The revised New Zealand Curriculum became mandatory for use in New Zealand schools in February 2010. The ongoing reform agenda in education in New Zealand since 1989 and elsewhere internationally has had corrosive effects on teacher professionality. State-driven neo-liberal policy and education reforms are deeply damaging to the mental and moral conceptions teachers have of their work. This article contemplates one aspect of The New Zealand Curriculum – its focus on values – and the way it challenges the development of ethical teacher professionality. It also considers the prospect of reclaiming some of that lost moral ground through critical implementation of the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum, a claim that rests on an argument that this policy breaks with neo-liberal reform by its identification with third way political ideology.