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[Split Thread] Maori Creationism in Science lessons

RecoveringYuppy said:
There is nothing in that article identifying that as background information. And it is identified as being something to be tested on. And what do you think the word dominion means?
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Like I said, I think it's interesting background information, not more than that. I've already said that I think this curriculum goes too far in a few areas - what more do you want from me?
 
arthwollipot said:
I think that's interesting background information, but not more than that. And it's also not saying that the position or influence of these stars has direct affects on events or people here on Earth, as European-based astrology does, so I'll give it that.
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If "has dominion over" isn't a scientific claim, what is it doing in a science curriculum?

Even western astrology doesn't show up in western science curricula. So why this? What's the scientific-didactical value here? Do New Zealand schoolchildren really need to be taught irrelevant superstitions as part of their science curriculum?
 
arthwollipot said:
Like I said, I think it's interesting background information, not more than that. I've already said that I think this curriculum goes too far in a few areas - what more do you want from me?
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Just stop making excuses for the parts that go too far.
 
theprestige said:
Even western astrology doesn't show up in western science curricula.
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I don't know what is included in science curricula today, but it would be a pity if all references to astrology were scrubbed from it.

Is there any science in astrology?
Through my work as a data scientist, I frequently encounter all manner of dubious forecasting models, most of which, nevertheless, rely upon exceptionally sophisticated mathematics. How many of these so-called scientific models, I wondered, could even beat the predictions of superstitious astrology? It’s a question I became very curious to answer. But what, actually, is astrology?

In my new book, A Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the Birth of Science, I set out to recast astrology as the ancient world’s most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained for centuries by some of history’s most brilliant minds from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler.

Just consider that for much of the last two thousand years, the word “mathematician” (mathematicus) simply meant an astrologer – there was no distinction....

Astrologers were the quants and data scientists of their day, and those of us who are enthusiastic about the promise of numerical data to unlock the secrets of ourselves and our world would do well simply to acknowledge that others have come this way before. Whether you’re intrigued by astrology, repelled by it, or anywhere in between, I contend that astrology remains tremendously relevant as a challenge to what we think we know and why we think we know it. Regardless of whether astrology has distilled any truth or not, what seems clear to me is that it has bottled up a certain type of magic, one that has proven time and again its ability to get us to stop and think about our connections to the wider universe.
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Roger Ramjets said:
That 'alternate ways of knowing' could have any place in science class, for any reason whatsoever. Especially if it's indigenous ancient knowledge (but we're not racist...).
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FTFY

Darat said:
What exactly is everyone so vehemently disagreeing about?
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Essentially it's about whether "alternative ways of knowing" (aka - "the wisdom of the ancients") should be taught in modern science classes or not.

If "alternative ways of knowing" were better than scientific ways of knowing, then they would become scientific ways of knowing. Belief in "alternative ways of knowing" is like belief in "alternative medicine". Should "alternative medicine" be taught in modern scientific medical classes? The "alternative" believers crowd will say "yes" of course.

Teachings in science classes should be taught for scientific reasons. There are other classes to teach non-science things.
 
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arthwollipot said:
All lives matter, right?
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I understand your lack of comprehension, because Maori and Indigenous Australians are two polar opposites. Maori were never hunted for bounty, Aussies never had a Treaty. Your indigenous people have historically been very badly treated, Maori have historically been legislatively advantaged.

arthwollipot said:
I think it's okay to focus some attention on communities that have historically been neglected or marginalised. You're better placed than I am - as an inhabitant of the West Island - to judge how much is too much, though.
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This piece from 1962 may help you out.

[IMGw=800]http://charman.co.nz/1962.jpg[/IMGw]
 
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ynot said:
Teachings ...
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Reminds me of the absurd claim, now considered factual, that Maori were punished for the crime of speaking Maori at school.

The truth is some kids were punished for using Maori to abuse teachers.
 
The Atheist said:
Reminds me of the absurd claim, now considered factual, that Maori were punished for the crime of speaking Maori at school.

The truth is some kids were punished for using Maori to abuse teachers.
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I first met Maori when I started school at age 5. I saw two Maori brothers in the playground and was fascinated by their brown skin. I overcame my shyness and started talking to them. The younger of the two said something in Maori and my fascination level went off the chart. I was really disappointed when the older brother quickly said something like “You’re not allowed to talk Maori at school, I’m telling Dad”. There was a definite threat of punishment implied. I don’t remember ever seeing them at school again. Not sure if they moved away or I lost interest in them and they faded into the mass of other kids.

Not a legal crime but perhaps a self-imposed tapu to avoid appearing too different from others?
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
Clever.

You have evidence that students only used Maori to abuse teachers, right?
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Any child would’ve been punished (back in the day) for abusing a teacher in any language the teacher didn’t understand, as well as the one(s) they did. In my day (50s - 60s) we got punished with a strap to the hand for every math answer we got wrong. The good old days.
 
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ynot said:
FTFY
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Thanks for nothing.

The Wisdom of the Ancients
...is a book written by Bacon in 1609, and published in Latin, in which he claims playfully to unveil the hidden meanings and teachings behind ancient Greek fables... He retells thirty-one ancient fables, suggesting that they contain hidden teachings on varied issues such as morality, philosophy, religion, civility, politics, science, and art.

This work, not having a strictly scientific nature as other better-known works, has been reputed among Bacon's literary works. However, two of the chapters, "Cupid; or the Atom", and "Proteus; or Matter" may be considered part of Bacon's scientific philosophy. Bacon describes in "Cupid" his vision of the nature of the atom and of matter itself.
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You dismiss 'The Wisdom of the Ancients', but our modern science that you so revere is built on it. And it has culture to thank for it. We wouldn't have science today if those early scientists didn't live in a culture conducive to developing their ideas.

ynot said:
Teachings in science classes should be taught for scientific reasons. There are other classes to teach non-science things.
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There it is again, the idea that science should exist in a rarefied atmosphere free of the 'taint' of culture. But that is impossible. Science is a part of our culture - a much smaller part than some scientists want to admit. And the more they try to distance science from culture, the more people get turned off to it - with disastrous results. In fact right now it is quite literally killing people. ~1,300 people are dying of Covid every day in the US because science couldn't get its message across.

You say only science should be taught in science classes and there are other classes to teach non-science things. But this is the wrong way to think about science. Science isn't just another subject, it's a way of thinking. There's science in music, art, literature, sport, and every other disipline. Experts in these fields know it, and everybody else would know it too if science wasn't so scared of intermingling with them. But it has its reasons:-

The Next Generation Science Standards
There is no doubt that science—and, therefore, science education—is central to the lives of all Americans. Never before has our world been so complex and science knowledge so critical to making sense of it all. When comprehending current events, choosing and using technology, or making informed decisions about one’s healthcare, science understanding is key. Science is also at the heart of the United States’ ability to continue to innovate, lead, and create the jobs of the future. All students—whether they become technicians in a hospital, workers in a high tech manufacturing facility, or Ph.D. researchers—must have a solid K–12 science education.
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And there you have it. What's the real goal of teaching science in schools? To produce more scientists and technicians to drive our consumer society. Not a word about the environment or cultural issues that are critical to our survival.
 
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ynot said:
Not a legal crime but perhaps a self-imposed tapu to avoid appearing too different from others?
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I'd say that's probably right.

Where I lived out in the backblocks of the central plateau, there were several houses where the grandparents couldn't speak English at all.
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
Thanks for nothing.

The Wisdom of the Ancients

You dismiss 'The Wisdom of the Ancients', but our modern science that you so revere is built on it. And it has culture to thank for it. We wouldn't have science today if those early scientists didn't live in a culture conducive to developing their ideas.

There it is again, the idea that science should exist in a rarefied atmosphere free of the 'taint' of culture. But that is impossible. Science is a part of our culture - a much smaller part than some scientists want to admit. And the more they try to distance science from culture, the more people get turned off to it - with disastrous results. In fact right now it is quite literally killing people. ~1,300 people are dying of Covid every day in the US because science couldn't get its message across.

You say only science should be taught in science classes and there are other classes to teach non-science things. But this is the wrong way to think about science. Science isn't just another subject, it's a way of thinking. There's science in music, art, literature, sport, and every other disipline. Experts in these fields know it, and everybody else would know it too if science wasn't so scared of intermingling with them. But it has its reasons:-

The Next Generation Science Standards

And there you have it. What's the real goal of teaching science in schools? To produce more scientists and technicians to drive our consumer society. Not a word about the environment or cultural issues that are critical to our survival.
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Tell Galileo, Darwin and many others like them that they “lived in a culture conducive to developing their ideas”. Science has progressed despite (not because of) the biases, supernatural beliefs, dogmas, religions, myths and legends of customs and cultures. Any ancient (old) knowledge that was actually true would still be just as true today. Science discovers what old knowledge wasn’t true and replaces it with new knowledge that is provably more true. Science doesn’t declare that anything is absolutely true. To keep valuing things that have been proven to be valueless is stupidity.

I get it, you clearly don’t like the disciplines of science with it’s unemotional and rigorous methods. You prefer to live in a more exciting fantasy belief world where truth is what everyone gets to decide it is for themselves, where magic and miracles are possible and reality can be ignored. But in real life you know you would be an idiot to fly in a plane designed and built in such fantasy a world. You prefer existence to be what you emotionally want it to be rather than what you intellectually know it to be. Yes, you do have such knowledge.

Science is the thing that separates fantasy from reality. Reality is the thing that bites you if you ignore it.
 
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ynot said:
Tell Galileo, Darwin and many others like them that they “lived in a culture conducive to developing their ideas”...
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Wow, didn't take long for you to start advocating communicating with ancestors...
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Couldn't speak English?
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Correct. They'd lived in remote villages where contact with white people had been so limited they never had the need until around WWI, which is when the kids started learning it. Their parents, who were the grand- and great-grandparents in the '60s, never did.

It meant we kids learnt some Maori at a time when hardly any white ***** did. We used to go pig hunting with them leading, and if you didn't know what they were saying you'd potentially get a pig dog chewing your throat out. The greatest irony to me is that what we learnt, from the mouths of people who'd only ever spoken Maori, was quite different to how it's presented today.

Of course, you're not allowed to mention that, along with the fact that in that area at least, Matariki was not a thing of any kind.
 
The Atheist said:
Correct. They'd lived in remote villages where contact with white people had been so limited they never had the need until around WWI, which is when the kids started learning it. Their parents, who were the grand- and great-grandparents in the '60s, never did.

It meant we kids learnt some Maori at a time when hardly any white ***** did. We used to go pig hunting with them leading, and if you didn't know what they were saying you'd potentially get a pig dog chewing your throat out. The greatest irony to me is that what we learnt, from the mouths of people who'd only ever spoken Maori, was quite different to how it's presented today.

Of course, you're not allowed to mention that, along with the fact that in that area at least, Matariki was not a thing of any kind.
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WARNING!!! - Sick humour alert . . .
Just "a pig dog"? :boxedin: :shocked:
 
ynot said:
WARNING!!! - Sick humour alert . . .
Just "a pig dog"? :boxedin: :shocked:
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Yeah, more likely three. Holy crap, I don't know what dog fights use, but I'd have my money on a Maori's pig dog against anything short of a lion. Jesus, they're bad, ugly suckers.

I've been meaning to have a good laugh by introducing our foreign friends to He Puapua to show what Maori are demanding, and the government is largely implementing, while claiming they're not: https://news.yahoo.com/generals-warn-divided-military-possible-142837801.html

Just to pick an education-related subject, I think this is hilarious:

Education Minister Chris Hipkins is working on the implementation of a new New Zealand history curriculum structured around the principles of critical-race theory to reflect Maori oriented history, colonization and the impact of power and privilege. The new education curriculum will primarily cover the following themes:

The Arrival of Māori to New Zealand.
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https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/teaching-nz’s-own-history-moves-step-closer

Kids are going to be taught facts about Maori arrival in NZ, despite there being almost no evidence for anything other than the fact that they arrived.

Someone mentioned anthropology, and there's the evidence of how it's going to be taught - rumour and hearsay as whichever Iwi holds sway says it is.
 
ynot said:
To keep valuing things that have been proven to be valueless is stupidity.
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To ignore the ways humanity has had to interact with the valueless on its way to the valuable is also stupidity. Mythology is only the first misty step towards scientific enquiry, in that it’s recognizing there are questions and we want answers. You feel it should be never mentioned or discussed as part of a science curriculum because it’s been left far behind as useless, but I think Ramjets has a point as far as keeping the cultural relevance… relevant. To understand that our desire for answers and our propensity for just up and choosing some that sound good, far predates our ability to get or even our desire to find actual reliable data about the world. To know what a journey it is from one to the other. To know no culture skipped the ‘let’s just say we already know’ phase.

And also to see what kinds of things various cultures were actually right about more or less off the bat and why. Obviously mostly things to do with the craftier end of things but again that’s part of what and why and when we could figure things out. And again how knowledge would be missed over completely in culture clashes, even basic stuff like say the locals knowing HMS Terror was gonna malnutrition itself to death while the modern crew was convinced their health depended on doing what they were doing. Or European explorers not understanding that many of the wilderness areas they found were actually managed forests.
 
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The Atheist said:
I'd say that's probably right.

Where I lived out in the backblocks of the central plateau, there were several houses where the grandparents couldn't speak English at all.
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How did vowl sounds square with what we hear on radio today?
Eg "au"?
Wlliam Williams and so on in the 19th century heard as in "cow"
 
Jerry Coyne, explaining to his audience what he thinks is going on. At least he provides citations at the end of his article.


I’ve been describing the big kerfuffle in New Zealand (well, it’s not a huge kerfuffle as the Kiwi public seems to know little about it) involving whether mātauranga Māori, (henceforth MM), which loosely translates to “Māori ways of knowing“. should be taught as science alongside modern science in both secondary-scjpp; and college science classes. In the past two weeks, I’ve been reading up on these ways of “knowing”, trying to understand them and to figure out how they can (or should) be fit into a science curriculum. The more I read, the more puzzled I get about what exactly is going to be taught, but that’s no surprise since advocates of incorporating MM into science class are not specific about how and what will be taught. That’s important! There are FIVE questions I’ve had, and I’ll give some quotes below about the issues. At the end I’ll advance some tentative conclusions.
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https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/19/what-are-maori-ways-of-knowing-and-should-they-be-taught-in-science-class-as-coequal-to-modern-science/


What get's me is the complete lack of any kind of response from the NZ Skeptic community.
 
Lithrael said:
To ignore the ways humanity has had to interact with the valueless on its way to the valuable is also stupidity. Mythology is only the first misty step towards scientific enquiry, in that it’s recognizing there are questions and we want answers. You feel it should be never mentioned or discussed as part of a science curriculum because it’s been left far behind as useless, but I think Ramjets has a point as far as keeping the cultural relevance… relevant. To understand that our desire for answers and our propensity for just up and choosing some that sound good, far predates our ability to get or even our desire to find actual reliable data about the world. To know what a journey it is from one to the other. To know no culture skipped the ‘let’s just say we already know’ phase.

And also to see what kinds of things various cultures were actually right about more or less off the bat and why. Obviously mostly things to do with the craftier end of things but again that’s part of what and why and when we could figure things out. And again how knowledge would be missed over completely in culture clashes, even basic stuff like say the locals knowing HMS Terror was gonna malnutrition itself to death while the modern crew was convinced their health depended on doing what they were doing. Or European explorers not understanding that many of the wilderness areas they found were actually managed forests.
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Strawman!

I'm not "ignoring the ways of humanity".

I'm not saying "the ways humanity has had to interact with the valueless on its way to the valuable" is a valueless thing.

I’m not saying history, culture and learning from experience are valueless things.

I’m not saying certain things that don’t belong in science don’t belong anywhere.

I’m not saying certain things that don’t have a value to science don’t have a value elsewhere.

I’m not saying all ancient/old knowledge was and is wrong.

I’m pretty much saying what Richard Dawkins said . . .
“The Royal Society of New Zealand, like the Royal Society of which I have the honour to be a Fellow, is supposed to stand for science. Not “Western” science, not “European” science, not “White” science, not “Colonialist” science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in. True science is evidence-based not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses etc. True science works: lands spacecraft on comets, develops vaccines against plagues, predicts eclipses to the nearest second, reconstructs the lives of extinct species such as the tragically destroyed Moas. “
 
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Samson said:
How did vowl sounds square with what we hear on radio today?
Eg "au"?
Wlliam Williams and so on in the 19th century heard as in "cow"
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Differences in pronunciation are mostly due to different Iwi having different pronunciation. "Wh", for instance, varies from a hard F up north to almost a whistle in Whanganui. Little difference to Poms from Newcastle saying "bewk" for book.

I had a case last year of a Maori shiela working at a tourism venture where she claimed she was being bullied because the Iwi she worked for demanded she pronounce words differently to what she'd learned from her Iwi. (failed)

The language issue I found was that the native speakers had a different way of speaking to what we learnt at school, which was also presented by Maori teachers. It was like two different languages - different words and a different style of speaking. I could speak to them fine, but if I spoke to a Rotorua Maori they thought I was speaking Martian. I did an essay about it that got an A in Maori in the early '70s. Forgotten it all now after 50 years of whitespeak.

Nowadays, the one that cracks me up most is most Auckland Maori pronouncing "Maori" as "mowdi", even though the official word has a macron over the A, so can only be said as "maadi".
 
The Atheist said:
Nowadays, the one that cracks me up most is most Auckland Maori pronouncing "Maori" as "mowdi", even though the official word has a macron over the A, so can only be said as "maadi".
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What cracks me up is when some Maori say "You don't talk Marry right". And why do many say "arksd" for "asked"? Not a beat-up, just curious.

"Maori shiela" a Kiwi Ozzy crossbreed? :D
 
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hecd2 said:
No.

The basic tenet of astrology is that the alignment of celestial features foretells/controls/affects human character/destiny/events. So, no.
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I've said in the past that the closest (European) astrology gets to actual science is in calculating the positions of the planets in the celestial sky at a particular time from a particular viewpoint. Prior to the existence of computers, calculating the natal chart was actually rather a complex process. I studied it when I went through my neopagan/Wicca phase.

Once you've got the chart, anything you do with it is unscientific.
 
Comments from NZ for teaching 'Maori Ways of Knowing' as science.


The traditional approach to scientific research is being challenged by mātauranga Māori and calls for greater consideration of Māori cultural values within the scientific community. At the same time there’s a growing interest in the “indigenisation” of science, which establishes new frameworks using scientific methods but with an approach firmly grounded in Māori values.
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https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/24-12...decolonising-science-through-matauranga-maori




Comments from NZ against teaching 'Maori Ways of Knowing' as science.


OPINION: There has been considerable debate around the intersection of NCEA, mātauranga Māori, and science. But it is the wrong debate.

I would like to offer a different perspective, informed by the review of mathematics education I chaired for the Royal Society of New Zealand and Ministry of Education recently.

Like many of the significant shifts we have seen in education and NCEA over the last few decades, the current debate is underpinned by slogans and little if any evidence.

First, there should be no doubt that our national teaching of science, technology and mathematics (henceforth just “science”) delivers cruel results.
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/ed...ng-the-wrong-debate-over-how-we-teach-science
 
Further commentary approving the idea that 'Western Science' should be infused with 'Maori Ways of Knowing'.


The University of Auckland's Julie Rowland examines the notion that education should be secular and devoid of any form of spirituality

Commentators, here and overseas, have depicted the practice and learning of science as facing an existential threat in Aotearoa/New Zealand due to the braiding of mātauranga Māori into institutional mores and curricula.

Some arguments cast our universities as communities of scholars developing knowledge according to the universal principles and methods of science.

Universities are far richer. They encompass the arts, humanities and social sciences and each discipline has its own way of making sense of the world. Quite often traditional scientific method does not come into it. The argument that casts scholars in pursuit of universal truths is a simplification that does not reflect the diversity of disciplines, thinking and experience universities have and need to fulfil their role.

Science is a rational pursuit of knowledge, but it does not exist in splendid isolation. If this is painted as the ‘ideal’ science, then it is incomplete. People do science, and people and their culture/s are inseparable.
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https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/science-does-not-sit-in-splendid-isolation
 
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