Education in Serious Decline
Make no mistake - New Zealand’s education system is currently in steep decline (Armstrong, 2023), and the country cannot afford another generation of young people getting a second-rate education. In this article we discuss the causes and remedies for this damaging long-term slide.
The transition of twenty years ago to the NCEA schools qualification system, with its lack of rigour in the delivery of core knowledge and skills, most markedly in mathematics and the sciences, heralded a decline in education standards in New Zealand.
In 2000, New Zealand was one of the top performers in the world. Our results were above the average of the world’s most developed countries and we placed third in mathematics and fourth for reading in a group of 41 countries. When the latest PISA results were published in 2018, the decline had progressed so much that in science and reading New Zealand was only marginally above the OECD average. In mathematics we are now below average. Of the larger group of 78 participating countries, New Zealand ranked low, at 27th (Hartwich, 2022).
Reading is similarly in trouble. For example, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) shows that the reading skills of New Zealand students continue to decline. In 2021, New Zealand recorded its lowest score since the inception of PIRLS in 2001 (e.g. Scoop, 2023).
Further, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a survey of 15-year-old students conducted every three years, shows even more worrying declines. New Zealand's performance in mathematics reflects one of the largest drops within participating countries (OECD, 2018). New Zealand's mean performance has been declining steadily in reading (2000-18), mathematics (2003-18) and science (2006-18) from earlier high levels of performance. In reading, more rapid declines were observed amongst the country’s lowest-achieving students. In mathematics and science, performance declined to a similar extent at the top and the bottom of the performance distribution, as well as on average.
The decline has now been exacerbated by moves to centre the school curriculum on the Treaty of Waitangi, and universities declaring themselves Te Tiriti-led and prioritising the inclusion of matauranga Māori in degree courses. Left-wing ideologies, combined with post-modern ideas and a dangerous mix of Critical Social Justice theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) policies, now appear to be more important to decision-makers than teaching basic skills and knowledge (P. Raine, 2023), and will exacerbate the observed steady deterioration. A more holistic approach in teaching and research is now favoured or even mandated, and merit-based assessment used internationally for many decades has been called into question on the basis that it inherently disadvantages minorities and indigenous people (Abbot et al., 2023).
We share major concerns with many others about the current refresh of the New Zealand Curriculum (Lillis, 2023; J. Raine, 2023). We fear that a poor curriculum will result in even poorer outcomes and wealthy families discarding NCEA and guaranteeing a better education for their children by sending them to independent schools that are not driven by ideologies.
Post-Modernism and Social Justice
Unfortunately, post-modernism is on a steep rise internationally (Sokal and Bricmont, 1999). Post-modernism favours subjectivism and relativism (the belief that truth and knowledge exist in relation to the self and society, and are not absolute) over objectivism and realism, and is critical of, or even denies, the many great scientific advances of the Enlightenment movement (Age of Reason!), which began in 17th century Europe. In a post-modern world any theory may be embraced without necessarily having sound evidence as a basis.
Post-modernism thrives on current DEI policies and gender activism. It even places subjective labels on science, claims new disciplines such as feminist science and traditional or indigenous astronomy, and labels science as sexist and racist. It implies that the outcomes of scientific exploration and scientific ideas very much depend on the identity of the observer, without clear distinction between fact and fiction. It puts holistic notions before everything else, condemning the very ideas of reductionism which are so important for understanding the natural world.
The philosopher, Mario Bunge, sounded a clear warning, already nearly thirty years ago (Bunge, 1996):
Over the past three decades or so very many universities have been infiltrated, though not yet seized, by the enemies of learning, rigor, and empirical evidence: those who proclaim that there is no objective truth, whence ‘anything goes,’ those who pass off political opinion as science and engage in bogus scholarship.
How can we explain the wonders of quantum physics to our students without involving reductionism for the concept of elementary particles, atoms or molecules? There are situations where the observer markedly influences the outcome of a measurement, such as in the famous Heisenberg microscope experiment in quantum theory, taught to every physics graduate student in New Zealand, but this interaction between the macroscopic (observer) and microscopic world is well described by the laws of quantum theory and in no way depends on sex or race. Unfortunately, publishing houses such as Nature, Science, the American Physical or Chemical Society, now welcome non-evidence-based claims of questionable quality on the basis of their current DEI policies. Recent examples include an article in Physical Review Physics Education Research (APS) on “Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study” by Robertson and Hairston (2022), or in Chemical Education (ACS) on “Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum”, by Dessent et al. (2021).
Post-modern ideas are alien to modern evidence-based science such as chemistry, physics or mathematics (Dawkins, 1998), and to the laws that cover the analytic work of engineers. To put it bluntly: Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 is set in stone and does not depend on either sex or race or on the identity of the scientist exploring it. Nor do the Laws of Thermodynamics. Nature is described to an astonishingly high degree of accuracy through the fundamental laws of quantum physics. As Richard Dawkins put it:
Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what tradition they may have been brought up in. True science is evidence-based, not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses . . .
Today, using microscopic theory, we have a basic understanding of how a snowflake takes shape and grows, without appeal to holistic or race-based ideas; of the causes of earthquakes and tsunamis; the risk of landslides, and how the elements in the Periodic Table were formed in stars and neutron star mergers. The search for a more complete picture and understanding of nature welcomes all ethnicities. Our students should not be deprived of this most fascinating activity of contemporary science.
Examples of Post-Modernism
The many anti-science statements coming from the post-modern corner are best illustrated by a few examples:
- Māori May Have Reached Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans (Wehi et al, 2022). This statement made it into the headlines, such as the New Zealand Herald, the Guardian and even the New York Times. It was debunked shortly after (Anderson et al. 2022).
- From the beginning of creation, to the children of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, and descending to our ancestors, all aspects of creation have whakapapa ... This allows us to consider whakapapa for each of the elements on the periodic table (NZASE resource). While this is nice storytelling that favours creationism, it does not belong in a science class. The abundance of the elements in our universe and on our planet Earth is well understood from basic nuclear physics.
- Mauri is an energy which binds and animates all things in the physical world. Without mauri, mana cannot flow into a person or object (Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand). This leads to the claim that Everything has a Mauri. A life force. When we are ill, our life force has been compromised (Māori Healers) and The Mauri is the power that allows these living things to exist within their domain. It is also known as a spark of life, the active component that gives life. A critical discussion on the Mauri concept proposed by the government’s NCEA panel for chemistry teaching in our schools has been provided recently by Professor Paul Kilmartin of The University of Auckland (Kilmartin, 2021). Among other issues, Professor Kilmartin has objected to the inclusion of Mauri (a life force) in our Chemistry curriculum, because it conflicts directly with science.
- A recent article in the Guardian (Graham-McLay, 2023) on celebrating Matiriki, stated that Māori books only survived because old people hid them from the colonists, who it is implied wished to suppress or destroy them. No evidence for this claim was given and, in any case, like all other Polynesian languages (except for the Easter Island), Māori had no written form or books until the introduction of writing by missionaries (Harlow, 2007).
- And - at a very basic level, in March 2023 a New Zealand child came home from school and told their parents that they had learned two important facts in science that day, namely that water has a spirit and memory - another introduction of animist confusion into what should have been a science lesson.
All modern tools that we use daily to live our lives in comfort have emerged in some way from basic science and technology. How can we combat global warming with a mix of science and non-evidence-based and animist beliefs? How can we solve the big problems in science without a basic understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology? How can we learn from history if ideology dictates that unpleasant aspects of some of our histories are omitted or corrupted? How can we teach logical thinking to our students when we present mythological notions as truth?
Fighting for Education and Science
Unfortunately, the acceptance of postmodern ideas by our media, who are amplifying a global post-modern movement, will result in our schools and universities becoming an anti-science breeding ground for the next generation should we fail to teach them critical and logical thinking.
Moreover, the denial of New Zealand as a democratic multicultural society, in favour of race-based bi-culturalism and Treatyism, diverts us from the actions that are needed if we are to address poverty, health disparities and a steadily declining education system. Unfortunately, many schoolteachers and university lecturers are too afraid to speak out for fear of being labelled racist by a cancel-culture mob or of losing their jobs.
So, what needs to be done to secure a bright future for our education system?
- The march of post-modern relativist views through our educational institutions creates a huge risk of their losing their international reputation and relevance, losing their international students, and of New Zealand becoming an inward-looking country. Schools and universities must not foster damaging ideologies and should move back from the politicisation that has occurred.
- International scholars, such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss and Jerry Coyne, have given wise advice. If New Zealand ignores them, then our education system is at risk of being seen as an international laughing stock. We do not need to indigenise or decolonise our education system for all to succeed, and Māori will continue to succeed in our universities, as they have done in the past, without ideological intervention from universities themselves or the State.
- New Zealand must again become a society where freedom of thought and speech are strongly upheld and not supressed by our politicians, university leaders, or the media, rejecting ill-conceived ideologies such as equality of traditional knowledge and world science.
- Universities should again become the critic and conscience of our society, where all perspectives can be discussed and debated openly, and where academics are protected from being ”cancelled” if they present views that do not align with the mainstream narrative.
- Science teaching should be based on testable hypotheses (Popper’s Principle of Falsification) and established truth, but not on a muddle of observations of the natural world, myth and legend. Established mathematics and science must be taught rigorously, without descent into vague relativism, where subjective views are presented as facts. The histories of all New Zealand’s many ethnicities should be taught without revision or sanitation.
- Governments must play an important role in providing strong leadership, without encouraging the indoctrination of our society with damaging ideologies that do not stand up to critical scrutiny or analysis.
- Matauranga Māori, as the Māori knowledge system, needs to be treasured but not protected from criticism, nor taken as an alternative to modern world science.
- The Treaty of Waitangi should be seen as an historic document but, silent as it is on education, not interpreted to enable the infusion of a postmodern version of matauranga Māori widely across taught curricula to the disadvantage of education in the basics for our young people.
New Zealand is a great democratic country with a population of many backgrounds. Neither racism nor inverse racism from the political left or right have any place in our society. We can do far better.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writers, and not of the universities with which they are or were formerly affiliated. We welcome any feedback and apologize in advance if we have offended some of our post-modernist colleagues.
References
D. Abbot, A. Bikfalvi, A.L. Bleske Rechek, W. Bodmer, P. Boghossian C.M. Carvalho, J. Ciccolini, J.A. Coyne, J. Gauss, P.M.W. Gill, S. Jitomirskaya, L. Jussim, A.I. Krylov, G.C. Loury, L. Maroja, J.H. McWhorter, S. Moosavi, P. Nayna Schwerdtle, J. Pearl, M.A. Quintanilla Tornel, H.F. Schaefer, P.R. Schreiner, P. Schwerdtfeger, D. Shechtman, M. Shifman, J. Tanzman, B.L. Trout, A. Warshel, J.D. West (2023). In Defense of Merit in Science. Journal of Controversial Ideas 3(1): 1. https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/1/236
A. Anderson, S. T. O’Regan, P. Parata-Goodall, M. Stevens, T. M. Tau (2022). On the improbability of pre-European Polynesian voyages to Antarctica: a response to Priscilla Wehi and colleagues. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 52(5):599.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2021.1973517
H. Armstrong (2023). The Tragic Decline of New Zealand Universities. Breaking Views NZ. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/07/henry-armstrong-tragic-decline-of-new.html#more
M. Bunge (1996). In praise of intolerance to charlatanism in academia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences-Paper Edition 775: 96-116.
https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1996.tb23131.x
R. Dawkins (1998), Postmodernism disrobed. Nature 394, 141. https://doi.org/10.1038/28089
C. E. H. Dessent, R. A. Dawood, L. C. Jones, A. S. Matharu, D. K. Smith, K. O. Uleanya (2021). Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum: An Account of How to Start, J. Chem. Educ. , 99, 1, 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c00397
C. Graham-McLay (2023). Indigenous renaissance: Māori hope Matariki holiday will help cement status of local knowledge, The Guardian, 13 Jul 2023
R. Harlow (2007). Maori: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/maori/8D7272E6110802CF9AD2EF300EFECEEE
O. Hartwich (2022). Rebuilding Better: Once world-class, NZ’s education system is now a disaster. How do we fix it?
P. Kilmartin (2021). Mātauranga Māori & the Science Curriculum with Paul Kilmartin. The Shape of Dialogue Podcast No 13.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOOe0NxFy80
D. Lillis (2023). Comments on the Refreshed Curriculum for Science, Technology and The Arts, Breaking Views, 18th June, 2023. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/06/david-lillis-comments-on-refreshed.html
OECD (2018). New Zealand - Country Note - PISA 2018 Results
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_NZL.pdf
J. Raine (2023). “The Laws of Science Haven’t Changed”. Breaking Views, 11th July 2023. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/07/john-raine-laws-of-science-havent.html
P. Raine (2023). The NZ University - Poacher turned Gamekeeper. Breaking Views 19th July 2023. https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/07/penn-raine-nz-university-poacher-turned.html
A.D. Robertson & W.T. Hairston (2022). Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study. Physical Review Physics Education Research 18(1):010119. https://journals.aps.org/prper/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010119
Scoop (2023). Global Study Shows NZ Reading Ability At Lowest Ever
A. Sokal, J. & Bricmont (1999). Fashionable nonsense: Postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science. Macmillan; 1999.
https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/steen/cogweb/Debate/SokalFNCh1.html
P. M. Wehi, N. J. Scott, J. Beckwith, R. P. Rodgers, T. Gillies, V. Van Uitregt, K. Watene K. (2022). A short scan of Māori journeys to Antarctica. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 52(5):587.
17 comments:
Spot on. My year 9 son was only being taught matauranga Maori for a month in science at high school. Including that the Maori gods fighting cause the wind. Even the Maori kids in class thought it was a load of rubbish and disengaged.
Thankfully it stopped after a complaint to the dean.
Great article, I dearly hope the bods in the education dept read it.
We need people like yourselves to highlight the drivel being pushed onto our young people or we are all sunk.
For a great example of what education can do for you look at Singapore.
A country with no natural resources but it has a world class educated population. The English GCSE system is well embedded and understood.
Fairy dust thinking is at the root course of NZ decline and it needs to be replaced with reality
Agree, agree, agree BUT not about the NCEA. The NCEA is not a curriculum but presents educators with the building blocks of a curriculum that can be tailor-made for given learners. It is an assessment/certification regime which does not in itself erode educational standards.
Hi Barend.
We understand about the NCEA as a system of qualifications rather than a curriculum. However, teachers teach to the assessments as much as to the curriculum. Students do something similar when they prepare for examinations.
David Lillis
I've just finished a 2 year stint as School Board trustee in a large public school. The single biggest achievement obstacles were: firstly, appallingly low standards in the primary and intermediate feeder schools requiring massive resource shift from the secondary school into year 9 and 10 students to bring them up to standard; secondly, far too much choice under the old NCEA system allowing students to duck out of the core subjects and still pass; and third; a lowering of societal standards of achievement often under the guise of diversity and racial equity.
Hopefully the new NCEA will correct the second issue but the first and third will persist as intractable headwinds for the public education system.
The physicist Alan Sokal has just published an article entitled "The implicit epistemology of White Fragility" in the Journal of Philosophy and Education. Sokal defines postmodernism as follows (page 2):
"an intellectual current characterized by the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a ‘narration’, a ‘myth’ or a social construction among many others. (Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 1)"
This aligns squarely with Rosemary Hipkins' relativist formulation of mana ōrite in the science curriculum refresh. This is ideological vandalism of science and education in New Zealand. How did someone with demonstrably anti-science views become so influential in revising our science curriculum?
Great article, and you have described the appaling situation so very clearly.
For myself, I got a very good education in science at Kapiti College and NZ School of Pharmacy in the 60's.
In the 70's I pursued a personal interest in particle physics and quantum mechanics. I found these topics fascinating and, of course, they are scientific.
Science deals in observed data. Scientific conclusions are drawn from interpreting the data. So far, so good.
However when "philosophy" and "humanities" and their vague words ending in "ism" are brought into the mix and somehow pushed into "Science" it becomes very muddy and imprecise. They are oil and water, and simply do not mix.
Richard Dawkins clear simple description sums it up. Science is science is science. It is not humanities, or politics or racial issues etc, etc, It is SCIENCE !!
The concepts of postmodernism probably
began as a wonderful distraction for bored European University academics back last century.
It's a subject that keeps giving, but surely was never to be taken seriously.
That is until the left realized how it could easily be used to drive political ambition.
The very idea that the universe centers around each individual, and is determined by their view of it, is extremely powerful.
It, in the last 50 odd years has slowly influenced western democracies.
Make no mistake It's as powerful as any weapon of war, and at war we surely are.
We need a new term to describe New Zealand's cultural malaise: aretephobia; fear of excellence.
We are witnessing the destruction of our once proud, highly regarded, educational system.
No longer. We are plummeting down in the global stakes, thanks to the woke.
Welcome to New Zimbabwe !
There is the suggestion here that all the Maorification of the syllabus is because of Maori underachievement. Unfortunately, Maori are over -represented in the underclass, crime and welfare.
My take on this is to face the fact NZ has one of the longest tails of under- achievements in the developed world. My explanation for how this has happened is the dominance of Marie Clay and her disastrous novel reading method which continued to be forced on NZ children despite mountains of evidence it was failing. Before Clay's influence the tail did not exist. John Dewey the father of progressive education and its constructivist (teach yourself } ideas was also an initiator of post - modern truth. Famously John Dewey wrote :" With dogma and creed excluded then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law
or permanent moral absolutes." Clay's Whole Language evolved directlyfrom Dewey's beliefs.
I share your concerns about the curriculum and am alarmed by the proposed curriculum “refresh”. But I have some criticisms of your argument (more a matter of emphasis than substance):
First off, it is hard to escape the irony of using the Theory of Relativity as a means to criticise relativism. That might make sense if one actually believes “Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 is set in stone.” But it is called the theory of relativity for a reason. The scientific method involves negating the null hypothesis, not etching divine truth on stone tablets.
Anyway, I think the focus on postmodernism is misplaced. Deconstruction and postmodernism is best understood as a post-traumatic response to the horrors of WW2 and the post-1968 disillusionment with Marxism-Leninism. It is a form of scepticism that has an unhealthy aversion to consensus. Taken to its logical extreme it amounts to a form of nihilism. What we are witnessing today is not that. Most 20th century postmodernists would make short shrift of critical race theory and the historical revisionism being promoted today.
The examples you provide have very little to do with postmodernism. Instead they are evidence of a fundamentalism that seeks to make the curriculum conform to the principles of Mātauranga Māori. Science is a casualty of this fundamentalism, but I do not believe it is its chief target. That would be the idea of a secular state.
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... continued ...
The separation of Church and State was achieved in Europe following the bloodshed of the protestant reformation and essentially amounts to an agreement to disagree. The problem is that this consensus is historically and culturally contingent. The values embedded in liberalism are neither self-evident nor universal. This does not mean we should abandon liberal values, but it does mean we need to argue for them.
This is the weakness of your argument. You presuppose what you set out to prove. Modern science presupposes a set of values. These values cannot be inferred from science (cf., naturalistic fallacy). Arguing that science is a means to uphold liberal democracy is a non-sequitur. How would you explain the scientific achievements of the Soviet Union and Communist China? What liberal democracy and communism have in common is that they presuppose a secular state. If we wish to defend science, then we need to defend secularism. But if we wish to defend liberal democracy, then we need to defend the core tenets of liberalism first championed during the Enlightenment.
Accordingly, the problem is not so much that people believe in a life force, the problem is that these personal beliefs are intruding the public sphere and increasingly look like a de facto state religion. The move to place Mātauranga Māori at the heart of the curriculum resembles an evangelical fundamentalism that threatens to compromise the scientific method. That is why a rhetorical strategy that purports to defend the principles of democracy by arguing that Mātauranga Māori is non-scientific seems ineffective at best.
People in a liberal democracy should be free to believe what they wish as long as their beliefs do not interfere or dominate others’ right to the pursuit of happiness. Liberalism champions religious freedom regardless whether the belief qualifies as monotheism, polytheism or atheism. Democracy rests on the idea that citizens are free to elect the government by means of their personal opinions. These opinions can change and may or may not be informed by science.
We can say that science is science is science. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the scientific method is not democratic. Fundamental to a liberal democracy (as opposed to a technocracy) is that we agree to disagree about each other’s private beliefs. This creates a space for public reason that can be informed by empirical evidence and the scientific method.
Science should not be defended as though it were an article of faith. It is not. It is a method that has proved very effective in explaining and manipulating the world around us. However, if we wish to live in an open society then defending the principles of liberalism should be our first priority.
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Hi A.
You make some very interesting and pertinent points that we should consider. Thank you for your contribution, especially on the need to defend liberalism.
David Lillis
Garrick Tremain created a wonderful cartoon, giving Jacinta Ardern last year’s ‘Robert Mugabe Award for Ruining a Great Little Country.”
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2022/05/garrick-tremain-awards.html?m=1
My nominee for this year’s award is Rose Hipkins, for her determined efforts to undermine NZ education standards.
@David Lillis
Your response to Professor Clair Charters opened my eyes to the extent of the problem. If one looks at her publications on SSRN it becomes evident that she has been pursuing an agenda hostile to liberal principles for some time.
For example, in 2003 she argued that “Universalist and cultural relativist solutions constitute an imperialist approach.” She then goes on to cite Isabelle Gunning who dismisses efforts by Western feminists to eradicate female genital mutilation as “thinly disguised expressions of racial and cultural superiority and imperialism.” With respect to indigenous custom in New Zealand she laments that “The marae is one of the very few remaining domains in which Maori can practice tikanga.” Fast forward 20 years and today we find mātauranga Māori being incorporated into a whole range of public policy with the troubling implication that challenging indigenous custom will be dismissed as “imperialist” or worse. The response to the 2021 Listener letter on science only confirms these suspicions.
But notice that most of the criticism aimed at the authors of ‘In Defence of Science’ did not seek to undermine science’s claim of knowledge (at least not directly). Instead the focus of the criticism was the alleged cultural supremacy and implicit racism of the authors and by extension science. Science is not being criticised for its claim to “objectivity”, or if it is, then only insofar as “objectivity” serves as evidence of structural racism etc. This strategy differs from postmodernism which seeks to undermine the claim to objectivity directly. Instead, the strategy being employed here rests on what we might term ‘indigenous infallibility’ according to which anything that threatens indigenous belief is considered illegitimate and evidence of structural racism, colonialism and imperialism etc. Science is not the target, it is collateral damage of indigenous fundamentalism.
I appreciate the concern about postmodern relativism, but again, I think the concern is somewhat misplaced. On that note, it is important to emphasise that democracy elects government by means of opinion and not by means of scientific knowledge. The problem with democracy is that it is easy to grow complacent and take the principles of liberalism for granted. This complacency is being exploited by activists who entrap the unsuspecting public in a so-called Kafka trap whereby any defence of liberalism serves as evidence of guilt. Those of us that believe liberalism is the least worst form of government need to bite the bullet and explicitly argue for the superiority of liberalism. Indeed, as Harold Miller notes in Race Conflict in New Zealand 1814-1865, that is the very same conclusion reached by Māori leaders by the mid 1850s.
“the Maori leaders were not only loyal to the Queen but were willing and indeed anxious to exchange their old customs for English laws; in the middle of the period a New Zealand Minister was able to say to the members of the House of Representatives, ‘We cannot mistake this cry of a people for law and government!’” xi
Hello A.
Thank you for sharing your opinions on this subject. They are very insightful and I intend to think them over at length during the next few days.
Quite frankly, I have never been political, and over the years have confined myself to research and related activities.
However, the reaction to the Listener Letter suggested to me that we are at a dangerous crossroads in New Zealand at this time. Today, good intentions are mixed with blind ambition and, as far as I am concerned, whatever inequalities we have here do not justify damage to education and science or giving greater socio-political status to any one group than to everyone else.
Lobbying for traditional remedies to exist outside of Health Legislation is but one measure of how stupid we have become. This is dangerous stuff!
My own writings reflect my personal attempt to influence for the greater good, while accepting that my views are imperfect and based on incomplete knowledge of the social, political and economic environment as experienced by New Zealanders of different backgrounds.
Thanks again.
David
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