This article from New Zealand’s Newsroom site was written by Julie Rowland, the deputy dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland as well as a geologist and the Director of the Ngā Ara Whetū | Centre for Climate, Biodiversity & Society. In other word, she’s a scientist.
One key to what the article is about is given by its subtitle, ”
The University of Auckland’s Julie Rowland examines the notion that education should be secular and devoid of any form of spirituality
And of course you know that she’ll come down on the “science + spirituality = progress” side. Click below to read, and I’ll give a few excerpts:
First she invokes the Treaty of Waitangi, (1840), which guaranteed the indigenous Māori people rights to hold onto their land and villages, as well as granting them the same rights as British citizens, though the country would be governed by England (called “the Crown”). The treaty (called “Te Tiriti”) is now interpreted to mean that indigenous people get roughly half of everything, and can insert their “way of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM), which includes religion, myths, gods, morality, and some practical knowledge, into everything academic:
Science is a rational pursuit of knowledge, but it does not exist in splendid isolation. If this is painted as the ‘ideal’ science, then it is incomplete. People do science, and people and their culture/s are inseparable.
In Aotearoa/New Zealand our nation’s origins lie with the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty is a formal agreement with the third article guaranteeing Māori equal rights and privileges. That means access to education within a system that seeks to fulfil the potential of every individual.
I suspect the heart of the issue is the notion that education should be secular and devoid of any form of spirituality. Proponents of this view would say a karakia (sometimes interpreted as a prayer) to open or close an event, or before guests eat afternoon tea, has no place in education. But in the context of Māori practices and values, and bringing Treaty articles to life, this makes perfect sense. And is absolutely integral.
Integral to what? Apparently not just to teatime prayers, but to all education:
Over the past three decades, Māori values, which are inextricably linked to spirituality, have been taken more seriously by the education sector resulting in a shift in the meaning of a secular education. For example, by 1999, all primary and some specialist (physical education) secondary teachers were required to factor spiritual well-being into their teaching programmes. If you’d been trained to think that spirituality has no part in education, as I did then, this was challenging.
But consider the alternative. If Māori values are parked outside state education, who is education for, and on what terms? Clearly, this scenario disregards every aspect of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and wider indigenous rights.
No, it just makes education secular instead of religious. While it’s okay to teach the small amount of secular knowledge that Māori have garnered (when to harvest berries or shellfish, etc.) into “science,” there is no need to make “spirituality”, including myths and gods that are simply fictional, an integral part of “knowledge”.
And about the Christians, Jews, and Buddhists who are “parked outside education”? Here we arrive at the crux of the matter: people like Rowland think that Māori spirituality MUST be part of education, apparently ignorant of the fact that there are other people participating in education in New Zealand— people who don’t buy the myths of MM.
Remember that the author is a big official at Auckland University, and her final words imply that not only must MM be part of a university education, but is essential to remedy “inequities” (presumably the lower achievement of Māori students than white or Asian students). The idea is that if Māori students don’t see their culture in every part of their college education, it will make them do worse in college. But it will also drag down college education in general by diluting the search for truth—the real benefit of college—with a form of social justice that asserts falsehoods about the universe:
In my view, efforts to acknowledge and understand mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) enrich the capacity of students and staff to connect across different world views, which is critical if we are to address the inequities in Aotearoa, let alone global crises like climate change. Acknowledgement and understanding of beliefs leads to richer engagement and the building of a relationship of equals.
Universities are the last in the education line to grapple with the duality that comes with meeting Treaty obligations. There is widespread support for this among academics who see the relevance in multiple ways. Our universities are not at a crossroads choosing the path of the universality of science or a race-based ideology. We are on a dual carriageway and the momentum is building.
Well, fine. Let MM be taught in sociology or anthropology classes as one of several forms of religious belief in New Zealand. But not in science class! Remember that there is a constant fight in NZ to make MM coequal with science in science class. I thought that misguided effort had waned, but according to Rowland it’s the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, Rowland doesn’t specify where her “dual carriageway” is leading. One thing is for sure: teaching MM is not going to do anything about mitigating global warming. Yes, getting more people into science will help science advance, but pushing a quasi-religion as science, just because of a treaty in 1840 which was largely prescientific, is only going to lower the quality of education in New Zealand.
OMG the Dialectic never ends.
By the way, “spirituality” is the latest New Improved thesis (to the Dialectical antithesis) the Fetzer Institute is putting into its Social Emotional Learning product – a synthetic New Age religion – in all U. S. Public Schools.
So “spirituality” is a Global imperative being pushed – it is not a mistake that it is in two unrelated countries.
Thanks for the reference to the Fetzer Institute, who were unknown to me before this. I went to their website, and at first blush they appear to be a low-rent Templeton Foundation.
I am involved with three public school boards in Illinois–two personally, the third professionally–and I have not gotten wind of anything incoming from Fetzer. I will, nevertheless, now be on the watch for any product of theirs.
OK but bear in mind my assertion above is not going to impress anyone, let’s say – and of course, you are encouraged to reach your own conclusions.
To get more background – again, reach your own conclusions – I suggest:
Education in the New Age
Alice A. Bailey
Lucis Trust (previously Lucifer Publishing)
1954
>Unfortunately, Rowland doesn’t specify where her “dual carriageway” is leading.
A dual carriageway is, of course, what we in North America call a divided highway with a median strip that is intended to prevent conflicts and indeed any interaction at all between traffic moving in opposite directions.
The Dean’s search for a metaphor has backfired grotesquely.
+1
This is of course similar to the arguments made by Christian fundamentalists when they try to insert Creationism into the public school curriculum. First, there’s no neutral ground, you can’t leave spirituality out; second, it’s not fair to allow one narrative while excluding others.
There’s also the claim that the scientific evidence supports a Young Earth and most certainly doesn’t support Evolution, but the Maori don’t seem to be there yet. It’s still at the point where they “harmonize.”
It’s just about introducing relativism into Science. MM is just the local wedge.
I find Rowland’s analogy to happy motoring quite charming. Perhaps the insertion of MM into every facet of NZ education demands road hazard signs, such as “Pavement Ends”, “No Outlet” or “Dead End”. The dual carriage way she refers to is, of course, “the duality that comes with meeting Treaty obligations”. Imagine what the US would be like if there were some 1840 governmental covenant that seemed to authorize DEI as a state religion. We would need signs warning “Bridge Out” and “Road Ends”.
“… the insertion of MM into every facet of NZ education …”
Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The Politics of Education
And a new one I found :
“We’re not just altering knowledge ; we’re altering consciousness and creating new kinds of subjectivities.”
-Henry Giroux
At ~ 45 min mark this talk : https://youtu.be/CAxj87RRtsc?si=VcWaDaMDh0YuKSOe
… does everyone remember that? When education altered our consciousness?
“Happy motoring…” You are funny. I’m so bored with the subject at hand (meaning; I wish it would go away) and appreciate the chance to laugh at it.
Ah, remember thhe tune that went with the 1957 advert for Esso?
As for the 1840 treaty, I apologise for my forebears being so wimpy as to sign such a disadvantageous agreement. The truth is that the Maori were so warlike that they had given British troops a very hard time (see ‘New Zealand Wars’ at Wikipedia). That’s how a stone-age tribe now has equal standing in the theory and practice taught at NZ universities.
Physics 101
Using Mātauranga Māori calculate the altitude needed to place a satellite in geosynchronous Orbit.
Chemistry 101.
Using Mātauranga Māori Calculate the number of atoms in 20 g of carbon.
Biology 101
Using Mātauranga Māori explain what recessive inheritance is and how it affects offspring
Wishing for a like button👍🏻
+1
From the link to Deputy Dean Rowland:
I am interested in the interaction of brittle structures (faults and fractures) and geofluids (both geothermal waters and magma). My work has implications for mineral exploration, geohazard analyses, fault growth models and understanding the evolution of continental margins. My projects are fundamental (architecture of magmatic provinces) and applied (controls on fluid flow in geothermal systems, vectoring to mineralised structures).
When she can explain to me how the Treaty of Waitangi or Matauranga Maori increases understanding of the science in the quoted paragraph and what empirical evidence shows that preceding lessons with a karakia improves educational performance by how much for how many Maori students, I will explain to her why I still think her proposals are wrong.
Professor Rowland’s Areas of Expertise:
Crustal fault architecture, structural controls on hydrothermal fluid flow, applied structural geology.
M. Maori gives us the names and titles of the gods and spirits controlling hydrothermal fluid flow. Doubtless worthwhile.
All correct answers will be retrospectively attributed to synergy with MM, which came first.
Ipso Facto.
QED.
There are calls for the decolonization of education in South Africa, but the extent of these demands appears less intense compared to the developments in New Zealand
I would like to pin down anyone who uses the word “spirituality” to define as exactly as possible what they mean by the term. Do they mean another realm of existence that is not material? Do they mean, like Sam Harris, a particular state of human consciousness that yields a sense of peaceful oneness with existence without any connection or reference to the supernatural?
Indeed, Stephen.
The Dialectical Epistemic Inversion model predicts a subversion of “spirituality”.
I’m not sure what or how – but it would certainly not be up to individuals to find on their own in that case.
Yuval Harari advocates for humans as “hackable animals” – maybe Musk does too – wild speculation there – reduction of thought to a line of code? Or perhaps a council of bio-sysadmins.
Or there’s “at-one-ment” (see in that A. A. Bailey book (1954)). The “One” is a Hermetic thing – but I don’t have a good citation off-hand.
My eyebrow goes up when someone says they’re “spiritual but not religious.” When I question that statement, the answers are all over the map. They may relate to something supernatural, which I dismiss.
But often the speaker is trying to draw an analogy to emotional states like “awe” or “love” (or a sense of “oneness”). I’ll accept the analogy if that’s what they mean, but I’ll point out the supernatural ingredient that is often attached in our culture.
I’m most dismissive when the person is unconsciously trying to say that they are a “good person.”
Other populations that developed far removed from Western culture and its science have managed to become pretty damn ambitious and uncompromising about adapting science without all this foof-ery. I think as a general rule, those cases would be because they either always held power or were later returned fully to power, so there was no need for the sort of guilt-ridden performance art that we see in NZ.
So I suggest that this problem in NZ might be solved by driving “through” it, as it were. Have the westerners literally give up power at all levels, and hand it over to Maori politicians and bureaucrats. It would be the ultimate “land acknowledgement” by giving it all back! I bet you that NZ would evolve to become like every other modern society, with science firmly back in the drivers seat. The Maori would do it themselves so long as they were the ones doing the steering.
Just like South Africa came around in the end, right?
Science … does not exist in splendid isolation.
Well, actually, it does, until you can come up with another way to determine what’s real and what’s only in your imagination.
“Science … does not exist in splendid isolation.”
This is a doozy, right?
It seems to suggest science is like anything else because brainwaves make it.
This is alchemical.
A quick metaphor : the drunk looking for their keys under the streetlamp.
Science assumes we all are that drunkard – that is the value of the streetlamp – of empiricism – of independent verification, nullius in verba.
Hard to encapsulate, but I thought I’d note that metaphor.
Heck, the TOW was signed between the Queen (more or less) and the Chiefs of the various Iwi. It was at a time before true democracy (although 20-30 years later we were becoming very democratic and were 100% by 1893) and was a time when only the nobility and aristocracy ruled by right.
Today much Māori political and business leadership is still within the nobility and aristocracy and the serfs for lack of a better term are still mostly picking up scraps. Winston Peters of New Zealand First, David Seymore of Act and the headline making new boy of National James Meager are not just conservatives but are all of rich Māori decent but can also be seen as upstart peasants not following their feudal lords.
The TOW was for its time though unprecedented in legal circles are despite some awkward translation issues was very well meaning. It basically said something along the line of the Queen being sovereign but the Chiefs running their respective Iwis, or something like that.
Governer Fitzroy (yeah, that one, Darwin’s captain) did he upmost to prevent the issues that started here from crooked real estate dealers that’ll make Trump look honest and corrupt members of various Iwi (many friends of mind have no issue saying that had crooks in their family).
“[P]eople and their culture/s are inseparable.” – Julie Rowland
She is wrong, because essentialism about cultural membership is false. What is true is that the process of an individual’s socialization includes an acculturation, i.e. a process by which the culture of a particular society is instilled in an individual from infancy onward; so one’s habitus (in the sociological sense) is more or less strongly influenced by the cultural environment in which one grew up. However, it doesn’t follow that people are essentially “inseparable” from their culture, because one’s acculturation isn’t an inescapable destiny. One’s originally acquired cultural habitus (or cultural identity) isn’t necessarily fixed throughout one’s entire life.
The New Zealand philosopher Jeremy Waldron (*1953) has developed an anti-essentialist cosmopolitan multiculturalism (in “Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative”, 1992).
“Jeremy Waldron…insists that defenders of minority rights exaggerate our dependence on particular cultural groups. He defends what he calls the ‘cosmopolitan alternative’. On this view, people can pick and choose ‘cultural fragments’ that come from a variety of ethnocultural sources, without feeling any sense of membership in or dependence on a particular culture. In the modern world, people live ‘in a kaleidoscope of culture’, moving freely amongst the products of innumerable cultural traditions. Each person’s life incorporates a melange of such cultural fragments, including, say, Inuit art, Chinese food, German folklore, and Judea-Christian religion.
Indeed, Waldron questions whether there really are such things as distinct cultures. The globalization of trade, the increase in human mobility, and the development of international institutions and communications have made it impossible to say where one culture begins and another ends. The only way to preserve a distinct culture intact, he argues, would be to artificially cut it off from the general course of human events. As Waldron puts it, the only way to preserve the ‘authenticity’ or ‘integrity’ of a particular culture would be to adopt a wholly inauthentic way of life—one which denied the overwhelming reality of cultural interchange and global interdependence.”
(Kymlicka, Will. Introduction to /The Rights of Minority Cultures/, edited by Will Kymlicka, 1-27. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. pp. 7-8)
Presumably, as part of the 50/50 spirituality split, there needs to be inclusion of, at the very least, Judeo-Christian systems of thinking in the curriculum, possibly other traditions as well, given the multi-faith nature of modern NZ.
Anyone like to speculate on the impact on cosmology and astronomy?
Creationism anyone?
Plus “elephants all the way down.”
Turtles
Hinduism is our second largest religion down here as well.
Science does not sit in splendid isolation
Actually, it probably does, deputy dean Rowland.
Edit: I see Rick beat me to it at #10. Not for the first time, I should have refreshed the page before commenting.
Unfortunately, Rowland doesn’t specify where her “dual carriageway” is leading.
Talking Heads probably had a clue…
Thank God (I know, not many faithful here, so thank Ceiling Cat if you like) we have the First Amendment in the U.S. Otherwise we would have Creationists inserting their “ways of knowing” into science classes here, and our public school students would be learning the Genesis creation story in biology and geology.
Flood Geology and the like?
The problem with biculturalism and the new mantra, co-governance is that it risks politically and ethnically excluding people from non Maori and non-European cultures. I recently asked an author whether his new book included the huge cultural and demographic impact of Asian students on the history of institution he’s writing about and he said OMG, I’ve overlooked them. As he’s a friend I can’t name names or the institution, but the inference is pretty darn obvious!
Readers outside New Zealand probably will not appreciate that writing articles like this one is a largely ceremonial function for an academic dean. Its purpose is to show interested parties that the author, her faculty and the university are on the side of Progress, Decolonisation and Indigeneity.
It is also worth consideration that the University of Auckland probably paid for this placement of this article in Newsroom — an online newspaper with no visible means of support, other than generous government grants.