DR MICHAEL JOHNSTON: Grading your grandmother

Victoria University of Wellington wants the teachers it trains to be ‘agents of change.’

According to the university’s handbook for teacher education programmes, teaching graduates must be committed to “social, cultural, and ecological justice.” Decoded, that means attending protests about political causes the activists lecturers find important.

Providing teachers with skills to manage a classroom is not part of the brief. Neither is ensuring they can teach their students even a modicum of knowledge. It is crucial, however, that new teachers can critique their ancestors.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Akopai 1 is one of two courses focussing on practical teaching skills. One of its assignments, worth 45% of the marks, is called Ko Tōku Tupuna Ko Au (my ancestor, myself).

For this assignment, students must critically analyse one of their forebears, living or dead. Personally, I’d choose a living one. Having a corpse on my psychotherapist’s couch would be untidy.

The analysis must include critical commentary on “how gender influenced” the ancestor’s life. If I had asked my Victorian grandfather how gender had influenced him, he’d have told me not to be impertinent. But I suspect that response wouldn’t wash with the commissars course coordinators.

The ancestor’s spiritual side, political views and financial situation must also be discussed. But my ancestors followed old etiquette. They knew never to discuss religion, politics or money in polite company.

To achieve a high grade in the assignment, students must demonstrate “deep connection to whakapapa.” But where does that leave the estranged or the orphaned? And pity the bewildered international students who thought they had come to New Zealand to learn how to teach.

Top marks also require students to “deeply engage” with their ancestor’s “tangata whenua or tangata Tiriti positioning,” and with their “power and privilege.” For non-Māori students, the trick here is to choose an ancestor who had money or status and beat up on them mercilessly. Pride in one’s heritage is not recommended.

It so happens that many of my ancestors were teachers. If they saw the content of Akopai 1, they would have some critical analysis of their own.

“Why,” they would wonder, “do the people who designed this course continue to be employed?”

“How can they, with apparent impunity, inflict such blatant and insulting nonsense on people aspiring to educate young New Zealanders?”

“Now that,” they would say, “is power and privilege.”

Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative