Unteach Racism – Module 3 – Low Expectations

In previous articles, we have investigated the brand new app that The Human Rights Commission and The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand have put together. The first module was an introductory one and contained the usual fallacy of assuming disparities in ethnic outcomes are caused by racism. In module 2 we were presented with the issue of low self-belief which we were led to believe was caused by teachers and schools. Today we look at module 3 and low expectations.

From the outset, I had more hope for this module. It’s a well-known truth that teacher expectations are extremely significant in the learning process. There has been significant study into this and a psychological phenomenon known as the Pygmalion effect has been noticed. Essentially, the idea is that learners internalise the expectations their teachers have for them. If a teacher has high expectations for a particular child, the child will rise to meet those expectations, and conversely, if a teacher has low expectations for a child, they will sink to meet those expectations. One classic study gave teachers a class that was described as containing extremely gifted students. Teachers were told who these students were. At the conclusion of the study, these students had fared the best. What the teachers didn’t know, was that these ‘gifted students’ were selected at random, and were ordinary children. So, low expectations and high expectations from teachers and our educational system do matter. More on this later, but back to the module for now.

We are initially presented with a quote. Studies have shown that Māori students recognise when teachers have low expectations for them and so put in less effort than they do for teachers who have high expectations for them. We are then reminded of the possibility of implicit bias. It is, we are told, important that we ‘heighten our awareness of these biases.’ These implicit biases may be impacting our view of our students and therefore limiting them. To determine whether we have implicit biases we are then directed to an American Implicit Association Test. The test begins by getting you to identify dark and light faces that come up on your screen, pushing a key with your left hand for light skin and a key with your right hand for dark-skinned. Next, we are presented with good words and bad words and have to sort them out likewise. After this things are mixed up with faces and words appearing. Then various combinations are made so that the person taking the test is thoroughly confused.

What does this supposedly prove? An implicit preference for Light Skinned People relative to Dark Skinned People is assumed if the test subject is faster to sort words when ‘Light Skinned People’ and ‘Good’ share a button relative to when ‘Dark Skinned People’ and ‘Good’ share a button. In the interests of full disclosure, when I sat the test this on two different occasions this week, I came out as supposedly having a slight automatic preference for Dark Skinned People over Light Skinned People. I am not aware of any such bias in my teaching practice.

To begin with, what is really being measured here? Might it just measure familiarity? We tend to find people we are around all the time better looking and tend to associate them with ‘good’ just because they are familiar. But does this mean in a classroom situation we would unconsciously have lower expectations for those who are less familiar? I am not sure this follows at all. It might be equally likely that we expect more of them. It’s not at all clear to me what the test ultimately proves.

Realistically in 21st century New Zealand, there would not be many teachers who unconsciously expect less from a darker (or lighter) face. I think we are too multicultural for that to be a reality. Our actual experience as teachers would counter this supposed implicit bias. For example, my teaching experience has been in classes where children with lighter skin are a distinct minority. Do I expect more or less from them than I do from the many different darker-skinned ethnicities I have taught? I doubt it. I have taught high achievers from many different ethnicities. I do not bring expectations into classes I teach based on skin colour, and I suspect few teachers do despite the absurd and unsupported claims of people like Whetu Cormick who suggests many New Zealand universities are “pumping out teachers and many of them are biased, they discriminate and they are racist.

Nonetheless, I do believe low expectations are having a negative impact on Maori and Pacific education. The irony is that it is not the conservative teachers, those who oppose the ‘Treaty Partnership’ nonsense being foisted upon the education sector, those critiquing the proposed new history curriculum, those critiquing the vacuous New Zealand curriculum and calling for more stringent standards, or those calling for an end to race-based entry into tertiary courses who have lower expectations for some learners. No, we are the ones who expect high standards from all our learners. We are not the racists.

The very people who have low expectations for Maori and Pacific learners are those putting together modules like Unteach Racism – the Teacher’s Council and many of the ‘elites’ controlling our education system. Let me give four brief examples of the low expectations I see in education. To begin with, let’s take our friend Whetu Cormick, former President of the NZ Principals’ Association. In 2019, in a response to a press release from The New Zealand Initiative critical of New Zealand’s education, Whetu Cormick suggested that what we need is a curriculum that is relevant to the community. He wasn’t worried that many New Zealanders didn’t know the names of the continents. If a kid in Bluff cares more about muttonbirds than continents, that’s what he should learn about says Cormick. So condemning a child to ignorance is OK as long as he studies what his culture is interested in. That’s low expectations.

We also see the tyranny of low expectations in the public schools that extirpate any books of the Western canon from their English literature courses and encourage children to choose books that they can ‘relate to’ as if brown children are incapable of relating to people of the past in the same way Pakeha children can. Surely Shakespeare is foreign to anyone living in 21st century New Zealand, but the riches we can glean from his study of human nature transcend culture and time.

Again we see low expectations in this ridiculous notion that to celebrate culture we must always have children dressing up in cultural garb and performing. If that is taking children out of academic learning time, which it so often is, we are short-selling those children academically. Schools should not be about teaching children their culture – that’s the job of the family. Schools are there to provide what family usually cannot – an academic pathway to success.

Finally, let’s not forget, the low expectations of thinking academic learning has to in some way relate to Tikanga Maori. You know, the typical nonsense that a teacher must relate all his lessons to the children’s cultural background. How does one relate differential calculus, or inorganic Chemistry to Maori culture – or any culture for that matter? Are we not humans, and isn’t investigating the world and seeking to understand its complexity and design a part of our human nature? Isn’t that larger than our own particular culture?

The truth of the matter is this: the path to wealth and success for many children in poorer families is not through focussing on their own community values and culture. In some cases, these values are precisely what is causing or exacerbating poverty. Rather, education should enable all our children to access the riches of the wider community. Education is not about keeping our children comfortably coddled in the culture and community they grew up in. Rather we need to be offering all our children the treasures of millennia of Western Civilization (and the many cultures and that have contributed to this). Let’s not sell our children’s birthright for a racist mess of pottage. Let’s give all our children their birthright as citizens of a Western democracy.

Unteach Racism – Module 1

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.

Police Ten 7 is a Racist Show?

As mentioned in previous posts, racism is the issue of our day. Despite this, I am not sure that we know what it means any more. Meng Foon, our Race Relations Commissioner has announced to the nation that our police are racist. He was upset that the show Police Ten 7 showed too many Maori and Pacific Island men and wanted the show to ‘proportionalise them’. He cited evidence that Maori are far more likely to be tasered than Pakeha men.

However, before we cry racism, we should switch on our brains. Perhaps there are other reasons that Maori men are more likely to be on Police Ten 7 and more likely to be tasered by police. Could it be that Maori men are more likely to commit serious crime than Pakeha men? Could it be that Maori men are more likely to be violent and resist arrest by police requiring the use of a taser to stop them? The very fact there is a disparity between races does not mean racism is the only possible cause. To assume this is the case is bad science. As a public figure, if you don’t understand this, you should do all you can to educate yourself, and in the meantime, you should refuse to comment on disparities.

I for one would like to see fewer men tasered and a more equal proportion of men represented in violent crime statistics as compared to women. However, I am not going to cry sexism and ask for Police Ten 7 (a show I never watch) to make sure 50% of the perpetrators are women. Men are more likely to be involved in violent crime than women. It’s not sexism, it’s reality. Meng Foon and others like him are unhelpfully stirring up a victimhood mentality with no legitimate reason. While I am sure there are instances of racism in New Zealand, I do not think this is a widespread institutional issue, and pointing to disparities between races does not show racism.

If you want to reduce Maori crime and violence, instead of complaining about Police Ten 7 or accusing the police of racism do something that might help. Look at the cultural factors in all of this. Start looking at family structures for children growing up, gang membership, education levels and drug and alcohol abuse. What if we turned these around? Would that make a difference?

Is Institutional Racism in Health Killing Maori?

The Herald article screamed at me: Covid 19 coronavirus: Racism within New Zealand health system – “It’s killing our people”. That’s a pretty serious claim. Racism is killing our people. Let those words sink in for a minute. If that’s true, New Zealanders ought to feel a sense of righteous outrage. Here in New Zealand, it’s claimed that racism in our health system is killing Maori. We’ve seen racism kill people elsewhere. We’ve seen ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and other places. Surely that can’t be happening here? Are people with evil in their hearts deliberately showing favouritism toward some ethnicities in the health system and mistreating others? What’s going on?

Statistics Showing Disparities

1. COVID is racist?

The article commences with a few shocking statistics. For instance, a study in the New Zealand Medical Journal shows that Maori are 50 percent more likely to die from Covid-19 than non-Maori. So are we to conclude that Covid-19 is itself a racist virus? Are we to remonstrate against the virus and ask it to pick up its game and become a more equal opportunities virus? So far, the neutral reader could hardly be convinced of racism. More information please.

2. Cigarettes are racist?

Then we are presented with another recent study that showed that Maori and Pacific people have a greater risk of heart disease due to a higher prevalence of smoking, obesity and heart failure. Again, this is hardly evidence of racism. I have not seen cigarettes sneak out of a packet, glance left toward a Pakeha and then right toward a Maori, and then perniciously make a racist choice to fly toward the Maori face to then forcibly insert itself between unwilling lips. Smoking is a choice, and like other choices, is a result of what individuals value.

3. Obesity is racist?

With regards to obesity, I’m sure we could accept that some ethnicities are more prone to this than others – perhaps genetically, but we can hardly blame this on racism. Racism is treating someone with partiality or mistreating them based on something that is beyond their control, something that is genetic. If we are not responsible for our own skin colour and shouldn’t be mistreated as a result of that, we certainly shouldn’t be accused of racism for the genes someone else receives!

4. Western Approaches to Medicine are racist?

Another study calls for more culturally appropriate care to be made available to Maori men. This seems odd to me. What does it even mean? Are Maori men so different because of their culture that they need an entirely different way of health care being provided? Because I would have assumed that Western medicine has been a boon for most indigenous cultures, Maori included. Surely this is not a request to go back to the kind of cultural health care that was on offer pre-colonisation when life was nasty, brutish and short?

Samuel Marsden

Currently, Maori die seven years earlier than non-Maori. This is disturbing. It’s sad, and we should investigate this. Of course, we want people to live long and healthy lives. But we do not immediately assume sexism is the reason males all around the world have lower life expectancies than women. Why should we assume that racism is the cause of the lower life expectancy of Maori? Furthermore, current Maori life expectancies under the supposedly racist health system which is killing them, compare very favourably with the life-expectancies of Maori pre Europeans when there was no health system and warring tribes were literally killing each other.

Furthermore, let’s not be tempted to hold idealistic and naïve views of the cultural superiority of pre-European Maori health care. Samuel Marsden’s Memoir of Duaterra, a primary record, highlights the unhelpful cultural practice of leaving the sick out in the open air to prevent the defilement of wharepuni. In the particular case mentioned, a sick woman and her child who was about three days old had been left outside with only a few reeds placed in the direction from which the storm of wind and rain blew. She had been left exposed like this all night. As a result of contact with Pakeha, Maori saw the value of Western ways and appropriated them.

Summary

That these disparities exist warrants further study, but to suggest they are indicative of racism is just plain silly. Maori life expectancies pre colonisation were undoubtedly lower than they are now, and the disparities between Maori and Pakeha life expectancy existed then too. In fact, the introduction of our supposedly racist health care system has without a shadow of a doubt actually improved Maori health.

Institutional Racism is the Cause?

So thus far, these statistics prove nothing except differences in outcomes for Maori. But apparently, these disparities are a result of institutional racism. So says the interim CEO of Hapai Te Hauora, Jason Alexander. Apparently institutional racism is deeply embedded in the health system. Alexander points out he is not talking about individual racism. Rather it is institutional racism that is killing Maori. So where is this institutional racism at work?

1. Access Issues

 The first major example given is access to healthcare. We are informed that Maori in rural areas don’t have easy access to health systems like people do in cities. But this is not racist. This is just a simple fact of geography. Anyone who lives in a rural area is going to come up against this same difficulty.

But wait, there’s more. Poverty in the city was also cited as an access issue highlighting institutional racism. Again, saying that access issues caused by poverty is racist is arrant nonsense. Any poor person will suffer these same access issues.

So there is our first major example of institutional racism, and it’s absolute bosh.

2. Barriers within healthcare services

The second major example given is that there are barriers within healthcare services. Apparently access to healthcare can make things worse for Maori according to Professor Alan Merry who is the Health Quality & Safety Commission chairman. Sounds like a hopeless case doesn’t it? Access to healthcare is difficult, and getting access makes things worse.

Image by 00luvicecream

But how can access to health care make things worse? I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to mean unless we are to take from that statement that healthcare professionals are so bad at their jobs that they make matters worse for the Maori who do access their services, much like blood-letting 19th-century doctors.

So what is meant? Once again we are presented with some statistics that apparently prove institutional racism. Here they are.

  • Specialist appointments happen less often for Maori.
  • Inappropriate prescribing happens more often for Maori
  • Maori children with asthma have more prescriptions for reliever medications without any preventer prescribed.
  • The percentage of Maori getting an operation for a hip fracture on the day of or after admission has steadily decreased since 2013, whereas the percentage for non-Maori has steadily improved.
  • Maori consistently rate the communication with hospital staff and doctors lower than other groups.
  • In old age, disabled Maori are less likely to secure specialist equipment.

Some of these statistics are disturbing, but are they evidence of institutional racism? Of course no! They are no more evidence of racism than the underrepresentation of Asian men in the All Blacks is a result of institutional racism. Once again we have racism assumed before proven and any disparity in data leads to the immediate assumption that racism is the cause. Another case of the invincible fallacy. Our world is not as simple as that.

I don’t for a minute believe that doctors in New Zealand look at the children that come into their surgery, and then prescribe differently based on the ethnicity of the child. Can you imagine it? “This is a Pakeha child here, so I’ll give him the reliever and preventer asthma medication, but this next one is Maori, so I’ll only give him the reliever.” I can’t imagine that happening. And do you know why? Because I actually believe that our health workers really care about people. It is an absolute insult to our health professionals to charge our health system with the crime of institutional racism. These individuals who make up our health institutions are by and large doing their utmost despite difficult circumstances to help their fellow citizens. Go into any doctor’s surgery in South Auckland and you’ll find posters targeting Maori and encouraging them not to smoke. There is without a doubt, a real desire in our health system to improve Maori health.

Get the Diagnosis Right!

Please hear me, I am not saying we shouldn’t care about these disparities. The real reasons should be investigated. My problem is that assuming racism is the cause when it most likely is not is like assuming the red spots on my arm are mosquito bites and giving me a soothing lotion when they are actually a result of the measles. Incorrectly diagnosing the problem will invariably lead to incorrect treatment. And incorrect courses of treatment do not solve problems. Often they just create bigger problems.

So don’t just point to a disparity and claim racism. Show me actual racism.

The Problem – Faulty Definitions

This leads us to the heart of the issue: a faulty definition.  How exactly is this concept of Institutional Racism defined by academics and these so-called experts? The definition mentioned is ‘the procedures or practices of particular organisations that result in some groups being advantaged.’ Read that definition again. If this is our definition, anything that causes disparities between groups is considered institutional racism.

Image by PDPics

This is just plain stupid, and the fact that otherwise intelligent people believe it is extremely disturbing. In all of human life, where do we see all groups achieving equal results? We don’t. A diverse world leads to diverse outcomes. Some groups will always produce better results in some areas than other groups. But why must we assume that this is because of racism? Didn’t we once learn somewhere back in school that correlation does not equal causation? Are we no longer wise enough to realise there are often multiple reasons for disparities in data?

A More Accurate and Truthful Definition

Before you tune me out as some kind of crazy who denies racism, let me assure you that I believe there is such a thing as institutional racism. I’m a Christian, and Jesus Christ is my Lord and king. His law condemns those who show partiality, so I am fully opposed to racism in any form, and that includes institutional racism, which I do believe exists. We can all imagine a system where there is institutional racism fairly easily. Apartheid South Africa would be a classic case. So how should Institutional racism be defined?

Here is my rough attempt at a definition. Institutional racism is the existence of preference or favouritism in an institution toward a particular race or races, by a deliberate decision based on ethnicity alone. I think that is a definition that fits much better with our actual definition of racism.

There IS Institutional Racism in New Zealand

Now, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that we do therefore have institutional racism in New Zealand. But contrary to the media promoted common misconception, that institutional racism is all in favour of Maori. In New Zealand, we have separate Maori seats in Parliament. We have affirmative action policies for Maori students wishing to enter medical school. We have decisions by DHB’s to promote Maori up the health waiting list based on their ethnicity. Councils around the country have appointed non-elected iwi representatives, sometimes with voting rights.

Conclusion

So is racism in our health system killing Maori? No. This is another example of poor research and the assumption that disparities automatically mean racism. In truth, they automatically mean no such thing. Disparities between groups is the norm, not the exception. It’s hard to believe that these kinds of articles are not disingenuous and part of a slow but steady move toward a co-governance approach that will be the end of true democracy in New Zealand. You can bet that reports in this vein will be used to lead the charge into a separate health system for Maori.