Jock Phillips’ autobiography, Making History The battle lines have been drawn over how New Zealand history should be taught in schools. On one side, fighting a rear-guard action, is Michael Bassett, whose reputation as an historian has produced as many critics as those of his political career. He is backed up by lay opinion-makers such as The New Zealand Initiative’s Roger Partridge and Chris Trotter’s Bowalley Road website. All three see a danger in a curriculum based on the claim that, “Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand,” to quote the first of the Ministry of Education’s three “big ideas” for the curriculum. The other two are the continuing effects of colonisation, and the “exercise and effects of power”.