Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; Climate Change, Biodiversity, Infectious Diseases and the Water Food and Energy nexus to be the new focus of New Zealand science education?
NZ Teachers Shocked Physics, Chemistry, Biology Missing From New Science Curriculum
By Rebecca Zhu
July 9, 2023Updated: July 9, 2023…
Michael Johnston, senior fellow of the think tank New Zealand Initiative, who was leaked a copy of this initial draft science curriculum by a concerned teacher, said the document was a blueprint for “accelerating the decline of science in New Zealand.”
The Epoch Times has not seen the document.
Mr. Johnston warned that if this draft went through, high school graduates wanting to pursue studies in physical sciences or engineering would need to be taught from scratch by their university.
“Central concepts in physics are absent. There is no mention of gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, mass or motion. Chemistry is likewise missing in action. There is nothing about atomic structure, the periodic table of the elements, compounds or molecular bonding,” he saidof the draft.
Rather than physics, chemistry, and biology, the document proposes teaching science through four contexts that appear to draw from fundamental principles of the United Nation’s Agenda 21: climate change, biodiversity, infectious diseases, and the water, food, and energy nexus.
Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/nz-teachers-shocked-physics-chemistry-biology-missing-from-new-science-curriculum_5383390.html
The New Zealand Education Department claims these concerns are all a big misunderstanding;
… Cathy Buntting co-wrote the draft curriculum and told Newshub it’s about modernising the curriculum.
“It’s proposing to teach those subjects differently, not operating in the silos that have been traditionally the structure of science education in secondary schools.”
The Ministry of Education said in a statement any speculation on the curriculum is premature, as this is a very early draft.
A proper draft document will go out for wider feedback in August and will give educators time to have their say and make changes. …
Read more: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/07/senior-research-follow-warns-universities-will-need-to-teach-science-from-scratch-if-new-curriculum-implemented.html
I can’t help thinking subordinating basic science training to UN agenda talking points is not going to help New Zealand students reach their full potential.
When building a new prototype device or software application for a client, fulfilling the client specification requires knowing where the electrons go and what path they take, not how they feel about their journey.
This is one way to indoctrinate students in the supposed ‘benefits” of green societies. By eliminating the hard sciences, it will be easier for leftist-leaning school curriculum planners to convince students to accept the revised, though faulty, agendas.
Climate Jugend and Green Shirts. You have to get them when they are young to create your perfect Zombie.
Dropping Hard Sciences from the curriculum is being done because it’s too Hard for the softies they wand to gradiate from skool
There are way too many college graduates now, let alone high school graduates, who do not get the Penn and Teller fake petition to ban DiHydrogenMonOxide.
I think Education should be a disqualifying major for actually teaching.
I have to concur, Tom. Some 60 years ago when I was at university, the Department of Education was the school of last resort. If you were having trouble anywhere else you could always transfer there and get a degree. Even now, education “science” is the only field I know of where proposals for content and methods can be broadly implemented with absolutely no requirement for verification and/or field testing, i.e., sort of a ‘try it everywhere and see if it works’ attitude.
I got a Psych degree in the mid 1970’s, and some of the references overlapped with Education. No matter how sloppy Psych was, Education seemed written at a remedial level.
A bit like what is going on all over the World these days.. throw a bunch of cr*p against the wall, to see what sticks (what folks swallow)
A new periodic table of lies is all there is.
You mean how they periodically change the dates of expired “tipping points”?
Teaching science as very abbreviateed “sciency” topics like environmentalism, or the water food energy nexus, or, heaven forbid, public health is the approach in grades K-5.
Public health will be about eliminating the useless eaters. The first thing to implant in that young brain is that ‘We’ are to many for this planet.
“too” lol
If you want to be both amused and depressed by the uneducated student class of today, take a look at this –
Horrifying. They had me on the Kardashian question though
I’d hate to guess where they put their tooth brush.
That was a trick question.
Not even the Kardashians know how many Kardashians there are.
EW, so proud of you for that admission, you have gone WAY up in my estimation.
me, too. I struggled, but I was finally able to answer the ‘three countries’ question.
Just remember, it’s the fault of Boomers that these people can’t afford houses.
I always wondered how AOC got elected. Mystery solved!
Don’t stop there. Down with mathematics!
Hey! Mathematics has feelings too.
Mathematics self-identifies as poetry
Make no mistake, they are after math’s too. If they can get you to say 2 + 2 = 5, and even more so if they can get you to believe it, you are lost.
Live not by lies!
I have always liked that quote. To be exact.. (since I first read it)
” A proper draft document will go out for wider feedback in August and will give educators time to have their say and make changes. …” Yeah right. Doublespeak for we will do it our way and you will lump it or like it. The NZ government gives only lip service to consultation. The decisions are already made. Warmunists they are.
Not surprising. That’s the way to ensure an agenda persists even after the perpetrators die. This probably won’t be limited to New Zealand and as a result, the world will be set back centuries.
Well, that is the plan.
Setting us back 2 centuries means eliminating 7 billion people.
They aren’t even coy about it.
Climate Cargo Cult
There are still tribes in PNG waiting fr their slice of the old WWII Cargo Cult to eventuate.
Seem we will be waiting decades for the “Climate Cargo Cult” to appear and deliver if ever…..
Climate Cargo Cult Party
The fact this proposal even made it into the first draft is a clear sign of their intention
A known political ploy is to leak an extreme draft of something the public won’t like and will unpopular then release a watered down version. The watered down version is accepted with releif, and can gradually be modified to the original and only a few notice
Wait till they remove all the amazing you tube videos on maths, physics and chemistry from the Internet…
I wonder how long it will be before “Feminist Glaciology” becomes a part of the curriculum.
This is just standpoint epistemology and proselytizing for the “Woke” religion. Their real aim is to indoctrinate a generation of students who not only do not know any hard science, but are utterly incapable of imagining it. The mere suggestion of empirical truth will cause them to have a melt down of some degree and require pop corn and therapy puppies.
It won’t. The new, new woke is fully signed up to trans rights at the expense of women’s rights. They’ll only be happy by eliminating women as a group entirely and feminists/feminism in particular. Trans ideology has been hijacked by cross-dressers and fetishists, and is becoming a dark cult of fanatics.
You would get the uncontested basics down first. Then you enrich the curriculum in whatever way you feel necessary.
The minister is either lying or incompetent.
Probably both.
Those subject matters are perfectly suited for a supplier of sheep meat to China.
NZ knows their colonial place.
Why worry..
What is suggested is possibly all the supposed science teachers are able to actually teach.
Teacher training is on the way down hill, and so is their ability to really teach any topic.
Most teachers have ‘lesson plans’ and pre printed material. No think just regurgitate junk.
In my day teaches who taught physics chemistry and mathematics had a degree I the topic besides their teaching degree. They taught the material with little or no notes because they knew their subject.
Now teachers popping out of the sausage machine have a sort of teaching degree with some thing/topic slightly added.
“not operating in the silos”
These Marxist totalitarians give themselves away every time; the mention of “silos” in anything but an agricultural ( or ICBM…) context tells me all I need to know. Only way to defeat these ……zealots….is to home school thereby depriving them of their “tinder”…
“It’s proposing to teach those subjects differently, not operating in
the silos that have been traditionally the structure of science
education in secondary schools.”
The “silos” and traditional structures are there in part to keep politics and activism out of the teaching of hard science. So she’s admitting to a “modern” attempt to corrupt science. The move is from empirical to emotional.
“It’s proposing to teach those subjects differently, not operating in the silos that have been traditionally the structure of science education in secondary schools.”
Silos? But that’s the real world of science. If the high school students don’t realize those silos serve a purpose they’ll never be able study real science in college. Even those students who aren’t going to college need to understand what real science is all about -specialization that allows deeper understanding. It’s OK for philosophy majors to blur the distinctions after they’ve taken several real science courses. It’s the job of philosophy to try understanding how the sciences all relate to each other and everything else.
Leftists never could deal with tough subjects like the hard sciences.
It’s hardly surprising that they would get rid of them as soon as they had the chance.
The left does not want an educated society, they want people to be ignorant and easily led.
It’s pretty obvious the objective is to raise a generation or two of ‘Red Guard’/’Brown Shirts’ to help them, the elite, gain world domination through either the U.N. or similar. As far as they are concerned the proletariat (e.g. in the U.S., those in fly over country) are too stupid to govern themselves and/or deal with the critical problems of today, e.g. those such as over-population, sustainability, consumerism, capitalism, etc. It’s going to take a fundamental transformation of society, a cultural revolution, to properly realocate the powers necessary to deal with those problems.
My first reading of the headline, I thought it said “Daft”… oh, wait!
I noticed a spelling mistake in “A proper draft document“, should read “A proper daft document”