The PPTA is now selling Toitū Te Tiriti merchandise through its website - complete with slogans, banners, and talking points straight from political activism. This isn’t about education. It’s about ideology.
When a union openly campaigns against government policy and pushes one side of a divisive constitutional debate, it abandons its duty to represent all teachers, regardless of their political beliefs.
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Their so-called Toitū Te Tiriti campaign is “centred in Te Ao Māori” and aims to oppose the Treaty Principles Bill, oppose removal of Te Tiriti references in legislation, and build union cultural capacity. In other words, it’s a political manifesto disguised as professional development. The PPTA isn’t just lobbying for teachers - it’s lobbying for a particular leftist worldview, and doing so under the banner of education.
When they’re not busy printing merchandise, PPTA members are on the streets waving rainbow flags during strikes - strikes that leave classrooms empty and parents scrambling for childcare. Those same flags appear in their Rainbow Resources section online, where teachers are urged to make schools “more inclusive” for “students of diverse sexualities, gender identities and sex characteristics.”
Inclusion has been twisted into indoctrination. Instead of focusing on literacy and numeracy, teachers are being encouraged to play amateur psychologists, guiding children into complex identity politics that have no place in the classroom. Kids don’t need ideological grooming - they need reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Parents have every right to feel frustrated. When schools become battlegrounds for political causes, education suffers. When teachers’ unions become campaign headquarters, trust evaporates. And when the people paid to teach our children spend their time marching with banners and selling political merchandise, it’s not just unprofessional, it’s a bloody insult to every taxpayer who funds the system.
The PPTA loves to talk about “building cultural capacity” and “affirming diversity.” What they never talk about is academic performance, discipline, or preparing students for the real world. Perhaps because those things don’t fit neatly on a t-shirt.
Who exactly do they work for - our children, or their own ideology?
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
Every so-called focused strike or protest nowadays, features flags from every disgruntled group-an immediate turnoff and in my mind just a staged political stunt. Stop grandstanding, negotiate and get on with educating the next generation in reading, writing and arithmetic. Enough is enough.
If you look at the maori party policy, it says schools will be given funding based on how much of the day te reo and maori indoctrination occurs. Little kids will not be able to compete with kids from western countries going forward.
Many teachers consider themselves to be agents of change. They have causes which they aggressively promote during class time and use that opportunity to recruit 'child soldiers' for those causes.
This is an abuse of power. School children need to be kept safe from zealous ideologues using their roles as teachers to indoctrinate them. Where controversial issues are legitimately taught in school classrooms, professionalism demands that this is done in a balanced way.
Readers may like to consult my published paper on the abuse of social studies as a vehicle for promoting the gender-bender agenda:
Vlaardingerbroek, B. (2015). The shaky legal foundations of the global human rights education project. Journal of International Social Studies, 5(1), 165-171.
i agree with Barand . Schools should be places of learning academic subjects as we know them in an a traditional sense .
But as I keep repeating this indoctrination into ideologies began decades ago , in NZ in the 1950s with Beeby and Fraser, with the introduction of Progressivism replacing Traditional Education ever so insidiously and gradually. It began with introducing , deliberately , I must add , methods of teaching the basics ineffectively , because a poorly educated populace helps their agenda of social engineering. Now educational progressivism is fragrantly revealing its true agenda of political activism and socialism combined with Marxist rhetoric. Sixty years ago wise educationalists predicted what we have now. Most of educational academia ignored the warnings and
complied with the Progressive agenda also probably because they risked cancelling if they didn't comply.
Barend must have been a brave outsider to write against the frightful Social Studies curriculum. A subject progressives have corrupted and turned into social indoctrination with DEI and CRT.
As with many articles on this website, we always get good comments on the subject being presented.
Now in line with Barend V's comments, many will agree with you, but sadly "the many" (being families) will wonder/ponder & ask - "What is The Minister of Education doing, to reduce this insanity and get Teachers back into the classroom"??
Or are we seeing, yet again, just how inept "the dear lady" is at her job, such ineptitude very akin to Paul Goldsmith (National) avoiding the back lash toward the BSA.
Can I ?? use the phrase (on behalf of above Minister's) - "Not in my backyard, Labour weekend is here, I am going on leave".
To Matua - The PPTA "bent a knee to Maoridom long ago" who in return "honoured" the overweight, bearded gent who 'fronts to the media' on behalf of the ppta.
Except for her trying to appease some maori activists, I feel our Education Minister is doing a good job under very trying circumstances. Best thing she can do to the PPA is call their bluff. Negotiations are over, take the offer on the table or leave. There will be some short term losses, but nothing like the covid debacle. Sensible teachers will go back to work, and hopefully the over weight bearded gentleman will have to eat humble pie. (Unfortunately he looks like he eats too many other types of pie)
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