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[Split Thread] Maori Creationism in Science lessons

The Atheist said:
And Maori "discovering" Antarctica is now taught as fact, when there is zero evidence to back it up, and a wealth of scientific, historical and geographical data to say it's nonsense.
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Again, I was responding to the specific document that was linked, which described pedagogical method, rather than listing specific things to be taught.
 
Richard Dawkins is in town and has a few words to say about these "other ways of knowing" and he's not too happy....

I’m in New Zealand, climax to my antipodean speaking tour, where I walked headlong into a raging controversy. Jacinda Ardern’s government implemented a ludicrous policy, spawned by Chris Hipkins’s Ministry of Education before he became prime minister. Science classes are to be taught that Māori ‘Ways of Knowing’ (Mātauranga Māori) have equal standing with ‘western’ science. Not surprisingly, this adolescent virtue-signalling horrified New Zealand’s grown-up scientists and scholars. Seven of them wrote to the Listener magazine. Three who were fellows of the NZ Royal Society were threatened with an inquisitorial investigation. Two of these, including the distinguished medical scientist Garth Cooper, himself of Māori descent, resigned (the third unfortunately died). I was delighted to meet Professor Cooper for lunch, with others of the seven. His resignation letter cited the society’s failure to support science against its denigration as ‘a western European invention’. He was affronted, too, by a complaint (not endorsed by the NZRS) that ‘to insist Māori children learn to read is an act of colonisation’. Is there an implication here – condescending, if not downright racist – that ‘indigenous’ children need separate, special treatment?
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Link
 
Just for the benefit of those who don't fully understand what's in play here (i.e. everyone not in NZ), this is a beautiful example of what Maori are seeking in terms of equal representation, regardless of the consequences.

Maori are having a cry, because NZ is belatedly about to introduce a bill that means anything sold for therapeutic purposes must be shown to be fit for purpose - the Therapeutic Products Bill.

Given that traditional Maori "remedies" have no scientific evidence in their favour, they're likely to be caught in the web and not receive any more funding.

Boo ******* hoo.
 
Maori?
They are all part maori but in large proportion European, sucking at the taxpayer tit.
 
Nick Matzke, a former member of the National Center for Science Education (The anti-creationism people) lives in NZ and apparently he's not happy about what's going off in NZ Education, sadly they've chosen to publish their letter through a dubious website.


Though it is interesting to not that none of this appears on the NZ Skeptics website, even though opposing the promotion of pseudoscience should be right up their alley.



Dear NZ Herald,

I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. I teach evolutionary biology, but I also have long experience in science education and (especially) political attempts to insert pseudoscience into science curricula in the USA.

I just read the NZ Herald article on mātauranga Māori and NCEA: How mātauranga Māori is being rolled out in schools, Rangi Mātāmua explains the knowledge system.

Unfortunately, I think the NZ Herald is uncritically repeating an overly rosy take from NCEA and the Ministry of Education. At least amongst scientists and science teachers, there has actually been a huge controversy over the NCEA Level 1 Chemistry & Biology draft curriculum.

A particularly significant problem is that the concept of mauri, meaning life force, was inserted directly into the basic chemistry curriculum. Please google the phrase “Mauri is present in all matter. All particles have their own mauri” — this is the language that NCEA used in their pilot Chemistry standards in 2022.
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https://plainsight.nz/letter-to-the-nz-herald-ncea-pseudoscience-mauri-is-present-in-all-matter/
 
Samson said:
Maori?
They are all part maori but in large proportion European, sucking at the taxpayer tit.
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Never mind the "What is a woman?" question that Prime Minister Hipkins had difficulty answering.

"What is a Maori?" also needs answering. I think Hipkins would have equal difficulty answering that.
 
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The Atheist said:
Same answer - you identify as one.
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Thinks . . . Although I have no actual Maori in me I can identify as one and get all the current racial advantages and privilege's given to Maori. Car pie to me!

If anyone can identify as anything, then identity effectively has no purposeful meaning.
 
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ynot said:
Thinks . . . Although I have no actual Maori in me I can identify as one and get all the current racial advantages and privilege's given to Maori. Car pie to me!

If anyone can identify as anything, then identity effectively has no purposeful meaning.
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Pendulum has reached apogee (I pray)
 
ynot said:
Thinks . . . Although I have no actual Maori in me I can identify as one and get all the current racial advantages and privilege's given to Maori. Car pie to me!

If anyone can identify as anything, then identity effectively has no purposeful meaning.
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It’s not quite the same in Australia. You have to both identify and be recognised by the aboriginal community you claim to come from. There have been a spate of people who have recently discovered that a grandparent was indigenous, and a number have not been accepted by the relevant community. Author Bruce Pascoe (“The Black Emu” a disputed history of ancient indigenous people as farmers) has not been widely accepted.

I would have thought that recognition by Māori communities would be a critical prerequisite.
 
ynot said:
Thinks . . . Although I have no actual Maori in me I can identify as one and get all the current racial advantages and privilege's given to Maori. Car pie to me!

If anyone can identify as anything, then identity effectively has no purposeful meaning.
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To inject some rare levity into this thread: I was following a muddy car through traffic the other day, and someone had written in the dirt "I identify as clean".
 
ynot said:
Thinks . . . Although I have no actual Maori in me I can identify as one and get all the current racial advantages and privilege's given to Maori. Car pie to me!

If anyone can identify as anything, then identity effectively has no purposeful meaning.
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It only works for Pakeha institutions.

My mate is married to a woman who is 1/16th Maori. Their son in a star at high school basketball and was asked by the Auckland Maori team to join them. He's whiter than me and other teams lodged a protest at the tournament, which was shut down by producing evidence of his being 1/32 Maori.

As far as I'm aware, the only criterion for being on the Maori Electoral Roll is ticking the "Yes" box on the question of whether you're Maori, so it's that simple.
 
lionking said:
I would have thought that recognition by Māori communities would be a critical prerequisite.
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That would be considered racism here.

If you want preferential treatment in health or other services, just claim you're Maori and nobody will dare question it.
 
The Atheist said:
As far as I'm aware, the only criterion for being on the Maori Electoral Roll is ticking the "Yes" box on the question of whether you're Maori, so it's that simple.
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Ministry of Social Development: The Problem of Defining an Ethnic Group for Public Policy: Who is Māori and Why Does it Matter?
At present, different criteria are used to determine who is a Māori, and these vary according to legal, tribal and policy contexts. The Māori Ethnic Group (MEG) is the reference group used for administrative and policy purposes. Cultural identity is the underlying operational definition of ethnic group as it is used in official statistics. An ethnic group is composed of people who have some or all of the following characteristics:

  • a common proper name
  • one or more elements of a common culture which need not be specified, but
  • may include religion, customs or language
  • unique community of interests, feelings and actions
  • a shared sense of common origins or ancestry
  • a common geographic origin (Statistics New Zealand 2004).

In contrast, most statutes use ancestry criteria to define who is a Māori. The Māori Land Act, and numerous other statutes, define Māori as “a person of the Māori race and includes any descendant”. Only persons of Māori descent can enrol in a Māori electorate to vote for candidates to occupy Māori seats in Parliament, or lodge a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal. Ancestry is the closest concept to whakapapa (genealogy), which has customarily underpinned any claim to being Māori.
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Pixel42 said:
To inject some rare levity into this thread: I was following a muddy car through traffic the other day, and someone had written in the dirt "I identify as clean".
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Wonder if this would work in Woke NZ . . .

Judge – “How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”.
Accused – “Neither Your Honor, I identify as innocent!”.
 
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The Atheist said:
My mate is married to a woman who is 1/16th Maori. Their son in a star at high school basketball and was asked by the Auckland Maori team to join them. He's whiter than me and other teams lodged a protest at the tournament, which was shut down by producing evidence of his being 1/32 Maori.
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Why isn’t claiming you’re Maori because you’re 1/32 Maori defined as being racist against the greater 31/32 of your ancestry?
 
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The Atheist said:
If you want preferential treatment in health or other services, just claim you're Maori and nobody will dare question it.
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Right. I wonder how far this goes towards balancing out the bias against Maoris in health and other services.

That would be considered racism here.
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"You don't look Maori to me. Prove that you are one or we won't give you preferential treatment!". I bet doctors in New Zealand say that all the time.

I am not Maori, but I was refused 'preferential' treatment because I couldn't prove I was a citizen. Lived here all my life and had the usual documents like driver's license, school records, on the electoral roll etc. but that wasn't good enough for them. All because they lost my medical records. Got kicked from one doctor to another who didn't care because I wasn't one of 'their' patients, and had to pay extra for not being properly treated - which resulted in permanent disability.

You think I could have avoided all that by claiming to be Maori? I think they would call me a liar...
 
angrysoba said:
Of course it is ridiculous. Fairy tales belong in religious studies classes, not in science classes.
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Or courses in folklore and mythlogy, but not science.
And I find the double standard at play here ridiculous. Exlcude the Genesis account from science courses, you have to exclude all other suprenatural accounts.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Define 'genetically/biologically closer'.
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Genetically all humans have a common ancestry.

Biologically all (normal) human males have a penis and a prostrate.

Don't ask me to define "normal", you know full well what I mean.
 
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angrysoba said:
Richard Dawkins is in town and has a few words to say about these "other ways of knowing" and he's not too happy....



Link
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I am not a Dawkins fan by any means....but he is right here. Sneaking a non science based "alternate way of knowing" creationist theory into a science class is no better then allowing "Intelligent Design" to be taught n a science class.No difference at all.
 
ynot said:
Give a single example of a bias against Maoris in health and other services.
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And what the hell does bias have to with teaching mythology as science anyway?
If they wanted to teach Maori legends as part of a requred course in New Zealand culture, fine. Just do not teach them as science.
 
dudalb said:
Or courses in folklore and mythlogy, but not science.
And I find the double standard at play here ridiculous. Exlcude the Genesis account from science courses, you have to exclude all other suprenatural accounts.
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There's no room for mythology in science, which why we aren't taught about what ignorant superstitious people in the past believed - people like Euclid and Aristotle and Galileo.

Science only deals in cold hard facts, not superstitious nonsense about everything living and non-living being connected by whakapapa, and the people of the land having a role in preserving the mauri, wāhi tapu and natural taonga in their area.

That's why we are taught the important stuff - like how energy is converted from one form to another, the chemistry of hydrocarbon distillation, the Carnot cycle, and that nice warm glow you get from burning fossil fuels.

Science isn't about being at one with Nature, it's about understanding how it works so we can exploit it until there's none left!
 
ynot said:
Genetically all humans have a common ancestry.

Biologically all (normal) human males have a penis and a prostrate.

Don't ask me to define "normal", you know full well what I mean.
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One of my friends told me last week about how his boss's teenage son was having an operation to adjust certain parts of his anatomy. If all goes well he will be losing a 'son' and gaining a daughter. Seems genetics isn't always as cut and dried as we think...
 
ynot said:
Give a single example of a bias against Maoris in health and other services.
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Experiences of Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand's public health system: a systematic review of two decades of published qualitative research
These 14 studies covering the past 18 years of Māori experiences of healthcare tell of an alienating public health system. Māori patients and their whānau consistently experience barriers between themselves and the health treatment they require (and are legally entitled to)... Experiences of coldness, micro-aggressions, discriminatory behaviour and shaming communicate a sense of ‘not-belonging’ and result in Māori patients and whānau disengaging and/or actively avoiding healthcare-related interactions as much as possible...

Dominant group members draw on negative stereotypes of Māori and misinterpret these survival tactics as failure to take responsibility for individual health. This form of structural violence is a tactic of hegemony and is perpetuated by dominant groups...

Our findings are consistent with international literature detailing health outcomes for Indigenous people in colonised nations.
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But hey, it can't be bias. They do it to some whites too!
 
Roger Ramjets said:
One of my friends told me last week about how his boss's teenage son was having an operation to adjust certain parts of his anatomy. If all goes well he will be losing a 'son' and gaining a daughter. Seems genetics isn't always as cut and dried as we think...
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Oh dear . . . how sad . . .

Do you seriously believe that a penis surgically operated on to kinda-sorta resemble a vagina magically turns a son in to a daughter? Can the "daughter" now get pregnant? Was the son’s prostate gland removed as well?

Genetics is as cut and dried as it is, a penis surgically modified to resemble a vagina is merely cut and incorrectly re-identified.
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
There's no room for mythology in science, which why we aren't taught about what ignorant superstitious people in the past believed - people like Euclid and Aristotle and Galileo.
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Just because Euclid and Aristotle and Galileo lived in more ignorant and superstitious times doesn’t mean they were totally ignorant and superstitious. We are taught the knowledge they scientifically discovered, despite them living in relatively ignorant and superstitious times.

Roger Ramjets said:
Science only deals in cold hard facts,
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Facts aren’t cold and hard to me. Why are you so emotionally against facts? Are you interested at all in what’s actually true?

Roger Ramjets said:
not superstitious nonsense about everything living and non-living being connected by whakapapa, and the people of the land having a role in preserving the mauri, wāhi tapu and natural taonga in their area.
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superstitious nonsense indeed!

The same people that hunted Moa to extinction, destroyed large areas of forests with fire, enslaved, raped and ate other Maoris they conquered in frequent bloody battles, didn’t have a written language or mathematics, didn’t invent a wheel or bow and arrow. A Neolithic (new stone age) people that didn’t have metal tools. The reality of Maori Wonderfulness isn’t so wonderful when the facts are revealed. Is that why you hate facts so much? Are you sure you’re not Maori?

Roger Ramjets said:
That's why we are taught the important stuff - like how energy is converted from one form to another, the chemistry of hydrocarbon distillation, the Carnot cycle, and that nice warm glow you get from burning fossil fuels.
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Take all your clothes off and walk naked to the nearest cave and live there without any science if that’s truly what you believe (don't light a fire, that's using science). You won’t of course because you would be as happy as anyone for that nice warm glow you get from burning fossil fuels if the alternative was dying of exposure.

Roger Ramjets said:
Science isn't about being at one with Nature, it's about understanding how it works so we can exploit it until there's none left!
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And you aren’t about being at “one with nature” either (whatever that means), except as a naïve, virtue signaling ideology.

ETA – You speak of science as if it’s a person or some sentient agent, it isn’t either. Science isn’t scientists and scientists aren’t science. Science isn’t responsible for how scientists and others use scientific findings and discoveries.
 
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ynot said:
Cry me a river of victim mentality tears. Not a single example of an actual bias against Maori given, merely feelings, beliefs and suspicions of bias.
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There won't be any, because you've hit the nail squarely on the head.

I was going to post a load of examples of the massive handouts there have been to Maori heath and education, none of which is making a dent in any of the problems, but instead I saw this story, which strikes at the real trouble with the idiotic idea that Maori need more of anything.

Every single act that aids Maori specifically concurrently stomps on the face of poor people, and that mostly means Pasifika.

(I also find it hilarious that the same Maori screeching demanding extra money for more of white man's medicine is also screeching about Maori "medicine" not being covered by handouts under the new legislation)
 
dudalb said:
And what the hell does bias have to with teaching mythology as science anyway?
If they wanted to teach Maori legends as part of a requred course in New Zealand culture, fine. Just do not teach them as science.
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Sad thing is they are, this is a preview of an NZ school textbook, the hosting website is that of a NZ educational publishing company.


The example page (124) is pure unadulterated creationism, just not Christian creationism.



https://scipad.co.nz/Digital previews/2022/BigIdeas1sciPAD/BigIdeas1.html#p=124
 
lionking said:
What you have posted doesn’t look like a science textbook. It looks more like an anthropology or comparative religion text. Can you elaborate.
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Go to page 1. It is called SciPad. It is "The essential workbook for New Zealand science students"

Then look at the contents page.

Then flip through it.

It is a science textbook.
 
angrysoba said:
Go to page 1. It is called SciPad. It is "The essential workbook for New Zealand science students"

Then look at the contents page.

Then flip through it.

It is a science textbook.
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Fair enough. I only looked at the page the link opened at. Looking at it more fully, it’s appalling and the people responsible should be sacked.
 
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lionking said:
Fair enough. I only looked at the page the link opened at. Looking at it more fully, it’s appalling and the people responsible should be sacked.
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Not necessarily.

It is in a section called Life and the Taiao. Apparently Taiao is a Maori word for "the natural world" or "the environment".

The section is mostly dedicated to how humans interact with the world, beginning with how we decide if something is alive or not, Linaeus's binomial classification system, and then comparisons about "traditional" and "traiditonal Maori" ways of seeing the world, with the former putting humans at the top of a heirachy or outside the natural world, while "traditional Maori" viewpoints seeing humans as one part interacting within the natural world. It's more of a case of the intersection between facts and values.

That doesn't seem to be a problem to me. There are live ethical and philosophical questions that scientists ought to wrestle with, in my opinion, and introducing them this way is not objectionable to me.

Now, as with any textbook, it may suffer from a certain reductionism. Maybe some Maori disputed this viewpoint over the centuries.

Anyway, I don't particularly like the concept of "other ways of knowing", but if this is all that's meant by it, then it's not really an issue in my oh-so-humble opinion.
 
Graham2001 said:
Sad thing is they are, this is a preview of an NZ school textbook, the hosting website is that of a NZ educational publishing company.
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It's just the start.

Maori are determined to turn NZ into a third world country.

I'm just saddened I won't be alive by the time they've achived their goal and belatedly realise the money well has run dry because they've destroyed it themselves.
 
The Atheist said:
It's just the start.

Maori are determined to turn NZ into a third world country.

I'm just saddened I won't be alive by the time they've achived their goal and belatedly realise the money well has run dry because they've destroyed it themselves.
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They'll no doubt just blame the remaining paheka.
 
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