The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
We must stand up to the proposed curriculum refresh because it is unfair, divisive and biased and will harm education. Due to come into force in 2026, the refreshed national curriculum concerns the education of millions of students over future decades and will impose costs of several billion dollars on New Zealand taxpayers.
Sometimes, the public becomes concerned about some issue but needs help to identify what can be done to effect change. Here are some ideas on the steps that the New Zealand public could take - those who are worried about what is going wrong in education right now. One possibility is to email or talk directly to your local Member of Parliament. Another idea is to email or talk to your school and your school board. Perhaps the most effective strategy is to email the Ministry of Education, stating your concerns about the refresh. Of course, you can do all three. To assist you in having your say, feel free to copy and paste text from this very web-page. See the text below.
Elsewhere in Breaking Views I have written extensively on workplace bullying generally, especially in New Zealand’s public service (Lillis, 2024a), and bullying at our universities specifically (Lillis, 2024b and 2024c). It appears that bullying has been exposed many times in the New Zealand media, but the message does not seem to get home to employers - or are they choosing to turn a blind eye?
Why Cancel One of New Zealand’s Greatest Scientists?
Why
was it necessary to cancel the names of two people so important to our history?
Two figurative statues have just been knocked down.
Shortly before this year’s election, MBIE announced [1] the replacement from 2024 of the research excellence-focused Rutherford and James Cook Fellowships with the Aotearoa New Zealand Tāwhia te Mana Research Fellowships, as follows:
Recently Professor Jerry Coyne wrote a piece on traditional approaches to treating dieback in Kauri trees (Coyne, 2024). Of course, the main problem here is that sometimes public money is spent on the pursuit of ideas that have little or no scientific basis, or at least have not been verified scientifically. Another issue is the possible misleading of the public at large on matters that have to do with science and education.
About
a year ago, I first wrote with co-authors on this platform about the cultural
shift and de facto politicisation of our universities [1]. By now I thought we
might have seen a steadying of the ship and a true course set once again. The
current reality is very worrying.
Throughout the Western world the infusion into universities of critical social justice (CSJ) theory and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) politics - now, ironically, exclusionary, racist and intolerant - is producing a generation of graduates steeped in postmodern relativist (frequently anti-science) thinking, embracing identity politics and the victim-oppressor mindset. It has caused division in our country rather than encouraging much-needed unity.
Science and Traditional Knowledge
A recent article makes a call for improved debate on science and Māori knowledge (Stewart et al., 2024). The authors suggest that respectful dialogue and greater understandings of the history and philosophy of both science and Māori education are necessary in order to prevent the invalid denigration of Māori knowledge. We agree with the stated need for respectful relations but, in addition, we believe that New Zealand needs a clear consensus on the relative positions of modern science and traditional knowledge within our wider innovation system. However, we will not reach such an agreement as long as traditional knowledge is being pushed politically within education and science.
Her article states that the Bill has been condemned for claiming falsely that it privileges Māori. Further, as the Health Coalition Aotearoa co-chair, she argues that the Bill undermines te Tiriti principles and Māori health. Third - she asserts that the bill could exacerbate health disparities and increase racist rhetoric against Māori, thus impacting on their wellbeing.
Hearing of continual problems in New Zealand’s workplaces has prompted this article as a comment on management and leadership. Perhaps the environments where I have worked were not typical of New Zealand’s workplaces, but unfortunately my own observations of management in the Public Service and at one Non-Government Organisation have been extremely disappointing, and I hear numerous accounts of poor decision-making, dysfunctional workplaces and bullying across the country. My belief, or rather my hope, is that most workplaces in New Zealand function reasonably well and that, in general, leadership and management in both the public and private sectors are tolerably good. On that basis, accepting that in most workplaces leadership and management are of a reasonable standard, in this article I focus on those situations where I feel that matters are in need of improvement.
The Historic Value of Indigenous Knowledge
Dr. Robert Bartholemew published a thought-provoking piece in Newsroom last week, in which he made several worthwhile points (Bartholemew, 2025). Indeed, today we do see greater awareness of the wealth of accumulated knowledge that allowed Indigenous people to adapt and thrive - from star maps for navigation - to recognition of celestial patterns that marked the passage of time. Surely, Indigenous knowledge systems (perhaps, “belief systems” is a more appropriate term where the embodied “knowledge” has not been verified) are part of the great history of humankind and retain cultural, social, historic and religious significance even today.
