Education matters to me: Key insights: a starting point for the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities. New Zealand School Trustees Association, and Office of the Children’s Commissioner, January 2018.
The news media has been full of reports on this study, purportedly showing that ‘racism’ in New Zealand schools is endemic, that non-white students are subjected to the intrinsic white racism of teachers, and that feelings of alienation and failure are perpetrated by the racist school system. Given the liberal-left propensity of teachers, and the politically correct atmosphere that pervades the education system, such claims are not credible. The report is the result of a survey of schoolchildren undertaken both face to face and via the internet, with the premise that children must be listened to in regard to how they want to be educated, as mandated by the Government’s commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993. (Report, page 4).
By reading the report rather than the skewered angle of the news media, one finds that although the authors were predisposed to seek out grievances, and that the nature of the survey encouraged respondents towards complaint, 93% found their school experience to be either ‘okay’ or enjoyable. The authors are not however distracted by this inconvenience.
Obfuscation
The authors are looking for a rationalisation to advance liberalism in the education system; hence negativity is emphasised, and the 93% satisfaction rate becomes irrelevant. For the media, headlines stating 93% of students are happy with their school life does not convey the same drama as claiming that children are downtrodden by ‘racist’ teachers. As one would expect from a report that proceeds from a liberal agenda, with predetermined conclusions, there are obfuscated areas. For example, a Maori student refers to his principal displaying graphs showing they were failing as an ethnic group, and that this engendered feelings of inadequacy. The media reports and the authors convey the impression that a White principal is inculcating feelings of inferiority among Maori children. However, the report states that this student comes from an ‘alternative’ education background. It seems likely that this principal is not a ‘white racist’ but rather the head of a Maori education institution and that he is chastising the children of his race for failing.
White alienation?
The grievances largely express feelings that children are not being listened to by teachers, not being understood, not be catered to as individuals, while conversely also not being catered to as races. ‘Pasifica’, a trans-ethnic cluster that does not exist in real communities, but is contrived to give a large proportion of New Zealand’s non-white population a sense of unity vis-a-vis Whites, whose own collective identity is discouraged, to say the least, is focused on in the quest to find racism. No effort seems to have been made to determine the extent of anxiety felt by White children when they are taught that their pioneer forebears were rampaging exploiters and expropriators. It would be interesting to undertake a survey of White children as to how they feel when their class is being taught, for example, a bogus history of Parihaka.
Anecdotally, I have been told of how migrant girls of Afrikaner origin were singled out at a college (Lower North Island) because of their accent and tidiness of dress in a largely Maori school. A survey on the experiences of Afrikaner migrant children might provide interesting material, but not of the type desired by the educational establishment, media and United Nations Organisation.
Compulsory Maori
Among the measures this report is floating, with the use of several quotes from Maori children, is for compulsory Maori studies for all, stating ‘Many rangatahi and tamariki Māori shared with us that they wished all people could understand and talk te reo Māori. This view was shared by rangatahi who are fluent or near fluent in speaking te reo. For tamariki and rangatahi in immersion-speaking kura kaupapa Māori, some feel that they are treated as outsiders for speaking te reo in public and in schools, as most students do not speak or know te reo Māori’. (Page 15).
‘Taha Maori’, or the ‘Maori Dimension’, as it was called, was mandated as long ago as the Lange Labour Government of the 1980s. Like all dogmas that are shown to be failures, the response is not that the dogma might be flawed but that it is not being enforced adequately. Given the bogus nature of egalitarian doctrines, repression and compulsion increase, and Whitey will always be at fault; the perennial scapegoat. Hence the media reports of ‘White racism’ in schools while this report itself should rather indicate that it is multiculturalist expectations that are causing frustrations among children:
‘Some Māori who cannot speak te reo, shared how they felt embarrassed and uncomfortable when people speak to them in te reo Māori, as they cannot understand it. They can sometimes feel pressured by teachers if they are expected to know tikanga and other aspects of their culture or reo. We have heard from children and young people that this can be a disempowering experience for young Māori who are disconnected from their cultural identity and expected to speak on behalf of their culture’. (Page 15).
White guilt complex: a control mechanism
The above quote is cited from a student at an ‘alternative education system’. The report uses semantics to buttress White guilt even here: Those Maori who do know their heritage feel affronted by the lack of such recognition in more mainstream schooling. (Page 15).
Again it is non-win for Whitey. White children are being subjected to a guilt complex within the education system but their sensibilities will not be considered. This report is evidence of that. Instilling self-guilt is a control mechanism that has been used both by cults and by communist states. It is called self-criticism and is exercised in a group context. It is a method of brainwashing to instil obedience by deconstructing the individual.
Induced neurosis among non-white children
A ‘Samoan secondary school student’ is quoted: ‘What also puts me off are the teachers telling me to give up saying I am not going to pass level 3 without even checking my credits. I sense stereotypes in my teacher’s eyes and gestures and how they act towards me makes me feel like leaving’. (Page 18). Are his teachers ‘telling’ him he is going to fail, or has he been inculcated with the perception that White teachers are inherently biased towards him, which has him seeing race bias in teachers’ eyes and gestures? Is the promotion of White guilt having an unforeseen side-effect in creating paranoia among non-white students? Another student refers to ‘racist people [who] don’t realise they are racist’. Maori and ‘Pasifika’ students claim to ‘feeling dumb’ due to the attitudes of their teachers. These paranoid assumptions suggest non-white students are being victimised by an education system steeped in the zeal to demonise Whites. They have been taught that they are victimised by a White system. ‘’Because we’re Māoris and the teacher might think we’re dumb’ (Page 20), a Maori student supposedly claims.
Nonetheless it seems that children by and large did not complain of ‘racism’. This is explained by large element of respondents who are European. (Page 19). Therefore, those who did complain of racism are the focus.
‘Dominant culture’
The premise of this report is an attack on the ‘dominant culture’: ‘We heard about the dominant culture for most schools in New Zealand. For young people who come from different cultural backgrounds, they are constantly searching to see themselves reflected in the culture of their educational environment’. (Page 21). Well and good. Young people need ‘cultural identity’, as the report states. Agreed. But someone’s ‘identity’ is apparently another’s oppression. In New Zealand the European culture is dominant because the education system is still based – albeit decreasingly – on teaching the European (Western) concepts of empirical science, rather than explanations of how Maui slowed the sun.
The multicultural expectation is for there to be a chaotic and enforced melting pot of cultures that at best can only be imparted on a superficial level. Hence we can throw sticks to reach other, learn some Maori phrases, and do some dances, but ultimately the experience cannot be integrated but rather fracture the individual personality. The multiculturalists need to study Carl Jung rather than Karl Marx.
Generation of the weak
Other expectations from students in general are that school should be warm and fuzzy places. (‘Section 3: Relations mean everything to me’). The attitudes suggest that a generation of weaklings is the goal of the education system; that one should not have to prepare for any type of struggle. How this is assimilated into the basic warrior characteristics of Maori, Samoan and other Polynesian cultures, without totally bastardising those cultures, and suppressing their ethos, is not explained. Is this because the aim is to pacify Maoris and Samoans, like Whites have been pacified? Again, we come back to the premise that such cultures can only be taught at a most superficial level.
The common outlook that liberalism is implanting is not a respect for the inner meaning of Maori, Samoan, Chinese, African, or Western, which cannot adequately be imparted by such a system, but the instant gratification of stunted emotions, or even of narcissism, where challenges cannot be faced with maturity. Grievances are nurtured, sleights remembered.
Paradoxically, the mentality is that of liberalism as a manifestation of the West in its epoch of degeneration. It is Western liberalism that is the ‘dominant culture’. There is not, and cannot be, any genuine appreciation of sundry cultures, when the liberal agenda is to force everyone into a melting pot and convey common liberal civic values which are ultimately Western, albeit the values of the Western culture in an epoch of decay. (Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations; Spengler The Decline of The West). Maori, ‘Pasifika’ and African cultures have not passed through any such epoch. The West’s liberalism is unknown among them.
The liberal declares the intent to provide all children (other than Whites) with a feeling of ‘identity’, yet that identity is based on the universalisation of Western liberalism, where the goal is the spawning of a generation without any deep roots in any culture; because the liberal sees culture in superficial terms, where it can be adopted or discarded like a fashion accessory. Are those Maori and ‘Pasifika’ who whine about their feelings expressing their actual racial temperaments shaped over generations, or are they expressing Western liberal doctrines of grievance and self-pity that have been inculcated into them by their teachers?
This report is urging an increase in racial and cultural hotchpotch in schools by urging the intermingling of sundry cultures and languages as if these – the products of generations of being shaped by unique and distant ecological niches and passed along epigenetically for centuries, can be imposed on all and sundry at the whim of liberal ideologues without causing injury to those forced into this experiment in social engineering. What has been lacking in the education system for several generations is the inculcation of resilience.
Dumbing down
The report states: ‘Children and young people told us that they would be more likely to engage if they learned about things relevant to their lives. One young person used the example of history – she has learned about World War II, but not the New Zealand Wars, she wants to know about Parihaka, not Guy Fawkes. Her music lessons are about composers from the 18th century, rather than the music that she connects with and has an interest in’. (Page 29).
While the teaching of the Land Wars is presently an option exercised by school boards, albeit one that we can soon expect to become compulsory, it is false to say that Parihaka is not taught. ( ‘New resource about history of Parihaka for schools’, https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/69983708/new-resource-about-history-of-parihaka-developed-for-schools). What is taught is biased against Whites, and one assumes would make many White children self-conscious and guilt ridden, but such questions are not asked. There is only one book on Parihaka that exposes Te Whiti and Tohu for what they were, and the character of their movement and the Parihaka settlement, and it is by this writer (The Parihaka Cult). Further, the Treaty of Waitangi is the basis of the New Zealand curriculum (See: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Principles/Treaty-of-Waitangi/Tools). As for music, what is wanted is hip-hop, rap, MTV excrescence, and the lowering of whatever remnant of cultural standards remain. Is there not enough of this inanity in the lives of children? If not, fine, let Maori, Samoan, et al focus on that; but how is this part of any heritage of White children? Where will the next generation of orchestral musicians come from, or is such music too elitist?
No such report would be complete without addressing the latest liberal fad: transgenderism or unisex. One of the few White children quoted is ‘non-binary’ (sic): ‘I don’t feel comfortable in the gendered uniform … I think mufti would be preferred, because everyone would be comfortable, but if a uniform is required have a non-gendered one. I think our principal is old fashioned with this stuff, and LGBTQ+ stuff in general, because even the formal only just allowed same sex couples. We need to catch up’. (Page 36). Catch up to what? To the West’s road of self-destruction, like prior civilisations, in the name of a fictional ‘progress’? This is yet another contrived fad that is creating a nebulous mass humanity in the name of a bogus ‘individuality’. What kind of identity is it that cannot even maintain gender differentiation, but seeks its replacement with something called ‘unisex’? It is neither one thing nor another. It another factor in the creation of a humanoid globule, as undifferentiated as primal slime. Other than that, uniforms per se are criticised, as one might expect, as a final vestige of traditional discipline; as a lack of free choice.
Expect further changes in the next few years throughout the education system; changes according to United Nations universalistic doctrines designed to socially and culturally engineer children into a nebulous mass robbed of real identity in the name of a bogus ‘identity’, to become ‘world citizens’. (K R Bolton)