Category: education

Academics in New Zealand going down the tubes

June 30, 2023 • 9:15 am

I’ve written many times about the decline of academics in New Zealand over the past 20 years. This is not a matter of debate; it’s shown by many statistics. One site, for example, gives the data and, quoting from other sources, says this:

The New Zealand education system is also now one of the most unequal in the world. The gap between the educational “haves” and “have nots” eclipses all our English-speaking OECD peers. All this, despite Government spending per child increasing in real terms by more than 30% since 2001.

Here is more from Roger Partridge (2020).  Here is a 2022 update:

Low attendance at school is another sign the country’s education system is slipping with children from lower socio-economic areas the worst affected, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative says.

The New Zealand Initiative is a think tank which carries out research to help New Zealand plan for the future.

It has commented on new research by the Education Review Office that shows children are missing school more in New Zealand than other English-speaking countries.

The office found four in ten parents were comfortable with their child missing a week or more of school per term and a third of students did not see going to school every day as that important…

The education system had been declining for 25 years and data backed up his view, such as the Pisa study carried out by the OECD. As an example, in maths the knowledge of a 15-year-old New Zealand student equated to a student aged 13 and a half 20 years ago.

Also from 2022:

In the past 12-18 years, New Zealand’s scores had declined by 23 points for reading, 22 points for science and 29 points for maths. The OECD estimated that 30 points was equivalent to one-year of learning.

If you want more, see this article from the New Zealand Herald, this one from the Waikato Business News, this one from Stuff,  this one from the New Zealand Initiative, and a post I wrote about the data in June. All sources agree on this decline, though the government, bent on achieving educational equity rather than quality, doesn’t seem to care much.

The post below by three Kiwi professors highlights the problems even more, blaming them on “misplaced social justice activism” that is hurting all groups in NZ, including the Māori, supposedly the beneficiaries of much of the new reforms. The problem is that the government, which is about as woke as they come, wants to reform education by making it more Māori-centric instead of making it more rigorous.

One sign of this, which I’m not going to dwell on today, is the explicit drive to teach science in such a way that modern science (misleadingly called “Western science”) is taught as co-equal to Māori “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM), which, while including some empirical evidence, is also laden with myth, legend, superstition, religion, and morality.  I cann’t emphasize to the reader how much the drive to sacralize the ways of indigenous people has permeated the country. But in the end this will make it more parochial and less able to compete with similar countries for educational status and achievement.

Kiwis dare not question this drive as it puts their jobs and reputations in jeopardy. But the three below took the chance:

Click to read.

A few quotes:

Social justice activism is potentially damaging to the New Zealand university system and society as a whole (see the recent article by Peter Winsley [3]). University students must, of course, be free to study and debate social justice issues, but it is the place of the State, the courts, and charities to deliver social justice, not the university itself. Universities should be places of open enquiry in the quest for evidence-based truth and of open debate on matters of controversy, but not institutions where subjective experience or an ideological view is presented as an unarguable truth and becomes indoctrination.

. . . Social justice activism is potentially damaging to the New Zealand university system and society as a whole (see the recent article by Peter Winsley [3]). University students must, of course, be free to study and debate social justice issues, but it is the place of the State, the courts, and charities to deliver social justice, not the university itself. Universities should be places of open enquiry in the quest for evidence-based truth and of open debate on matters of controversy, but not institutions where subjective experience or an ideological view is presented as an unarguable truth and becomes indoctrination.

Some dangers of speaking out (there are far more incidents like these than I could recount):

Here in New Zealand, a senior academic was recently warned that questioning a perceived fall in academic standards would lead to disciplinary action. Also in New Zealand, failing to address matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge, including traditional concepts of knowledge) in contestable funding grant applications, even in mathematics or fundamental physics, may jeopardise the chance of winning a grant. These are just [two] examples of situations that have become commonplace.

. . . Many academics are uncomfortable with the direction that is now being taken but are afraid to speak out for fear of loss of promotion prospects, disciplinary action, being labelled racist, or even finding their names on one of the current redundancy lists.

Even questioning whether MM should be taught as coequal to modern science in science class also got seven signers of the famous Listener letter in trouble; all were demonized, some demoted. and two were reported to New Zealand’s Royal Society, of which they were members. (The “investigation” fizzled.)

I’ll skip the rest of the article except to highlight the solutions offered by the authors—solutions that are sensible but seemingly impossible to enact:

How do we turn all of this around? Possible actions are:

Incentivise freedom of speech and political neutrality. It is not the remit or responsibility of the university to be the kind and conscionable face of the State, or of any political party. For that we have the justice system and Government agencies. Government does not own our universities but, of course, is a major funder. It could influence internal policy by strong encouragement of freedom of speech, and by rewarding an absence of social justice politics driving programmes and staff behaviours. This could occur through, for example, targeted funding around best practice in the neutral role of “critic and conscience of society” and/or international teaching and research relevance. While social justice issues should be widely debated, a university’s operating culture should not be driven by social justice political agendas.

Carry out an internationally benchmarked review of university funding and reset base student funding levels, with a higher proportion of government funding supporting institutional operations. The level of student fees for the various programme categories will also have to be reviewed. Conversely, we would ideally deliver fees-free degree education, but if this is not possible, then access to university education could be ensured for students of limited means by funding targeted, need-based scholarships. Internally, universities should refocus a greater proportion of expenditure on core teaching and research.

Re-focus the Performance Based Research Fund back from its recently increased social justice focus to a renewed emphasis on research excellence and relevance.

Reboot Immigration New Zealand to ensure that ample, properly trained capability is present to deliver a speedy and effective international student visa service. Finance Education New Zealand and universities for an intensive and extended marketing campaign in key overseas source countries for international enrolments.

Generate an agreement between the eight universities around commitment to maintaining international standing. This initiative would require statements around adhering to the liberal epistemology in science, resisting moves to give equivalence in science studies to indigenous or minority “ways of knowing”, and removing unnecessary restrictions to teaching and research, thus ensuring international connectedness in research, and respect for multiple viewpoints while holding to a politically neutral position on all subjects.

Conclusions

New Zealand must not aspire to being an inward-looking Pacific ethnostate, a direction that seems to have been fostered by the present Government. It is vital that, for their future international credibility, our universities, on a viable financial footing, return to being completely apolitical and resist the changes that are being wrought by social justice activism. University decisions and actions in relation to teaching, research and outreach should be based on merit and not on identity.

Yes, these are all good, and, if implemented, would kick New Zealand back up into academic parity with other economically comparable countries.

But if you know New Zealand and its government (the new PM, Chris Hipkins, is the former Minister of Education who promoted the ‘social justice’ attitude and its concomitant effect on academic quality), you’ll know that these suggestions are, as Mencken would say, “bawling up a drainspout.” There is no chance, given the suppression of dissent about these issues, to even discuss them.

As I always say, I call attention to this because I love New Zealand and its people, but deplore what they’re doing to themselves. Further, this decline is an object lesson for the U.S., as ideology is increasingly creeping into our academics, now seen as a branch of Social Justice activism. “It can’t happen to us,” you say? I’m not so sure.

I’m sad to say this, but I don’t think the academic problems of New Zealand will be fixed.  They are circling the drain, but the politicians and academics don’t seem to care (except for those who dare not speak of the problem).

New Zealand’s educational decline

June 16, 2023 • 9:15 am

I’ve written before about how poorly New Zealand is doing, relative to similar countries, in educating its children, but I didn’t know how poorly until a Kiwi sent me this article from the think tank The New Zealand Initiative.  The author, Roger Partridge, not only gives the depressing data, but also focuses on problem: the government’s “child-centered approach” to teaching.

By the way, I get a lot of these articles from different New Zealand residents, all of whom want me to write about the problems of their country but are too afraid—and rightly so—to give their names. So these are all from anonymous sources.

Click to read:

The data from 2020 (my bolding)

The rise of automation, artificial intelligence and pressures from developing economies are threatening low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Never has the need for school leavers to be well-educated been more important than today.

Yet something is rotten at the core of New Zealand’s education system. A growing proportion of children leave school unable to read an instruction manual or do basic maths. Over the last twenty years, our education system has slipped from being the envy of the world to barely mediocre.

Kiwi students once ranked near the top of international education league tables. In the latest results from the highly rated Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study, Year 5 students placed last among all English-speaking countries and 24th out of all 26 participating OECD countries. Students suffered similar slides in maths and science.

The New Zealand education system is also now one of the most unequal in the world. The gap between the educational “haves” and “have nots” eclipses all our English-speaking OECD peers. All this, despite Government spending per child increasing in real terms by more than 30% since 2001.

Here are data from 2022 given by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution: (my bolding)

Low attendance at school is another sign the country’s education system is slipping with children from lower socio-economic areas the worst affected, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative says.

The New Zealand Initiative is a think tank which carries out research to help New Zealand plan for the future.

It has commented on new research by the Education Review Office that shows children are missing school more in New Zealand than other English-speaking countries.

The office found four in ten parents were comfortable with their child missing a week or more of school per term and a third of students did not see going to school every day as that important…

The education system had been declining for 25 years and data backed up his view, such as the Pisa study carried out by the OECD. As an example, in maths the knowledge of a 15-year-old New Zealand student equated to a student aged 13 and a half 20 years ago.

. . . . In the past 12-18 years, New Zealand’s scores had declined by 23 points for reading, 22 points for science and 29 points for maths. The OECD estimated that 30 points was equivalent to one-year of learning.

Here are the 2019 attendance data from that link above, showing the proportion of students in different Anglophone countries that attend school regularly (regular attendance “is defined as attending more than 90 percent of the time). New Zealand’s 2021 figure went up just 2%—to 60%.

Now what’s the reason for such a decline in both educational attainment and attendance? (Surely they are connected!) While a University of Auckland analysis of the slip in literacy produces only a bunch of waffling, including obsession with the Internet (something that of course also dogs competing countries), Partridge blames New Zealand’s philosophy of education (my bolding):

In her new book, my New Zealand Initiative colleague Briar Lipson exposes how pseudo-scientific dogmas have enveloped our education system. The book New Zealand’s education delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system is a startling dissection of the perils of the so-called child-centred approach forced onto schools by official curriculum and assessment policy.

Gone are the days when teachers followed a national, knowledge-based curriculum, ensuring all children are exposed to the same knowledge in core academic subjects like English, maths, science and social studies. Instead, the much-vaunted New Zealand Curriculum is a scant 67 pages long. The entire curriculum for social science (including history, social studies, geography, economics and politics) for Years 1-13 fits on a single A4 page.

How much children learn about the world around them is left to the discretion of the individual school, teacher and, increasingly, child. Instead of knowledge, children are to develop “competencies” like problem-solving and critical thinking, commonly described as “21st century skills.” (Goodness knows how any leader managed when they were educated in the 20th century.)

Some schools have continued with a more traditional, knowledge rich curriculum. This is especially true of schools that have opted out of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in favour of international examination systems like Cambridge or International Baccalaureate. But in state schools, New Zealand Curriculum’s extreme child-centred approach prevails.

The problems with a child-centred approach are obvious. Or they are to almost everyone except those responsible for the education system. If the content of classroom study must “relate to the child,” students may learn little about the world outside their family or surroundings. This risk will be greatest for children whose home life involves neither books nor quality time engaging with adult family members.

Partridge also notes that the educational deficit is, as expected, larger in “vulnerable” communities. I’m not sure if this is a euphemism for communities comprising more indigenous (Māori) inhabitants, but statistics do show that the child poverty level is palpably higher in Māori children than the average child in New Zealand (and that of course means that the disparity between Māori and European descendants is even higher). Partridge continues:

In New Zealand’s Education Delusion, Lipson argues that the solution to these education woes is to strengthen the role of knowledge in the New Zealand Curriculum.

Drawing on both empirical research and cognitive science, Lipson shows that the New Zealand Curriculum’s approach has things backwards. Knowledge is a pre-requisite for all competencies, from reading comprehension to creativity and problem-solving (try fixing an engine without knowing how it works). Lipson’s research also demonstrates that direct instruction by teachers is the best route to gain that knowledge.

Taking on the education establishment is not for the faint-hearted. The Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Council for Education Research and the teachers’ unions are well-organised. They (mostly) sing from the same song sheet and defend their beliefs with a religious fervour. And were it not for international data, it would be almost impossible even to identify New Zealand’s downward trajectory and grave inequities.

That song sheet, by the way, includes the famous tune, “All Ways of Knowing Are the Sa,me/The Lord God Made Them All.”

I’m not going to weigh in on how to fix this problem: it’s enough to recognize that it exists and it is severe. What I will say is that the government of one of my favorite countries is doing precious little to fix it; in fact, it’s exacerbating it in two  ways.

First, if a “child-centered” curriculum involves enhancing children’s local knowledge at the expense of general or worldwide knowledge, it’s parochial.  And surely giving indigenous “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori or MM) equal billing with the “ways of knowing” taught in comparable OECD countries will not help literacy, science, or math—the three areas in which NZ is especially behind. By making itself more parochial, and sacralizing the indigenous people, the NZ government and educational establishment will only guarantee that they continue to drop to the bottom.

Further, the constant sacralizing of the indigenous language won’t help with literacy either, particularly compared to other Anglophone nations.It’s nice that Crown people can speak some Māori words, but local language is dominating to the point where foreigners can’t read a lot of stuff supposedly written in English.

Second, by chilling speech around these issues (as I said, most Kiwis who write me don’t want their names used), the government can go ahead and do what it wants without getting any pushback. What I predict will happen is that well-off Kiwis will increasingly put their children in private and independent schools having more rigorous curricula. That will, of course, only enhance the disparities in education between rich and poor, and make state-run schools much worse than private ones. It will also enhance general inequality.

Education, along with many other aspects of NZ’s national welfare, are being held hostage by fealty to beliefs and demands of the Māori , people who most need the benefit of better education. But nobody dare mention the likely effects of indigenizing or “decolonizing” national education.

I see no way to stop this, particularly because those in higher education and the government must hold to their virtue by adhering to the ambiguous 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the basis for claims that everything Māori, including science, must get attention and money equal to those given matters of the “crown”, as Europeans are called. It’s sad to watch the self-destruction of this country, but the greatest dissolution is down the road, when undereducated Kiwi children grow up and run the country.

A talk and a curriculum from New Zealand

February 15, 2023 • 12:15 pm

What is PCC(E) banging on about today? This post is about the decolonizing of government school curricula in New Zealand, especially of “early childhood curriculum.” Why do I care? I’ve explained it before: I hate to see a country I love going down the tubes, especially in science and academics. But you should also realize that there are few people in New Zealand who can publicly say the things I can, or publicly post letters opposing the ideological domination of science and academia by indigenous people.  Anybody who had a job in New Zealand would get fired for writing posts like this one. So it’s also a resource for the many disaffected kiwis who, because of pervasive “cancel culture” in their country, never get to hear those who support them. These posts may bore you, and in that case just skip them!

Yesterday I posted a letter to the new Prime Minister of New Zealand (and its new Minister of Education), signed by Elizabeth Rata and three other academics. Rata is Director of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit on the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. Although she was instrumental in helping Māori students, her refusal to equate Māori “ways of knowing” with science, or to take the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti) as a binding document that gives indigenous people the right to dominate at least half of the public school curriculum, has caused her to be canceled among “progressive” Kiwis. Plus, as noted below, she signed the (in)famous Listener letter (see it here), which caused a huge uproar despite the fact that its sentiments were rational and correct.  This is from Wikipedia:

Rata was one of the principal figures in developing the kura kaupapa schooling project. She was the secretary of the combined kōhanga reo whānau seeking to develop continuation for Māori language learners graduating from kōhanga reo and was a member of the original Kura Kaupapa Māori Working Party. However, according to Rebecca Wirihana, herself an early Kura activist, “Elizabeth has been wiped out of the history of kura kaupapa.” Her recent criticisms of the direction of Māori immersion education, and of the insertion of mātauranga Māori into New Zealand education,  have prompted some highly critical responses.

. . . In July 2021, in the context of a review of the NCEA (New Zealand’s National Curriculum), Rata, along with six other University of Auckland professors and emeritus professors published a controversial letter entitled “In Defence of Science” in the New Zealand Listener, which said indigenous knowledge (or mātauranga Māori) “falls far short of what can be defined as science itself”.

This 26-minute talk, by Rata, called “New Zealand’s descent from democracy into ethno-nationalism”, was pointed out by reader JS428 in a comment  on my post.  What it’s about is the “decolonization” of New Zealand that’s supposedly based on the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Ti Tiriti has been subject to various interpretations, and has been used to call for the equality of Māori ideas and culture with all other ideas and cultures in the schools. Although Māori constitute only about 17% of New Zealand’s population, they claim this hegemony because they’re the descendants of indigenous Polynesians who colonized the island, and also because they interpret Te Tiriti as giving them that right. But remember that New Zealand is now a multi-ethnic society, with these proportions of groups given in Wikipedia:

As at the 2018 census, the majority of New Zealand’s population is of European descent (70 percent), with the indigenous Māori being the largest minority (16.5 percent), followed by Asians (15.3 percent), and non-Māori Pacific Islanders known collectively as Pasifika (9.0 percent).

Yet, as you’ll see below, Rata is pushing back in this talk, calling for a return from the tribalism (based on “treatyism”) between Māori on one hand and everyone else (83% of the population) on the other. What’s happening in New Zealand is that a Māori-based ideology (Rata calls it “ethnonationalism”—the equivalent of CRT in America—is demanding not just education equity, but educational equality. That is, striving for instructional equity would occupy a far smaller proportion of academic instruction than would equality.  (Of course I favor educational equality insofar as it means that all students should be given the same opportunities and treated the same. Rather, by “equality” above I mean that half of the curriculum should be devoted to studies of Māori culture, language and ways of knowing.)

Rata asserts that this ideology controls language, the media, and education in New Zealand, and she’s not far wrong. Her discussion of education starts at 15:49 in the talk.

What I’m concerned with, as was Rata in the letter she co-signed yesterday, is summarized in her quote:  “Our education system is indoctrinating children into re-tribalism.”  I will let you be the judge of that by perusing the official government “preschool curriculum” below. Her two reforms for education itself are these. First, “remove the treaty and its principles from all education” (remember, it’s the treaty which makes activists demand to make Mātauranga Māori—Māori “ways of knowing”—coequal to science in the classroom). And you’ll see how the Treaty is used on p. 3 of the preschool curriculum below. Second, Rata asks the country to “rebuild the education system to teach academic subjects—the source of the “partially loyal individual”—rather than ideological dogma.

Below, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot (the pdf is here), is the newest (2017) version of New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, required to be taught in all public pre-schools. Look through it yourself (don’t read it unless you want to wade through 70+ pages of palaver), and see if you detect what I do: an insidious attempt to take over education via the tribalism Rata mentions about above.

The title page itself, almost entirely in Māori, is echoed throughout the document. Note that already on page 3 they invoke the Treaty as justifying the extreme intrusion of ethnicity into the curriculum. They say it’s a curriculum for “all children,” but it’s really a curriculum for the Māori—certainly not for the equally numerous Asians, whose culture and language don’t permeate this document.  (Try finding some Chinese or Hindi words in there!) Now this document does contain, as did the higher-level curriculum I discussed yesterday, some good goals.  But just skim through the pages and see the pervasiveness of the treaty-based ideology.

You’ll be the judge; I haven’t the spoons for any kind of detailed analysis. You won’t be able to understand a lot of this document unless you already speak Māori, or have a dictionary in hand. Remember, look at the cover and recall that English is by far the language most widely spoken in New Zealand.

As always, I’m not at all opposed to making New Zealand students learn about Māori history and culture: they bloody well should! But ethnicity-based teaching cannot be allowed to dominate all aspects of schooling to the point that New Zealand students begin falling behind comparable countries in academic achievement. And that’s already happening. And the government doesn’t seem to mind. Many Kiwis, as David Lillis mentioned in the comments yesterday, are self-censoring on this issue because they fear for their reputations and livelihoods.

A bot discusses the relationship between science and religion

January 28, 2023 • 11:30 am

Matthew was trying out the ChatGPT site—the one in which an AI bot answers questions and writes essays on any specified topic. It’s being used widely, especially by students who get the bot to write their assignments—cheating, of course.  Here’s what Matthew did:

I gave ChatGPT an essay:  “Science and religion are enemies. Discuss.”

Science and religion have long been considered to be in opposition to each other, with some arguing that they are outright enemies. However, this view is not entirely accurate and a more nuanced understanding is necessary to fully grasp the relationship between these two fields. In this essay, I will discuss the ways in which science and religion have been perceived as enemies, as well as the ways in which they can complement each other.

One of the main reasons why science and religion are often seen as enemies is due to the fact that they have different ways of understanding the world. Science is based on empirical evidence and the scientific method, while religion is based on faith and spiritual beliefs (Duarte, 2018). This can lead to conflicts, particularly when scientific discoveries challenge religious beliefs. For example, the theory of evolution has been met with resistance from certain religious groups who believe that it contradicts their creationist beliefs (Numbers, 1992). Additionally, the idea of an old earth and the Big Bang theory have also been met with resistance from religious groups who believe in a young earth and literal interpretation of the creation story in the Bible (Numbers, 1992).

Additionally, some argue that science and religion have different goals and aims. Science aims to understand the natural world through observation and experimentation, while religion aims to provide a sense of meaning and purpose in life (Pigliucci, 2002). These different goals can lead to tensions and conflicts, as some may see science as threatening to their religious beliefs. For example, the idea of naturalism in science, which posits that everything can be explained by natural causes, can be seen as a threat to religious belief in supernatural causes (Pigliucci, 2002).

However, it is important to note that science and religion do not always have to be in conflict. In fact, many scientists and religious individuals have found ways to reconcile their beliefs and integrate them into their understanding of the world (Polkinghorne, 2002). For example, some religious individuals have found ways to reconcile evolution with their religious beliefs by seeing it as a means through which God created life (Polkinghorne, 2002). Additionally, some scientists have recognized the limitations of science and have turned to religion for a sense of meaning and purpose in life (Polkinghorne, 2002).

Furthermore, science and religion can also complement each other in certain ways. For example, science can provide a deeper understanding of the natural world, which can enhance one’s spiritual experience (Polkinghorne, 2002). Additionally, religion can provide a moral framework that can guide scientific research and ensure that it is conducted ethically (Polkinghorne, 2002). For instance, religious moral principles such as non-maleficence and beneficence can guide the ethical conduct of scientific research, ensuring that it is done in a way that minimizes harm and maximizes benefit (Beauchamp and Childress, 2013).

In conclusion, the relationship between science and religion is complex and multifaceted. While there may be conflicts and tensions between the two, it is important to recognize that they do not have to be enemies. Instead, they can complement each other and provide a more holistic understanding of the world. It is important to approach the relationship between science and religion with an open mind and a willingness to consider different perspectives.

References:

    • Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2013). Principles of biomedical ethics. Oxford University Press.
    • Duarte, J. (2018). Science, Religion, and the Meaning of Life. Springer.
    • Numbers, R. L. (1992). The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. University of California Press.
    • Pigliucci, M. (2002). De

(The bot quit before giving all the references, but they’re easy enough to look up.)

Can you tell that this essay, complete with references, was composed by a programmed AI machine? I can’t. Moreover, it makes sense and covers a number of relevant areas. In fact, I could have written the first paragraph! If this were part of a take-home essay exam, it would no doubt have earned a decent grade.

Now you see why ChatGPT is so beloved by students and so feared by educators. But there are ways around it, and teachers are finding them. You can give in-class exams, as I did, or ask questions that a bot simply could not answer. There are also ways of checking prose to gauge the probability that it was written by a bot, but as bots improve, those prose-checkers will become less useful.  I doubt that any of us could, by reading it along, tell that this wasn’t written by a human!

A New Zealand geography teacher calls for giving Mātauranga Māori “equal status” in the classroom

December 5, 2022 • 9:15 am

Karen Finn, labeled below as a “PhD. candidate, University of Auckland,” is also identified in this short article as “a geography teacher and a teacher editor” who’s “researching decolonizing school geography in Aotearoa New Zealand for a Ph.D. in Education.” The short piece appears on Ipū Kirerū, the blog of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education. And its message is a harbinger of things to come because Finn, who’s not Maori, advocates for Mātauranga Māori (MM), the “way of knowing”of New Zealand’s indigenous people, to be given “equal status” in the geography classroom. The NZ government, educators, and educational authorities apparently plan for MM to be given equal status in everything, including science, though Māori comprise about 16.5% of the population and Asians 15.1% (Europeans are 70.2%).

Recall that MM comprises far more than just empirical stuff—practical knowledge like growing plants and catching eels—but is also an elaborate system incorporating legend, fantasy, religion, a preoccupation with connection and ancestry, and morality. I’m not sure how much MM geography there really is (and author Finn doesn’t tell us), but she wants it to have equal status (presumably with “European geography”) in the classroom. Click to read, and then read the comment at the bottom from a Kiwi friend who discusses the drive to turn NZ education into half “Western stuff” and half MM:

A few quotes from Finn:

Current changes to The New Zealand Curriculum and NCEA call for equal status for mātauranga Māori – mana ōrite o mātauranga Māori. I’m both excited and challenged by this prospect. As a Pākehā geography teacher, giving equal status to mātauranga Māori differs from my expertise and requires me to acquire new knowledge. In this blog post I offer some reflections on my learning so I can support mana ōrite o mātauranga Māori.

Equal status for mātauranga Māori – mana ōrite o mātauranga Māori – is one of several key changes being made to NCEA and curricula. Mātauranga Māori is defined in Te Aka Māori Dictionary as “Māori knowledge – The body of knowledge originating from Māori ancestors, including the Māori world view and perspectives, Māori creativity and cultural practices”. Sir Hirini Moko Mead argues that mātauranga Māori is knowledge of the past, present and future, and it continues to develop and emerge. Mead further explains the importance of mātauranga Māori in this way:

Put simply, the term refers to Māori knowledge. However, once efforts are made to understand what the term means in a wider context, it soon becomes evident that mātauranga Māori is a lot more complex.

It is a part of Māori culture, and, over time, much of the knowledge was lost. The reasons for the loss are well known. Several minds have worked to recover much of what was lost — to reconstruct it, to unravel it from other knowledge systems, to revive parts of the general kete or basket of knowledge, and to make use of it in the education of students of the land. Especially Māori students for whom this is a precious taonga, a treasure, a part of the legacy that is theirs to enjoy.”

Finn then makes the argument that I want to emphasize: that MM and other indigenous stuff are essential as coequal in the curriculum, for without that educational equity, students of Māori ancestry will be left cold—uninterested in “modern science” or modern anything. I’m not sure how this is supposed to work, but I suppose via luring students in with MM and then hooking them with a dose of modernity.

Finn raises Te Teriti o Waitangi as an importation rationale. This is the treaty used to undergird all of this: the Treaty of Waitangi, first signed in 1840 as an agreement between European colonists and Māori, though not all Maori groups signed on. The third part of the treaty “gives Māori people full rights and protections as British subjects,” and that’s been interpreted as a requirement to give MM equal time in the classroom. There is very little debate about this in NZ, and most of those who take issue with this interpretation dare not voice their concerns lest they be demonized or even fired. Finn cites the treaty below but also asserts, importantly, that Māori students will not be successful unless half of their education deals with the indigenous “way of knowing”:

Bolding is mine:

Mead’s statement goes a step further than simply defining mātauranga Māori to explaining the urgency of mana orite o mātauranga Māori, particularly for schools. Giving mātauranga Māori equal status in education is important for honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and supporting ākonga Māori (Māori students) to achieve success as Māori. Mason Durie says that supporting ākonga Māori to achieve success as Māori requires schools to engage with te ao Māori, and this includes mātauranga Māori. Giving equal status for mātauranga Māori expects the education system to change to fit Māori students rather than the students change to fit the system. It shows ākonga, whānau and communities that their knowledges are valued in schools.

Mead suggests that teachers have an important role in making use of mātauranga Māori. To perform this role well we have to become learners, and even do some unlearning. In my PhD, I am aiming to learn about mātauranga Māori for geography, which is my subject speciality. However, mātauranga Māori isn’t organised into (Western) academic disciplines, such as geography. Mātauranga Māori is integrated and holistic, with relationships between living and non-living parts of the environment and people, and connections between the past, present and future. My process of learning about mātauranga Māori for geography needs to be broader and more holistic than just my discipline.

. . . I’m not alone in this learning journey. Most teachers are learning, planning, and beginning to teach mātauranga Māori, according to NZCER’s National Survey of Secondary Schools. Despite most teachers having begun this journey, non-Māori lag behind Māori in working towards giving equal status to mātauranga Māori. Māori teachers also take more of the burden in supporting colleagues and schools to implement equal status for mātauranga Māori. The survey findings remind us that Māori teachers have varying levels of expertise in te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori and need support too. I need to approach my learning with humility and kindness, without making assumptions or demands of my Māori colleagues.

. . . Mead suggests that teachers have an important role in making use of mātauranga Māori. To perform this role well we have to become learners, and even do some unlearning. In my PhD, I am aiming to learn about mātauranga Māori for geography, which is my subject speciality. However, mātauranga Māori isn’t organised into (Western) academic disciplines, such as geography. Mātauranga Māori is integrated and holistic, with relationships between living and non-living parts of the environment and people, and connections between the past, present and future. My process of learning about mātauranga Māori for geography needs to be broader and more holistic than just my discipline. These are some of the ways that I have begun learning:

Good luck teaching geography in that “holistic” way!

Finn then gives a list of six ways she’s “learning” how to integrate MM into geography, with a virtue-laden statement that sounds familiar to Americans:

3). I am continuing to reflect on my worldview, my privilege, and my ignorance. I am learning and practising humility. One day I hope to be what Georgina Stewart calls a White Ally to my Māori colleagues and ākonga.

As many of us agree, MM certainly deserves a place in the curriculum of NZ schools:  it’s an important part of the nation’s history and culture. That place should be in anthropology and sociology classes. But half of all the curriculum?  I don’t think that’s wise, especially in science, in which students will be confused between MM (even just the empirical bits) and modern science, which are certainly not coequals in helping us understand the world and Universe.

The idea that curricula must be tailored to the ethnicity of the student is pervasive, not just in New Zealand, but also in the U.S.  It has some merit in that students’ backgrounds have to be taken into account to teach them. But to teach everything through an identitarian lens, especially one that calls for coequal representation in the curriculum, is a recipe for not just divisiveness, but educational decline.

One take on this was provided by a Kiwi who’s sent me articles like the above calling for curricular “equity”. He/she wrote me the following (quoted with permission):

. . . it seems pretty clear to me that the whole [identitarian curriculuar] project is based around a self-reinforcing culturalist ideology whereby students are encouraged to believe that their “safety” depends on accessing curriculum through the lens of their own culture. I have no idea what proportion of Māori students think like this, but this proportion will only grow as they are trained to think that way. I think it’s both patronising and infantilising to think that Māori can only relate to science if it’s linked to cultural myths. Even if people accept that this approach is required, what does this then mean for all of the Kiwi students from other cultures? Clearly this is impossible.
There’s a recent piece by John McWhorter in the NYT that bears on this: McWhorter says:
“[T]oday’s left cherishes a form of tokenism.
Our theoretically enlightened idea these days is that using skin color as a major, and often decisive, factor in job hiring and school admissions is to be on the side of the angels. We euphemize this as being about the value of diverseness and people’s life experiences. This happened when we — by which I mean specifically but not exclusively Black people — shifted from demanding that we be allowed to show our best to demanding that the standards be changed for us.”

 

I think this is much closer to what’s actually going on in New Zealand.

Pew study on what criteria Americans think should matter for college admissions

October 21, 2022 • 11:15 am

Although colleges and universities are, left and right, dropping or devaluing high school grades and standardized tests as criteria for admission, the American public still maintains that these two factors (which I’ll consider as indices of “merit”) are the most important considerations, ahead of “community service and involvement” and well ahead of being first in your family to go to college, athletic ability, race or ethnicity, gender, and whether one is a “legacy” (i.e., had a relative attend the applicant’s school). This is what today’s article concludes.

The big contention, of course involves whether one should consider “merit” (as evinced by tests and grades) a lot more important than “race or ethnicity”. This is the conflict involved in debates about affirmative action.  But according to this Pew study in March, all groups see indices of merit as more important than ethnicity, though the emphasis on merit has dropped a tad in the last three years. But the order of importance of the eight factors shown below, including legacy admissions and “outside activities,” hasn’t changed since 1999.

Click on the screenshot to see a summary of the study. (The methodology is here, detailing the use of 11,687 subjects.)

Here are the overall results, lumping all Americans together. Each criterion was weighted by each respondent as “major”, “minor” or “not a factor” in how they should be weighted for college admissions.

As you see, high-school grades are by far the most important criterion, followed by standardized tests, and then, in decreasing order of importance, “first in the family,” athletic ability, race or ethnicity, legacy admission, and gender.  I would reverse grades and standardize tests, since standardized tests put everyone on the same scale, while high school grades vary tremendously among schools. Rather than “community service involvement,” I’d use “extracurriculars” as an index of breadth of interests.  For “race or ethnicity” I’d substitute “socioeconomic class”, which would allow a form of affirmative action for racial groups but also give a leg up to the disadvantaged in other groups.  Then “first in family”, which is correlated with socioeconomic status. I wouldn’t consider athletic ability at all, nor whether one’s relatives attended the school, but schools use the latter criterion as a way of ensuring an income stream from families with an intergenerational college affiliation.

I’m not sure about gender, as more women than men now get college degrees, so the problem is largely solved. But I’d make an exception for historically male colleges like military schools, where qualified women should be admitted on the same basis as qualified men.

Here’s the inter-year comparison (2019 vs. 2022) of how grades and standardized tests are rated, which is of lesser interest than how different population groups and how Democrats vs. Republicans see these factors. Blacks and Hispanics tend to see high school grades as less important than do whites and Asians, while Republic and and Democrats are pretty equal on the importance of grades.

The same holds for ethnic groups regarding standardized tests, while Democrats see standardized tests as of lesser importance than do Republicans—in line with the greater emphasis of Republicans on formal indices of merit.

Finally, we have a bar graph showing how different ethnic groups—and Republicans vs Democrats—regard legacy, first-generation status, and race/ethnicity as weighting factors for admissions.  All three “groups of color” see “first in family,” “legacy” and “race and ethnicity” as more important factors than do whites.  I can understand these data except for the “legacy” part, which I would think would be less emphasized in groups of color.  There’s also a substantial difference between Democrats and Republicans on the race/ethnicty and “first in family” criteria, with Republicans putting less weight on race/ethnicity and “first in family” criteria. That, too makes sense since Republicans, in my view, care less than Democrats about “leveling the playing field”. Political affiliation makes little difference, however, in how one weights “legacy” as a criterion.

In sum, the public apparently still wants grades and standardized tests to be the most important criteria for admission to college, with “activities” a bit behind and other factors, including race/ethnicity, far behind.  In the public’s view, including the views of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, the debate between merit vs. ethnicity seems to have been settled, though a ranking doesn’t rule out affirmative action—it just makes race a less important criterion for helping a student jump the merit queue.

This debate, however, will all be settled when the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in its next term.

The editor in chief of Science misleads readers into thinking that there is no contradiction between wanting high academic standards and wanting equity

July 11, 2022 • 10:45 am

The article below is by H. Holden Thorpe, who is editor-in-chief of all the Science journals, and it appeared in the most recent issue of the flagship journal Science (reference below). You can read it by clicking on the screenshot, or download the pdf here (both for free).

The point Thorp is making, which is in the title itself, is so palpably false that I can’t believe he doesn’t know he’s deliberately distorting reality for the sake of ideology. This is performative wokeness on a huge scale: almost lying for ideological reasons:

Thorp asserts that improving diversity, presumably by beefing up the number of minority students in schools, does not lower the standards of the school. This, of course, is manifestly false: we all know, and schools know, that to achieve something even close to equity (equal representation of students from all groups), you must lower admissions standards. This is already being done in a big way, through affirmative action and the removal of barriers to admission. The elimination of standardized tests like the SATs is one sign of this. And, according to the Bakke decision, this is perfectly legal, although one cannot have a quota system.

The preferential rejection of Asian and Asian-American students at Harvard, for example, occurred because applying the very high usual admission standards would result in a woefully low percentage of black and Hispanic students. Instead, Harvard, like many other schools, now uses a nebulous form of “holistic” admissions that includes assessing “personality fit”, on which Asians were scored low. This case will make it to the Supreme Court, I suspect, which will probably overturn the decision that Harvard’s practices were legal.

Now I’ve said many times that I do favor a limited form of affirmative action as a form of reparations towards those who didn’t have equal opportunity in the past. So yes, I favor “inclusion,” though not to the extent of either Thorp or many colleges. But I do not pretend that affirmative action, or “inclusion” as it’s called, does not involve lowering standards. It does: the object is not to keep them the same, but to keep the bar at least high enough that people who are qualified to study at a school, or to be promoted to the next grade, are the ones who get in.

In contrast, Thorp recognizes a lack of equity, but doesn’t attribute it to cultural or environmental differences between groups. Instead, he says that it’s the educators’ fault. With the right kind of teaching, Thorp asserts, all students can master scientific material. It just needs a big reform in educational methods. I quote from his article:

It’s common to hear that improving student diversity in higher education requires lowering the bar to admission and watering down the curriculum so that all students can pass the course of study. I’m not aware of anyone who is advocating such a trade-off. [JAC: Of course they are; they’re just silent about it.] There are known methods of teaching that allow more people from different backgrounds to master scientific material without compromising the quality of education. These include a greater use of active learning methods that engage students with course material through discussions and problem solving (as opposed to passively taking in information). Making such reforms may require faculty to learn new ways of teaching. But isn’t that the job—to foster education for everyone?

Another common refrain is that understanding science requires a high degree of skill in mathematics. I’ve heard firsthand from faculty that students can’t pass their classes unless they have previously achieved a high score on standardized tests in math such as the SAT or ACT. That is a breathtakingly pessimistic view. These high scorers are often students who’ve had the opportunities and resources to prepare for pre-college exams, which vast numbers of students have difficulty accessing. Isn’t the whole point of teaching to provide a pathway to achievement?

In the end, Thorp us convinced that the teachers have simply failed the students, most notably in STEM:

Opening the doors to science for everyone requires that faculty learn the most effective methods for teaching a diverse student body. Yes, it’s more work on top of the many other faculty duties, so universities must provide resources to make the adjustments, such as revamping classrooms for active learning, providing time for faculty to redo their curricula, and doing the hard work involved in having the faculty and institution make the cultural changes that students need. And everyone should have more optimism about who can become a scientist.

It’s not the job of faculty and institution of universities to “make the cultural changes” that students need. For if differential achievement is based on different cultures, surely the differences begin making their effects known when children are very young.  Creating equality of opportunity at that time is the job not of universities, but of the government, parents, and society. By the time students get to universities, it’s way too late.

The second of the three paragraphs above assumes that the difference between groups rests on test preparation, but in reality it’s based on a huge difference between groups in culture, background, and environment. (I can’t say anything about group genetics because we have no information on it.). And it’s the teachers’ fault for not finding creative ways to teach math. But in reality, they’ve tried, even using “culturally sensitive math”, but it hasn’t worked.  We don’t yet know what teaching methods can work to bring deprived students up to equity of outcomes. Indeed, even in Kathryn Harden’s book on differential achievement within groups, The Genetic Lottery, although she demands that equity be achieved within whites (she doesn’t deal with different races, but assumes that inequities among white students results from their different genes), she’s at a loss to recommend what changes be made in schooling. (I reviewed her book for the Washington Post.)

The data all show, and I won’t adduce it here for fear of being called names, that schools with selective admissions or a desire to keep equity as students go through school, invariably lower standards to maintain equity. It’s clear that it is impossible not to lower standards in order to increase the representation of a severely underperforming population. Thorp knows this, but has to say otherwise lest he be called a racist. In reality, he should have just kept his gob shut. But Science, like many scientific journals, is engaged in performative editorializing in a big way. 

And, as I said, teachers—our unsung heroes—have been desperate for years to not leave students behind. They’ve tried most everything, to the extent that even Harden can’t think of anything new.  But equity has not been achieved. I don’t think it will until equal opportunity and resources are there from when a newborn is in the cradle. (Do they still have cradles?) And that is going to take a lot more than changing methods of educating students.

Here’s a passage from a new post on Freddie deBoer’s blog, an article called “Education doesn’t work 2.0“. (It’s free, but subscribe if you read him often.} DeBoer doesn’t mention anything about race or ethnicity here; he’s talking about a general lack of malleability of every kid towards education (perhaps only white kids). But many poorly perfoming students are white, too, so unless there is are ethnicity-specific ways of teaching that don’t apply to low achievers among whites, we’re stuck.

DeBoer:

The brute reality is that most kids slot themselves into academic ability bands early in life and stay there throughout schooling. We have a certain natural level of performance, gravitate towards it early on, and are likely to remain in that band relative to peers until our education ends. There is some room for wiggle, and in large populations there are always outliers. But in thousands of years of education humanity has discovered no replicable and reliable means of taking kids from one educational percentile and raising them up into another. Mobility of individual students in quantitative academic metrics relative to their peers over time is far lower than popularly believed. The children identified as the smart kids early in elementary school will, with surprising regularity, maintain that position throughout schooling. Do some kids transcend (or fall from) their early positions? Sure. But the system as a whole is quite static. Most everybody stays in about the same place relative to peers over academic careers. The consequences of this are immense, as it is this relative position, not learning itself, which is rewarded economically and socially in our society.

This phenomenon is relevant to the question of genetic influence on intelligence, but this post is not about that. The evidence of such influence appears strong to me, and opposition to it seems to rely on a kind of Cartesian dualism. However, one need not believe in genetic influence on academic outcomes to recognize the phenomenon I’m describing today. Entirely separate from the debate about genetic influences on academic performance, we cannot dismiss the summative reality of limited educational plasticity and its potentially immense social repercussions. What I’m here to argue today is not about a genetic influence on academic outcomes. I’m here to argue that regardless of the reasons why, most students stay in the same relative academic performance band throughout life, defying all manner of life changes and schooling and policy interventions. We need to work to provide an accounting of this fact, and we need to do so without falling into endorsing a naïve environmentalism that is demonstrably false. And people in education and politics, particularly those who insist education will save us, need to start acknowledging this simple reality. Without communal acceptance that there is such a thing as an individual’s natural level of ability, we cannot have sensible educational policy.

Finally, I’ll give a comment from a colleague who wrote me about the Science editorial:

Not only is Thorp’s claim inconsistent with available data, but he himself resigned as chancellor of UNC because of a scheme that lowered academic standards in the African American Studies department to the point that students were given grades in classes that didn’t exist.

From his Wikipedia article:

“In 2013, Thorp resigned from the position of chancellor amid allegations of widespread academic fraud, which were later outlined in the Wainstein Report. The Wainstein Report describes the findings of an independent investigation conducted by the former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein. It describes abuses spanning over 18 years, which included “no-show” classes that had little to no faculty oversight. Approximately half of those enrolled in these classes were athletes.”

Here is the Wainstein Report:  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1344054-full-wainstein-report.html

Thorp’s article doesn’t need much debunking. In five minutes on the Internet you can find how standards for STEM admissions have had to be substantially lowered to increase equity.

One of America’s best high schools swaps merit for equity

May 27, 2022 • 9:15 am

I think I’m going to do only short posts today, with perhaps one medium-length one. Here’s a fairly short one based on an article in yahoo! news (click on screenshot to read).

Lowell High School is (or was) one of America’s best and most rigorous schools.  Here’s what U.S. News and World Report has to say about it in its last report):

Lowell High School

1101 Eucalyptus Dr., San Francisco, California | (415) 759-2730
#82 in National Rankings
Overall Score 99.54/100

Quick Stats

Grades: 9-12
Total Enrollment: 2,786
Student-Teacher Ratio: 25:1

Overview of Lowell High School

Lowell High School offers a rigorous curriculum focused on honors-level and Advanced Placement courses, including chemistry, calculus and economics. Lowell High School also offers a variety of foreign languages, and its athletic teams claim more city championships than any other public high school in San Francisco. Distinguished Lowell alumni include three Nobel Prize winners and famed gorilla researcher Dian Fossey.

Lowell High School 2022 Rankings:

Lowell High School is ranked #82 in the National Rankings. Schools are ranked on their performance on state-required tests, graduation and how well they prepare students for college. Read more about how we rank the Best High Schools.

All Rankings

  • #82 in National Rankings
  • #6 in California High Schools
  • #1 in San Francisco, CA Metro Area High Schools
  • #1 in San Francisco Unified School District High Schools
  • #143 in STEM High Schools

As you see, it’s one of America’s best high schools. But not for long  Click to read:

The reason? Because the school decided to prioritize equity over merit, going from merit-based admissions to a lottery system.  From yahoo! (emphasis is theirs).

San Francisco’s Lowell High School, regarded as one of the best in the nation, is seeing a record spike in Ds and Fs among its first batch of students admitted in fall 2021 through a new lottery system instead of its decades-long merit-based admissions.

Of the 620 first-year students admitted through the lottery, nearly one in four (24.4%) received at least one letter grade of D or F in the said semester, according to internal records obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. This marks a triple increase from 7.9% in fall 2020 and 7.7% in fall 2019.

Principal Joe Ryan Dominguez attributed the rise in failing grades to “too many variables.” Last month, Dominguez announced his resignation from the school district, citing a lack of “well organized systems, fiscal responsibility and sound instructional practices as the path towards equity.” [JAC: Donguez took over only last fall!]

The lottery system was born out of a long, contentious battle that began in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Proponents of the new system argue that the merit-based system was racist as it resulted in an underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students, while opponents say it would harm Asian students – who make up the majority of Lowell’s population – and undermine the benefits of a competitive academic environment.

Discussions regarding a long-term policy are still being held. Outgoing District Superintendent Vincent Matthews has proposed an extension of the lottery system, while critics such as Members of the Friends of Lowell group and Lowell’s own Chinese Parent Advisory Council continue to lobby for the return of the old system.

The San Francisco School Board, which introduced the lottery system at Lowell, saw three of its members removed in February after a recall election initiated over misplaced priorities, including what many felt were “anti-Asian” policies.

This is what you get when you prioritize equity over meritocracy, especially when the remediation of inequity occurs far too late down the line. It’s clear that merit is competing with equity, as that’s precisely what proponents of the new system maintain. As usual, Asian students—who are regarded as people of color when they’re attacked but as “white adjacent” when they succeed—are the big losers.

The solution evades me, as I do favor equality of opportunity if not equity, and also feel that some brand of affirmative action must be exercised as a form of reparations. But admitting D and F students does nobody any favors, as by the time the students get into high school, the results of centuries of discrimination have already worked on the students.  I keep thinking about how to fix this problem, because, after all, society owes minorities some reparations. John McWhorter has non-affirmative action solutions (teach phonics, end the drug war, and don’t force everyone to go to college), but I can’t quite go that far.

There are two ways to fix this. One, enacted by Los Angeles and San Diego schools, is to relax grading standards, creating a “holistic grading” system that virtually eliminates Ds and Fthis is done by  keep giving students chances to improve until they get the right grade. That has the merit of giving feedback to students, but the problem of misleading them into thinking that life works that way.

The other way, which I recommend, is a form of affirmative action that will apply while the harder work gets done: trying to create equal opportunity for everyone starting at birth. And we know that that will take years, a lot of resolve, and buckets of money. But it’s the only permanent fix.

In the meantime, we must at least admit that equity and meritocracy are, at present, not compatible. The more meritocratic your standards, the less equity you get. Then, when we admit this to ourselves, we can set about fixing it. We can’t resolve the problem with tricks like reducing standards and “holistic” grading.