The Dominion. TUESDAY, MAT 16, 1911. NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1128, 16 May 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, MAT 16, 1911. NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

A question of much interest and of no little importance, which may be raised in this country any day, has been receiving some attention in Australia. At its last conference the Australian Natives' Association passed a resolution affirming that Australian history should receive greater attention in State schools than it does at present, and should bo made a compulsory subject. The resolution was brought before the Minister of Education a few days ago, and the Association was informed that the Department "had before it a programme which had as one of its objects the question of Australian history and development." That young Australians should know as much as possible of the history of their country, or, to bring the question across the Tasman Sea, that young New Zealanders should learn the facts of New Zealand history, Is beyond all dispute, but it is doubtful whether a means can be found to have New Zealand history taught in our schools as it ought to he taught if it is to be worth teaching. There is, of course, the initial difficulty of text-books and teachers. We have a cynical little note in the New York Post upon the need for organising "an institution of Tailor-Made History, where any person or any community may have 'its text-books written in accordance with definite specifications." The Post explains the length and monotony of Homer's catalogue of ships in the Hind by Homer's Reeling that he should assign a place in the Trojan war to the ancestor of -every Greek squive who gave him "a square meal and a bed for the night." This is frivolity, but the I'ost hardly passes the truth when it observes that "from the very beginnings of the art, history has been written to support a national, racial or party thesis." No history of New Zealand worthy of the name of. history has been written, although the late Mr. Alfred Saunders came very near to giving us the right thing; and it is pretty certain that a history written for use in the State schools would be strongly flavoured with tho political feelings of the Government of the day. ' But 'there are even larger considerations than this We reviewed the other day a book of Australian verso that is the authentic offspring of Australian "nationalism," and it seemed to us that the whole volume was an elaborate variation upon this line in one of the author's pieces: "We're the boshter comin' nation of the earth, 'twixt you an' me." That is what young Australia is being sedulously taught to believe, anf to say, and it is pretty obvious that it is just what young Australia ought to be taught to forget if a good national character is to be developed. The great bulk of the people of New Zealand are agreed, upon the vulgarity and folly of. the extraordinary self-glorifica-tion that is so popular an occupation in Auckland; but is not the same vulgarity and weakness to bo found in the tendency of New Zealanders, which Mr. Seddon strongly developed, and which Sir Joseph Ward endeavours, with smaller success, to maintain, to scorn the "effete" nations of the Old World? That is a tendency that is very liable to be developed, in a more dangerous way, by any teaching of New Zealand history that does not aim chiefly at getting the true perspective. This point is well dealt with by the Melbourne Argus: Tho best minds in every country have always fought against that pseudopatriotism to which Goldsmith gave the name of "natural prejudice." It is a narrow superstition to make a fetish of our own historical records to the neglect of everything that led up to our being here at all. Such "historical" stud'v cramps tha minds of those who cliny to it, and if it bo exaggerated in Australian schools bur little Australians will become -Little Australians with a capital L. History should be surveyed as a whole, and however vaguely the whole be seen, tho instruction is better than can bo gained by a concentrated stare at a few details. The Argus goes on to say that Australian; history, considered by itself, and without reference to the long preparations for it, is partly a talc of brave explorers and pioneers, but mainly of the placid progress of a free and fortunate people to a high degree of comfort. Our contemporary's final conclusion is that "the children in our schools should be taught how all this [the securing by Britain of the power to colonise! was done, so that they may be brought to realise how much we owe to the race from which we have sprung." This is very well said, and yoc, owing to the peculiar circumstances of New Zealand, ws are not sure that much good might be got from teaching in our schools the political history of the past thirty years. It is an unpleasant reflection that thousands of children, for whom the his-tory-of their own country will date only from their late teens, are growing up in the belief that New Zealand has nothing to learn from older countries; that heavy borrowing is the normal work of government, that there was always a kind "State" waiting to do what our fathers and their grandfathers relied upon themselves to do, that our Ministers are typical statesmen—conceive the loss of that poor child to whom tho name of Gladstone or Paljierstox or Disraeli calls up only an image of a sort of Ward or Carroll or Fowlds ! —and that life and nationhood contain iio problems, and never have contained any problems, that are not inside tin Ministerial speech reported that morning. It would not ho necessary to bring our young people very far back into our past in order to surprise and enlighten them. There can, indeed, be few men in New Zealand under forty who would not be interested, astonished, and broadened by almost any sketch of New Zealand's political history between the years 1870 and 1890. For this reason wc should be inclined to favour tho leaching of New Zealand history in our schools, trusting to tho curative influences of the day to stop in at tho right time to prevent the study becoming, as, under the pressure of a perverted and unreasoning "nationalism," it might easily, become,, an agent for intensify..

ing the insular and exclusive attitude that is so humiliating to those i New Zealanders who love their country none th-s less for knowing just where it stands in history and in civilisation.