I haven’t been convinced that Winston has found his issue this year that will propel NZF over the 5%.
Demanding Government Departments drop their Māori names is petty and demanding domestic gangs are redefined as terrorist groups so the military can be sent in is borderline insane, however, his critique of the new insane science curriculum however is a 5% threshold crosser…
School science curriculum: Teachers shocked at leaked draft – ‘Where’s the science?’
Science teachers are shocked that an advance version of the draft school science curriculum contains no mention of physics, chemistry or biology.
The so-called “fast draft” said science would be taught through four contexts – the Earth system, biodiversity, food, energy and water, and infectious diseases.
It was sent to just a few teachers for their feedback ahead of its release for consultation next month, but some were so worried by the content they leaked it to their peers.
…it doesn’t mention chemistry, biology or physics once yet mentions Mātauranga 55 times! It is education so dumbed down to give the precious little angels a cultural cuddle because they are so easily triggered these days they will get social anxiety’s if anything is too hard.
There is a real sense that our kids are not getting ahead educationally and that school has morphed into a baby sitting for our kids feelings.
Gen Xers and Boomers grew up in an educational philosophy that stated ‘Be the best you can be’. The idea was you were in a constant competition with yourself to perform with personal excellence in the field you did best in.
It unfortunately also used Bell Curve graph ruthlessness that ensured 50% failed regardless of whether they actually passed. That created generations of lost potential. Instead of reform the Belle Curve mentality, we went completely the other way with Tomorrow’s Schools in dumping all the responsibility onto local communities without any of the resourcing.
That manifested a completely different philosophy.
Millennials and under were brought up in an educational philosophy of ‘everyone is special’.
You can quickly see the problem.
Schools seem to have been given carte blanche to define educational achievement as they like with the most important factor being the feelings of the child.
It seems to have produced a brittle generation who require constant nurturing and cuddles rather than stoic self reliance and independence of critical thinking agency.
Removing the science from science so that it is dumber and easier so the precious little kids don’t feel dumb is only making us weaker.
Winston may have finally found his issue.
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Takeaway from the other day’s Productivity Seminar. Low decile schools lead the pack in Te Reo. Go figure.
Brilliant – A microcosm of where New Zealand is headed, if we don’t change track – a poor but culturally sensitive country.
So what do you mean? Are you saying those schools score higher in Te Reo? Could that be because Māori are overly represented in low decile schools and they may have had more exposure to the language?
Another bread and butter idea made with stale bread and rancid butter. I’m amazed that Chippie didn’t order this stupidity to be shredded. He should know it’s a total vote killer. Mind you, it’s patently clear that he has no clue what his govt departments and ministers are up to.
Funny that. This re-writing of the curriculum is being pushed by the same academics who are highly critical of National’s proposed rewriting of the curriculum.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/486649/analysis-teachers-need-a-lot-of-things-another-curriculum-rewrite-isn-t-one
I think we’re seeing just how weak Chippy is as leader: a poor candidate with poor policies. If he gets over the line, it will only be because the Tories are even weaker.
These curriculum changes are so extreme that it’s hard to imagine they would be accepted in any other country. Are there think tanks and N.G.O’s supporting this? Who is funding such organisations, if any? Is the country being used as a laboratory to test these ideas, prior to further deployment, as the Mont Pèlerin Society were doing in the 1970s/1980s?
The only effect is the country becomes even more of an international laughing stock.
Hooray for Haus.
Martyn – NZ First at 5% to 7% on election night, perhaps??
Largely agree Martyn. Though Winston didn’t engage in an “attack on education”, but an attack on dumbing down and indoctrination.
If Winston had his way, creationism and the “Young Earth Theory” would be taught in our schools. Either that or the kids would be writing on slates, and chanting their times tables.
Interesting. One seminal post-apocalypse story, featured the survivors as those who knew their tables, and could do long-division sums and algebra, and maybe geometry, in the absence of devices and modern communications as can I.
So Winston is a fundamentalist Christian? This is news to me, Millsy.
Everybody is a fundamentalist Christian according to mllisy even atheists.
Pope Punctilious 11 Mill sly may be confusing Winston with Coster, committed Christian silencer of women. Winston’s a racing riding fishing man, looks more Italian in a suit than any Popes do, as good a gift of tongues as any Holy Ghost, a trained mind, full head of hair, Scots mother. Looking good.
Always has been. The guy is steeped in it. He voted agains legalizing homosexuality and opening up marriage recognition to same sex couples.
And there will never be wage increases and healthcare or benefits ever again…you forgot! You are losing form.
And Winston will allow drilling and fracking and cracking and greenhouse emissions fore ever again…you forgot! You are losing form.
Yeah good! About time NZ started earning some money instead of plunging its citizens into endless debt.
Whilst Winston suggested none of that it would still be an improvement on what we have.
Bob the first, do you mean an improvement on what we currently have, or what is proposed in the draft report?
Both Peter.
Fucking hypocrite, so you like Winston now, you absolute moron.
nice handle bb
BB I’m always prepared to listen to what people say,what Winston said is true.
I’m not bone headed like some,wedded to a cause even if it’s stupid.
When you can produce eyewitnesses to macroevolution there will not be any reason for opposing views on origins, until then people should be free to understand what evidence we do have with whatever worldview suits them.
Bonnie, evolution is evolution, macro vs micro, it’s all on a continuum. You are simply repeating a creationist cannard regarding a distinction and proving you know jack shit about the subject.
There is a massive difference between a change in existing species (information) & how those species arrived in the first place. Your refusal to accept the difference shows that only a naturalist explanation is acceptable to you & that you are incapable of allowing others to see different explanations for the same evidence. All you need to do is create a living cell or even easier (?) bring a dead cell back to life & there would be no argument that naturalism provides a sound explanation for the origin of life.
Winston is struggling to find that ‘one issue’ that he normally does to get over the line. He has recently tried the vac hesitant crowd, but they reminded him that he was part of the govt that installed mandates to get people vaccinated, and he was silent then. He’s also tried he puapua but had been caught out because he did know what was going on, and even if he didn’t…why didn’t he?
Also this time he can’t escape the notion that he installed this govt, by opting for Jacinda in 2017, with National sitting in the mid 40s. The former NZ 1st voters I talk to say ‘never will I trust him again’. He’s even tried to distance himself from Labour by saying he can’t trust them, but who can trust him? Noting that his actually words are ‘i will never go with Labour…in its current guise’. So that means he still holds that door open.
He may get there…BTW he won’t win Northland. But he’s spent the last 40-odd years fooling voters, so he’s well versed in finding a cause.
But I think Acts big rise is where many NZ 1st voters have gone. At least they know where their vote will go, but with Winston you’ll never know.
BG. Our students trail the world in maths and science as usual, and our prisons house illiterates, its Ministers semi-coherent. If it takes somebody nobody likes to address these issues, then so what ? Luxon and the Nats are comfortable with the status quo, the Greens are bonkers, Maori racist, Labour lost, and the day wont come when the right person appears. That’s how all this has happened.
Interesting how everyone has a strong political views on this without seeing the document. Yes, with what comments and information are publicly available it would appear the traditional science building blocks are not there, but shouldn’t we each personally read the document before making unsupported political claims and assassinations?
I’m definately interested in reading it. Please post the link. Although according to Martyns story I won’t be able to read the words physics, chemistry, biology. Sounds like there will be earth system not including soil physics, bio diversity not incuding biology and infectious diseases not including cell chemistry. How does that work?
Did you not read the part where this is a ‘draft’ that has been ‘leaked’ by concerned teachers.
So sick of all the Maori centric bullshit being forced upon us. I did kapa haka as a (white) high school student. I supported Aotearoa being our official name. My favourite ever teacher was Maori and my auntie married a lovely Maori bloke who is like a second father to me. I preferred the Maori version of our national anthem. I’m not anti Maori at all but we have a situation now where woke academics and public servants in some sort of colonist grief therapy want to turn our country upside down. The curriculum doesn’t mention chemistry, biology or physics once yet mentions Mātauranga 55 times! WTF!? the majority of Maori wouldn’t even know what Mātauranga means.
Good article Martyn. Thank you.
You may well be right about it.
You give much food for thought.
We need to teach our children biblical principles, such as the belief that the Earth was created in six days. Most science classes teach that the sun is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium, but it’s not.
Each star that we see in the night sky represents the souls that are now in heaven!
Well done Winston Peters. The dumbing down of education has been progressive and effective, and the proof of the pudding is in the ignorami peopling the Beehive. The sexualising and confusing of children, especially via unproven genderID ideology does disturb parents, and rightly so.
winston peters is a crook. He’s a lap poodle to the dodgy as fuck leafy-suburbs urban rich. Let’s not forget that.
The Wine Box Inquiry.
Oh look! There goes winnie… Barking up the wrong tree in the wrong forest.
Yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap,yap !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winebox_Inquiry
Farmers. How about we think about where your money has been going for the last 140 years?
Specifically from about 1960.
The Paradise Papers.
“VICE News Tonight on HBO went behind the scenes from Day One of the Paradise Papers, with exclusive access to the investigative reporters working in secret across continents to expose an unseen world of offshore accounts, hidden money, and financial maneuvering at the highest levels of politics, business, and finance.”
https://youtu.be/r8mdNahdo4M
Education in NZ has been fucked over, experimented with and dumbed down by governments, special interest groups, pointy heads, the woke and extremist gender ideologues in a little over a generation.
This latest abomination is business as usual.
The results are in.
The children we are responsible for educating are dumber, less resilient, more fragile, incapable of original thought and expression and are completely unprepared to deal with the brutal world they are about to enter into as adults.
But then everybodys a winner. B+ for just turning up.
The Well said Jack,we can see by the comments on this site many examples of illiteracy in both English and mathematics.
You can add history and science to that.
Well we’ve seen what happened with the history curriculum why would we think they were going to stop there.
You mean actually teaching NZ history? Oh the horror.
whilst ignoring the Horror of the Musket Wars ! The curriculum is not an accurate account of NZ History It is racist propaganda designed to instill guilt in non- maori. The Ministry of pig ignorance and illiteracy( Ministry of Education) needs to be sued for defamation!!!
I’m with Winston on this one. There’s so much scientific illiteracy among our MPs. I think David Seymour may be the only one with a science background. The rest are all lawyers, arts, sociology, and they may or may not see what’s been going wrong here. If only they could appreciate the beauty behind the periodic table, and how stunningly brilliant to was of Mendeleev and others who figured this out in the 1800s, and what insight it offers to the understanding of matter. Or when they go on about EVs, if they actually understood what electricity is. If they could understand the simple beauty behind the standard formulae: F = ma, V = a x Ω, KE = 1/2mv sq, PE = mgh, and so on, that back in the day every high school kid doing physics knew about. Or if they actually knew what DNA stood for. I could go on.
And is it really true that “it doesn’t mention chemistry, biology or physics once yet mentions Mātauranga 55 times!”? This is beyond parody.
It must not happen, unless we want to produce a generation of scientific ignoramuses.
Yes Tom, it is beyond ridiculous that we are now being taught that maatauranga Maaori is “co-equal” with the periodic table, germ theory, and Newton’s laws of motion.
But to say so is to be branded a racist – and to risk being fired.
Pope Punctilious 11. Object to Bruce being told that having a penis doesn’t mean that he’s a boy and you’re labelled anti- transgender. Brenda idolising her princess ballet teacher means that Brenda’s probably a male. Quick,whip out the puberty blockers and make her into one. Bind her budding breasts and threaten mum and dad if they express any disquiet over the defeminisation of their vulnerable underage daughter based on damaging dogma.
Education is the answer to how to get people out of poverty but unfortunately they have been taken over by an out of touch group of public servants who want to use our young as lab rats for a social experiment.
Barn like classrooms were no one can study in a quite space just because it is cheap . Poor pay and conditions dumb down the teaching and lord the Maori language over everything to stop arguement by calling people racist who challenge the move.
And from this morning’s O.D.T.
“Welcome to the University of Stuff That’s Not Too Difficult.
“We hope you will make the most of your years here, and will feel fully supported by the inclusive curriculum developed by our government partner, the Ministry Through the Looking Glass.
“Now, we see you have enrolled in two of our most popular courses: ‘What Makes That Happen?’ and ‘Why Does It Matter?’. Excellent choices.
“Sorry, what’s that you say? You were looking for a paper in science? Oh, goodness me, no, nobody talks about that kind of old-fangled thing round here any more. This is a university of the present, not one rooted in the past, we’re proud to say.”
OK, you can wake up now. That was just a nightmare. Well, sort of.
This week we have learnt that moves are afoot to introduce a new school curriculum which skirts around the margins of science and what traditionally are considered the most difficult subjects, especially in the last years at secondary school.
Science teachers around the country are up in arms about an early draft of a school science curriculum which, alarmingly, fails to mention both the most basic of science disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, and concepts such as atoms.
Instead, the draft suggests pupils get their science knowledge for life by being put through 13 years of learning about four “contexts”, namely the Earth system; biodiversity; food, energy and water; and infectious diseases.
Yes, physics, chemistry and other subjects like maths and statistics can be difficult.
They are not for everyone.
But it is vital that young people are educated, to as high a level as they can cope with, in such complicated science.
We note with fervent hope that this is said to be only an early draft, sent to just a few teachers for comment and then leaked.
That implies there is still plenty of time for common sense to prevail.
When it comes to science, basic principles haven’t changed for many decades. Science is science is science.
There is not a lot of room for wokeism here.
I agree, if I get your drift TG. It appears things are no longer called what they used to be, but principles are principles. Hopefully those principles are embedded/ integrated into the four contexts: learning about earth system; biodiversity; food, energy and water; and infectious diseases seems a pretty good coverage of what’s important with a fair bit of scope for more.
Tom
We don’t your crap science stuff. It’s unimportant. What is important and what we need is a maori name for new curriculum and maori names for the four new pillars. Once we have those established we have ourselves a world class education system. Do you know any consultants that can help with this quest for the names? If you do, let us know so we can pay them 500,000 dollars to come up with 5 names.
Let’s all become dumb Maoris, dumb Pakeha and dumb Islanders and get colonised by Chinese and Indian engineers, doctors, computer scientists and other Stem. Meanwhile farmers will continue to pay our way.
Peters identified the target perfectly:
The Sociology and Education Dept/ghettos within our Universities, teacher training institutions and Ministries.
The University of Waikato is particularly noteworthy for turning out gobblegook speaking magical thinkers:
“……they will be teaching the chemistry and the physics that you need to engage with – the big issues of our time – and in order to engage with the excitement of science and the possibilities that science offers……”
-Cathy Buntting
RNZ Morning Report 5 July 2023
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018897157/new-way-to-teach-science-in-schools-proposed
A great opinion piece on this in The Standard. https://thestandard.org.nz/new-curriculum-science-to-be-taught-in-the-context-of-the-great-challenges-of-our-time/
There are some serious questions posed in this piece, ones that need answering before any sort of valid opinion could be formed. The hand wringing and political assassinations over a leaked draft is mind blowing; all of it is based on a few comments from a few who have seen the leaked document, and it would seem that there is a variety of views, not all negative.
Wiston Peters is doing no more than seizing on something in the hope that he can recover some votes. There is no indication that he has read the document; true Winston opportunism; interesting how many fall for it time and time again – did they learn nothing from his last performance in parliament.
Enjoyed this. Appears that more than ‘science’ is at stake. Keep with the old, the so-called reductionist way of seeing the world, or adopt an alternative view, supported by reorganizing curriculum content and the promise of joined-up learning.
Kinda reminds me of the ‘literacy wars’: basic skills or a whole-meaning approach. That too is a current focus at Ministry level.
Don’t know about your take on the new science curriculum, but aint Winnie at 77 still brilliant at slicing and dicing. Seymour is trying to cannibalize his votes, effectively. Winnie on an open plain would blow him away.
I seem to be blocked by him on Twitter, criticizing his dividing policies. Urging him to talk for the people, his other card. But he follows that old original divider, his guru, Muldoon. Psycho ego is the heart of all the best politicians.