Is Tertiary Education for Learning or for Indoctrination?

Is Tertiary Education for Learning or for Indoctrination?

Any edifice that rests on the shifting sands of contemporary academic fashion is bound sooner or later to fall. The university of the future will, paradoxically, need to offer its students an education with deeper historical roots

Ferguson and Howland

Compulsory Courses at the University of Auckland

The University of Auckland is set to deliver courses entitled ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’. All students must complete a Waipapa Taumata Rau core course in their first year of study. 

The university website informs us that ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ is the Māori name gifted to the University of Auckland and that the relevant courses are called by this name to symbolize students’ aspirations as they seek to be a part of the University and to succeed in their studies. 

 “Designed to transition you into University life, your Waipapa Taumata Rau course provides knowledge vital to your studies and essential skills (like critical and ethical thinking, effective communication, and the ability to work well with others).

Each faculty course teaches you why place matters, introducing you to knowledge associated with the University, the wider city, this country, and its people and history, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

You’ll learn about different knowledge systems that underpin your area of study to provide a foundation for your future learning. Your Waipapa Taumata Rau core course will play a key role in shaping your first year of study with us.

Completion is required to progress into your second year of study where you will have opportunities to build on what you have learned.”

Some of the material does seem very relevant, especially critical and ethical thinking, effective communication and the ability to work well with others. Also positive is the discussion of knowledge associated with the University, the wider city, this country and its people and history, provided that a balanced picture of New Zealand’s history is encouraged.

However, we ask why all students must take such a course in order to progress into second year at a time when STEM courses are being cut. Why is Te Tiriti an enforced part of these courses but apparently not the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852? Will the Constitution Act of 1986 be discussed, or other recent legislation?  

Knowledge Systems?

What exactly are the ‘knowledge systems’ that underpin students’ areas of study and that will provide a foundation for their future learning? How will these knowledge systems support electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, theoretical and experimental physics, pure mathematics, theoretical and applied statistics, organic and inorganic chemistry, evolutionary biology and cancer research? How will they assist in combatting malnutrition and infant and child mortality, clean energy technologies, efficient transportation and many other fields of endeavour?

Will students of forestry science at New Zealand universities be introduced to traditional medicine for restoration of kauri forests? One account of such medicine asserts  the “need to tune into the vibrations of the forest” and recommends burial of mauri stones within the affected areas, along with appropriate rituals? Will students be taught that sperm whale oil embodies healing properties for kauri? Will they be encouraged to “send out a call to the world, asking communities to hold special ceremony on behalf of kauri” and “invite the world to Aotearoa to join us in prayer and ceremony in the initiation of our future Rongoā interventions.”? In that account we are told:

“Through listening and traditional meditation in the forest, will assist those to align to the cellular frequency of the forest and to become more enlightened in the work of looking after the forest.”  

Will students of agriculture learn that farmers should manage their farms on the basis of the phases of the moon, when in reality the lunar cycle has no effect whatsoever on plant growth or physiology?

If the thinking behind such traditional knowledge is taken as an allegory for loving and caring for the natural world and its living environments, then something wonderful has indeed been gifted to us. But if such beliefs are accorded the status of literal truth then we have the makings of a very serious problem in tertiary education.

In New Zealand, what about the approximately 25% of tertiary students who are non-Māori/non-European? Will their knowledge systems be presented too? Will the international students who are forced to take these courses consider their fees to be money well spent?

Today in various countries we hear demands for decolonization of mathematics. For example, Rowena Ball claims that mathematics has been gate-kept by the West, defined to exclude entire cultures and that almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based. Among others, she wants to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics. However, Sergiu Klainerman responds as follows:

“If mathematics was in fact a cultural artifact, like music, literature or the arts, it would be impossible to explain its extraordinary effectiveness in the physical sciences, weather prediction, engineering or artificial intelligence.“

We agree with Professor Klainerman. Further, we believe that both science and mathematics transcend all political, cultural, ethnic and religious frontiers.

A Core Curriculum?

Today, readings at many universities in the Western world cover “progressive preoccupations” that include anti-colonialism, sex and gender, antiracism and climate. Surely, there is great merit in dialogue and action on such issues but it is critical that students’ readings are diverse rather than comprising only the perspectives of the contemporary left.

Ferguson and Howland tell us that if students are to become active and reflective individuals, they must learn to regard the past not merely as the crime scene of bygone ages, but as the record of human possibilities – an always unfinished tapestry of both admirable and shameful lives and both noble and base deeds. They must develop an ear for the English language and the language of ancestral wisdom, as well as the various languages of intellectual inquiry, including mathematics. They need a good grasp of modern statistical methods and they must also allow themselves to be inwardly-formed and cultivated by the classics.

They suggest that a sound foundation would also require an introduction to the modes of cognition, including intellectual and moral intuition and scientific demonstration. Aristotle, informal logic and Karl Popper would introduce students to the “preeminently learnable and knowable things.”

Will Students Vote with their Feet?

The perceptions of international students that New Zealand is indigenizing its degrees could lead to a significant loss of international enrolments and reduced credibility of our universities. The motive of preparing students to be effective learners is laudable, but is it strictly necessary to demand of them to assimilate these systems in order to progress in their other studies?

If the academic and political initiatives relating to these courses were truly about preparing students for university studies, then perhaps they should take the form of preparatory courses, possibly available online, before students begin their degrees. In the United States, for example, many universities provide future students access to “Cornerstone” courses in order to prepare them for assessment on writing, reasoning, research and literacy.  

Any mandatory belief-based curriculum amounts to indoctrination and should have no place in our universities. In a competition amongst the universities for fee-paying students and Government funding, will universities that insist on such courses see their enrolments fall, as students go to wherever they are not forced to pay for indoctrination?

Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics. 

An earlier version of this article was first published at Breaking Views

Cover image by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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David Lillis