Two letters have just been published in Science signed by a total of 15 scientists, all criticizing the first article below (published in Science last February), a piece arguing for teaching indigenous knowledge (including N.Z.’s version, Mātauranga Māori) alongside science in the science classroom. (Click to read.) Now the authors, after being criticized, denied that they really meant what they argued in this paper:
I also published a post in February criticizing Black and Tylianakis’s paper, and was pretty hard on their claims, which deserved such criticism. Science clearly published their article as part of the performative wokeness infecting major science journals, and it was full of assertions and short on facts. It was, in reality, an attempt to sacralize indigenous knowledge—a dangerous gambit. Some quotes from my critique:
In the end, this article appears to me to be a DEI-ish contribution: something published to advance “the authority of the sacred victim” by arguing that indigenous knowledge and ways to attain it is just as good as modern (sometimes called “Western” ) science, and that teaching it will empower the oppressed. Here’s one line from the paper supporting my hypothesis:
In addition to a suite of known benefits to Indigenous students, we see the potential for all students to benefit from exposure to Indigenous knowledge, alongside a science curriculum, as a way of fostering sustainability and environmental integrity.
In other words, the argument here is really meant to buttress the self image of indigenous people, not to buttress science. You can see this because there are hardly any examples given to support their thesis. Instead, there is a lot of palaver and evidence-free argument, as well as both tedious and tendentious writing.
The publication of this paper is somewhat of a travesty, for it shows that the AAAS is becoming as woke as New Zealand, where the claim that you should NOT teach MM in the science classroom can get you fired! If this kind of stuff continues, the authoritarians will eventually shut down anybody who makes counterarguments, as is happening in New Zealand, where counterspeech against the “scientific” nature of MM is demonized and punishable. Did the AAAS[ The American Association for the Advancement of Science] even get critical reviewers for this piece?
But it’s especially important for Kiwis themselves to push back on this paper, for authors Black and Tylianakis are both from New Zealand, and their paper could be seen as supporting the widespread but misleading idea that indigenous knowledge, at least in New Zealand but probably everywhere else, is coequal to modern science.
The first paper pushing back, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, has fourteen authors, including all but one of the Auckland University researchers who signed the Listener Letter on science—the letter that ignited this conflagration. In fact, that letter, which argued that indigenous knowledge in NZ had a place in the classroom, but not the science classroom, is quite similar to what you’ll read below (click headline to read). But you can’t attack this stuff too often, for the postmodern-derived claim that “all ways of knowing are equal” must be debunked before it destroys New Zealand science (it’s already done a job on social science and the humanities).
Here’s Ahdar et al.’s argument against what Kiwis, in their drive to sacralize Māori language, call mana ōrite, defined below. An excerpt (I’ve highlighted the money quote):
We agree with A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) that the arguments of those supporting the “mana ōrite” policy (translated as “equal status” or “equal value”) between Indigenous knowledge and science are largely based on ethics and morals; that science is typically considered discrete from nonscience academic disciplines, whereas Indigenous knowledge lacks such divisions; and that science and Indigenous knowledge systems are distinct in “methodologies, philosophies, worldview, and modes of transmission.” However, such distinctions (1, 2) are precisely why Indigenous knowledge—although it contains empirical and cultural knowledge of great value—should be taught as a distinct subject or as aspects of other subjects, not “alongside” science in science classes, as Black and Tylianakis suggest.
Black and Tylianakis fail to consider how to resolve conflicts between science and Indigenous knowledge in empirical content or methodology in the classroom. In Indigenous knowledge, empirical observations generally merge seamlessly with, and gain an authority not to be challenged from, spiritual and religious beliefs (3–5). Therefore, incorporating such observations into science curricula has led to, and will continue to lead to, the use of spiritual concepts in science classrooms (6).
Placing science and Indigenous knowledge alongside each other does disservice to the coherence and understanding of both, and leading Māori scholars have cautioned against such comparisons (7, 8). Black and Tylianakis do not explain how science students might reconcile content from these two very distinct systems when taught as being of “equal value,” nor do they acknowledge that teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside science greatly limits the delivery of science curricula that meet international academic disciplinary standards.
Note how the authors use the Dennett-ian strategy of first showing where they agree with the paper they’re criticizing before they start hurling the brickbats.
And indeed, as I’ve written before, attempts to equate MM with science has lead to confusing lessons incorporating Māori myths and the concept of “mauri”, or vitalism, into the science classroom (see here, here, and the many posts here). What’s new in this letter is the authors’ digging for the roots of mana ōrite, which, they say, lie in social constructivism (my bolding):
The mana ōrite policy (9) states that Indigenous knowledge and science should be given equal status, but equating such vastly different systems is meaningless and based on the relativist concept of social constructivism. This ideology posits that all knowledge depends entirely on its cultural context, which it cannot transcend, and therefore epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another. This is inherently antiscience; science is open to all to pursue and critique, and it depends on every claim being open to challenge. Framing the mana ōrite policy in terms of “relative value” or “relative status” is the problem, not the solution, because it tips the discussion into an emotive moral judgment that purports to say something about the merit of cultural differences. Under this view, the contest of ideas becomes a battle of cultural and political power rather than a matter of empirical evidence and theoretical coherence.
Their letter goes on to say that because science is based on testing factual claims, but indigenous knowledge, in contrast, comes with a heavy dose of spirituality and other nonfactual stuff, it shouldn’t be taught in the science class, or construed as a form of “knowledge”. This parallels the Listener letter, but this and Matzke’s letter are more important because they are peer-reviewed letters in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals. It goes without saying that the letter could not have been publishe in New Zealand, and that’s very sad.
There’s another critique as well: a single-authored paper written by American Nick Matzke, now working at Auckland Uni. Nick may be familiar to you as a prolific author on The Panda’s Thumb website, and as a fighter against creationism as a member of the National Center for Science Education. Nick is now battling the Kiwi version of creationism: the spiritual/religious aspects of MM. He’s argued against the vitalism of MM (“mauri“) in a video (see here), but in this letter, again peer reviewed, he criticizes the vitalism of New Zealand’s indigenous “ways of knowing”. Letters in Science have considerable clout, though of course Nick and the other 14 authors are up against powerful ideological and political forces in their own country and university. (Click to read.)
Nick points out several examples where vitalism (“mauri“), a supernatural concept, remains in the Kiwi science curriculum—at the behest of NZ’s Ministry of Education:
A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) give an overly rosy picture of New Zealand’s policy of “mana ōrite,” or equal status for mātauranga Māori, in science education, which they say teaches Indigenous knowledge “alongside” science rather than “as” science. They suggest that this policy avoids problems such as teaching creationist myths in science class. However, the New Zealand Ministry of Education placed supernatural content directly into science and math curricula with no clarification that it was nonscientific material.
The chemistry curriculum required students to “recognise that mauri is present in all matter which exists as particles held together by attractive forces” (1), with a glossary that defined mauri as “[t]he vital essence, life force of everything.” This concept, known as vitalism, has long been debunked (2). Teaching concepts that directly conflict with empirical evidence undermines the goals of science education. Dozens of science teachers opposed the inclusion of mauri in the chemistry curriculum, but the Ministry steamrolled their objections, citing “the requirement for mana ōrite” (1). The objective was only removed after 18 months of controversy, at a time when the 2023 election was looming. The Ministry, ignoring vitalism’s evidentiary flaws, claimed the reversal occurred because inserting concepts such as mauri into science curricula ran the “risk of recolonisation” (3), despite the fact that mana ōrite’s entire rationale was decolonization.
Problems remain in 2024. Despite its removal from exam objectives, mauri remains in the chemistry curriculum, in which students are told, “Revisit the concept of mauri” (4). This learning can sit beside learnings in atomic theory” (5), and the Gulf Innovation Fund Together website (4) says that mauri is “the force that interpenetrates all things to bind and knit them together.” A math qualification on practical problems of “life in… the Pacific” asks trigonometry students to calculate how much flaxen rope the demigod Maui made to lasso the Sun, slowing it to lengthen the day (6). The text of the exercise is studiously agnostic about the literal truth of this story, describing it as a “narrative.” Black and Tylianakis might categorize this as teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside math, but teachers face the prospect of strife among students over whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth and if students of various backgrounds are expected to defend or disclaim its verity.
The letter (limited to about 300 words) goes on to emphasize that the Ministry’s current policy puts supernatural content in the science classroom, and suggests, as is only sensible, that MM, if it’s to be taught as a whole, has to be in a “nonscience class or unit” that discusses the content and diversity of Māori beliefs. Nick also wrote a brief backstory about this on The Panda’s Thumb website and makes two minor corrections of his letter.
Now of course the original authors, Amanda Black and Jason Tylianakis, got to respond, and they were given more words than the critics. Click below to see their reply:
I’m biased, of course, but I consider this response very weak, as it continues to defend the nonscientific aspects of MM, including mauri, as forms of “knowledge”. In fact, I don’t think that they realize that all verifications of truths about the world, whether they come from science or sociology, are examples of what I call “science construed broadly”. Here are some statements that weaken their response (my own comments are flush left):
Indigenous knowledge must retain its integrity as a separate, parallel knowledge system. Analogous to philosophy, Indigenous knowledge should be taught alongside science as a separate form of knowledge, not within the science curriculum.
Indigenous “ways of knowing” such as MM are not “parallel knowledge systems”. In fact, MM is not a “knowledge system” at all, for, although it does contain some empirical knowledge, it’s also laden with religion, tradition, superstition, ethics, social strictures, legend, vitalism, and so on. This gemisch cannot be a knowledge system, though later on the authors try to argue that, for example, vitalism is also “knowledge.” Further, philosophy, a useful discipline when applied to real issues, is not a “way of knowing” but a “way of thinking”. Philosophers can verify what’s true about the world only in the same way scientists do: via observation, replication, hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt, experiments, and so on, And that’s part of science, not philosophy. But wait! There’s more!
Matzke demotes Indigenous knowledge to a “belief system” rather than knowledge, and Ahdar et al. dispute the idea that “epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another.” Philosophy, arts, and other social sciences and humanities are all valuable forms of knowledge that sit alongside science in the curriculum without positivist science proofs of their “verity,” as Matzke requires of Indigenous knowledge. We thus agree with scholars who have cautioned against using science to test nonscience concepts from other knowledge systems (2). (Ahdar et al. claim to agree with such scholars as well but contradict themselves.)
No, philosophy, art and much of the humanities are “ways of seeing,” not “ways of knowing”. Knowledge or empirical truth, defined as “justified true belief” accepted by most rational people, cannot be attained without using the methods of science. If you make a claim about what’s true in the world, then yes, you need science construed broadly to test that claim. These authors are so immersed in their “all knowledge systems are true in their own way” mantra that they don’t seem to even know what science is.
Here they try to shoehorn mauri, indisputably a form of vitalism and supernaturalism, into science:
The concept of mauri, a key feature in the Māori worldview, has been frequently explored within the peer-reviewed scientific literature as a measure of ecological resilience (2) without being absorbed by or undermining science. Similar to the concept of health (4, 5), mauri is not directly measurable, but both health and mauri can be operationalized through quantifiable indicators, and both concepts are useful for communicating societal and environmental well-being to the public. Nonscience concepts (assuming that they are not presented as science) can have value for connecting with communities.
I’m not sure what the sweating authors are trying to say here. What do they mean by “operationalizing vitalism through quantifiable indicators”? If they mean that, then yes, the concept of mauri is testable in the same way that intercessory prayer as a way to cure disease is testable (and of course it’s failed: prayer doesn’t work). I’d put up many dollars if they could find a way to test whether vitalism was operating in nature. The authors’ last statement, that supernaturalism can be valuable in “connecting with communities”, is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant to the argument of these letters.
Here’s another example of their relative ignorance about indigenous knowledge. If they mean what they say below, let them give just ONE EXAMPLE:
Matzke’s concern about “whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth” fails to acknowledge that Indigenous knowledge systems can encode knowledge within apparent myth (2), so neither English term may fit perfectly. Education on Indigenous knowledge would avert such misunderstandings.
Yes, true. Separate the empirical wheat from the supernatural chaff, and then plant the wheat alongside science. But teaching myths that mix both empirical knowledge and superstition can only confuse students. Are the authors suggesting that teachers tell students that part of MM isn’t really true? If so, they should admit that (this would get them into big-time trouble), but they should also clarify what they mean by this:
We believe that harm arises when nonscience is presented as science, and we remain unconvinced that the intent of the mana ōrite initiative (8) is to present Indigenous knowledge and culture as science or to compete with scientific concepts in science classes.
Kiwis really need to debate this issue: in fact, this is the most important of aspect of science that needs discussing in New Zealand right now. What a pity it is that this discussion has effectively been banned. Remember Auckland Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater’s promise to hold such a debate three years ago—a promise she never kept?
What a mess. The poor students are being fed a very mixed-up melange that will not serve them well. What will happen if New Zealand faces an actual threat that requires science to counteract? Will the scientists trained in this way be up to the task?
I had not heard the phrase “authority of the sacred victim” before, and wasn’t sure whether it represented a criticism or an endorsement of the idea. The linked article, from the abstract, looks like a pip and an endorsement of the concept of the sacred victim.
I think all DEI, anti-colonialism discussion, and CRT is based on the concept of the sacred victim.
Absolutely Darryl. I’m surprised it is new to Dr. B.
The sacralization of anything indigenous is a central plank – perhaps its most authoritarian aspect – of DEI.
It partly forms the basis of the …. what is it? …. “hole theory” of late: that the hole in people that religion’s decline has left has been filled with religious-style woke nonsense. Haidt has talked about this, as has Michael Schellenberger. Dawkins goes against it with some horror. I think Dawkins fears the truth here as once you see woke as a religion there’s no unseeing it.
D.A.
NYC
https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/
+1
Here is another essay by the same author that may clear it up.
https://lawliberty.org/forum/social-justice-rites-sacrificial-politics-sacred-victims/
“This is a system of social constructions. That is, Sacrificial Politics is a system of roles bestowed upon people by those around them, and these roles carry rights, prerogatives, obligations, expectations, and social statuses. For example, with diversity talk we do not just recognize that some people are “different” in the desired way; we do not just include them; and we don’t treat everyone in the room equally. We confer a status on select people as “diverse” and as having the power to bestow “diversity” on the groups they join. Other people get the status of not “diverse.”
… The sacrificial core of the movement comes out most clearly when a Blasphemer gets publicly excoriated. These humiliating spectacles do not merely punish or correct individuals. They are public sacrifices seeking communal atonement (and policing communal unity). Otherwise, it’s hard to account for how disproportionate the response may seem. Within the sacred system, the response seems totally justified.”
Because Aotearoa New Zealand was colonized by Polynesians only ~once and only recently, it has only one indigenous culture, language, origin story, and collection of myths and knowledge. Canada could never pull off something like mana ōrite on a national level because we were colonized several times and long ago, and indigenous culture here diverged into dozens of origin stories, languages, and myths, each with its own justifications for their past exploitation, enslavement, and extirpation of their neighbours. So we can’t tell all those stories and call it “science” because they conflict with each other, and in fairness we can’t pick just one. It’s ironic that our diversity is limiting the reach of our indigenization.
The “only recently” thing is an interesting slight of hand I noticed as a kid going to school in NZ. 1970s.
As an Australian I was surprised the Maori settlement of NZ was kind of sold as being on a par with Aboriginal inhabitance of Australia.
The former is about 800 years vs 40,000+ years.
Gotta be careful of “time immemorial” claims. Like “Palestine” as a country. Another gigantic lie from a historical point of view.
D.A.
NYC
https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/
One hopes these are the first of many broadsides. One looks with hope for more signs like these.
Btw, Maui would have needed about 95.72 million miles of flaxen rope to lasso the sun, plus a few million extra to make a knot, etc. Of course there are some problems with physics, but I won’t dwell on them here.
HAHHa. You get the prize today Mark. You did the math!
cheers,
D.A.
NYC
A math qualification on practical problems of “life in… the Pacific” asks trigonometry students to calculate how much flaxen rope the demigod Maui made to lasso the Sun, slowing it to lengthen the day.
I state very confidently and without checking my facts that lassoing the Sun with a flaxen rope has never been and never will be a practical problem of life in the Pacific, but when you are a desperate examiner required to worship a current idol of the tribe in order to appear nominally relevant to some of your pupils, any tokenistic bovine excrement has to do.
Technically, if you read the story, it is about Maui and his brothers journeying to where the Sun rises out of a pit in the morning, lassoing it there, then beating it with a magic jawbone (from Maui’s grandmother, IIRC), until it agrees to travel more slowly. If you insert a bunch of premises, you can do trigonometry on this, but I’m still puzzled about the point of it, or how it is a “practical problem” about “life in the Pacific.”
There could be some interesting cultural learning involved in the story, but the NCEA curriculum as written does not explain what any of that would be, nor why it is relevant/useful to bring up in trigonometry. And it’s not clear that the cultural learning would go the direction the Ministry of Education presumably wanted, i.e. to raise the status of mātauranga Māori and the pride/interest of Maori and Pasifika students in science. E.g., one of the more obvious things that I get from the story is that the Polynesian cosmology was probably a flat-earth cosmology. I don’t draw any positive or negative lessons from that, nobody in the world knew most of science for most of human history. But if there has been a top-down directive of “equal status”, including directives that everything about indigenous knowledge is “valid”, or even directives to “believe” the material (in at least one Ministry of Education mana orite video), the importance of teaching te ao Māori (the Māori worldview) as a whole, etc., then such things can become points of awkward questions, arguments, etc.
And again, teachers and students of different background face quite awkward questions with such material. Will it be expected that Māori students defend, or disclaim, the literal truth of the story? How about white students, or students of other backgrounds?
Perhaps it could work if everyone automatically agreed beforehand and with good humour that these stories are myths that no one takes literally — kind of the status of comic books and disney cartoon movies — but the curriculum doesn’t say that, and I’ve observed a great deal of hesistancy and nervousness in NZ about calling things “myths and legends”, even when that is clearly what they are from a scientific point of view.
Random thoughts: If the New Zealand direction is a search for indigenous status and shared brotherhood and if science is a process rather than experientially based enterprise, then:
1. Maybe the New Zealand example points to a need to, beginning early, teach students units or courses on human cultures and why different groups have different beliefs and understandings of how and why the world works the way it does. Provides status, expands human understanding and provides fascinating material, all while youngsters are still forming their world views.
2. If you pull back the lens on the New Zealand decision and in the spirit of Mike’s observation, what’s to prevent teaching as science the experiential knowledge and religion based beliefs of other groups of New Zealanders as well as the Māori? It took centuries to de-Christianize science and some may wish to change that direction. Once started, principles seem more apt to expand than contract, at least for a time.
3. Is inserting DEI principles into science akin to inserting indigenous ways of knowing into it? Other religious or theological principles?
4. Caffeine, I obviously need caffeine.
” a measure of ecological resilience” and “environmental well being” – haha, ask the Moas and the Haast’s Eagles, two types of sea lions, and various other birds and other animals how resilient they were after the Polynesians settled in NZ. I’m so tired of these claims that indigenous peoples were so much better at managing ecosystems when the truth is that they hunted until entire species were wiped out and cleared land by large scale burning operations so they could farm. They didn’t coexist peacefully as stewards of nature – they killed well beyond the need for sustenance and altered the landscape in ways that further destroyed ecosystems which resulted in the loss of species that could not adjust to the new conditions.
I’m just as tired of lefty claims of the noble savage.
Note that in NZ when Maoris got the TECHNOLOGY they murdered each other with the speed and glee any humans ever have (see “Musket War” from memory).
D.A.
NYC
I’m just going to make a little plea that one of the benefits of technology is to allow you to stop or mitigate natural processes you have set in motion, or to invent processes that are themselves amenable to control. Maori had no way to put out the forest fires they started and so they had no choice but to burn uncontrollably to clear for subsistence horticulture which fed them; forests didn’t. And it was well known to them that the forests regenerate after natural fires. Soil loss and permanent deforestation aren’t inevitable consequences of natural or human forest fires. If the forest loss in New Zealand is indeed attributed to Maori burning, well, that’s what the science says, so OK. And we do know that deforestation condemned other civilizations on more marginal islands from Greenland to Easter Island to terminal decline. Maybe this would have doomed the Maori if the Dutch and the British hadn’t shown up.
The Plains Indians had no way to stop a bison stampede from going over the buffalo jump to the last animal not so exhausted it had to stop running before it got there. In those contexts, a far-sighted individual might say, “You know, that was a lot of bison left to rot just for a winter’s worth of pemmican.” The response from the elders would be a a smile and a shrug: “Whatcha gonna do, eh?”
Steel axes, saws, and repeating rifles still allow profligate waste of trees and animals but they also enable selective clearing and shooting if you have a mind to. And since cutting down trees and chasing bison on horseback to shoot them are both hard work (harder than starting fires and stampeding them over cliffs), there is an incentive to take only what you need to. But you have to be motivated by seeing value in unburnt wood, whether standing or felled, and living, grazing bison, and that value is not obviously communicated in the spiritual legends. (The “stewards of the land” stuff was made up ex post facto when it became fashionable.)
I’m aware of killing frenzies by both Maori and Amerindians that were not due to inability to control what they started, so I don’t claim this explains all environmental degradation by pre-Contact indigenous people. I’m just trying to be fair. I don’t condemn indigenous people for not knowing that burning and slaughtering might have consequences they couldn’t foresee. I do resent the propagation of disinformation that they had ways of knowing to foresee this and that made them not do it when the evidence is they did. Good and hard, whenever they could.
Due to my childhood Yeshiva studies many decades ago, I incline to the view that Talmud-Torah is a knowledge system parallel to Western science, and equivalent to it in all respects. For example, the laws of koshrut can illuminate the nature of matter, as described differently in Western physics. Electrons, characterized by charge, are analogous to the fleishig category, while protons correspond to milchig, and neutrons to pareve. It should be obvious that teaching physics through these koshrut concepts will foster sustainability and integrity, improve particle justice, and help impart sub-atomic physics to the communities of Borough Park in Brooklyn and Mea Shearim in Jerusalem.
Apparently some Modi-loving experts of Matauranga Mahabharata attest that everything in the Mahabharata is true, such as the flying saucers and the death ray guns. But they haven’t explained why the ancient Indians forgot these really useful inventions and reverted to the bullock cart and spears.
I’m all for particle justice!
Why are electrons unfairly characterized as “negative” while protons get to be “positive”?
Unfair! Particle justice now!
Can’t be long now until PZ Meyers invites some indigenous knowledge ‘experts’ to set up a science blog on FreeThoughtBlogs.
First article: How Gravity was Invented by a Farting Turtle, and Why This Means Everybody is Racist!
Ha ha! But the first rule of way-over-to-the-left wokery is to completely ignore the bat-shit-insane wokery that is to the left of them! And of course they never try to moderate each other. That never happens either.
While it is not perfect, and I’d reckon even he’d himself agree it wasn’t, at best I call it “respective impartially”, I go with Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of “Non-overlapping Magisteria”.
It is hardly perfect, but about the best one can do in certain contexts.
Standing up for science, and against the teaching of myths and legends as truth, brings professional and reputational risks – though probably much less so today than formerly.
But there’s something else. When you argue against equality of Traditional Knowledge and modern global science in public fora, you can see immediately how some people, particularly those who have part-Indigenous ancestry and who may have little or no understanding of science, are genuinely hurt.
I, too, have struggled with this one because we do not wish to cause hurt (possibly many others feel the same way), but I state the case as strongly as I feel is reasonable.
There is a more important moral and educational imperative here – we owe it to our school children, our teachers and our scientists to state what we believe to be the truth and not either to misguide or to empower others to misguide.
David Alexander Lillis
Well David,
regarding ‘not wishing to cause hurt’, as your co-authors Ananish and Natasha know ( the former being ethnic Indian, the latter with her professional expertise on China /SE Asia ), the ‘hurt’ is a consequence of being forced to confront reality.
It isn’t so much about the elevation of pre-modern myths and legends, so much as the historical shock of civilisations overwhelmed by the military and scientific supremacy of early modern Europe, who were the first societies to harness technological and navigational supremacy from early modern science. Chinese, Indians, and the Islamic world, all experienced the humiliation of being colonised or at least militarily defeated by numerically fewer but organised and rapacious western societies. In addition, societies in the Americas and the Pacific collapsed through the introduced disease burden of novel viral and microbial infections that caused population collapse.
Indian, Chinese and Islamic intellectuals ‘explained’ why their cultures were so great, yet were unable to cope with the European military shock, as a defence mechanism. ‘Blame colonialism absolutely but our philosophers and poets were far better than Kant or Shakespeare and our family values are far superior to western family values’. [ PS I’m delighted that Elizabeth Rata is trying to reintroduce Shakespeare into the curriculum. Maybe she could throw in Mozart as well? ]
Matauranga Maori pride is qualitatively the same defence mechanism that Chinese, Indian, and Islamic cultures traversed over the past 200 years — it is just delayed as most things are in Keyaurastan New Zealand. So what is the excuse for feeling ‘hurt’ by the comparison?
The best riposte comes from the governments of China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan : through education and industrial policy, develop a highly industrialised science-based society to draw level and this way banish the 2 centuries of cultural humiliation. Will this happen in NZ? The answer is NO, because economically, as I am sure Ananish and Natasha know, NZ’s future is to be incorporated into the Australian economy, maybe as a state like Tasmania.
Hi Ramesh.
Agreed! Mozart for the music curriculum. See:
https://www.royalsocietyofnewzealandwellingtonbranch.org/blogs/a7hqy1akyygs9m48gj0la6toflfodf
David
Thanks for picking this up and drawing attention to it. A small correction – we’ve lost touch with one of the original Listener Seven, John Werry, and two others have died, Mike Corballis and Robert Nola. Kendall, Garth, Elizabeth and I fight on while remembering them and missing them. Happily, we’ve acquired new allies, as the list of authors shows.
There are signs that the climate in NZ academia is slowly becoming more conducive to controversial opinion, which our letter shouldn’t be, but probably will be. Otago University has adopted a strong free speech policy which draws on Chicago’s, and there has been considerable pressure to strengthen Auckland’s rather limp draft policy. NZ’s cause may not be entirely lost.
It’s worth noting that the Labour government (left wing in NZ but possibly far left in most of the world) that drove this MM coequal with ‘Western science’ thing was voted out late last year. The coalition that replaced them (right wing in NZ but possibly centrist in most of the world) is re-writing the school curriculum, ostensibly because the current curriculum is too high level and forces individual schools/teachers to develop large amounts of often diverging curriculum details on top of their usual lesson planning and teaching. I hope the curriculum issues mentioned in this article will not survive this re-write. However the issue that a large section of NZ society supports political parties that will happily undermine science and even democracy (via a misguided attempt to amend the Human Rights Act to protect religious groups from hate speech and if you read it carefully from criticism) will no doubt persist.
Hi Ian.
See:
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/07/david-lillis-english-curriculum-for.html
David
This is happening in many parts of the world . As a math professor I am aghast to see how our students in India in elite science schools are so devout believers of religion that they are ready to put science and math in the category of myth. It is a sad situation. Losing scientific temper means you lose the basic and the only way to gain some knowledge about this world. However in India science is given a lip service and it is thought as some kind of fantasy construed by humans and now science is being pushed to the sidelines while Indians gladly use modern technological gazettes and think that technology is independent of science. A very sad situation and those like me who want to stand up for science are simply silenced and marked as a kind of political activist. Science will never have the centerstage in India again a place which it rightfully had after independence.
Hi Joydeep Dutta,
Are you talking about the issues with e.g. Hindu nationalist science, that Meera Nanda has written about for a long time?
Cheers,
Nick
University management is directly driving the decline.
“…there have been unrealistic efforts to force poorly defined “Treaty obligations” into teaching and research. For example, one [NZ] university is now telling its academic staff that all curricula should, as a high priority, be “designed, developed and delivered in authentic partnerships with Māori [and] uphold provisions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. It’s not clear how so many authentic partnerships can be achieved across all disciplines, from chemistry to ancient history. The 1840 text of te Tiriti gives no guidance on advanced learning in the twenty-first century…”
P.S. Source for that quote is Grant Duncan on Substack. https://grantduncanphd.substack.com/p/wiles-v-university-of-auckland-landmark