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| News Corps goes to battle in the seemingly neverending culture wars, 2 November 2018 |
The
Guardian, 2
November 2018:
I have recently been
involved in working on a project that aims to provide teachers with some
insights and elaborations on how
to teach the mandated science outcomes in the Australian National
Curriculum by using historic and contemporary examples from Indigenous people
and communities.
The work combined
various Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, science educators, curriculum
experts, teachers, academics and editors. It looked at examples of traditional
land management practices, understandings of chemical reactions and processes, astronomy,
medicines and any number of fascinating topics of how Indigenous peoples have
worked scientifically for millennia in Australia, and still do. It was a great
project to be a part of.
I was quietly hoping
this important project would fly under the radar of the ongoing culture wars
that exist within Australia, but it seems that was wishful thinking.
It began with a piece on
the Daily Telegraph website titled “Fire
starting and spear throwing make national science curriculum”. Not quite
unfortunately, it would be great if they were though.
I can see how it makes
for a better headline though. “Fire starting and spear thrower are two examples
of 95 different optional elaborations that teachers can use to help them meet
the mandatory outcomes of the National Science Curriculum if they want to”
doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
"I can’t fathom the
hubris required to think that after 60,000 years or so of being in Australia,
Indigenous people wouldn’t have picked up a thing or two that the rest of the
world could learn from."
If you want to
understand the science of how a lever works, about stored energy and kinetic
energy, or about mass, acceleration, inertia, and lots of other cool stuff that
is mandatory in the curriculum, then a spear thrower is a great way to teach
it.
And did you know that
before the match was invented in 1826, most people around the world had to
light fires the old fashion way? And by “old fashioned way”, I either mean by a
fire saw, fire drill, fire plough, or by using flint. All of these examples can
be found traditionally in Australia and you can use these methods to teach
about combustion, friction, heat energy, kinetic energy, density, and any other
number of cool sciencey things.
The article goes on with
the standard emotive phrases we see in the culture wars: “racial politics”,
“dumbing down”, “slammed by critics” – literally all just in the first
sentence.
The front page of the
Daily Telegraph carried the story on its front page on Friday with the headline
“School Kooriculum: outrage over Indigenous school scheme”. Sure, “Kooriculum”
is awesome and I am definitely stealing that in future, but there is no
“scheme” and very little outrage.
There is Kevin
Donnelly decrying this work as “political correctness” and claiming it
is “dumbing down the school curriculum” even though, again, these resources are
entirely optional, and have been created in response to requests from teachers.
Donnelly argues that
“western scientific thought, based as it is on rationality, reason and
empiricism, is not culturally determined”. He quotes Professor Igor Bray as
saying that “science knows nothing about the nationality or ethnicity of its
participants, and this is its great unifying strength”.
He talks about how
Western science is “preeminent” in its value to the world, and can be traced
back “through the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment to the early Roman
and Greek scientists, mathematicians and philosophers”. So it seems that while
science knows nothing of nationality or ethnicity, Kevin Donnelly does know
that it traces back to the Greeks and Romans, and clearly thinks that what he
calls “western science” is superior to all others.
Thousands of years
before western science was even dreamed of, Indigenous
Australians were developing a detailed and intricate understanding of,
and relationship with, the world around them.
It allowed people to
intimately understand the relationships of the moon and the tides, measure the
equinoxes and solstices, develop a deep wealth of knowledge of plants, animals,
seasons, the stars and countless other amazing feats of intellect and ingenuity
that have long been denied in the ongoing narrative western civilisation has
created about Indigenous peoples.
The ways in which this
knowledge was interwoven with a holistic view of the world and the place of
humans within it, the ways in which it was encoded and handed down through the
ages is fascinating as well. Instead, Indigenous people have long been framed
as primitive, backwards, deviant, having nothing of value to offer apart from
free land and free labour, in constant need of saving, and deserving of
countless punitive measures.
Western science can
indeed trace much of its origins back to Greek and Roman societies and in
exploring its rich history over the centuries, it’s not a bad idea to look at
all the unscientific beliefs that were once science fact.
Read the full
article by Luke Pearson here.
