It is one of the ironies of this election campaign that Chris Luxon is being painted as a religious zealot who will allegedly force Christian beliefs on the nation even as Chris Hipkins is actually introducing mātauranga Māori into education — and most controversially into science.
Last week, Chicago University’s Jerry Coyne, one of the world’s pre-eminent evolutionary biologists, described mātauranga Māori as a mix of “religion, ethics, morality, tradition and superstition” with some “empirical, trial-and-error based knowledge that can be taken as part of science”.
“It is not a ‘way of knowing’,” the professor said, “but a ‘Māori way of living’.”
Over the past two years, Coyne has regularly dissected proposals to insert mātauranga Māori into New Zealand’s science curriculum, and outlined what he sees as the damaging consequences for students and for the international reputation of the nation’s universities as science teaching “circles the drain”.
He entered the debate after a letter on mātauranga Māori and NCEA science titled "In Defence of Science”, written by seven Auckland University professors, was published in the Listener in July 2021. Two years later, Coyne says he still gets a stream of emails from New Zealand academics and teachers who feel they can’t speak out publicly about mātauranga Māori for fear of losing their jobs.
In discussing the topic in depth, Coyne is doing the job New Zealand mainstream media refuses to do.
Meanwhile, the temptation to paint Luxon as a religious zealot seems to be irresistible to some journalists — and, of course, to Labour MPs as the party’s election campaign cranks up.
Luxon’s Christian beliefs have been used as a stick to beat him with from the day he became leader of the National Party in November 2021. The media has returned repeatedly to his views on abortion (despite his promises to not tamper with the current laws) as well as twisting National’s policy on prescriptions to claim he intends to prevent women from accessing free contraception. Cabinet Minister Megan Woods even implied in a social media post that National’s policy reflected the reproductive dystopia portrayed in The Handmaid's Tale.
Yet Hipkins’ push to incorporate Māori spiritual concepts into science — which breaches the separation between secular education and religion — goes almost entirely unremarked.
Last week, an aspect of the debate flared into life after Dr Michael Johnston, a senior researcher at the New Zealand Initiative, drew the public’s attention to a leaked draft document for teaching science, technology and the arts as part of a comprehensive Curriculum Refresh that Chris Hipkins instigated in September 2019 as Minister of Education.
The refresh — which includes giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and embedding mātauranga Māori throughout the entire curriculum and across all learning areas — is being rolled out in stages. Social sciences was released in November 2022 and the compulsory history curriculum has been taught since the beginning of 2023. English is now also available to be used in schools, as is mathematics and statistics.
Science, technology and arts are “in development” and will be available for use next year, while health and physical education are in development for release in 2025, along with learning languages.
Dr Johnston pointed out that, in the draft consultation document for science, “Central concepts in physics are absent. There is no mention of gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, mass or motion. Chemistry is likewise missing in action. There is nothing about atomic structure, the periodic table of the elements, compounds or molecular bonding.”
Science teachers subsequently expressed their disquiet in the media over these baffling omissions, but it was left to Act leader David Seymour to draw attention to the elephant lurking in the room — the embedding of mātauranga Māori everywhere.
As he put it: “Act has seen a leaked copy of the ‘refreshed’ NZ curriculum for science, technology and the arts. Throughout the document, the words ‘chemistry’, ‘physics’, ‘biology’, ‘atom’ and ‘molecule’ get zero mentions. ‘Force’ gets one mention. ‘Mātauranga Māori’ receives over 50 mentions. Who decided science should give way to spirituality?”
The answer to that question is, of course, the Right Honourable Christopher John Hipkins, currently serving as the 41st Prime Minister of New Zealand, and who was the Minister of Education for five years after Labour came to power in 2017.
In February, Auckland University’s Professor Elizabeth Rata, whose particular expertise is in the sociology of education, sent an open letter to Hipkins — co-signed by three senior academics: Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, Dr Raymond Richards and Dr David Lillis — and copying in the current Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti.
The academics expressed their concerns about a document discussing the curriculum refresh released last September — including “the insertion into the curriculum of traditional knowledge, or mātauranga Māori, as equivalent to science”.
The letter made it clear that while mātauranga Māori has its place in a school curriculum, it is not science: “Traditional knowledge has its own value and purpose and belongs in curriculum subjects such as social studies, geography, and literature. But it is not science and does not belong in the science curriculum.”
Professor Rata and her co-signers were under no illusion about who was ultimately responsible for deciding science should give way to spirituality. They concluded their letter with: “Prime Minister Hipkins, the Curriculum Refresh and the NCEA Reforms were developed on your watch as Minister of Education. It is, therefore, incumbent on you to repeal them before irrevocable damage is done to our country. As Prime Minister, you are certainly in a position to do so.”
In the letter, Professor Rata drew attention to the concept of “mauri” (life force; vital essence) being included in the syllabus as relevant to biology and chemistry. “Vitalism, the idea of an innate ‘life force’ present in all things, has surfaced in many cultural knowledge systems, including European, but has been soundly refuted and is not part of modern science.”
The subversion of science education in New Zealand by supernatural and animistic elements has also been noted by renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
Writing in The Spectator in March during his Antipodean speaking tour, he derided the “ludicrous policy, spawned by Chris Hipkins’ Ministry of Education before he became Prime Minister. Science classes are to be taught that Māori ‘ways of knowing’ (mātauranga Māori) have equal standing with ‘Western’ science...
“Mātauranga Māori includes valuable tips on edible fungi, star navigation and species conservation (pity the moas were all eaten). Unfortunately it is deeply invested in vitalism. New Zealand children will be taught the true wonder of DNA, while being simultaneously confused by the doctrine that all life throbs with a vital force conferred by the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. Origin myths are haunting and poetic, but they belong elsewhere in the curriculum.”
The assumption that including mātauranga Māori as a prominent feature of science education will make it more “inclusive” doesn’t tally with the lack of interest in traditional beliefs and spirituality among Māori themselves.
As Professor Rata has noted: “The majority of Māori do not fit with the official idealised picture of Māori spirituality. According to the 2018 census, 53.5 per cent of those identifying with Māori ethnicity had no religious affiliation. The number identifying with traditional Māori religious, beliefs and philosophies is small and declining, from about 12 per cent in 2006 to 7 per cent in 2018 (NZ Statistics, 2018). As more Māori enter the professional class it is likely that this trend will continue.
“Given that over 50 per cent of Māori already have no religious affiliation, it is doubtful that there is a constituency for a spiritual-based education.”
As many suspect, the push to insert Māori spirituality into education has not come from a grass-roots swell but from a top-down mandate. Our political and academic elites have decided this will be good for the public, whether the public wants it or not.
Among that academic elite is Hipkins’ mother. Of course, you’d never guess from the persona the Prime Minister has cultivated in the media as a down-to-earth, working-class “boy from the Hutt” that he grew up in a home dedicated to radical educational ideology of the kind promoted by the Ardern-Hipkins government.
Rosemary Hipkins, who began her career as a science and biology teacher, is now “Chief Researcher/Kaihautū Rangahau” at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, which she joined in 2001. It is a statutory body that operates under the NZCER Act 1972 and, while not formally attached to any government department, university or other educational organisation, is contracted by the Ministry of Education to develop policy.
Rose Hipkins is heavily involved in research for the redesign of NCEA. As the NZCER website puts it: “Currently Rose is working on several projects supporting the review of the NCEA”… and is exploring “the implications of decolonisation”.
Her most recent book, Teaching for Complex Systems Thinking (2021), includes “an explicit discussion of parallels between complexity science and indigenous knowledge systems (specifically mātauranga Māori in the New Zealand context)”.
A 2022 paper, Enduring Competencies for Designing Science Learning Pathways, for which she was lead author, states that young people will need to be educated in “at least two different knowledge lenses” — mātauranga Māori and science — in order to “understand their place and identity in the natural world” and “to live as ethically and responsibly as possible”.
It is clear that the acorn hasn’t fallen far from the tree in the Hipkins family. You might even say that when it comes to promoting mātauranga Māori in science and “decolonising” the curriculum, Chippie is a chip off the old block.
His mother’s contribution to the radical overhaul of education has been rewarded by the Labour government. In 2019, Rose Hipkins was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science education.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
He entered the debate after a letter on mātauranga Māori and NCEA science titled "In Defence of Science”, written by seven Auckland University professors, was published in the Listener in July 2021. Two years later, Coyne says he still gets a stream of emails from New Zealand academics and teachers who feel they can’t speak out publicly about mātauranga Māori for fear of losing their jobs.
In discussing the topic in depth, Coyne is doing the job New Zealand mainstream media refuses to do.
Meanwhile, the temptation to paint Luxon as a religious zealot seems to be irresistible to some journalists — and, of course, to Labour MPs as the party’s election campaign cranks up.
Luxon’s Christian beliefs have been used as a stick to beat him with from the day he became leader of the National Party in November 2021. The media has returned repeatedly to his views on abortion (despite his promises to not tamper with the current laws) as well as twisting National’s policy on prescriptions to claim he intends to prevent women from accessing free contraception. Cabinet Minister Megan Woods even implied in a social media post that National’s policy reflected the reproductive dystopia portrayed in The Handmaid's Tale.
Yet Hipkins’ push to incorporate Māori spiritual concepts into science — which breaches the separation between secular education and religion — goes almost entirely unremarked.
Last week, an aspect of the debate flared into life after Dr Michael Johnston, a senior researcher at the New Zealand Initiative, drew the public’s attention to a leaked draft document for teaching science, technology and the arts as part of a comprehensive Curriculum Refresh that Chris Hipkins instigated in September 2019 as Minister of Education.
The refresh — which includes giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and embedding mātauranga Māori throughout the entire curriculum and across all learning areas — is being rolled out in stages. Social sciences was released in November 2022 and the compulsory history curriculum has been taught since the beginning of 2023. English is now also available to be used in schools, as is mathematics and statistics.
Science, technology and arts are “in development” and will be available for use next year, while health and physical education are in development for release in 2025, along with learning languages.
Dr Johnston pointed out that, in the draft consultation document for science, “Central concepts in physics are absent. There is no mention of gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, mass or motion. Chemistry is likewise missing in action. There is nothing about atomic structure, the periodic table of the elements, compounds or molecular bonding.”
Science teachers subsequently expressed their disquiet in the media over these baffling omissions, but it was left to Act leader David Seymour to draw attention to the elephant lurking in the room — the embedding of mātauranga Māori everywhere.
As he put it: “Act has seen a leaked copy of the ‘refreshed’ NZ curriculum for science, technology and the arts. Throughout the document, the words ‘chemistry’, ‘physics’, ‘biology’, ‘atom’ and ‘molecule’ get zero mentions. ‘Force’ gets one mention. ‘Mātauranga Māori’ receives over 50 mentions. Who decided science should give way to spirituality?”
The answer to that question is, of course, the Right Honourable Christopher John Hipkins, currently serving as the 41st Prime Minister of New Zealand, and who was the Minister of Education for five years after Labour came to power in 2017.
In February, Auckland University’s Professor Elizabeth Rata, whose particular expertise is in the sociology of education, sent an open letter to Hipkins — co-signed by three senior academics: Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, Dr Raymond Richards and Dr David Lillis — and copying in the current Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti.
The academics expressed their concerns about a document discussing the curriculum refresh released last September — including “the insertion into the curriculum of traditional knowledge, or mātauranga Māori, as equivalent to science”.
The letter made it clear that while mātauranga Māori has its place in a school curriculum, it is not science: “Traditional knowledge has its own value and purpose and belongs in curriculum subjects such as social studies, geography, and literature. But it is not science and does not belong in the science curriculum.”
Professor Rata and her co-signers were under no illusion about who was ultimately responsible for deciding science should give way to spirituality. They concluded their letter with: “Prime Minister Hipkins, the Curriculum Refresh and the NCEA Reforms were developed on your watch as Minister of Education. It is, therefore, incumbent on you to repeal them before irrevocable damage is done to our country. As Prime Minister, you are certainly in a position to do so.”
In the letter, Professor Rata drew attention to the concept of “mauri” (life force; vital essence) being included in the syllabus as relevant to biology and chemistry. “Vitalism, the idea of an innate ‘life force’ present in all things, has surfaced in many cultural knowledge systems, including European, but has been soundly refuted and is not part of modern science.”
The subversion of science education in New Zealand by supernatural and animistic elements has also been noted by renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
Writing in The Spectator in March during his Antipodean speaking tour, he derided the “ludicrous policy, spawned by Chris Hipkins’ Ministry of Education before he became Prime Minister. Science classes are to be taught that Māori ‘ways of knowing’ (mātauranga Māori) have equal standing with ‘Western’ science...
“Mātauranga Māori includes valuable tips on edible fungi, star navigation and species conservation (pity the moas were all eaten). Unfortunately it is deeply invested in vitalism. New Zealand children will be taught the true wonder of DNA, while being simultaneously confused by the doctrine that all life throbs with a vital force conferred by the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. Origin myths are haunting and poetic, but they belong elsewhere in the curriculum.”
The assumption that including mātauranga Māori as a prominent feature of science education will make it more “inclusive” doesn’t tally with the lack of interest in traditional beliefs and spirituality among Māori themselves.
As Professor Rata has noted: “The majority of Māori do not fit with the official idealised picture of Māori spirituality. According to the 2018 census, 53.5 per cent of those identifying with Māori ethnicity had no religious affiliation. The number identifying with traditional Māori religious, beliefs and philosophies is small and declining, from about 12 per cent in 2006 to 7 per cent in 2018 (NZ Statistics, 2018). As more Māori enter the professional class it is likely that this trend will continue.
“Given that over 50 per cent of Māori already have no religious affiliation, it is doubtful that there is a constituency for a spiritual-based education.”
As many suspect, the push to insert Māori spirituality into education has not come from a grass-roots swell but from a top-down mandate. Our political and academic elites have decided this will be good for the public, whether the public wants it or not.
Among that academic elite is Hipkins’ mother. Of course, you’d never guess from the persona the Prime Minister has cultivated in the media as a down-to-earth, working-class “boy from the Hutt” that he grew up in a home dedicated to radical educational ideology of the kind promoted by the Ardern-Hipkins government.
Rosemary Hipkins, who began her career as a science and biology teacher, is now “Chief Researcher/Kaihautū Rangahau” at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, which she joined in 2001. It is a statutory body that operates under the NZCER Act 1972 and, while not formally attached to any government department, university or other educational organisation, is contracted by the Ministry of Education to develop policy.
Rose Hipkins is heavily involved in research for the redesign of NCEA. As the NZCER website puts it: “Currently Rose is working on several projects supporting the review of the NCEA”… and is exploring “the implications of decolonisation”.
Her most recent book, Teaching for Complex Systems Thinking (2021), includes “an explicit discussion of parallels between complexity science and indigenous knowledge systems (specifically mātauranga Māori in the New Zealand context)”.
A 2022 paper, Enduring Competencies for Designing Science Learning Pathways, for which she was lead author, states that young people will need to be educated in “at least two different knowledge lenses” — mātauranga Māori and science — in order to “understand their place and identity in the natural world” and “to live as ethically and responsibly as possible”.
It is clear that the acorn hasn’t fallen far from the tree in the Hipkins family. You might even say that when it comes to promoting mātauranga Māori in science and “decolonising” the curriculum, Chippie is a chip off the old block.
His mother’s contribution to the radical overhaul of education has been rewarded by the Labour government. In 2019, Rose Hipkins was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science education.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
11 comments:
Rose is yet another colonist that feels the indigenous people aren't clever enough to work out their own way to decolonize. If she has any real conviction she would step aside from the trough and allow a Maori to take her place.
Yeah right, the trough is far to comfortable.
Thank you Graham Adams. Your insightful fact filled writing has sustained me over the last couple of years.You have now confirmed for me that our PM is not only an idiot but he is also incapable of thinking for himself . Being able to see past the end of his nose would have been an invaluable skill in his career.But of course he would have found that too much hard work!!
Thanks, Orowhana. The fact the mainstream media has promoted a view that Hipkins is a "bread-and-butter" PM when he is clearly a woke ideologue — not least in education — is immensely frustrating.
Thank you Graham Adams . It is almost insidious , or just dumb that parent and sibling conflicts are prevalent within the current Labour Government , ie Mahuta and Hipkins . When Chippie's mother is ensconced in determining education and he was the Minister of Education it is reasonable that he now be placed before the Parliamentary Privileges committee for conflict because the MSM have failed the populace .
Corruption has many faces.
Brilliant article, Graham. The way the media target Luxon’s religious views while ignoring Hipkins’ foisting of creationism and vitalism on high school is, in my view, strong evidence of government control of the mass media.
Graham mentions Rosemary Hipkins, who began her career as a high school biology teacher, so you’d think that in her time in the classroom she would have had a decent working knowledge of her subject. Not if “Alive and well II”, a textbook she co-authored with Lindsey Conner (who also became an science education high-flyer) and published in 1999, was anything to go by. The publisher described it as “a new edition of the classic textbook for Year 11 Human Biology”. The authors, described on the back blurb as ‘experienced biology teachers’ were both involved in teacher education at colleges of education.
All very impressive. The trouble is, at the time they wrote their book, neither was adequately qualified academically to teach biology, so serious are the errors and misunderstandings. To give just a few of the most egregious examples:
•The authors didn’t have even a basic understanding of how the eye forms an image on the retina, or how it accommodates to view near objects.
•They didn’t understand the function of the middle ear.
•Their diagrams and labels of nerve cells are appalling (there is no such thing as a ‘dendron’ – a term invented by a biology teacher decades ago and uncritically copied by other teachers ever since).
•I quote from page 54: The oxygen carriers [red blood cells] . . . “are bi-concave so that they can swell up without bursting when they take a load of oxygen on board.” Such an illustration of the authors’ indifference to accuracy is so bad, it’s not even wrong – they clearly made it up (the red cells’ bi-concave shape causes them to become bell-shaped as they move along the capillaries, increasing the surface area for diffusion of oxygen).
The authors are careful to avoid any mention of ‘technical’ terms from elementary chemistry and physics, such as ‘molecule’ and ‘diffusion’ thus helping to give credence to biology’s reputation as a ‘soft’ science for those who aren’t good at maths.
Their treatment of proteins makes no mention of different kinds of their constituent amino acids, and more particularly that they are in a specific sequence. This would give meaning to the concept of a gene carrying the information enabling a cell to join amino acids in a particular order. From there it’s just one more step to the idea that DNA contains four kinds of chemical (whose names are shortened to A, G, C and T), and it is the order of these that represents (in code) the order of amino acids in a protein.
On top of that, the authors clearly don’t even understand the meaning of ‘genetic code’. On page 120 they state that “the code is slightly different for each person”. With very rare and minor exceptions, the code is universal; it is identical for bacteria, broccoli, and greyhounds. What differs is the information. To illustrate, there is one Morse code, with which one can transmit an infinite number of messages.
The authors this ‘classic textbook’ show no evidence of a desire to impart knowledge or understanding of biology. Yet they were teachers of teachers and became leaders in taking high school biology in the terminal mess it is today.
It is hard not to think there are elements of fascism at play in NZ. The elevation of one race, ideological capture of education, silencing of free speech, promotion of a charismatic leader (Jacindamania). Media cartoons lampooning opposing views, ideological thought police (Disinformation Project) etc
Thank you Graham,. for again calling as it is.
And Orowhana, of course he couldn't see past the end of his nose, it was just as with the rest rest of them - embedded too deep in the public trough.
But like all parties, they need to think of succession or are they really that myopic and stupid that they think they can fool all of the people all of the time? With student levels of literacy and numeracy declining rapidly, they must think that ignorance is bliss and that a future of growing welfare dependency will assure them the seat of power forever? Are they that ignorant that not that far off, such a welfare system will collapse under its own weight?
What this smiling clown and his circus followers are permitting to be done to our education system is beyond egregious - and, much more rapidly than Greta's climate, they are truly stealing our children's futures and dreams. Rather than rewards and respect, they should be accorded our utmost contempt.
I totally agree with all the above comments,
This quote:- "In 2019, Rose Hipkins was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science education." means, for example, that on this basis, Alfred E Newman would also qualify.
So now Hipkin's witch doctor mother determines the academic curriculum and the fate and future of all NZ educated students ?
Has NZ sunk to the level of the Third World to the point that blatant nepotism can determine the future direction of a nation ?
Are the schools and universities going to teach foreign fee paying students this absolute nonsense ?
or is just a special indoctrination of NZ students ?
Its beyond belief that our academia can believe and contemplate teaching this crap.
Welcome to the Third Reich and the Goebbels propaganda regime
The Daily Mail could pick it up with this headline:
“NEPOTISM at the top: Unelected PM of New Zealand who cannot define a woman, has his own MOTHER contracted to redefine entire nationwide school science curriculum in New Zealand. Biology and physics OUT, decolonisation and mythology is IN (AND she got an award and paid for doing it)”
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