Jerry Coyne: A powerful University dean in New Zealand touts merging higher education with indigenous spirituality

This article from New Zealand’s Newsroom site was written by Julie Rowland, the deputy dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland as well as a geologist and the Director of the Ngā Ara Whetū | Centre for Climate, Biodiversity & Society. In other word, she’s a scientist.

One key to what the article is about is given by its subtitle, ”

The University of Auckland’s Julie Rowland examines the notion that education should be secular and devoid of any form of spirituality

And of course you know that she’ll come down on the “science + spirituality = progress” side. Click below to read, and I’ll give a few excerpts:

Click to read

First she invokes the Treaty of Waitangi, (1840), which guaranteed the indigenous Māori people rights to hold onto their land and villages, as well as granting them the same rights as British citizens, though the country would be governed by England (called “the Crown”). The treaty (called “Te Tiriti”) is now interpreted to mean that indigenous people get roughly half of everything, and can insert their “way of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM), which includes religion, myths, gods, morality, and some practical knowledge, into everything academic:

Science is a rational pursuit of knowledge, but it does not exist in splendid isolation. If this is painted as the ‘ideal’ science, then it is incomplete. People do science, and people and their culture/s are inseparable.

In Aotearoa/New Zealand our nation’s origins lie with the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty is a formal agreement with the third article guaranteeing Māori equal rights and privileges. That means access to education within a system that seeks to fulfil the potential of every individual.

I suspect the heart of the issue is the notion that education should be secular and devoid of any form of spirituality. Proponents of this view would say a karakia (sometimes interpreted as a prayer) to open or close an event, or before guests eat afternoon tea, has no place in education. But in the context of Māori practices and values, and bringing Treaty articles to life, this makes perfect sense. And is absolutely integral.

Integral to what? Apparently not just to teatime prayers, but to all education:

Over the past three decades, Māori values, which are inextricably linked to spirituality, have been taken more seriously by the education sector resulting in a shift in the meaning of a secular education. For example, by 1999, all primary and some specialist (physical education) secondary teachers were required to factor spiritual well-being into their teaching programmes. If you’d been trained to think that spirituality has no part in education, as I did then, this was challenging.

But consider the alternative. If Māori values are parked outside state education, who is education for, and on what terms? Clearly, this scenario disregards every aspect of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and wider indigenous rights.

No, it just makes education secular instead of religious. While it’s okay to teach the small amount of secular knowledge that Māori have garnered (when to harvest berries or shellfish, etc.) into “science,” there is no need to make “spirituality”, including myths and gods that are simply fictional, an integral part of “knowledge”.

And about the Christians, Jews, and Buddhists who are “parked outside education”? Here we arrive at the crux of the matter: people like Rowland think that Māori spirituality MUST be part of education, apparently ignorant of the fact that there are other people participating in education in New Zealand— people who don’t buy the myths of MM.

Remember that the author is a big official at Auckland University, and her final words imply that not only must MM be part of a university education, but is essential to remedy “inequities” (presumably the lower achievement of Māori students than white or Asian students). The idea is that if Māori students don’t see their culture in every part of their college education, it will make them do worse in college. But it will also drag down college education in general by diluting the search for truth—the real benefit of college—with a form of social justice that asserts falsehoods about the universe:

In my view, efforts to acknowledge and understand mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) enrich the capacity of students and staff to connect across different world views, which is critical if we are to address the inequities in Aotearoa, let alone global crises like climate change. Acknowledgement and understanding of beliefs leads to richer engagement and the building of a relationship of equals.

Universities are the last in the education line to grapple with the duality that comes with meeting Treaty obligations. There is widespread support for this among academics who see the relevance in multiple ways. Our universities are not at a crossroads choosing the path of the universality of science or a race-based ideology. We are on a dual carriageway and the momentum is building.

Well, fine. Let MM be taught in sociology or anthropology classes as one of several forms of religious belief in New Zealand. But not in science class! Remember that there is a constant fight in NZ to make MM coequal with science in science class. I thought that misguided effort had waned, but according to Rowland it’s the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, Rowland doesn’t specify where her “dual carriageway” is leading. One thing is for sure: teaching MM is not going to do anything about mitigating global warming. Yes, getting more people into science will help science advance, but pushing a quasi-religion as science, just because of a treaty in 1840 which was largely prescientific, is only going to lower the quality of education in New Zealand.

Jerry Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design, a prolific scientist and author. This article was first published HERE