OPINION
John Porter
With Critical Race Theory (CRT), we face a doctrine deeply embedded for decades with its genesis in Marxism.
I have written earlier that we should all have serious concerns about the incremental creep of CRT into our lives and also into our country’s culture and governance.
The 20th century spawned a number of Marxist-style revolutions with disastrous consequences for the populace. Socialist governments, through gulags, show trials, executions, and mass starvations in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and Cuba dispensed death and despair to their citizens, racking up a body count of millions. Marx’s concepts unleashed some of mankind’s darkest brutalities.
When Marxist Western academics, scholars and intellectuals finally acknowledged and recoiled from these atrocities, they conveniently adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest that was emerging, especially in the USA, in the 1960s. Abandoning Marxism’s economic opposition to capitalists, they substituted race for class and aimed to create a new revolutionary direction, focusing on and emphasising the deprived and dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
As experts in language construction, these emerging Critical Race Theorists realised that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. It was far easier to garner support and sympathy by promoting the concept of equity. Not only because equity is easily confused with the Western world’s principle of equality but also because it sounds non-threatening and righteous.
CRT supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including “equity”, “social justice”, “collective guilt”, “diversity and inclusion” and “culturally responsive education”.
To stem this tide destroying honesty and integrity, we need to confront and reject CRT because it is invasive, corrosive and ruins everything it touches: social justice, environmentalism, feminism, education, culture, and Christianity.
But how to counter CRT? And, is this really possible given that its roots have been allowed to grow deeply in society?
In my earlier article, I stated CRT has grown out of academia. Here is a classic example of an academic’s warped thinking and, more worryingly, what he is teaching students.
In 2020 Dylan Asafo, a lecturer at Auckland Law School, wrote: “Our criminal justice system, especially our policing structures and prison institutions, have always been designed to oppress Maori, as well as other groups of colour. Our nation’s history tells us how police and prisons were key tools of colonisation in enabling the mass theft of Maori land and the installation of the white supremacist system of capitalism to promote the socioeconomic domination of white settlers.”
Since this corrosive ideology originated in academia, it is to education we must direct our primary focus to prevent further pollution of young minds. Take the fight back to academia and education themselves!
First and foremost, we must demand quality teachers and truth and transparency in the school curriculum.
Young minds are being filled with warped views of our country’s history through comic books that lack objectivity and are skewed to present the Treaty of Waitangi from a Maori activist’s viewpoint. These so-called “learning tools” clearly aim to influence young people’s knowledge and thinking.
As the accuracy of the content can be disputed, this could be described as racially biased and as a form of brainwashing. In short, it is propaganda!
A high-quality education ensures a bright future for our youth and, therefore, our country. The range of individual and social benefits bestowed by education is immense. It is proven time and again that adults with higher literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills report better health, greater social and political competence. Conversely, failure in primary and secondary school only serves to limit the prospects of young adults. The linkage between low academic achievement and unemployment makes this glaringly obvious.
Do we need DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) learning in schools?
Educational experts insist that we do, saying, “Teaching needs to be responsive to diversity within ethnic groups and we also need to recognise the diversity within individual students influenced by intersections of gender.”
As we know, Gender Diversity is playing an ever-increasing role in our education system.
A Ministry of Education publication on RELATIONSHIPS and SEXUALITY EDUCATION states –
- school rolls and records use each person’s name, gender, and pronoun of choice
- all school forms allow for genders in addition to male or female (eg, gender diverse, non-binary, takatapui)
- Trans, non-binary, and intersex akonga should be able to choose a toilet and changing room that matches their gender identity. Trans girls should be able to use the female toilets if they so prefer.
- School uniform policies are reviewed so that all uniforms are inclusive and don’t reinforce outdated, Eurocentric, and exclusionary notions of gender.
Why do we have diversity learning in schools? Again, the so-called experts contend our education system was built on a ‘one size fits all’ model and is now not fit for purpose.
I suggest the promotion of Civics Knowledge has far greater importance than Gender Diversity.
There is a massive disconnect between the populace’s engagement in politics and the importance of casting a vote – as witnessed by only 42% of all eligible voters voting in the 2022 Local Body elections. Compare that with 53% in 1998 and 49% in 2010.
Our Action Stations, a people powered campaign platform, is running a petition titled “Make Civics Education a Core Subject in All New Zealand Secondary Schools.”
They state “In New Zealand, we have less social cohesion, lowering levels of trust in the government and lowering voter turnout rates.
“We believe it requires implementing education and training within schools so young people have the ability to learn before they are able to actively engage and understand how decisions are made. We believe this is one crucial action that will work towards a more democratic society.
“We want every person to have the tools and knowledge to vote, make informed decisions and effect change.”
Next, we must look at how and who we need to recruit as new teachers. There needs to be alternatives available to people entering teaching – alternatives that do not include Critical Pedagogy.
Over the last decade, this ideology has turned our school system into an experiment in child-centred control.
Having children at the centre of decisions about their learning has only diluted subject knowledge. Erroneously, teachers have been told that they are at their most professional when they let their students lead.
Advocates of Critical Pedagogy have insisted that teachers must become learners alongside their students, as well as “students of their students”. Teachers must become experts beyond their field of knowledge, and immerse themselves in the culture, customs, and lived experiences of their students.
Then “the who” we need to recruit must be addressed. Valuing and rewarding the excellent influencers of young minds is vitally important. In 2014, the Key Government introduced the Investing in Educational Success Initiative, designed to lift achievement through incentives for teachers and principals. The IES received $359 million over the first four years and $155 million annually after that.
But only $26 million of that pot had been allocated by 2017! That left a whopping $333 million un-spent with only one financial year left! A thoroughly worthwhile project just left to drift and decay.
Finally, school boards. The board’s role is to oversee the governance of its school and to ensure that everything that needs to be done gets done – legally, ethically, and as well as possible in the best interests of its students.
If CRT ( or any other agenda) annoys parents then they must become active in school governance.
All too often apathy will prevail and it is expected that “Someone Else” will take up the cudgels.
Parents need to access and engage in the school board decision-making process, especially around curricula.
The board can ensure fact-based history, true science and pure mathematics are central in the curriculum.
School boards should demand a transparent curriculum, the provision of key lessons such as those mentioned above, plus (as stated earlier) the teaching of a civics course that creates a civil society where everyone, regardless of background or skin colour, can pursue a fruitful life.
Decisions about new education models are being made by a Ministry of Education that follows unscientific advice and is in thrall of a defective philosophy. Education is awash with flawed ideology, contradictions and ethnic bias.
We have also heard of school children who have been asked to acknowledge their ‘white privilege’ in the classroom.
What body is giving the Ministry of Education this sort of advice? The NZ Council for Educational Research.
They play a huge part in providing the Education Ministry with new or refreshed curriculum.
Note their five-year plan:
- Decolonising education
- Upholding mana Maori, whakamana Maori
- Improving equity for akonga and equity in education
- Influencing the future of education.
And their chief ‘researcher’ is…Rose Hipkins, mother of Chris.
It is intriguing that, in a supposedly self-managed and decentralised school system, the government manages the most important asset in education – namely teachers. Principals with a successful record of school management should be rewarded with more authority to plan their teaching resources to best suit their local needs.
If New Zealand is to stay true to its autonomous education system, we must take the power away from the hands of bureaucrats and teacher representatives and hand it to those leading the schools.