Sociologist of education Elizabeth Rata was one of what I call “The Satanic Seven”: a group of seven professors from the University of Auckland who took a public stand in a magazine against teaching Maori “ways of knowing” as co-equal with science. The “Listener letter”, published last July, is so well known (and also infamous) that it now has its own Wikipedia page. The infamy comes from an assertion that would be uncontroversial in most places: the claim that government proposals to ensure equal co-teaching of modern science with the indigenous “way of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM) were unwarranted and a recipe for disaster.
And they are. While MM has nuggets of truth gleaned from experience (but not experiment), it’s also a whole lot of other stuff as well: legend, fable, local theology, morality, and so on. And a lot of it is scientifically bogus, like the claim that Polynesians discovered Antarctica around 700 A.D. (The first real sighting of the continent was by a Russian ship in 1820.) Who could assent to teaching such nonsense as “true”? It’s even worse because New Zealand’s rankings in STEM education among comparable countries have plummeted in the last several decades. Teaching MM in science class will only make those rankings lower.
When I consider how hard the government and educational authorities at all levels are pushing this “equality-in-the-classroom” proposal, academia in New Zealand begins to look like a bunch of lemmings jumping off a cliff (yes, I know they don’t really do that). Knowing that the government’s proposal will hurt the country’s educational standing, they press on nevertheless, for satisfying the Māori—and a misguided interpretation of the 1840 treaty between settlers and the Māori—is more important than furthering the truth. New Zealand is wrecking its own educational system with out-of-control wokeness.
But like Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Rata has nevertheless persisted. Below is the link to a piece she just published in a popular NZ venue, Newsroom. It’s a short article which says much of what I’ve summarized above. But she’s braver than I, for even full professors and retired professors risk professional damage from speaking their minds. (Two signers of the letter who were also members of the Royal Society of New Zealand are still undergoing “investigation” for criticizing MM as a form of science.) You can read the piece for yourself, (click on the screenshot) but I’ll give just a few excerpts that I’ve indented.
From Rata:
A useful contribution is to consider the role of the 2020 Education and Training Act in the shift from science to ideology. The basic contradiction between universal science and the parochialism of the treaty ideology is found in that legislation.
“Treaty ideology” refers to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (often seen as the Māori version “Te Teriti”), which was signed by the British and some (but not all) Māori chiefs, and those chiefs only from the North Island. It’s thus unclear how widely the treaty applies now, and even its interpretation is not straightforward given that the Māori words have some different meanings from the English ones. Nevertheless, here are its three provisions as given in Wikipedia:
- Article one of the Māori text grants governance rights to the Crown while the English text cedes “all rights and powers of sovereignty” to the Crown.
- Article two of the Māori text establishes that Māori will retain full chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures while the English text establishes the continued ownership of the Māori over their lands and establishes the exclusive right of pre-emption of the Crown.
- Article three gives Māori people full rights and protections as British subjects.
The problem is that the treaty has been stretched so far that it’s now interpreted to mean “the Māori get half of everything”, and in this case “everything” includes “half of the time in science class to promulgate the Māori way of knowing”. Nobody with any sense would agree with the latter construal, but wokeness overrides rationality as PM Jacinda Ardern leads her lemmings over the cliff.
But I digress, for it angers me that a pack of legends, superstitions, theology, and so on, larded with a few bits of knowledge gleaned from experience, should be given half the time in a modern science class. By all means (as the Satanic Seven emphasized) teach MM in anthropology or history class, but do not drag it into STEM. That’s not good for NZ or for the Māori, whose science education will be grossly deficient. It serves only to make the treaty worshipers flaunt their virtue. What a price to pay for that! And it’s not like the U.S. Constitution that can be amended for clarity or revision. Te Teriti is here to stay.
Dr. Rata:
The main Treaty principles clause requires the university’s council “to acknowledge the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. ‘Acknowledge’ can be weak or strong. Since the term first appeared in the 1990 Education Act it has morphed into the strongest interpretation as obligation and commitment. It is now very difficult for academics to question the ideological intensity which has swept through the university as ‘obligation’ is embedded. Prayers in the secular university go unchallenged. Treaty requirements in teaching courses are fulfilled. Funding applications without mātauranga Māori adherence are declined. Language is self-monitored for ideological lapses.
The legislation also holds a clue to the seemingly widespread support from academics for the Treaty ideology. Section 281 encourages the greatest possible student participation by under-represented groups. The assumption is made that adherence to treaty principles will provide this encouragement. That is unlikely. The educational underachievement of a section of the Māori population happens well before students reach tertiary education.
Fixing the lower STEM achievement of Māori students cannot be done by teaching MM in class. It must be done the same way that lower academic achievement of black and Hispanic students in the U.S. must be done: encouragement, cultural transformation, mentoring, and so on. (Really, I don’t know the solution, but I know it doesn’t involve teaching fable as truth.)
Teaching falsehoods in science will not create more equity. As Rata notes (my emphasis below):
University students from all racial and cultural groups tend to come from knowledge-rich schools which provide a solid foundation for university study. These are often the children of the professional class who have benefited from such knowledge in their own lives and insist that schools provide it for their children.
It is access to the abstract quality of academic knowledge and language, its very remoteness from everyday experience, and its formality – science in other words – that is necessary for success. Tragically this knowledge is miscast as ‘euro-centric’. The aim of the decolonisation and re-indigenisation of New Zealand education is to replace this knowledge with the cultural knowledge of experience.
But science is not euro-centric or western. It is universal. This is recognised in the International Science Council’s definition of science as “rationally explicable, tested against reality, logic, and the scrutiny of peers this is a special form of knowledge”. It includes the arts, humanities and social sciences as human endeavours which may, along with the physical and natural sciences, use such a formalised approach. The very children who need this knowledge the most, now receive less.
The science-ideology discussion matters for many reasons – the university’s future, the country’s reputation for science and education, and the quality of education in primary and secondary schools. But at its heart it is about democracy. Science can only thrive when democracy thrives.
Elizabeth will get into more trouble about this: her professorship will not insulate her from unwarranted criticism—or even punishment by the University of Auckland. But, admirably, she persists. As she says, MM doesn’t even come close to conforming to the International Science Council’s definition of “science.”
As far as I know term “Māoriphobe” has not yet been coined, but I’ll Coyne it here because it’s only a matter of time before people like Rata are tarred with it. (A more melliferous alternative is “Tiritiphobe”.)
And time is running out for NZ. Until its rational citizens wake up and try to understand what science is, and how important it is to both education and societal progress (NZ has been very good with vaccination, for instance, and MM didn’t give us vaccines), the rodents will keep jumping off the cliff.
And then there will be no rodents left, for every serious or accomplished scientist will have fled the country.
I think actually there is rather a lack of literacy here which is at the root of the problem. IT seems that they quite literally don’t know what the meaning of the word “science” is. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED)is useful here giving its etymology
“The collective body of knowledge in a particular field or sphere (13th cent.) < classical Latin scientia knowledge, knowledge as opposed to belief, understanding, expert knowledge, particular branch of knowledge, learning, erudition < scient- , sciēns , present participle of scīre to know, of unknown"
You can get a greater insight by looking at the German and Dutch words. Wissenschaft and Wetenshap. It is likely that id we hadn't borrowed Latin via French to get so many words that we would have had Witship or Knowingship as the word.
Again from the OED wit = "The faculty of thinking and reasoning in general; mental capacity, understanding, intellect, reason. archaic (now esp. in the wit of man = human understanding)."
It is essentially a word that describes the state of knowing something. Knowledge is the only way of knowing. Myths and legends are almost by definition not things that we know
OED myth = "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon.Myth is strictly distinguished from allegory and legend by some scholars, but in general use it is often used interchangeably with these terms."
These things are not known but believed to be the case because of tradition and argument from tradition and has been well established as a fallacy. No wonder scientists are worried. This point about tradition isn't white or western or even human. It would be the same on other planets of intelligent people
I can guarantee that at some point in Maori history there have been several important intelligent people who've realised this and as a result some leap forward has been made. Like the people who developed their seafaring skills when the tradition was not to do it. It is a known psychological characteristic of open minded, progressive and inventive individuals.
They probably know. Like earlier PoMo and creationist efforts, this is an attempt to cash in/leverage science’s reputation and popularity. The government is giving lots of $$ for scientific research? Then call your work science, and you can apply for that money too! All the kids want to take science in school? Get your pet subject considered part of science, that way when they take the class they want to take, they have to listen to your spiel.
There’s an easy test to see if this ‘borrowing science’s cache’ hypothesis is correct: offer the interest group the ability to teach their topic as an elective (High School) or give them a separate department/series (Uni). If they say yes, they pass the test – they really are just interested in the ‘opportunity’ to present their topic. If they say no, that only inclusion in/as science will do, then they fail – you know at that point that they’re not interested in equal access and treatment, they’re interested in forcing people to study their pet topic by hitching it to something people really want to study.
(As a RL example, “Bible as Literature” can be taught as an elective in US high schools. All the groups have to do is demonstrate to the school or district that a significant number of kids want to sign up for it. But creationists almost never do this, because this method doesn’t force non-Christians to learn Christian theology or give it the credibility of a scientific idea, the way putting creationism in a Biology class could.)
Kudos to Professor Rata for continuing to stick her head above the parapet in defence of science and knowledge.
“[B]egins to look like a bunch of lemmings jumping off a cliff (yes, I know they don’t really do that)” – I wonder if that myth has its origins in Scandinavian folk “ways of knowing”?
When I saw the title of this post, I thought we had a second, bonus “reader’s wildlife story” for today. Alas, it was not so. Oh, well, it’s important stuff, but so disheartening that it’s necessary.
Maoriphobia? well first you have to get past Maori bashing which is more wildly used by Maori and non Maori politicians and activists.
Overseas students were a source of revenue for NZ educational establishments.
What self respecting student would want a NZ qualification now.
Rata has been arguing against this movement to ethnocentric “science” since at least 2007. Clearly the right people weren’t listening (or did listen and ignored her advice).
Good on her, I say. I imagine she’s had terrible pile-ons and blowback.
Kudos to PCC (E) for helping to keep this issue front and center. People from small countries are generally INTENSELY interested in what the rest of the world thinks about them, so PCC (E)’s words will have greater impact than a NZ local who, as I estimate above, is less at liberty to question the current state of affairs there and its future direction.
D.A.
NYC (formerly of Auckland)
Why can ‘t we see recent findings or applications of MM and judge by ourselves? In any field, locomotion, astronomy, medecine.
I’ve given examples as far as I can find them, and I’m reading the pro-MM literature. I would suggest that you resort to Google and start with the MM entry.
Are you asking me to do this work for you?
Sounds like a retorical question to me, drawing attention to the absence of such findings.
astronomy
Medicine
I can’t find any links specifically focusing on locomotion but if you want to have a go yourself, try googling mātauranga māori science area which is what I did.
The quick answer is that there aren’t any, but aren’t we all kind of over that whole “findings” thing anyway, and more about the vibe these days? You could start here if you really want to go down the rabbit hole:
https://scientists.org.nz/resources/Documents/PressReleases/NZAS-M%C4%81tauranga%20and%20Science.pdf
“.. academia in New Zealand begins to look like a bunch of lemmings jumping off a cliff.” Some years ago, I attended a symphony concert together with a woman friend who is enthusiastic but not very
knowledgeable about serious music. The program included “The Return of Lemminkäinen” from Sibelius’ “Four Legends from the Kalevala”. After the stirring conclusion of this piece, my companion leaned over to me with enthusiasm, and exclaimed that the music just made her picture the lemmings jumping off a cliff. I hastened to advise her to keep her comments to a whisper, in case there were any Finns seated near us; the hero of the Finnish national epic is rarely pictured as a small, suicidal rodent.
Apropos of not much, back before the Thomas Fire in ’17 took my entire library, I had a rather rare volume–a copy of the Kalevala, in Esperanto, gifted to me by a Finnish Esperantist ca. 1991.
It must be that most NZ academics in the natural sciences know that MM is gonna be a problem, right? They can’t tar and feather all of them, so why not stand together and refuse to let this happen? I know some buy into it, but surely most of them don’t, right?
I’m guessing they don’t buy into it but collective action problems like this one are very, very hard to fix, especially when the possible punishment for the truth teller’s “sins” is ostracism from the (no doubt) fairly small scientific community there. That’s WHEN some idiot screams: “RACIST” an unprovable charge to counter and (probably there like here) social death.
D.A.
NYC
Hi Jerry, in a previous post on your excellent analysis of MM, you concluded that it must all be political. Sadly true. To help understand and recognize this, I strongly recommend the books; ‘Cynical Theories’ by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, and ‘Counter Wokecraft’ by Charles Pincourt with James Lindsay, and Christopher Rufo’s CRT you tube video. In New Zealand the radical reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, plus the push for MM are all informed by the neo-Marxist/Critical Social Justice ideology, described in these texts and resources. Don’t get me started on the proposed school history curriculum (propaganda), which also closely follows the tenets of Postcolonial Theory and Critical Race Theory, and has required a radical re-writing of our history!
Elizabeth Rata is a better Kiwi than those odious British nurses, real kiwis are ratites (from rata: raft, due to the lack of a large breastbone, a ‘keel’). 😁
For a country I partly grew up in (along w/ Australia) what is happening in NZ pains me. I’m a lefty, quite left actually, similar to our host, but the recent wokism is so damaging to our side and in NZ damaging to the entire country.
Of course it is a problem (uniquely, I think) in the entire Anglosphere but from keeping a distant pulse on NZ I’d say it has gone further there than anywhere else. And for longer.
Recently I mentioned (here) how NZ passports (for 15 years now) are in English and Maori – even though very few NZers speak it, even Maoris. And *very* few, say, foreign immigration officials do!
It is all so DIVISIVE: I thought progressives are about tearing down, not erecting walls between people. Or am I just effin’ old?
D.A., 50
NYC
re passports. Māori is an official language so dual language passports are not a surprise.
Indeed. And my UK passport has Welsh and Scottish Gaelic along with a variety of other European languages, so I can’t see a problem with Māori as well as English on my NZ passport.
There could be a good opportunity here to teach real science. Teach a course titled “What is Reality?” or something like that. Compare science and MM teaching side by side. Look at the evidence. When two teachings are in conflict, determine how to determine which (if either) is correct. Bring the conflict out in the open, and let students take their best shot defending each side.
I’m coming to believe that no one really gets what science is about without learning to distinguish it from pseudo-science.
”And then there will be no rodents left, for every serious or accomplished scientist will have fled the country”
Well but they will be quickly replaced by other like-minded scientists from overseas. I was a PHD student in NZ and I know the situation pretty pretty well. I’ve seen other international students (my peers from canada, uk and usa) quickly embrace the popular discourse as if they had just had ‘the’ revelation of their lifetime! When one needs to climb the greasy pole one agrees that the moon is made of fresh blue cheese. And blue cheese it is!
The situation will no longer be the one you experienced when the new rules are in place. If students “quickly embrace” MM as sciene, they’ll be lost. They’d best go elsewhere. If NZ gets a bad reputation for the quality of science, then the “replacement” students will get worse and worse. I don’t get why you don’t think this will make a differene.