Place—or Race?—in Education
Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland has enshrined “place” in education in a top-down and almost entirely unargued-for way. “Place” appears to be a cover for race: an attempt at social justice and possibly an attempt to lift Māori performance in the university and society. The roots of this shift go back to 2022, when a broad curriculum “transformation” was proposed. The elements dealing with “place” were initially given great prominence. They promoted idealized, romanticized, and essentialized Māori ways of thinking and attempted to instil a narrow and fixed interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Although the university has since back-tracked and watered down much of the language used in public-facing documents, the underlying messaging around place, Māori ways of thinking and te Tiriti o Waitangi appear to be intact.
In 2022 the university management consulted with staff and students about a Curriculum Framework Transformation project that would roll out across the whole university. How genuine the consultation was remains contested. A major thrust of the proposed changes it would lead to was a compulsory WTR (Waipapa Taumata Rau) course at the introductory level in all faculties which would foreground “place” in education. It was described as transformative, but argued for in only the vaguest of generalities.
The WTR course ran into immediate problems, with criticisms coming from inside and outside the university. Some staff objected to the top-down design and implementation of this new course, which included a common core of material developed centrally and pushed to the different versions taught by different faculties. The student verdict, when it was rolled out in 2025 as a compulsory course for all commencing undergraduates, was markedly negative. The university was forced into a crisis review and partial climbdown: the course would no longer be required for all undergraduates. But it remains a requirement for all in pathways for “accredited programmes” such as medicine, engineering and education. The current description of the WTR courses as a suite emphasizes their general study skills component. “Place”, however, remains prominent in the course descriptions: “This course considers how knowledge of place enhances your learning, the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how knowledge systems frame understanding.”
What is the rationale for this emphasis on place? In June 2022, I submitted the following concerns as part of the formal consultation process that brought in the curriculum transformation. There has been no attempt by the university to respond to the substance of these concerns.
Submission: CFT Consultation
The CFT [Curriculum Framework Transformation] consultation document offers as its rationale only “Expectations of what a university education should be and do are changing” (p. 1), but offers no evidence of what these changing expectations are, or whether they are warranted, other than noting increasing digitization and the impact of Covid-19.
When there is so little and so vague an explicit rationale driving CFT, one wonders: is there some other rationale?
Place
The CFT document declares that its “taumata or transformational principles” “arise from and return to place” (p.1) and that “The curriculum will provide a foundational understanding for all students of what it means to study at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, and how place shapes our educational experience, through a ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ foundational course” (p. 7).
“Place” throughout the CFT document seems merely a strategic rhetorical evasion. A consideration of “place” in relation to Tāmaki Makarau could include, for instance:
- geology, the country as a sunken continent, or the processes of uplift, erosion, and volcanism that formed the isthmus; or
- botany, the relationship between the indigenous flora of Aotearoa and the rest of Australasia and of South America; or
- zoology, the unique evolutionary radiation of birds in Aotearoa in the absence of terrestrial land mammals; or
- geography, the large percentage of East, South-East and South Asians now living in the city.
Image by AR on Unsplash
It could include, for that matter, in
- history, the burning off of much of the land’s forest cover by early Māori, and the extinction of the moa in the centuries after Māori arrived, or the tribal battles for territory between different iwi within the isthmus that had largely depopulated it by the 1830s, or the urban influx since 1950 of formerly rural Māori.
“Place” as a concept related to this university could be the topic of open inquiry. But that does not seem what is proposed.
Instead what appears to be proposed is an idealized, romanticized ethno-nationalist ideology of Māori as uniquely spiritually connected to this place and without the fallibility and limitations every human group has shown.
Knowledge, Open Inquiry and Universities
The first principle of universities is the discovery and dissemination of knowledge through open inquiry.
The first principle of CFT is the “commitment to mātauranga Māori, kaupapa Māori pedagogies, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and accountabilities” (p. 7), which is elaborated thus: “Our curriculum and teaching model will reflect the value and recognition that Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland accords to Māori knowledges and ways of knowing, and the relationality of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As a knowledge institution we have the responsibility and honour to develop, nourish and protect the Māori-led revitalisation of mātauranga.”
“Protect” here is in direct conflict with the first principle of universities.
Knowledge in a university is not protected, although it is preserved. Rather, it is contested. Science (in the broad sense that includes all serious scholarship, including that of the humanities and the social sciences) grows by challenging with argument and evidence what has been thought to be known, and learning where what we thought we knew has been mistaken, incomplete, or inadequate. Science in this sense actually reflects a position of humility and equality: no one can be sure of possessing the truth; anyone can propose ideas, and anyone can challenge them.
Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland by its very nature has a commitment to preserving knowledge, whether of Māori or any other traditions those working here have an interest in. But it must also be committed to challenging what is thought to be known, because this may err (we are all fallible), as it is usually discovered to do when inquiry pushes hard enough.
It is proposed that the obligatory foundational course “will provide Māori-focused curriculum content and Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and accountabilities and will ensure all students have the relevant knowledges of place to enhance their learning” (Recommendation 5).
Nothing in the language in which Te Tiriti o Waitangi is introduced reflects the fact that interpretations of its history, texts, intentions, subsequent application and present implications are genuinely contestable. The implication is clear: that despite Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland having hitherto been a place of open inquiry, open inquiry about Te Tiriti will not be allowed: “the principles and accountabilities” are ideologically predetermined and prescribed.
And nothing in the way mātauranga Māori has recently been introduced into the university suggests that the foundation courses will be taught in a manner that invites or encourages the open inquiry that drives universities and discoveries. To judge by practices already in operation, the course will consist of ideological indoctrination, with no room for dissent—which will be branded racist, harmful, and dangerous—and even with enforced re-education reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution.
Or to take a perhaps closer parallel, the advancement of an idealised Hindutva in the Indian education system over the last twenty years: another ethno-nationalistic move limiting free inquiry and serving the supposed interests of one creed over other kinds of believers, like that country’s many Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and others (see Meera Nanda’s discussion here and here).
The Curriculum Structure Paper includes (p. 5) the “assumption” that “including te ao Māori in programmes, teaching and student experience will appeal to existing student markets whilst growing appeal to Māori and Pacific students, international students and lifelong learners.” An open inquiry into place in Tāmaki Makarau might indeed have appeal; but indoctrination, while it may convince or cow some, is more likely to generate outward adherence to officially-proclaimed doctrine and inner resentment at the loss of intellectual freedom, openness, and the right to dissent. This is no more likely to draw international students or staff or to appeal to local students of whatever cultural origin than the promotion of Hindutva in Indian universities has increased their international appeal or international ranking.
Identity-based ideology and enforced and misguided virtue signalling at the expense of open inquiry, indeed, threaten the future of Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland.
I note that the document Manu Kōkiri: Māori Success and Tertiary Education: Towards a Comprehensive Vision (2021), written by Dr Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal for Taumata Aronui, offers a vision of Maori success in tertiary education, a goal I hope we all share, but does not put anystress whatever on a sense of “place.” Since a major motive behind the CFT seems to be the promotion of Māori success within the university, which we all want, may I suggest that the means advanced in CFT seems irrelevant, as Taumata Aronui’s ignoring “place” implies, and yet dangerous to the open inquiry that has so far been central for Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, as for every other great university.
A determined push by the university to minimize inequality of opportunity by advocating and acting to improve literacy and numeracy skills for less advantaged students in our catchment area and across the country would do far more for the university’s future, including for the diversity, quality, education, and research of its students and staff, and for its reputation, than institutionalising the indoctrination that the CFT so evasively proposes.
