Peter Schwerdtfeger, John Raine and David Lillis: Is the Decolonisation and Indigenisation Movement Dividing our Country?

Decolonisation and the Undermining of Sound Education

It is difficult not to be aware of cultural reshaping in New Zealand society. Moves have also been made by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education to politicise our schools’ education curriculum through casting it within a Treaty of Waitangi framework, and presenting mathematics and the sciences from a postmodern, relativist and decolonisation perspective which appears hostile to the core areas of student learning. Fortunately, the curriculum is now being further reviewed and developed but both this, and some university programmes, remain vulnerable to being used as a vehicle of cultural indoctrination. Here, we examine decolonisation, the need for open and constructive academic debate, and the imperative to protect democracy in New Zealand.

David Lillis: Education and Research in New Zealand

For those interested, here is a letter that was written several months ago to the editor of the New Zealand Herald - which they declined to publish – refusing, by the way, to give a reason.

The public should be aware of proposed changes to our national primary and secondary education curriculum, embedding matauranga Māori (traditional knowledge) throughout the curriculum, probably requiring students of all ethnicities to spend significant class time on Te Reo. Both Te Reo and matauranga Māori should be treasured and preserved, but the changes are excessive.

Coming into force in 2026, the refreshed curriculum will damage the education of millions of students over future decades and impose costs of several billion dollars on taxpayers. A negative consequence will be the effect on every child of substituting time on critical learning with much Te Reo and matauranga Māori. Matauranga Māori is to be accorded equal status with world science, probably taught as truth, and the quality of education and portability of our secondary qualifications will suffer as a result.

Martin Hanson: Evolution of the educationist

Extracts of a speech I gave on my retirement from King's College, Auckland in 2006. 

As an ageing biology teacher, I find it interesting to look at the creatures in the education business from the evolutionary point of view. The ancestral species, from which all the contemporary ones have evolved, were the schoolmaster and schoolmistress. Both occupied broad ecological niches, which in layperson’s language means they were multi-talented, taking two or three sports, producing plays, conducting orchestras and running debating — and all that on top of imparting knowledge in the classroom.

Though they have been driven to extinction in most schools, such paragons still exist in some 'elitist' schools where they are generally still held in high esteem. Elsewhere, however, they are only to be found as fossils in rest homes.