Ministry of Education deputy secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid said a timeline for public engagement will be published in February and the new curriculum will become compulsory in all schools from the start of 2022.
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This process will be keenly watched and not just in education circles. There is bound to be contention about what is decided. Somewhere in the curriculum will be details or omissions taken exception to.
In the comparatively youthful history of this nation, many events are shrouded in controversy. The Erebus disaster, as one example, remains a divisive subject despite occurring within this generation's lifetime and being subjected to a rigorous Commission of Inquiry.
However, in many instances of history, facts can be gleaned. Numbers of people involved, for instance, can often be verified. But accounts will vary about the motives or causes leading up to historical moments, not just from the two sides involved but every individual, may have an interpretation.
What was written cannot be denied but its accuracy cannot be viewed as the final word when there are incompatible spoken accounts. This is where "words" will need to be heeded.
Words - whether written, spoken or carved in wood - will need careful curating, along with a 360-degree view of context about the times in which these things happened.
Historians remain students for life, revising and refining as more information comes to hand. What was formerly overlooked can become highly significant with the passage of time.
Activists, as the label suggests, from all sides will want to steer the record towards their agenda. An Aotearoa/New Zealand History Curriculum will have a target on its back as an important tool in driving this narrative.
Just as important as the study papers, it should be remembered, will be the people charged with delivering the curriculum: the teachers. In this, we know they are already doing a good job with barely a ripple of concern.
Dr Michael Harcourt this week released the results of a survey of history and social studies teachers at all New Zealand secondary schools with more than 250 students, as well as his sample of students for his doctorate with Victoria University.
He found 82 per cent of the 298 teachers who responded had taught about colonisation in New Zealand in the past year. All without, it seems, a flurry of letters to newspapers or complaints to the ministry.
It was once said that only the vanquished care about history - but that is certainly not true. We should all care. This is our history, our unique story. Care should be taken in its telling.
