| New Zealander here, not that it really matters.* It appears that "...a proposal by a government working group that schools should give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom" is a misrepresentation. The author of this article has taken up this issue because it appears to fit a political hobby horse of his. One might read this article and conclude that The Woke Have Done It Again, they have Defied Science and Suggested that Mythology is Just As Important As Darwin. However, one of the authors of the government working group material has also commented publicly about this and her take casts things in a slightly different light: "The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao. To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics (May, 2021)."[1] Are those crazy (left-wing, out of touch, 'woke') government working groups really Denying Science? Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas? [1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1... * (Edit: actually, I thought about it, and I decided that it does matter: I'm not really comfortable with our politics, which are quite different from UK/US politics, being used for grist in northern culture-war mills.) |
>Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas?
Well, wouldn't the existence of the panel lend some weight to their claims they are being cancelled? I mean really, what did the guy that was so bad that the university decided it needed to take disciplinary action? He published a letter, and it was a pretty respectful letter at that. Is he being investigated for taking someone out of context?