Few parents are aware of the dire state of education in New Zealand. If they were, and if apathy were not so prevalent in our country, they would already be aware, there would be a general public outcry about what is being foisted upon our children. It is bordering on criminal the way we are short-changing our children of an academic education while brainwashing them with the latest degeneracy and inciting fear of an imminent environmental disaster.
Take for instance the NCEA Change Programme which a reader alerted me to. As if NCEA was not a farce already, our educational leaders and experts have decided to weaken it still further. How? Apparently, the aim is to “improve well-being, equity, coherence, pathways and credibility – for students and teachers alike.” The reality? A backward qualification that will lead us to Woketearoa.
So the first reason for change is to make NCEA more accessible. Apparently, the current assessment standards were not “designed with New Zealand’s diversity in mind, and don’t do enough to include students of all cultures, identities, disabilities, genders, and sexualities.” What does this even mean? How does belonging to the alphabet cult mean one is unable to access knowledge like everyone else?
But let’s leave the crazy alphabet cult for now and focus our time on the second of seven reasons for the change. The goal here is to ensure equal status for mātauranga Māori in NCEA. Mātauranga Māori means Maori knowledge. We are informed here that the changes are designed to “integrate te ao Māori (Maori worldview) and mātauranga Māori (Maori knowledge) into the new ‘graduate profile’ for NCEA, and into the design of achievement standards.”
Let me give you an example of what this nonsense looks like in terms of assessment. I took the following screenshot from here on June 28th.
You will note that in the proposed NCEA level 1 Chemistry and Biology Assessment standards for Chemistry and Biology, matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) is put alongside Western science understandings. For those of you who have a Science background, you will no doubt be horrified by the broad and seemingly ill-defined body of knowledge that is being assessed.
A couple of questions are in order. What exactly is matauranga Maori with respect to chemical reactions and microorganisms? My New Zealand history might not be the best, but even I know that pre-colonisation, Maori were not exactly world leaders in Science. Sure their ancestors had impressive navigational skills, but their knowledge of chemical reactions and microorganisms was rudimentary to non-existent. To add the words ‘matauranga Maori’ to these assessment standards is pure tokenism or historical revisionism.
Now this is not to denigrate Maori. Geographical isolation was a good excuse for their lack of scientific know-how. They had not the advantage of learning from others which cultures of Europe had. Furthermore, their animistic beliefs were an obstacle to scientific knowledge. As Herbert Schlossberg puts it in Idols for Destruction, “Animist cultures…are not likely to produce large numbers of skilled engineers as long as they believe that physical objects have spirits.” Beliefs like not being able to step over cut flax because it contains the spirits of one’s ancestors, or that people should not stand on the top of mountains because they are tapu are examples of primitive animist fear which ultimately cripples learning and development of knowledge.
With the coming of Christianity, Maori were freed from this unfortunate and debilitating worldview. It seems our wokeocracy is trying to celebrate and reintroduce it again. Fortunately, as many of you are aware, a number of academics protested this in a letter to the Listener. They pointed out that maturangi Maori has no well defined or agreed-upon definition, that it is not science and they argued that “if mātauranga Māori is to be included so fully into the education system at all levels, then it needs to be subjected to full critical scrutiny – as do all science claims.” It should not surprise anyone that these brave souls were pilloried and ‘cancelled’ by the usual suspects – spineless cultural elites like the president and academy executive committee chair of the Royal Society as well as activist agitators. This only proves the point they were making. We are not dealing with a scientific view that can be critiqued and argued about. We are dealing with something more akin to a blind faith.
Now I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but when I relooked at the Assessment standards for Biology and Chemistry on August 8, they had been altered. The screenshot of these standards is below.
You’ll notice that the words matauranga Maori have been removed from each of these assessments. What we have is not a whole lot better though. The first assessment is, “Explore a microorganism within the mauri of the taiao.” Translated this means, “Explore a microorganism within the life force of the earth. This sounds rather pantheistic to me. I’m sure it won’t just be Christian families who oppose this approach to Science. I imagine materialists would be rather concerned also.
What to do? Get your children out of public schools. The power in our public system is in the hands of people who support this approach. If you want your children to have a decent education, you are almost certainly going to have to make a financial sacrifice. Put them in an independent school that teaches an internationally recognised curriculum like Cambridge. The good news is that this should pay dividends because children brought up on this nonsense are going to be no match for children who have been given an actual education.