Colonisation

Recently there has been a bit of controversy over the benefits or otherwise of colonization to New Zealand. The National party’s education spokesman Paul Goldsmith suggested that colonisation “on balance” had been a good thing for Māori. Cue the howls of outrages from ignorant and divisive politicians.

Goldsmith’s statement is an obvious truth. The fact that there is any disagreement over it is beyond belief. Maori before European colonisation had very low life expectancy. They did not have iron. They were not blessed with having access to many scientific discoveries due to their geographical isolation. They had no stable government and might was right. Warfare was brutal and regular. The very fact that there are land claims and compensation is paid for past injustice is a testament to the benefit of colonisation. Maori have been blessed by the coming of British law to these islands. Prior to European settlement, there was no recourse for the weak when they were abused by the strong. For all its faults, colonisation, and particularly the impact of Christianity has been a benefit to Maori culture.

Those who doubt this are either ignorant of history, or deliberately divisive. Let me leave you with Michael Bassett’s comments on this issue. I particularly love his description of Peen Henare and Wille Jackson as two of the weaker minds in our ministry! You can find the rest of his article here.

So, in the opinions of Peeni Henare and Willie Jackson, two of the weaker minds in our ministry, Paul Goldsmith MP is “ignorant” and talking “nonsense” when he says that on balance, Maori benefited from the colonization of New Zealand. According to Henare, Goldsmith who, incidentally, is a First-Class Honours graduate in history with an impressive number of well researched books to his credit, “set back the country” by stating what, on balance, should be obvious to all of us. As that sage Maori leader Sir Apirana Ngata always said, colonization of New Zealand could not have been prevented; Maori were just lucky that it was the British, and not some of the less enlightened imperialists who undertook the settlement of New Zealand. When will our ministers learn some history?

The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #7

We continue today our look at the Directory for Private (Family) Worship. While I think we can commend the idea of church authorities encouraging families to develop the discipline of regular private worship, there seem to be a number of times where, (according to my cultural sensibilities) the church authorities who have written this directory are potentially overstepping the bounds of their realm of government. Today is another case of this I think.

VII. Whatsoever have been the effects and fruits of meetings of persons of divers families in the times of corruption or trouble, (in which cases many things are commendable, which otherwise are not tolerable,) yet, when God hath blessed us with peace and purity of the gospel, such meetings of persons of divers families (except in cases mentioned in these Directions) are to be disapproved, as tending to the hinderance of the religious exercise of each family by itself, to the prejudice of the publick ministry, to the rending of the families of particular congregations, and (in progress of time) of the whole kirk. Besides many offences which may come thereby, to the hardening of the hearts of carnal men, and grief of the godly.

So what does this mean in more current language? As I understand it, this rule begins with noting that in the past, when the church has been troubled, multiple families have gathered together to worship, and that God has indeed blessed this. However, in times of peace, they believe this ought not to be the normal situation. Why? Firstly, it can hinder the religious exercise of each family. My guess is that when you have a big gathering of families, it might be harder for the father to help individuals in his care than when families meet on their own. The second reason they give for this not being helpful is that it can prove to be to the prejudice of public ministry. In other words, it can cause division and families can tend to sense they do not need the local church when they band together regularly. It can lead to further error and hardening of hearts.

Now once again I see the points that these leaders were making, but I am not sure that this is something we should be making a rule against. Yes, families should be part of a local congregation, and the banding of families together ought to be in the context of a local church. Yes I think there are dangers in the denigration of the public ministry when families think they can replace the local church, but at the same time there are regularly times in Church history when the church is governed by men who do not love Christ, or who are teaching what is not true. It is in these times when rules against families banding together for worship are problematic.

Who Do They Belong To?

One of the idols of our age is the state. And education is very important to the state, particularly the leftist state which seeks to control and manipulate every area of life to achieve utopia. They need to produce compliant citizens who will follow their dictates mindlessly. Part of this of course is that much of what they say is arrant nonsense, and it takes a certain type of idiot to listen to them. For example, only someone bereft of sanity – an idiot – can sagely proclaim that a man with a few bits chopped off and given some hormone treatment is a woman. So you see, they believe they must control education, and education is not about developing critical thinking and intelligence as much as they try to tell you that. If it was, they would free it up to different views and approaches.

You don’t believe me? At teacher’s college, I wrote an essay suggesting that teacher registration was a waste of time, because it didn’t protect students, and it didn’t improve teacher standards. Moreover, I argued that independent schools should have the freedom to employ people who have not jumped through the ideological hoops required by registration since to attract students who pay fees when the government holds a monopoly of ‘free’ schools obviously forces those schools to provide a superior service. Predictably, my essay was not looked upon favourably. Written comments from more than one lecturer were recorded on the paper which I had never seen before. One comment in particular stuck with me. “We must have gatekeepers.” Yes, quite. The statists have to control who teaches your children. That is an assumed good.

So statists, and unfortunately most teachers are statists, do not believe that parents are responsible for the education and training of their children. Setting themselves against Christ, they believe that children must be rendered unto Caesar and his bureaucratic minions. They arrogate to themselves what belongs to parents. In New Zealand, we see this in their monopolistic control of education generally, and in their zoning rules (and a host of other rules) specifically. We also see it in the way teachers think they have the right to teach values contrary to the wishes of parents.

Indeed, this evil has saturated the Western world. A couple of recent examples are in order. In Loudoun County, Virginia, the district educational leaders have proposed policies requiring teachers to use a child’s preferred gender pronouns. At a public meeting on this issue, parents were so opposed to this, that the board closed public comments at the meeting, and the police declared an unlawful assembly. Two parents were apparently arrested for refusing to leave the meeting. There is nothing so frustrating to these control freaks than to have parents arrogantly assume they have a say in what their children are being taught.

In other parts of the US, teachers, are complaining about the crackdown by conservatives on critical race theory being taught in schools. Here’s one example of the kind of ill-educated brainwashing robots government schools tend to attract.

So what should you do? Get your children out of government schools. Seriously. What are you waiting for? Do not render to Caesar what belongs to God. Give your children an actual education. “Free compulsory education” gets a one out of three. Yes, there is compulsion. It’s not free and it’s not education. It costs the souls of our children and stifles their ability to think and challenge the idolatrous State.

Different Bodies Mean Something

Hate speech alert. God’s design for marriage is a man and a woman. The Bible makes this clear, but sometimes we don’t think too hard about this. Why do we need a man and a woman? Is it just because two are better than one? Are we essentially to function in the same way? Are we like dual hard drives in a desktop computer – just in case one fails, we have another exactly the same that can carry on functioning? Sure, we admit we have different bodies. We understand the birds and the bees. But do we realise that our different bodies mean something?

Modern Christians don’t seem to consider the significance of our bodies. This is probably why we have failed to be effective in so many areas. We seem to do pretty much the same things as the pagans around us. We don’t often consider that we are designed and that our differences are deliberate, and that they, therefore, have meaning and purpose.

Consider the modern evangelical Christian couple. They marry – usually later in life than in previous generations. Why? Like most pagans, they consider getting their careers on track is more important than sexual purity and creating a successful family. We don’t tend to question the relatively recent narrative that university education for all is the path to fulfilment and success, because we have accepted individualistic materialism and its focus on personal fulfilment. Then, like most secular couples, at some point, our evangelical couple decides they want to add children to their lives. And note, children are an optional accoutrement. They are not integral to the purpose of marriage. They are not core to the purpose of a man and a woman. No, career is much closer to this.

So what happens next? The wife takes a short amount of time off to have the baby. She takes maternity leave of perhaps a year if the baby is lucky, and then she is back into her career. Childcare is then outsourced to others while the couple continues with the main purpose in their lives – personal fulfilment and the pursuit of materialistic success and wealth. This of course leaves the couple, and particularly the wife feeling guilt as she tries and fails to ace her career, care for her husband and be a wonderful mother.

Is this the way it is supposed to be? Should Christians follow this narrative? Of course not! As Christians, we need to rethink the cultural narrative around us. Our bodies are designed by God and tell us about our purpose. Unfortunately, the story that a woman’s body tells has been placed on the book-burning list. Instead of raising our young Christian woman to see the glory of the domestic sphere – being a supportive wife and mother, as Paul notes (see Titus 2:4, I Timothy 2:15, ) we have taught them like the culture around us to glory in career. We have taught our girls to be men.

Now in Christian circles, highlighting the importance of motherhood and children for our girls is often critiqued. When young Christian women make decisions about further education (for instance choosing not to go to university) that express their desire not to rack up years of study and debt which might make being a full-time wife and mother from an early age more difficult, there are Christians who frown on this. Sometimes we are told, ‘What if she does not get married?’ Now there is an element of truth in this. Not all young women who desire marriage do in fact marry. Yet this does not negate a few important truths. First, marriage is normative, and this means that for most Christian women, the way they will fulfil their Christian kingdom work is in the context of being a wife and mother. Preparing for this is therefore of primary importance. Secondly, the argument can be flipped the other way. Most intelligent and capable young women are exhorted to aim for careers that are not conducive to fulfilling wifely and motherly duties. My question is, ‘What if they get married?’ This is the far more likely eventuality. And yet we ignore it. We end up putting both financial hurdles and temptations in the way that are likely to be a stumbling block to their primary role. Finally, we must recognise the cultural blinders that make us assume that more time at university is the path to success. Maybe a young girl won’t marry and have children. But does that mean working as a nurse is less important than working as a surgeon?

A woman in marriage is designed primarily to help her husband in his dominion task by carrying and nurturing children and creating a wonderfully supportive domestic realm. She is not designed to provide for herself. We should not be ashamed of these truths. The world and culture around us have neglected these truths, to the detriment of men, children and women. The Christian way is beautiful and provides an arena for us to flourish in the bodies and roles God has given us. So let’s encourage our girls that it is legitimate to long for children and desire to support a husband. Let’s innoculate them against the secular lie of our age that a woman’s greatest happiness can be found in a career or pursuing the masculine calling of dominion. Too many miserable and stressed women testify against this. Let’s teach our girls of the supremely important role they have in Christ’s kingdom. Let’s excite them with the impact that strong marriages and families have for the kingdom of God.

Parent-Controlled Childhood

The truth is…yesterday’s parent-controlled childhood protected children not only from sex, from work, and from adult decisions but also from the dominance of peers and from the market, with all its pressures to achieve, its push for status, its false lures, its passing fads. – Kay Hymowitz in Ready or Not – Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future – and Ours

Think about the impact and control your child’s peers are having on them. How are they being shaped by them? As parents our role is to shape our children, and part of that is controlling how they are shaped and who shapes them. Hannah Arendt is quoted by Hymowitz as pointing out that the authority of a group is stronger and more tyrannical than the severest authority of an individual person. We would do well to recognise this and protect our children.

Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels

Recently we highlighted our callous politicians and cultural elites including the media who have no compassion for children despite constantly bleating on about how caring they are. These are people who constantly attempt to position themselves as on the moral high ground yet have no qualms about supporting the murder of innocent and defenceless unborn children.

Well I read of this tragedy last week. The title begins with “Abortion Tragedy”, and some of my readers with more sanguine hopes for human nature and culture in NZ might be thinking at this point, “Oh wow, there are still some out there who see abortion as a tragedy.” Yeah nah. The rest of the headline reads, “Couple left to terminate pregnancy at 25 weeks after midwife misses two ultrasounds”.

So here is what happened in a nutshell. The couple’s midwife failed to read two early ultrasounds which would have ensured she identified problems with the pregnancy up to four weeks earlier. The tragedy (apparently) is not the abortion itself, but the fact that it would have been better to happen earlier, since abortions after 20 weeks are not advised.

The New Zealand Herald noted that the couple won an apology from the midwife. Talk about straining gnats and swallowing camels. Sure, the midwife did not do her job properly. The baby seemed to have abnormalities that are consistent with some kind of chromosomal abnormality (like Downs syndrome) based on what I can understand from the notes on the case. But these would-be parents have sacrificed their child because of his or her disability. They have essentially determined that there is no dignity in a disabled child, or that raising one would cramp their style. Where is their apology? They have demanded a midwife apologise for not doing a good job, when they have killed their weak and defenceless child for the crime of being abnormal, and then have the brazen audacity to complain that they should have had the information they needed to commit this killing four weeks earlier.

They are Mad

No doubt many of my readers will have seen the British ‘influencer’ (surely a better term is narcissist) who has undergone a number of operations to make himself look Korean. He claims he identifies as Korean. Of course, there is a certain amount of logic in his madness. If you can make up genders in your little Fairyland, then why can’t you make up your race? If one can construct one’s own gender identity and identify as a pansexual unicorn, then why the heck can’t you choose your racial identity?

Because…that’s racist. Thus say other loonies who have escaped the asylum. It’s OK to make up stuff about gender. Thinking a woman is all bust, long hair and dresses and assuming that simply adding these is all a person with male appendages who identifies as a woman needs to do to be a woman is apparently not at all sexist. But thinking that changing what one looks like to have features more like the race one identifies with? That’s racist. In fact, it is apparently a “prime example of racism, cultural appropriation, and transphobia, enacted from a perspective of considerable privilege.”

We are piously lectured at without any apparent irony, that gender is our internal sense of self, whether that be man, woman, neither or both. Yet, on the other hand, race ‘presents as categorised (often physical) traits that are socially constructed and understood.‘ You know, kinda like how sex used to be. As my grandmother sagely put it to me when I was a kid, you either have a Willy or a Mary. Quite. These physical traits used to be understood before we as a culture grew so stupid.

Maybe we now need to make up a semi-related word to race, let’s say ‘kith’ and then pompously argue that ‘race’ and kith are different. We could argue that ‘kith’ is our internal sense of self, whether that be Asian, Black or White racist.’ And then, just like the fruitcakes who separate gender and sex and assume that a transwoman dude with his male appendages cut off, on hormones and wearing women’s clothing is a woman; we can be consistent and do the same thing with this chap who identifies as Korean. You know, a clearly white dude who has had bits and pieces added and subtracted to his appearance to make him look like a Korean, because he feels his kith is Korean is totally entitled to do that because kith is not the same thing as race you bigots. At least we could claim to be consistent in our insanity.

But our moral superiors say “No!” Just go ahead and read the sanctimonious twaddle these people write. “It is racist to think someone can pick and choose parts of a race or culture they like, then distance themselves from that culture when it suits them.” And yet it is apparently not at all sexist for a massive dude to choose the parts of a sex he likes and use this to his advantage in weightlifting at the Olympics? A little further on we are told in a Pecksniffian manner that there “is a difference between affirming your gender as a trans person, which doesn’t harm anyone else, and choosing to live and appropriate another culture.” What is the difference? You are just making stuff up. You’re inventing the rules as you go. We can see the emperor, and he is stark naked, and because he has a “willy”, we can also see that he is a man, despite his petulant toddler-like ravings about being a transwoman sometimes two-spirit pansexual.

The bottom line is these people are clearly mad, but unfortunately, they are often in places of considerable influence. The author of the article is Pro-Vice Chancellor at Edith Cowan University. We need to mock and scorn them. They are doing their best to destroy this world, and we the mentally stable need to point out their hypocrisy and stupidity. It should also go without saying that we don’t give our children to these degenerate flakes to be ruined.

Unteach Racism – Module 4 – Harmful Assumptions

Once again, after a break of a few weeks, we are set to continue our ascent of Mt Lunacy, otherwise known as the Unteach Racism app put out by the education-focused Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. For those of you determined to assault your own intelligence and sanity, you can find the website here. But worthy readers, I..ahem…humbly suggest you would be better off perusing my reviews of module 1 introduction, module 2 low self-belief and module 3 low expectations. Additionally, I would recommend checking out Maga-hat teacher Ethan Aloiai’s helpful video on the topic. So on to module 4 and the perils of harmful assumptions.

What are harmful assumptions? Apparently, this module will explore ‘how racial stereotyping impacts learners, their sense of self-worth and their achievement, and what steps can be taken to resist and unteach them.” If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because we have been here before. I think this app is a little bit like the minister with one sermon. The titles might be different, but the message is the same. Every week.

We begin the module with a quote from a paper on unconscious bias, and then wade into stereotyping. No, not the stereotyping of teachers and white people as racists. Of course, it’s the racist stereotypes teachers and schools have. It is argued that these can impact our ability to treat others fairly.

We are then presented with a list of statements which we are asked to complete in our heads. Here are a sample:

  • Men are better at..?
  • Girls like to play with..?
  • Attractive people are often..?
  • Overweight people are..?
  • Maori can be..?
  • Asians are..?

Noticeably absent from the list was the sentence “White people are..?” But I guess our stereotypes about them aren’t likely to impact whether we treat them fairly.

Then we had the obligatory poor-me-teenage-angst quotes from Maori and Pacific Island children about how teachers assume they are no good because of their ethnicity. Really? How would they know? Contrary to leftist opinion, we do not know what is inside other people’s heads. We often assume we know, but we have no access to the mind of another person except through their speech and actions. And even these require interpretation.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the quotes.

“I feel like most teachers don’t particularly think that we islanders are good enough really, from the way they convey to teach.”

and

“At other schools we’re judged like ‘typical Māori girl’. We were labelled at other schools. “

See? Nebulous woe-is-me crap. Teachers in general are a group of people excited to see students succeed. We do not think particular ethnicities are dumb. Then we have this young Tuvaluan/Samoan/Rarotongan chap.

I used to have goals but not now because my teachers were [!@*!] and then I got angry and then in trouble at school and with the law. I don’t have goals. They said things like if you want to leave…leave!

Maybe it wasn’t that this young chap’s teachers were !@*!. Perhaps this kid is just a pill. Sounds like he wants to blame someone or something else for his problems with the law, which is typical of human nature and a big issue in the criminal class.

So maybe stereotyping isn’t the big problem it’s made out to be. When I saw the “Men are better at…” statement, I immediately thought soccer! Stereotypes exist because we are able to see trends and patterns. We see that often Asian parents are very focused on the academic success of their children. We do see that Pakeha parents often complain about schools and teachers when their children aren’t happy. We do see these things. But we are not robots. We are able to account for children and individuals who do not fit the norms of these patterns we see. We are able to treat children as individuals. As a teacher, I have taught some lazy and disinterested children. It’s frustrating, and occasionally that frustration is going to be visible to those children. Yet I can assure my dear readers that the frustration is never at ethnicity, but at laziness and disinterest.

In the wrap up of this module, we are directed to a resource that will enable us to reflect on the biases, stereotypes and assumptions we and our learners have. One point they make is that “frequently stereotypical representations of self and others foster and maintain racism”. Is this true? Are stereotypes (which by their very nature are some reflection of general realities) something that foster racism? Is it racist to note that many Pakeha parents march up to the school office when their precious teen daughter is upset? Is it racist to note that many Asian parents are very determined for their progeny to succeed academically? No. Racism is treating a person in an unjust manner because of his race. Can a person have his eyes open to the world and the general realities of life and at the same time treat people fairly. Without a doubt.

The main part of the resource encourages teachers to think critically about resources they use and create for classroom learning. Specifically, it challenges teachers to think about how different ethnicities are represented. It’s a pity our educational elites don’t apply some of this thinking to their own representation of Maori and Pacific learners, which as I’ve noted elsewhere, always tends to present them in cultural garb dancing. While there is nothing wrong with thinking about the different ethnic groups you have in your classroom and trying to ensure the resources you use, and posters you have on classroom walls reflect some of that diversity, there is a problem with this kind of thinking. We end up encouraging our children to believe that their core identity is tied to something that is skin deep. It amounts to saying that a white child is not going to be interested in learning about Ancient Egyptian culture because it doesn’t reflect him. Or that a Pacific Island child cannot be interested in classical music or opera, because these reflect other ethnicities. Can an Asian child identify with a positive portrayal of a white child? Can a white child identify with the positive portrayal of a black child? Of course, because they are all children. That commonality is more important than the small difference that skin tone makes.

Kris Faafoi on Labour’s New Hate Speech Laws

Kris Faafoi, our Justice Minister on hate speech laws. Seriously. What a clown! Oh dear. Is that hate speech? I mean I’m all for clowns. Clowns are great. Clowns bring joy to children. But I think clowns belong in the circus. And I don’t think circuses should be let anywhere near parliament. Too late.

Reddit Parenting Advice #11 – Reading Advice

As mentioned in previous posts, ensuring your child develops a love and aptitude for reading is one of the single most important things you can do for them educationally. Today’s reddit parenting advice comes from a parent wondering about a child who seems uninterested in stories.

I have a kid who doesn’t really care for story books. Almost all day long, he reads non-fiction books on butterflies, construction, flower, trees, bugs, ships, rockets, etc. Is this anything to worry about? Is this a phase? Btw, he’s 4. My concern is that he might become a bit robotic (like me).

There should be no surprises that this child is a boy. Boys tend to develop an interest in the physical world around them. They are often less interested in sitting down for story time than girls who from a young age tend to enjoy sitting on Mum or Dad’s lap for a story. This has been something I have seen in my parenting.

It’s also no surprise that boys tend to enjoy non-fiction books either. Consider your average adult male. What are they more likely to read? Of course you can come up with counter examples and exceptions, but men tend to be interested in non-fiction more than women. In fact one things I have noticed is that many adult women read little to no non-fiction, and where you do see women reading non-fiction it can often be trashy magazine articles that focus on relationship drama. No doubt this commentary will be seen as incredibly sexist, which to be honest makes it all the more enjoyable to write. But getting back to the point – boys and girls are different, and this extends to their reading choices.

Now as a man who does happen to enjoy fiction (whilst not neglecting non-fiction), I happen to believe that we need to encourage our boys to develop a love for narrative. Our faith itself is a great story made up of many smaller narratives. Narrative can teach us things in a powerful way. Good novels extend our experience of life in a way that broadens our understanding of the world and human nature.

From my experience, training a boy to love fiction does take time and patience. My oldest boy still tends to enjoy reading factual books about historical events or how-to books, and it has taken some years to develop his interest in narrative to the point that he will pick up and read fiction.

So how did we approach this? Well, first of all, I did ensure that I read to him. It’s important for boys to see men reading and enjoying reading. They need to see it as a masculine occupation. Secondly, reading became a part of our daily routine. Every night I would read to him, and as boys tend to like routine, this seemed to help. Thirdly I chose books carefully. I would repeat books to him regularly when he was a toddler so that they became familiar. Children seem to enjoy this repetition and knowing what comes next. Then as he grew older I began to read him chapter books. Although he has sisters around his age, I tended to choose books that I thought were more masculine than feminine. My theory, which seemed to work, was that if I find a book that he likes, his sisters will like it too. The reverse of this is not true. The few times I chose a more feminine book, for instance, Anne of Green Gables, he was not impressed and did not enjoy the story. Then as he grew older I set goals for him to achieve in his reading. This year I have set him the goal of 52 fiction books in a year. While his sister would probably achieve that in a month or two, this for him is a significant achievement. And since he seems, like many boys, to be task-oriented, he is intent on insuring he meets this goal.

So I don’t think there is anything to worry about in a four year old boy who loves non-fiction books. Yes you want to broaden his interests – it’s not great to leave him there, but it’s natural for boys to prefer non-fiction. They are the future dominion takers who go out into the earth under Christ extending his kingly reign.