Concrete utopian function: toward the Novum of curriculum based health education and youth suicide prevention in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

In this thesis I explore a prospective new meaning for taha wairua and its application in youth suicide prevention strategy. Using Gadamerian hermeneutics I fuse the textual horizons of the New Zealand curriculum, New Zealand youth suicide prevention, and Ernst Bloch's (1986) The Principle of Hope, within their broader horizons of meaning. To ask the question, 'what is the Novum (the objectively new) in curriculum based health education and youth suicide prevention in New Zealand'? Through the method of constructive hermeneutics I identify material dialogic concept of hope (concrete utopian function) as the prospective Novum in the horizon of each. My thesis is organised into three interconnected parts: Part one 'sets the scene' and maps out the 'fertile ground' of the Novum. Part two introduces the general concept of hope and explores the specific concept of concrete utopian function as hope, before translating this into te reo Māori, as a uniquely New Zealand application of its concept in the word tūmanako. Part three fuses the concept of concrete utopian function (hope) with the New Zealand curriculum as it currently stands, as a means of opening the abstraction of its concept, out into the real possibility for pedagogical praxis. Throughout this part I argue the case for concrete utopian function as (hope) as an organising principle for taha wairua in the New Zealand curriculum statement on health (1999), and the specific application of this as a health promoting strategy for the construction of hope as resiliency against the risk of youth suicide and suicidal ideation: hopelessness.