Unteach Racism – Module 1

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A new website called Unteach Racism has been set up for teachers in New Zealand. Apparently, this is the result of a few years of collaboration between the Teaching Council and the Human Rights Commission. The stated aim of the website is to support teachers to ‘identify confront and dismantle racism in education.’ Who knew racism was such a problem in New Zealand education?

Who knew teachers were deliberately favouring some and targeting others for failure? Being a teacher myself I was shocked! Having always desired the best for all my students and delighted in the achievement of every single one regardless of ethnicity, I was shocked to be informed that racism is a systemic part of New Zealand education. I assumed my colleagues were more or less the same as me. Yet it seems thousands of my colleagues are racist rednecks who have slipped into the education system with the nefarious intention of secretly passing on their intolerant bigotry and deliberately targeting sections of our community for permanent illiteracy, innumeracy, shame and poverty.

Thankfully, despite being educated in such a patently racist system, our glorious Teaching Council has remained untouched by this racism and is committed to rooting out the bigotry of hate and oppression in order to usher in a glorious new dawn of racial harmony and educational equality. So the result is an app that is apparently designed to brainwash support teachers to think about what they know about racism so they can teach unteach it in the classroom. Thankfully this will without a doubt immediately shame all these evil racist bigots within the teaching profession and they will repent of their evil ways. No longer will they be able to blame weeknight party throwing, sexually immoral, unemployed, drug-dealing drunkard parents for the failure of their children. The blame will be back squarely where it belongs – with the racism of the system.

So in the next few weeks, we will work through the eight modules on the app. Today we will look at Module 1 which is entitled “Unteach Racism”. The stated aims of this module are to introduce the concept of systemic racism and identify its impacts in education and other sectors. We commence with a typically emotive and fluffy speech that one expects from a young girl who has not yet moved into the real adult world. She is a young Maori student who suggests that failing to pronounce a name or place correctly is feeding the ‘taniwha of racism’. So take that all you ignoramuses who pronounce Paris ‘Pa-riss’. You racist bigots.

We are then taken on a tour of examples of ways that racism has shaped our systems, structures and social outcomes. The module consists mainly of statistics of which some are noted below. A few of the statistics are linked back to government reports, but a couple are linked to articles from Stuff – that bastion of neutrality and objectivity.

  • June 2017 unemployment rate for Pakeha was 3.4% while Maori had an unemployment rate of 11.1%
  • In 2017 the mean hourly rate for Pākehā was $30.09, for Pacific Peoples it was $22.96
  • 52.9% of the prison population is Maori, but only 18.7% of our population is Maori
  • Maori home ownership rate is 31%, whereas Non-Maori home ownership is 57.9%
  • Pacific and Māori participation in Early Childhood Education is lower than Pakeha
  • Only 2.7% of students are enrolled in Maori medium education
  • Maori learners are twice as likely to be suspended

Once again, we have a list of disparities cited with no context to ‘prove’ racism. Despite the stated aims of the module being to introduce the concept of systemic racism and identify its impacts in education, it seems that the two ideas are conflated. For the designers of this brainwashing app, systemic racism seems to be defined as the existence of disparities between races. This ‘proves’ systemic racism. Actually, these statistics do no such thing. Even a quick read of some of the linked reports demonstrates there is complexity. For example regarding the unemployment rate, a Statistical Analysis of Ethnic Wage Gaps in New Zealand suggests that “Educational level and occupation are the two factors that have the largest impact on Māori-Pākehā and Pacific-Pākehā wage disparities, amongst all those considered.”

Assuming systemic racism is the cause of these disparities is simple and perhaps, therefore, appealing to the simple-minded, but what if the existence of disparities is not so simple? What if different cultures in their different values tend to choose things in accordance with those differing values? And what if those different choices lead to different outcomes? Even some of the quotes from learners illustrate this. One child in Kura Kaupapa Māori was asked about achievement. The learner said, “Achievement should be more than grades. Be able to support whānau and doing jobs well in life.” That’s not something I (an experienced teacher) have heard regularly (if at all!) from an Asian parent’s lips. Perhaps, just perhaps, the values a family has will make more of a difference to a child’s educational success and achievement than this mythic taniwha named ‘systemic racism’. If the problem is ‘white privilege’, what is it that enables other minorities such as Asians to succeed more than Pakeha New Zealanders?

Since feedback is an essential part of the teaching process, I have assigned a grade to the Teaching Council of New Zealand and given them my teacher’s comment on their work. Let’s hope for better in the future.

Grade: F–

Comment: Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you for finally handing in your group assignment entitled Unteach Racism. It’s a little overdue. I note you started this in 2018 with the Human Rights Commission. Frankly, I expect more from you given the exorbitant fees you forcibly charge me for the privilege of you hectoring me and badgering me all in the name of improving my teaching. Furthermore, given the extensive time frame you got with those extensions, I was hoping for a top-quality assignment. Unfortunately, I have to grade you an F double minus for biased presentation of statistics with no context, lack of critical thinking, an absence of diversity of thought and alternative viewpoints and a divisive approach to race relations in New Zealand. I also think you have inaccurately titled the assignment. I suggest “Teaching Racism” would be a more suitable title. Please do better next time. With a little more research and a more balanced approach, I hope, though sincerely doubt you are capable of more.

Language Lies

No doubt my readers have noticed the wonderful ability of some of our ‘thought leaders’ to brainwash the young, gullible and ill-educated by lying to them. They have become so brazen that they will now use a term to mean the exact opposite of what it truly means.

One example of this misuse of language is the term “diversity”. When our thought leaders use this word and claim they want diversity, they mean they don’t want me or other conservatives who have different opinions to them to speak or have a platform anywhere. Another example is the phrase marriage equality. Marriage was always equally open to any man or woman who could find someone who wanted to marry them. Marriage equality was about destroying the definition of marriage. A third example is the word ‘anti-racist’. To be anti-racist, you must support policies that actively discriminate based on race in order to lead to equal outcomes. So an anti-racist is a racist. Of course, let us not forget the chestnut “economic justice” which sounds so beautiful, but has nothing to do with justice, but is about stealing from some to give to another group, which when you think of it doesn’t sound very just at all.

A current example of deceitful speech of our thought leaders is the term conversion therapy. A friend of mine recently shared this thought experiment with me. Let’s imagine you went back to the time when your grandparents were young, and you asked them which of the following was conversion therapy, and which was gender affirmation therapy: 1) Telling a person that they need to live in accordance with their male or female sexed body. 2) Assisting a person live as the gender they consider themselves to be in their minds. This may involve removing parts of the body and injecting the body with hormones from. I think most of our forebears would imagine that gender affirmation therapy would be described by number 1, and conversion therapy would be number 2, which in actual fact is the opposite of how the elites define these things.

There’s a great video which I’ve posted before which brilliantly points out this stupidity. Watch it before our tolerant and inclusive elites decide it’s dangerous.

Now some readers might be saying to themselves, sex and gender aren’t the same. You, dear reader, have been brainwashed well. What is this idea of gender? It seems it is something you define yourself according to the whims of your feelings. How can you scientifically investigate a thing like that?

I leave you with a brilliant quote from Anthony Esolen’s book Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments For Sanity. ‘I do not use the word gender, except to refer to the grammatical category. I’m quite aware of the non-sensical idea that sex is one thing, referring only to a minor bit of plumbing in the nether regions, and gender another, referring to everything else about men and women, all of it supposedly “socially constructed” and arbitrary. Yes, I’ve heard it all my academic life, and the more we actually learn about biological maleness and femaleness, the more absurd this line becomes. Every cell of my body is marked as masculine. My adrenal system is different from my wife’s – it is primed for sudden attack and just as sudden calm; an adrenal system for all-out fighting, followed or preceded by cold strategy. Hers is not that way. I doubt anyone caring for small children ought to be that way. My heart-lung capacity at age fifty is that of a woman at her peak, at age twenty. I will possess more brute strength (by far) than my daughter until I am very old, or in the last stages of a terminal disease. My wife sees things I do not see; she makes connections with people I would not make; she has the touch.

Nothing but Blind Pitiless Indifference

Many of my readers are no doubt familiar with Richard Dawkins, probably the world’s most famous and outspoken atheist and critic of religion. The author of The God Delusion has recently had his 1996 humanist of the year award withdrawn by the American Humanist Association for statements that demean marginalised groups.

Just what statement was this? It was a tweet.

Harmless enough right? Well, not in this age. Especially not for the secular humanists. There is a beautiful irony in this. Rev Richard Dawkins has not caught up with the implications of his materialist religion. He’s the chap who wrote, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Here’s what happens when your religion has no transcendent authority mate. If there is no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, there certainly is no rationality. You’d be best just to watch which way the mob is going and run with them. Alternatively, you could stop suppressing the truth, believe in the God who is and who is the reason there is truth and rationality. That’s God’s voice you are hearing in creation that causes you to know men can’t really identify as women.

Who is changing Whom?

For a generation now, the air has been thick with the talk of “changing the world,” but who is changing whom? There is no question that the world would like to change the church. In area after area only the church stands between the world and its success over issues such as sexuality. Unquestionably the world would like to change the church, but does the church still want to change the world, or is its only concern to change the church in the light of the world? Something is rotten in the state of Evangelicalism, and all too often it is impossible to tell who is changing whom.

Os Guiness in Impossible People

A quick guide to truth and falsehood

If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.

Anthony Esolen in Out of the Ashes

Masculine and Feminine Approaches to Loving Neighbour

I think it was C.S. Lewis who once compared masculine and feminine approaches to love. Men tend to think of it as leaving your neighbour alone and letting him get on with his life, whereas a more feminine approach seeks to do neighbour active good. There does seem to be an element of truth to this generalisation. My wife is more likely to think of making Christmas cookies for the neighbours than I am!

Lewis, I think (and I can’t remember the exact place he makes this point), argues that the woman’s approach to loving neighbour is better. In general, I am inclined to agree. Love is not a lack of action toward someone, but a positive action.

However, the feminine approach to love of neighbour is a dangerous thing when taken into government, and as our government becomes more feminised, a live and let live approach is replaced by the tyranny of moral busybodies. There’s a reason we call it a Nanny State.

Who can forget Prime Minister Ardern’s daily television appearances during the COVID pandemic? We were talked down to as if we were children. We were restricted from normal activities so we could be kept safe, and we were told to ‘be kind’. It was like being seven years old again.

Then we had Siouxsie Wiles of the fluro pink hair who ended up becoming New Zealander of the Year. She berated Aucklanders who left the city before the 2021 lockdown. “Hey, all you Aucklanders leaving the city during the night to spend the week at your bach… you better bloody well take Level 3 with you,” and “You do realise this is a s****y thing to do? If you are incubating the virus you run the risk of spreading it outside Auckland #COVID19nz.”

It makes one wonder whether there is something about a woman’s nature that suits her more to governing the domestic sphere and looking after children rather than governing adults.

Teaching Your Children to Show Respect

When I was growing up, there was a real distinction between children and adults. This distinction was demonstrated in many ways, but one that is fading out of existence is the use of titles. I would never have dared to call John Smith by his Christian name. Rather I addressed him as Mr. Smith. Even a young unmarried woman would be addressed with the title Miss. For adults who were family, we would address them with their title: Mum, Dad, Aunty, Uncle, Nana and so on. In situations where we had close family friends, we would address them with Uncle or Aunty and then their first name. While this was the tradition of our culture, I believe there was intent behind it. The intent was for children to realise that there was a distinction and distance between them and adults. Children were most certainly not on par with adults.

The world has changed. In some households, children call their parents by their first name. A number of schools have dispensed with titles. But where I have seen the biggest change is in general culture. In my church, children call me by my first name. In children’s church, my children are encouraged to call their leaders (adults) by their Christian names. This is now normal.

“So what!’ you might say. Not so fast. Little cultural habits matter. They have a message. What is the message that our culture is sending? Children and adults are interchangeable. Adults are not hierarchically above children. They are on the same level. And even if you as a parent disagree with this message, you live and breathe and parent in this culture. Your children are growing up with this cultural worldview. Whether this change is symptomatic of the lack of respect children have for adults, or whether it is part of the cause, there is no doubt we are living in an age where children do not have a healthy respect for adults in general. That is why in our churches we have children who feel no fear in refusing to do what an adult asks them to do.

Where else do we see this message preached by our culture? In the schools. Schools have become child-centred in their approach to learning. Children decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. Teachers become facilitators. We see it in youth crime, where young teens are routinely arrested for crime and abuse police officers. We see it in our government taking away the use of physical force as a form of discipline. We see it in our culture celebrating children deciding what gender they identify as. Our culture has tried to flatten the distinction between adult and child, and the ruination of childhood is the result.

It is the small things that signal cultural values. So contrary to common advice, do sweat the small stuff. Talk to your pastor about these things. Require children to address you with your title. It’s not about whether you feel comfortable about it or not. Your comfort is less important than developing a culture that teachers respect for age. Require your own children to address people with titles. Small things matter.

We should not give god-like powers to the State

In Defending Marriage, Anthony Esolen lays out 12 arguments defending marriage. The final argument is that we should not give god-like powers to the State. A great quote from this chapter follows.

‘What the State essentially does, when it requires us to be parties to the lie that a man can marry a man, is to deny the anterior reality of marriage itself. It says, “Marriage is what we say it shall be,” and that implies, “Families are what we say they are,” and that implies, “There are no zones of natural authority outside the supervision and regulation and management of the State.” We’ve given up on the foolish notion of the Divine Right of Kings, dreamed up by totalizing monarchs of the late Renaissance. Now we have the Divine Right of Bureaucratic States. The old kings used to make common cause with smaller zones of authority, guilds and towns, for example, in order to check the ambitions of the noblemen. The new kings have obliterated those smaller zones of authority in principle, and seek to do so in reality also. That is in large part what public schools are now for; the education of children against the authority and direction of their own parents.’