Lesson 1: What Makes a Society?
The Four Pillars — Through a Systems Thinking Lens
Students discover that every human society — from an iwi to a modern nation — is built on four essential pillars. They begin to see societies as systems: interconnected parts that only make sense when understood together.
Whakatūwhera — Cultural Opening
Before there was a Parliament, before there were courts, before there were banks — there was the hapū. Māori communities had developed, over hundreds of years, a sophisticated system for managing people, resources, decisions, and identity. They had leaders (rangatira), laws (tikanga), food systems (maara kai, fishing, gathering), and deep cultural practices that held the community together. This was a society — just organised differently from the ones European settlers later built.
Today we ask: what do ALL societies need to survive? What are the essential building blocks — regardless of culture or time period?
"Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi."
With your food basket and my food basket, the people will thrive. — Societies are built on sharing and interdependence.
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students Will Know
- The four essential pillars of any society.
- How societies function as systems — with interconnected parts.
- How Māori society (hapū/iwi) organised each pillar differently from modern Western society.
Students Will Demonstrate
- By mapping the four pillars for two different societies (past and present).
- By identifying at least one connection between pillars (systems thinking).
- By beginning their Society Design Blueprint with their chosen context.
🔄 Systems Thinking Hook (10 mins)
Start with a concrete system students know: their school. Ask: "If I removed all the teachers tomorrow, what would happen? What if I removed the principal? The students? The building?"
Introduce the vocabulary: components (the parts), connections (how they relate), purpose (what the system is trying to achieve).
🏛️ The Four Pillars of Society (20 mins)
Pillar 1: People & Community
Who makes up the society? How are people connected? What are the social roles and relationships?
Hapū example: Extended whānau groups, with defined roles — rangatira (leader), tohunga (specialist), tūāhine/tuakana (sister/elder sibling relations that determined responsibility).
Modern NZ: Citizens, immigrants, iwi, rural/urban divide — "community" is harder to define and often more fragmented.
Pillar 2: Governance & Rules
How are decisions made? Who has authority? What rules hold the society together?
Hapū example: Hui (community meetings) where all voices were heard. Tikanga — customary law developed over generations. Rangatira led by building consensus, not by force.
Modern NZ: Parliament, elected government, statute law, courts — representative democracy where most citizens vote but few directly participate in decisions.
Pillar 3: Resources & Economy
How does the society manage what it needs to survive? Food, shelter, tools, knowledge?
Hapū example: Maara kai (gardens), fishing rights, forest gathering — managed collectively with kaitiakitanga (guardianship). Surplus shared through gift economies (hau).
Modern NZ: Market economy, private ownership, government welfare system, international trade — resources distributed through money rather than relationship.
Pillar 4: Culture & Values
What shared beliefs, stories, and practices give the society its identity and meaning?
Hapū example: Whakapapa (genealogy as cosmology), karakia (prayer/incantation), haka, waiata — culture as the living memory that connects present to ancestors.
Modern NZ: Rugby, multicultural festivals, Waitangi Day (contested), media, social media — culture more fragmented and commercially driven.
Ngā Mahi — Mapping Activity (30 mins)
Activity: Society Comparison Map
Students work in pairs. Each pair chooses TWO societies to compare — one must be non-Western or pre-colonial.
- Pre-contact Māori hapū (Aotearoa, ~1400–1840)
- Ancient Athens (democracy's birthplace, ~500 BCE)
- Feudal Japan (samurai society, 1185–1868)
- Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu, ~1400–1533)
- Modern Aotearoa New Zealand (present day)
- A fictional society of their own invention (set up for the design project)
For each society, complete the four-pillar matrix:
| Pillar | Society 1: ___________ | Society 2: ___________ |
|---|---|---|
| People & Community | [describe] | [describe] |
| Governance & Rules | [describe] | [describe] |
| Resources & Economy | [describe] | [describe] |
| Culture & Values | [describe] | [describe] |
Then answer: "Which pillar do you think is most important? What happens to a society if that pillar collapses?"
Systems Thinking Extension: Mapping the Connections
For each society they mapped, students draw arrows between the pillars showing how they connect. Example prompts:
- How does your governance system affect how resources are distributed?
- How does culture shape who is considered part of the community?
- What happens to culture when the economy collapses? (Think: Great Depression)
This systems thinking exercise builds the foundation for the culminating project — designing a society requires understanding that you can't change one pillar without affecting all others.
🚀 Launching the Design Project
Your Society Blueprint — Getting Started
This unit culminates in each student (or group) designing their own society. Today you make your first design decision: your context.
- A remote island after a shipwreck (100 survivors)
- A space colony on Mars (500 settlers, 20 years in)
- A post-disaster Aotearoa (Auckland flooded, 10,000 people starting over)
- A kaupapa Māori community reclaiming ancestral land (your design)
- Your own context (approved by teacher)
Record your context and your initial ideas for each of the four pillars. These will develop over the next three lessons.
Aromatawai — Assessment & Next Steps
Formative Check
- Exit ticket: "Name the four pillars and give one example from a society we discussed."
- Collect comparison matrices — check for depth of understanding vs. surface description.
- Note which students are choosing interesting/challenging contexts for their blueprint.
Looking Ahead
- Lesson 2 deep-dives on Pillar 2: Government systems — democracy, consensus, autocracy, and the rangatira model.
- Students should come with their context chosen and one paragraph describing their society's starting situation.
- Extension: Research one non-Western society in depth (Pacific Islands, African kingdoms, Indigenous American nations).
🏫 He Kōrero mā te Kaiako — Teacher Notes
Position Māori societal structures as sophisticated and complete — not "primitive" versions of Western institutions. The hapū model in many ways had stronger social safety nets, clearer environmental governance, and more participatory decision-making than colonial replacements.
Don't rush this. Students who internalize the vocabulary (components, connections, purpose, feedback loops) early will produce far more sophisticated society designs later. The connection-mapping exercise is particularly valuable.
The "Mars colony" context works well for students who struggle to detach from the existing NZ system. The "kaupapa Māori community" context creates powerful conversations about sovereignty and decolonisation — suitable for the right class. The shipwreck scenario is lowest barrier to entry.
Whakaaro — Reflection
Every human society that has ever existed has solved the same four fundamental problems: who are we as a community, how do we make decisions together, how do we share what we need to survive, and what stories and values hold us together? The answers have been brilliantly different across cultures and time. Your challenge, starting today, is to design your own answer. There is no single correct society — but there are better and worse choices, and understanding why is the heart of this unit.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students design and critically analyse imagined societies — exploring governance, resource distribution, and systems thinking through the lens of tikanga Māori and contemporary civic values to understand how societies are structured and by whose values.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Can identify key systems in a society (governance, economy, environment) and explain how they interact
- ✅ Applies tikanga and manaakitanga principles when designing governance and resource-sharing systems
- ✅ Evaluates a designed society against criteria of equity, sustainability, and tino rangatiratanga
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide a society design template as an entry point; use role cards to assign students specific societal roles. Extension tasks include comparing their designed society to an existing iwi governance model or writing a constitution using tikanga principles.
ELL / ESOL: Use visual system diagrams; pre-teach civic vocabulary (governance, sovereignty, sustainability) alongside Māori equivalents (rangatiratanga, kaitiakitanga, toitū).
Inclusion: Offer design formats across modalities — written, diagrammatic, or oral presentation; neurodiverse learners benefit from structured design frameworks with clear decision points.
Mātauranga Māori lens: Whare as deliberative space — tikanga as constitutional framework. Kaitiakitanga as resource governance. Manaakitanga and whanaungatanga as the social contract. Whakapapa connects people to land and to systems of responsibility.
Prior knowledge: Basic awareness of how governments and economies work; familiarity with New Zealand civic structures.
Curriculum alignment
- Social Sciences — Level 4: Understand how systems of government in New Zealand operate and affect people’s lives.
- Social Sciences — Level 4: Understand how people make decisions about access to and use of resources.