis

In his 1988 essay ‘Social crisis and curriculum accords’ American education theorist Michael Apple stressed that what is taught in schools is not politically neutral. What counts as ‘legitimate knowledge’ is open to argument. It often reflects the interests of the powerful.

But for considerable periods of time, sometimes even decades, society shows broad agreement over the aims of education, what schools should teach, and who decides what to teach and how.

These are called ‘curriculum accords’. They do not necessarily need formal consensus but established as ‘commonsense’. Curriculum accords often mirror the values and perspectives of dominant social groups, shaping how society is framed for future generations. When curriculum accords collapse, the curriculum landscape can resemble a battlefield.

New Zealand in the last century has been characterised by two curriculum accords. The first ran from around 1940 to 1980 and coincided with the expansion of mass education. After a brief interregnum in the 1980s, a second curriculum accord (neoliberal) was put in place, roughly from 1990 to 2020. This now seems to be collapsing.

The social-democratic curriculum accord

From 1940 to 1980 New Zealand schooling was dominated by a ‘traditional’ curriculum based on school subjects that mimicked British models. It supported an education system that was in favour of equality of opportunity, but which in practice was selective and sorted students into categories for the labour market. Society assumed that teachers were best placed to make decisions about education, who had ongoing discussion about the value of traditional and progressive approaches to teaching and learning.

Any curriculum change was piecemeal as New Zealand became a consumer society, youth cultures and gender roles changed, and so did patterns of employment.The first major education report of the post-war period – the 1962 Curry Report – considered arguments for wholesale curriculum change but ultimately decided that the existing curriculum was still fit for purpose.

The curriculum interregnum

Curriculum accords last as long as the economic and social settlements on which they are based remain stable. By the 1970s, New Zealand’s social democratic settlement was starting to fray. The underlying cause was economic.

The 1980s saw a neoliberal economic experiment and significant arguments about the school curriculum. As in many nations these revolved around whether the curriculum was turning out students who were work-ready. There were also arguments about schooling for girls and whether the curriculum reflected the needs of a bi-cultural or multicultural society.

All this was underpinned by a debate about whether the welfare society that had developed in New Zealand in the 20th century was a help or a hindrance. The question was, what next?

The (progressive) neoliberal curriculum accord

In 1984 New Zealand took an abrupt turn from Keynesian welfare policies toward neoliberal reforms – emphasising free markets, privatisation, and less state responsibility.

Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced in 1988, in which the education system was restructured. Schools became self-managing, and the curriculum was reoriented to produce entrepreneurial, competitive individuals. This was reflected in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (1993): “We need a workforce which is increasingly highly skilled and adaptable, and which has an international and multicultural perspective.”

The premise was that the old economic model based around a protected agricultural sector was no longer suited for a competitive global economy. What was important was human capital and skills.

New Zealand was to become more future focused, and a new consensus or curriculum accord emerged which reflected the new economic conditions. Subjects would be replaced by learning areas, knowledge was less important than learning how to learn, there was an acceptance of the idea of continual assessment and experiments in learning environments. The curriculum looked and felt modern.

But many teachers who had trained and worked in the social democratic curriculum accord rejected the economic terms on which the neoliberal curriculum accord was based.

Governments throughout this period tried to limit the power of teachers. However, the neoliberal curriculum accord evolved into ‘progressive neoliberalism’. For example, curriculum thinking focused on the long tail of underachievement, the need for cultural diversity and the recognition of the commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi. Overall, the move was towards a curriculum designed for 21st century learning.

The progressive neoliberal curriculum accord reached its height with the publication in 2023 of Te Mataiaho. This curriculum strongly reflected the influence of the professional educational classes in university departments of education and consultants providing professional development.

The refreshed curriculum was socially liberal, focused on diversity, inclusion and identity, and sought to advance a vision of Aotearoa. Te Mataiaho has been popular among many teachers and educational experts, but the Government wants to replace it.

The end of the accord

It seems to many that the challenge to the curriculum accord is an act of political vandalism. It certainly changes the curriculum landscape. It has six features.

First, the Government argues that there are economic reasons for changing the curriculum. Educational performance is seen as key to increasing national economic performance.

Second, it stresses the importance of knowledge and ensuring that students get access to a body of agreed knowledge. This is what is meant by a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum.

Third, it downplays local concerns and imports curriculum ideas from the United States and Britain.

Fourth, it challenges the progressive orthodoxy which argues that learning is a co-construction between teachers and students, and that students bring to the classroom knowledge and experience that should form the basis for learning.

Fifth, it questions the right of teachers and educationalists to have authority over the curriculum.

Sixth, the Government has bypassed many of the educational experts who have shaped the curriculum accord – and helped write Te Mataiaho (2023).

The Government has done this in a rapid and ‘no-nonsense’ way, which is why the breakdown of the accord is causing such concern.

Following the logic of Apple’s analysis I would argue that curriculum accords are more enduring and indicative of much deeper shifts in the nation’s culture and political economy. Recent changes to the curriculum can be seen as a belated response to the wider conservative revolution (restoration?) taking place in many Western economies since the global financial crisis of 2008.

Across the advanced economies there has been a return to fiscal realism, austerity policies and rising levels of wealth and income inequality. These have created the conditions for populism (for example Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in America).

In New Zealand, these trends were less clear in the post-crash years, and Labour governments seemed to offer a more progressive form of neoliberalism, marked by tolerance and inclusion. Te Mataiaho (2023) was a symbol of this. However, post-Covid, many of the crisis trends have appeared in New Zealand, and the culture wars have been an important feature of a ‘noisy’ political scene – which includes education.

What next?

Moments of intense debate over the school curriculum are indicative of significant social crisis. My guess is that this is because the progressive educational imaginary of the last three decades is in retreat. The post-capitalist futures it imagined have not come to fruition and as the global economy is faltering, governments are looking to return to older and (for some) more trusted ideas about what education is for.

Unfortunately, the debate so far has not been a genuine discussion about what type of curriculum is required for a world where economies are likely to shrink to deal with the impacts of global warming, and where there is a need for democratic renewal that will allow for redistribution of wealth and sustainable ways of living. We need a new curriculum accord but it seems a long way off.