David Lillis: Education, Science and the Election

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...” Carl Sagan (1995).

The Need for Constructive and Polite Discussion

The election is now less than three weeks away and much of the current exchange of views on the critical political issues is relatively polite and constructive – but not all. Most of us who write about science and education, for example, do so in order to share ideas which decisionmakers and indeed the general public can accept or reject as they see fit. Some of us hold to views that are not agreed to by everyone, but we remain polite and accommodating of the different views of others.

For example, I and others believe that traditional knowledge should have a valued place in our society and retains historic, cultural and religious interest today, but should not be accorded equal status with modern global science within our curriculum or elsewhere, nor taught as science unless all knowledge claims advanced within those knowledge systems have been tested through the methods of science. Our views should be accepted as contributions to the wider mix of ideas on science and education and on other issues of public interest. They are advanced with just as much positive intent as the opinions of others.

A Conversation that Lacks Balance

Unfortunately, here in New Zealand we see a distinct lack of balance in our national conversations about education in particular, but also in other domains. For example, a considerable volume of material that espouses the notion of equality between traditional knowledge and modern global science has been published by the Ministry of Education, the Aotearoa Educators Collective, our university education faculties, our education journals, our mainstream media and others. In addition, a range of material on indigenizing our universities is out there in the public domain. Undoubtedly, those views are advanced for the most part with positive intent.

By comparison, the number of publications that advance dissenting or opposing views is very small and the range of media that will publish such material is very limited. In recent years manuscripts that do not cohere with the prevailing, indeed dominant, ideology on education, are usually declined for publication by our education journals and the reviews accorded to them are often unflattering, to say the least. Our journals must do better. They must be encouraged to publish genuine research that meets international standards and expectations of quality and further encouraged to embrace a broad range of opinions. They should not take it on themselves to act as gatekeepers for one or other ideological perspective.

Neither should our professional bodies act as gatekeepers but sometimes they do, as we saw this year when the Journal of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists removed a previously published peer-reviewed article by Māori author, Dr. Arna Mitchell. In her article Dr. Mitchell disputed the conclusions of a prior report which had asserted that racism and oppression were pervasive across the profession of psychology in New Zealand and which had argued that modern science is rooted primarily in European colonial traditions and derives its present authority from historic power structures. Dr. Mitchell’s article was removed, not because of fraud, plagiarism, major error or misconduct, but because continued publication was inconsistent with the values of the college (Gaikwad, 2026).

All policy should be contestable and all considered opinions and good ideas on education, or on any other domain of public interest, that have been advanced in good faith and after due consideration and analysis, should be equally contestable and treated as worthy of consideration.

Most of us want equality of opportunity and education of the highest calibre for all children of all backgrounds. In addition, we want an education system that reflects the multicultural, rather than bicultural, and cosmopolitan nature of our country. Approximately 25% of our citizens are neither Māori nor European and our schoolchildren must embody a similar distribution. Our curricula should reflect such diversity. Thus, we should teach our children about many cultures, religions and world views, but in secular education we must not give undue prominence to any one culture or world view, European or otherwise. Equally, we should teach how to think but not what to think in relation to social and political issues.

We Need a Balanced Curriculum

We must resist any semblance of a Eurocentric curriculum. Here, my own evaluation of the new curriculum of Minister Stanford and her team is that it is not in any way Eurocentric. As an example, we see that our schoolchildren are expected to explore only one work of Shakespeare during their years at school, when in fact his poetry and plays have been revered all over the world for more than four centuries. Partly because the new curriculum is neither Eurocentric nor dominated by any one form of traditional knowledge or “other ways of knowing”, I support the current reforms in education. I will continue to offer that support, provided that constructive feedback is listened to and appropriate action taken where shortcomings in process or curriculum design are identified and genuine improvements can be made.

Equally, we must object to initiatives such as the 2023 Labour Government draft refreshed curriculum for Mathematics, Statistics and English, my own version of which mentions Te Tiriti no less than 40 times; the word "mātauranga" 29 times, and the word “Māori” 65 times, but where our Pacific people are mentioned only five times and no other population is mentioned at all – not our Asian community, nor our Middle Eastern/Latin American/African (MELAA) ethnic group (2% of New Zealand’s total population), nor our European population.

That document discriminated between “tangata Tiriti” and “tangata whenua”, when all ethnic and cultural groups should be treated in exactly the same way. The curriculum was “designed to foster the next generation of Te Tiriti partners by moving beyond the rhetorical notion of ‘honouring’ Te Tiriti to give effect to it and its principles.” Here we were in real danger of creating a political manifesto rather than a curriculum.

To be clear - it was that kind of systemic imbalance that concerned me most at the time, rather than the presence of the Treaty or other issues in that document, such as confusion between science and non-science, and I felt it necessary to call out that imbalance. For the record, I believe that the Treaty can have a place in education, though in fact it is silent on education, and I believe that it has a valued place within our wider society, despite being superseded by more recent legislation. However, it should not have prominence to the extent demanded in that curriculum document and elsewhere. Thus, in the Introduction to that curriculum document, where it said:

“Te Mātaiaho is designed to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to be inclusive of all ākonga.”

. . . we may prefer to read something like:

“This Curriculum is designed to support high-quality teaching and effective learning of each and every child across each and every school in New Zealand.”

Surely the Labour Party view was genuine and heartfelt, but so too are the opposing views of others. What we need is more constructive and polite debate. Unfortunately, the current dialogue is not always constructive or polite, and quite a few colleagues and associates of mine who are working on the new curriculum and on other aspects of the education reforms have been subjected to very vitriolic ad hominem attacks on social media and in some cases have received hate mail. We know the identities of those who engage in such behaviour; after all, they readily identify themselves when they lash out at my colleagues, despite objecting vociferously when they themselves are identified and their behaviour called out by others.

Further, we are aware of at least one political party and one or other organization that appears to condone, if not support, such behaviour. However, all attempts to have offensive and even defamatory posts about my colleagues taken down are being ignored and, worse, lead to further attacks on those who try to curtail such negative activity.

New Zealand’s Public Service and Mainstream Media

I have spoken often enough about the rise of underqualified, non-subject matter experts to management and leadership positions within our public service and about the bullying of experts out of employment by those same non experts. These behaviours were very obvious to me and my colleagues at the organization that oversees assessment and in our policy and curriculum organization. I do not intend to repeat myself on such matters again, but the lack of progress is very disappointing.

Naturally, we want our mainstream media to publish scientifically robust material. However, as one example of failure of our media, over the last few years several pieces have appeared on the lunar cycle as a guide to managing agriculture when there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for the idea of the lunar cycle influencing plant growth and physiology and therefore no evidence for the cycle as a guide to farming.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the responses of scientists to such pieces do not get published and often are not even acknowledged. The same happens on the very difficult subject of climate and the environment, where the notions that the science is not yet completely settled, that carbon dioxide may not be as pernicious an agent of change as had been thought, and that anthropogenic emissions may not be the primary cause of the observed warming, do not go down well with our media editors. These people presume to act as New Zealand’s ideological gatekeepers, despite few of them holding qualifications or significant expertise in science. Thus, very frequently they provide platforms and political traction to non-scientists who run with the accepted ideological narratives, but all too often they cancel the views of genuine experts who hold dissenting views.

In addition, mainstream media has printed other pieces that in effect endorse traditional or folk medicine for sick people – potentially a very dangerous message to give to desperate people who are themselves very ill or who perhaps have a sick child. The research evidence is very clear that traditional or folk medicine yields mostly negative outcomes for cancer and other serious conditions of human beings.

Lack of Understanding of and Respect for Science

Back in 1995, the American astronomer and populariser of science, Dr. Carl Sagan warned about lack of understanding of and diminished respect for science, most famously articulated in his book - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Sagan, 1995) - and in his final interviews. Dr. Sagan focused on a deep paradox - a society utterly dependent on science and technology, but where almost no one understands how they work. At the time he was referring to his home country of America, but the same concerns apply to New Zealand in the present. Dr. Sagan spoke of the danger of a high-technology democracy, but where the general public and many leaders lack basic scientific literacy, thus creating a recipe for disaster.

Dr. Sagan stressed that science is not simply a body of knowledge but is instead a tool for sceptical thinking, a way to interrogate the universe, a means for recognizing human fallibility and a safeguard for protecting society from charlatans.

Finally, Dr. Sagan spoke of the rise of pseudoscience and he predicted a reversion to superstition, consulting of horoscopes and clutching of crystals, magical thinking and a "celebration of ignorance", fuelled by superficial media and a pervasive inability to tell the difference between what feels good and what is true.

The Next Three Years

New Zealand has to get much better at constructive dialogue and accepting that others have their own considered points of view. In addition, whether we retain the current Coalition Government or bring in a new left-leaning Government, let us hope that the significant gains that have been made by Minister Erica Stanford and her team are not thrown away for political reasons and alternative ideologies reintroduced instead – ideologies that have proven conspicuously unsuccessful over the last twenty years. At this moment, we are making progress, despite the objections that are voiced every day by certain groups, and our children deserve better than we have experienced so far.

As we approach the election where the people will speak and choose their government, and as we approach the end of 2026, let us put our differences aside, while retaining our independent perspectives on education, and support, at least in principle, the current reconfiguration of education and its emerging but clear promise for better things to come.

References

Gaikwad (2026). Peer-reviewed article by Māori author removed because it wasn’t in line with organisation’s values
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360997918/peer-reviewed-article-maori-author-removed-because-it-wasnt-line-organisations-values

Sagan, Carl (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Published: 25 February 1997. ISBN: 9780345409461
Imprint: Random House US Group

Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics.