New Zealand's relation toward Britain in primary school syllabi and history textbooks 1877-1937

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0 (B), Victoria University of Wellington (Robert Stout Research Centre), course: MNZS 510 Making New Zealand, 20 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: One way to find out what a country thinks about itself and its relations to other countries is to look at what it tells its school children. This essay examines what New Zealand pupils were to learn about their country and its relation to Britain. For this the two subjects history and geography are taken into account, because they tell most of all about New Zealand's ideas of the past and the present world. The essay is based on three syllabi and several history textbooks. Syllabi reflect what the children were supposed to learn, textbooks give a further indication of what the contents of lessons actually were. The timespan covered reaches from the first national curriculum in 1877 to the last history textbook published before World War II from 1937.