NICK HANNE: Who's teaching our teachers? Punishing dissenting voices in education

Very rarely do you get the chance to witness a truly great teacher at work in the classroom.

Dr Paul Crowhurst has worked in education for over twenty years – almost as long as I’ve known him – and I’ve had the privilege of observing him teach in various contexts, both to children and adults. He’s impressive.

Paul’s Doctorate of Education was earned while not just juggling a busy family life, but also a highly demanding role as a school principal.

It wasn’t a surprise to me that when Paul was asked to teach a tertiary paper in 2020 on Educational Leadership at Massey University’s Institute of Education, he gladly accepted the offer.

While his lecture load was initially on a fixed-term contract, Head of the Institute of Education, Associate Professor Alison Kearney, was soon asking about the potential for Paul to take on more lecturing opportunities at Massey. There were also promising indications that his Adjunct Senior Lecturer’s role would continue into 2022 and grow into something larger.

But this is a story of how, despite the positive conversations, Paul was mysteriously denied the opportunity.

It was only through an OIA that the puzzle pieces came together.

Paul was aware of the radical trends emerging in education. But he was unaware of just quite how radical the institutional ethos had become at Massey.

The term “ideological capture” typically sums up this phenomenon whereby ideological gatekeepers within an organisation or institution weed out independent thinkers from their ranks.

This pervasive mindset was first revealed in the OIA when Professor John O’Neill, Paul’s former PhD supervisor, wrote to Professor Kearney as Head of the Institute of Education, recommending Paul as a lecturer. The otherwise enthusiastic endorsement from O’Neill came with a caveat that “the only real downsides with Paul are he is male and Pakeha.”

The professor, though also “male” and “Pakeha”, seems, ironically, to have exempted himself from such categorical discrimination.

The first semester of 2021 passed satisfactorily for all concerned as Paul continued to teach the 771 paper in Educational Leadership, all the while continuing his role as principal of a busy South Auckland primary school.

And, during the mid-year break, Paul submitted an op-ed to Stuff on the new Unteach Racism initiative, which the Teaching Council of NZ decided to roll out in schools across the country.

Paul had concerns about two aspects of the programme’s revolutionary new thinking. Firstly, the fundamental claims it makes concerning “unconscious bias”, and secondly, the traditional “Pakeha social structures” which, according to the new theory of racism, are necessary to maintain “white supremacy”.

In his article, Paul does not doubt that racism is real and problematic. He believes there is a need to address racism whenever it occurs in schools. However, he points out that the Unteach Racism programme, which declares that modern NZ has an inherently racist social system, seem to be contradicted, at least in part, by the evidence of educational outcomes.

You can read the full Stuff article by Paul here.

At the time the article was published, Paul expressed interest in a permanent job as a Senior Lecturer in Education with the responsibility of heading up the Educational Leadership programme. Given his experience and conversations with Massey, he seemed a strong and obvious candidate.

Yet, mysteriously, he wasn’t even shortlisted.

Unbeknownst to Paul at the time, the article had caused a stir at Massey.

Within days of the op-ed appearing in Stuff, another lecturer in the Institute of Education flagged the story with Professor Kearney.

Internal email communications show that several members of the Massey faculty believed that Paul’s op-ed is “horrific” and “deeply racist” and “part of the problem they’re trying to eradicate from the education system”. Another lecturer wrote to Kearney stating, “with all the work we are doing to undo this thinking, it would be terrible to be linked to (Paul) and his opinion”.

One even asked whether others could feel “safe” around Paul’s ideas, and there was talk of reporting him to the Teaching Council (the very same professional regulatory body which initiated the Unteach Racism programme in the first place).

While Paul was aware after writing the op-ed that not everyone would have agreed with the ideas, he still assumed his role as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Massey would not be threatened by a thoughtful article written in good faith.

Bear in mind that at this time, Paul was a principal of an ethnically diverse primary school in South Auckland. He wanted more than anything for his students and staff to thrive and succeed. His intention was to help them overcome any barriers they may face; he was just doubtful that an ill-defined, unsubstantiated and unworkable curriculum was going to achieve its stated end.

Paul continued revising his notes for the second semester of the 771 paper. But, further internal email communications at Massey show that, in hindsight, the campaign to get rid of Paul was already in full swing.

One complainant also drew attention to the fact that Stuff initially received strong feedback from many readers both for and against Paul’s op-ed, such that an Editor’s Note at the end of the article was added the day after publication which read: “In response to this column, we will be publishing a different opinion from an educator on Friday, 16 July. We're also reviewing Stuff’s process behind publishing this article to determine if it aligns with our company charter and editorial code of practice and ethics.”

Paul, it seems, had been found guilty of that most heinous of things: sparking debate.

During the two months following the publishing of the op-ed, not once did Paul hear from any member of faculty at Massey of any concerns regarding what he had written. But eventually he received a surprising email from Professor Kearney explaining that his services as a lecturer at Massey would no longer be needed in 2022.

She said the position Paul applied for would be filled by an existing member of staff due to a “tightening of budget where all units have been required to make target savings for 2022.”

Paul politely requested a copy of his personnel file and all email communication from Massey that may have discussed him or his employment over the previous 18 months, and eventually received over 120 pages.

Paul says, “I’m not bitter or resentful toward anyone at Massey, but as an institution they have a problem with deep rot… What I learnt from working at Massey for two years was that it is just a sad place where you survive by saying the same nonsense over and over.”

Paul’s story reveals a number of problems about where higher education is going wrong.

Diversity of representation seems only to apply to an individual’s appearance. The prevailing ideology, on the other hand, requires conformity.

There is a deliberate and often orchestrated attempt to filter out dissenting or independent thinkers at the professional level.

Professional and/or employment actions taken against non-conforming thinkers are more likely to succeed when done behind closed doors. Dishonesty and a culture of ‘the ends justify the means’ typify institutional behaviour that leads to unethical - and at times unlawful – discrimination towards people like Paul.

When we pull back the curtain on many of our tertiary institutions, we get the evidence of intolerance on full display.

We need more people like Dr Crowhurst who are willing to stick their heads above the parapet and remind people what a free society stands for. If we care about the future of education in NZ, it is incumbent on the rest of us to support them when they do, whether we agree with them or not.

This article first appeared at The Platform. Nick Hanne is the Education Partnerships Manager at the Free Speech Union.