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Abstract
This article is a reflection on the challenges faced by school geography teachers in New Zealand. After a brief description of how the geography curriculum is currently organised, it provides a short statement about the current curriculum settlement in New Zealand. This leads to the main argument that much of the twentieth century school geography in New Zealand was developed on the basis of a particular ‘national environmental ideology’, which viewed the society and nature as closely connected and valorised specific landscapes and ways of seeing. This national environmental ideology was challenged in the last quarter of the century as a result of economic, social and cultural change, with the result that there is a ‘crisis of representation’ on how to offer a coherent account of New Zealand's geographical space. The article concludes with a discussion on how the subject might develop in the coming decade.
Notes
1. The Periodisation followed in this section is based on Jones Citation(1989).
2. The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealandlandisms (2010) defines Pakeha as ‘a light-skinned non-Polynesian New Zealander; especially one of British birth or ancestry as distinct from a Maori; a European or white person’.
3. A ‘bach’ is ‘a holiday house or weekend cottage owned as a second residence, often at the beach’.
4. This book was published in 1966 and its third edition was published as late as 1980. Mayhill was the Head of Geography at Auckland Grammar School; Bowden was the Head of geography at Onehunga High School.