That Calvinist 'original sin' derived stance which can so easily justify child abuse and sexual repression has a long history dating back to Germany in the 1800s with the celebrated (at the time) parenting advice of Moritz Schreber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Schreber
Psychologist Alice Miller called it an example of poisonous or black pedagogy researching how it underpins considerable childhood trauma that impacts adults in later life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy
You can read more about her analysis of this in her famous book 'The Drama of the Gifted Child' also known as 'Prisoners of Childhood'.
We know that adverse childhood experiences due to poverty and abuse correlate strongly with all manner of psychological suffering later in life largely based on the world renowned Dunedin study.
Hopefully, David's coverage of this issue and highlighting examples of the harm this particular theology has caused historically might eventually make the Ministry of Education take a much closer look at schools like this.
When your own parents are sending you to schools like these, those children don't have a voice.
Incredibly powerful and empathetic reporting from John. Richie so clearly states what poverty sets people up for. And to see National and Act utterly giving the finger to those that need it must - ugh.
Not off topic at all, Eliot! I was thinking about adding this interview when I posted but I thought I probably had too many links already! It's an ADHD thing :-)
"when your own parents are sending you to schools like these, those children don't have a voice" - exactly! And unlike the current movement for parents to have THE say in their children's education, I strongly believe the "traditional" Aotearoa-NZ state school model (with all it's flaws) is in the best interests of most children. Parents are quite capable of messing up their kids minds out of school hours, without it being 24/7, and by learning to think for themselves & mix with other kids from all sorts of backgrounds, they have some chance of seeing their way out as they get older - but then that is the point eh? Parents know if their kids know life could be different, they might "escape" the religious fanaticism ...
Indeed. It's the exact same issue right now with social transition for trans youth who come from homophobic or transphobic families of origin - which often aren't necessarily due to religious beliefs - and want to be called by their chosen pronouns and name at school - without being 'outed' to their parents who they know will harm or punish them.
Here in NZ, the FSU is currently supporting the 'free speech' rights of a transphobic teacher who wants to misgender students, in contravention of both the Human Rights Act 1993 s21 which covers gender identity per the 2006 Crown Law opinion and the NZ Teaching Council code of practice which is partly based on the Māori value of manākitanga - which I would (roughly) translate as expressing kindness and respect for others, emphasising responsibility and reciprocity.
It goes without saying that the FSU does not believe in the existence of hate speech.
The original sin doctrine has a lot to answer for. So many people have been taught to see themselves as fundamentally broken; to view their own normal wants and needs as aberrant and offensive. When that's taught to you as a child, it makes it almost impossible to see yourself in a positive light. An oppressive sense of guilt and shame hangs over everything you do. I've barely been able to unpick the damage myself and I'm a straight white man. It'd be much worse if I belonged to a group that's more ostracised by evangelical Christianity, like for instance the author of the Webworm blog.
In his youth prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine of Hippo was hedonistic and boasted about his sexual experiences with women. However, all his boasts were possibly false and meant to cover for the fact that he was actually bisexual. His joining Christianity and leaning into a Manichean theology focused on original sin is evocative of internalised homophobia (and Gnosticism but that's a different story).
John Chrysostom was stridently homophobic and is the source of the reinterpretation of the Sodom and Gomorrah story from the Talmud as being about deviance from divinely ordained heterosexuality rather than breaches of hospitality. When Brian Tamaki talks about earthquakes happening because of our acceptance of same sex desire, he's channelling Chrysostom who preached that God hated homosexuality *so much* that he will punish and destroy any Christian who dared to tolerate it in their midst. That's a psychotic level of homophobia.
Tracing this down to Moritz Schreber, he's also the father of what we now call Conversion Therapy since his son Daniel Paul Schreber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Paul_Schreber developed schizophrenia due to the trauma he suffered at the hand and mechanical anti-masturbation devices of his father. I wish I was making this up!
Daniel later wrote a famous book offering a first hand account of an asylum, 'Memoirs of My Nervous Illness' in 1885 which caused quite a sensation in European society.
Freud read that book and wrote a famous paper in 1911 interpreting his paranoia as being caused by his suppressed homosexuality and that's the kernel from which the poisonous tree of Conversion Therapy grew and 'blossomed' after Freud's death starting with Sandor Rado in 1940.
A deeper irony is that reading Shreber's book, he wasn't gay but actually transgender although that wasn't a concept that had emerged yet since Magnus Hirschfeld's famous Institute for Sexual Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft wasn't established until 1919 and which the Nazi's sacked and burnt all his research in 1933.
For an awesome documentary documenting the queer history in that era, I can recommend 'Eldorado - Everything the Nazis Hate' https://www.netflix.com/nz/title/81331646
As a teacher at a state school that is under funded to deliver the curriculum this makes me livid. And the funding that Seymour’s charter school got from tax payers was way more than we get too. Please vote. But not for that guy.
i am seeing racism everywhere at the moment so my comment about special schools is about that. the education act 1989 formalised the existence of kura kaupapa maori so that they could be funded. In the lead up i suspect that there was an uproar about maori getting special rights, so of course the ministry and govt had to not appear to "privalege" maori and a similar option for special character (not kura kaupapa maori) schools was included. later, a National/act govt turned that into charter schools and labour changed it back to special characteer schools. but basically anything that maori get, has to be duplicated for the rest of the population to keep the racists happy. we are left with a system that allows non-maori to be different from the mainstream if they want to. an invite to extremists.
My batshit crazy schools were twofold: Hebron Christian College when I was primary school age and to be honest the only thing I really remember about it were feuds with Sarah Jane Honey at lunchtime which were conveniently resolved and everyone friends again by the end of lunch. The other one was Christian Heritage College. The principal was an unusual character and my teacher of the two-classroom nightmare. He suggested that all non-Christian music was evil and I remember my whole class sniggering when I asked "even that Rainbow Connection song?" He liked to "paddle" the children with other teachers watching as witnesses when the children were naughty and once threatened me with the strap (I decided to runaway if that ever eventuated). The quality of the education was extremely poor because there just isn't the teachers available to teach a range of subjects to high school kids. Some children flourish simply because of the size of the teacher to child ratio but I basically begged to leave that school and won that round a year later. These are very expensive schools and I feel sorry for the kids that go to them, and sorry for the parents who think their children are getting a quality education if they pay through the nose for it. In terms of the philosophy it is based on, it is no different to what children are taught by their parents, by their church, sunday school or youth group - it just means that they are surrounded by it and never come across anyone with a different worldview. From the point of view of parents - it means that they never have to worry about their child straying from their faith. Otherwise known as brainwashing. Of course we later found out that the principal of Christian Heritage College was charged and pled guilty to sex abuse against pre-teens back in the 1960s. He was originally charged with 4 cases of sexual abuse including a 9yo boy which he was going to plead not guilty to but they dropped charges of two of the boys and went ahead with the other two. Years of sexual abuse this was and once he pled guilty he was given a sentence of 2 yrs and 8mths and lost his teacher license. It doesn't really feel enough, does it?
Yikes! 2yrs 8mths for a school Principal abusing children? Perhaps these "Christians" should also have "special character" punishment rather than the mainstream - venture to wonder what punishment could be found in "Christian Heritage" teachings?
This sort of thing is exactly why I am against school vouchers in the U.S. I'm sure there are plenty similar schools here receiving government funding.
As for Sean Plunkett: I hope he gets the life he deserves, like maybe a nephew like Kevin. I might be a little angry.
I simply cannot understand how we allow religion-affiliated schools to exist. Just because millions of people believe in complete nonsense, doesn't stop it being complete nonsense. It's about time we grew up and started taking responsibility for who we are.
Great isn’t it? I wish they’d call this the election fortnight instead of an election day. And cut off the politicking from now too... I think we’ve all had enough
My kid went to a hugely popular and highly sought after integrated Presbyterian college in the lower North Island. (Why I got sucked into that bullshit is beyond me. Ahh hindsight huh?). One day she phoned me, distraught, and I had to go collect her. Turns out at age 14, her class were told to write a letter home to their parents explaining that they were “pregnant with God’s child”. She doesn’t go to that school any more.
I recommend ‘Straight white American Jesus’ podcast on Christian nationalism and the wilder shores of fundamentalism. Also Byron Clark in his Substack Feijoa Dispatches talks about the Christian nationalism of Alfred Ngaro and the New Zeal party
My kids went to a state integrated CoE primary school in the UK. It was five minutes from our house so seemed the best choice. How I remember the gasps and muttering and outright glares from many parents in the playground the day my son gave out invitations for his Harry Potter themed seventh birthday party. To compound matters, we’d presented the invitation in an ‘evil’ Macbeth-style spell format. Of course, now we know JK is a TERF, I’d be a similarly po-faced arse about a Potter party.
Those poor kids. It really hurts my heart to think of little kids being taught they are intrinsically bad, and that they’ll live their lives feeling ashamed and scared because not only are they bad, but the world is a terrifying “spiritual battleground” 🥺
As an aside, the spiritual battleground with its roaring lions immediately brought the image to mind of the mini-series that was made of The Shining. It had Rebecca De Mornay, Stephen Weber, and Courtland Mead (from The Little Rascals) in it. Switch the hotel for a school, but keep all the other creepy stuff, including the topiary lions that come to life, and that’s what Ponotahi Christian School sounds like to me.
Hoo boy that is WILD. We've sent one of our kids to a state integrated special character school - a very ordinary Anglican one where the special character seems to mostly be the ability to charge parents extra "donations" 🤣 . The curriculum is solidly MOE approved (yes I checked lol it has a very good science program and none of this abstention-only sex ed rubbish). I genuinely thought state integrated meant the school had to follow the NZ curriculum, but this Carterton bizzo is deeply worrying.
See - that Anglican one sounds fine. That's how it's meant to work. And being state integrated definitely means you need to follow the curriculum - but it's like the MoE is so dopey, they just don't seem to care very much - or very quickly.
I'd be really keen to know why the school is named Ponatahi. There is no direct te reo Māori translation, but Te Aka states 'pona' is knot, to knot, to tie up. And 'tahi' is 1. For not including Māori as per their ERO report, I find it weird they have a te reo Māori name with no immediate indication of why they chose that name on their website..
so they can fly under the radar to a casual observer. If you called it "Batshit crazy fucktards crusading on utter nonsense" it wouldnt fit on the sign.
My initial assumption was that's the name of the area? But yes agree completely, it's wrong on so many levels to use a te reo Māori name yet let down Māori in what appears to be EVERY SINGLE aspect 🤯😡
Yes it's a name in the area but definitely not where the school is located (the street it's on is opposite the street I live on). It's a brethren school.
What I think always amuses me is that your religion, or your belief in your religion, is so weak that you can't possible even THINK about opposing views. Like, learn about evolution. Learn about the opposing theories. Unless you, or your religion, is weak, it's not going to cause problems.
That Calvinist 'original sin' derived stance which can so easily justify child abuse and sexual repression has a long history dating back to Germany in the 1800s with the celebrated (at the time) parenting advice of Moritz Schreber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Schreber
Psychologist Alice Miller called it an example of poisonous or black pedagogy researching how it underpins considerable childhood trauma that impacts adults in later life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy
You can read more about her analysis of this in her famous book 'The Drama of the Gifted Child' also known as 'Prisoners of Childhood'.
https://www.amazon.com/Drama-Gifted-Child-Search-Third-ebook/dp/B06XCG9MKN
We know that adverse childhood experiences due to poverty and abuse correlate strongly with all manner of psychological suffering later in life largely based on the world renowned Dunedin study.
https://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/
Sadly, professor Richie Poulton who championed the study just passed away.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/10/01/dunedin-study-professor-richie-poulton-dies-aged-61/
Hopefully, David's coverage of this issue and highlighting examples of the harm this particular theology has caused historically might eventually make the Ministry of Education take a much closer look at schools like this.
When your own parents are sending you to schools like these, those children don't have a voice.
Thank you for giving them one!
Slightly off-topic, but worth reading. John Cambells interview with Richie Poulton is here https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/10/01/john-campbell-poulton-poverty-and-the-real-way-to-get-tough-on-crime/ , concluding:
"“How well are we responding to poverty?” I asked Poulton. “Pretty bloody poorly,” he replied.
And what will come of that in the years ahead?
What does our own remarkable science tell us that will us lead to?
Let’s give the last word to Professor Poulton, because he deserves it.
“Shit.”
Incredibly powerful and empathetic reporting from John. Richie so clearly states what poverty sets people up for. And to see National and Act utterly giving the finger to those that need it must - ugh.
Not off topic at all, Eliot! I was thinking about adding this interview when I posted but I thought I probably had too many links already! It's an ADHD thing :-)
"when your own parents are sending you to schools like these, those children don't have a voice" - exactly! And unlike the current movement for parents to have THE say in their children's education, I strongly believe the "traditional" Aotearoa-NZ state school model (with all it's flaws) is in the best interests of most children. Parents are quite capable of messing up their kids minds out of school hours, without it being 24/7, and by learning to think for themselves & mix with other kids from all sorts of backgrounds, they have some chance of seeing their way out as they get older - but then that is the point eh? Parents know if their kids know life could be different, they might "escape" the religious fanaticism ...
Indeed. It's the exact same issue right now with social transition for trans youth who come from homophobic or transphobic families of origin - which often aren't necessarily due to religious beliefs - and want to be called by their chosen pronouns and name at school - without being 'outed' to their parents who they know will harm or punish them.
I note that the US Supreme Court will soon be ruling on this issue and it's not looking good for US trans youth: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/01/pronouns-schools-supreme-court-00118832
Here in NZ, the FSU is currently supporting the 'free speech' rights of a transphobic teacher who wants to misgender students, in contravention of both the Human Rights Act 1993 s21 which covers gender identity per the 2006 Crown Law opinion and the NZ Teaching Council code of practice which is partly based on the Māori value of manākitanga - which I would (roughly) translate as expressing kindness and respect for others, emphasising responsibility and reciprocity.
It goes without saying that the FSU does not believe in the existence of hate speech.
https://www.fsu.nz/preferredpronounspetition
I recommend Gavan Titley's book 'Is Free Speech Racist?' as the counterpoint to that philosophically flawed position: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Racist-Debating-Race-ebook/dp/B08CS4PHMJ
The original sin doctrine has a lot to answer for. So many people have been taught to see themselves as fundamentally broken; to view their own normal wants and needs as aberrant and offensive. When that's taught to you as a child, it makes it almost impossible to see yourself in a positive light. An oppressive sense of guilt and shame hangs over everything you do. I've barely been able to unpick the damage myself and I'm a straight white man. It'd be much worse if I belonged to a group that's more ostracised by evangelical Christianity, like for instance the author of the Webworm blog.
Totally. The teachings on 'original sin' and homophobia as Christian concepts are actually additions that come from the 3rd and 4th century in the form of St Augustine of Hippo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo and John Chrysostom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom respectively. These concepts have a deeply intertwined existence.
In his youth prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine of Hippo was hedonistic and boasted about his sexual experiences with women. However, all his boasts were possibly false and meant to cover for the fact that he was actually bisexual. His joining Christianity and leaning into a Manichean theology focused on original sin is evocative of internalised homophobia (and Gnosticism but that's a different story).
John Chrysostom was stridently homophobic and is the source of the reinterpretation of the Sodom and Gomorrah story from the Talmud as being about deviance from divinely ordained heterosexuality rather than breaches of hospitality. When Brian Tamaki talks about earthquakes happening because of our acceptance of same sex desire, he's channelling Chrysostom who preached that God hated homosexuality *so much* that he will punish and destroy any Christian who dared to tolerate it in their midst. That's a psychotic level of homophobia.
Tracing this down to Moritz Schreber, he's also the father of what we now call Conversion Therapy since his son Daniel Paul Schreber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Paul_Schreber developed schizophrenia due to the trauma he suffered at the hand and mechanical anti-masturbation devices of his father. I wish I was making this up!
Daniel later wrote a famous book offering a first hand account of an asylum, 'Memoirs of My Nervous Illness' in 1885 which caused quite a sensation in European society.
Freud read that book and wrote a famous paper in 1911 interpreting his paranoia as being caused by his suppressed homosexuality and that's the kernel from which the poisonous tree of Conversion Therapy grew and 'blossomed' after Freud's death starting with Sandor Rado in 1940.
A deeper irony is that reading Shreber's book, he wasn't gay but actually transgender although that wasn't a concept that had emerged yet since Magnus Hirschfeld's famous Institute for Sexual Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft wasn't established until 1919 and which the Nazi's sacked and burnt all his research in 1933.
For an awesome documentary documenting the queer history in that era, I can recommend 'Eldorado - Everything the Nazis Hate' https://www.netflix.com/nz/title/81331646
Pinning this.
As a teacher at a state school that is under funded to deliver the curriculum this makes me livid. And the funding that Seymour’s charter school got from tax payers was way more than we get too. Please vote. But not for that guy.
Voting and definitely not for him.
Thanks for delivering the curriculum in what I imagine are less the ideal conditions.
I would never vote for Rimmer
done. I wasnt going to anyway. but still
i am seeing racism everywhere at the moment so my comment about special schools is about that. the education act 1989 formalised the existence of kura kaupapa maori so that they could be funded. In the lead up i suspect that there was an uproar about maori getting special rights, so of course the ministry and govt had to not appear to "privalege" maori and a similar option for special character (not kura kaupapa maori) schools was included. later, a National/act govt turned that into charter schools and labour changed it back to special characteer schools. but basically anything that maori get, has to be duplicated for the rest of the population to keep the racists happy. we are left with a system that allows non-maori to be different from the mainstream if they want to. an invite to extremists.
My batshit crazy schools were twofold: Hebron Christian College when I was primary school age and to be honest the only thing I really remember about it were feuds with Sarah Jane Honey at lunchtime which were conveniently resolved and everyone friends again by the end of lunch. The other one was Christian Heritage College. The principal was an unusual character and my teacher of the two-classroom nightmare. He suggested that all non-Christian music was evil and I remember my whole class sniggering when I asked "even that Rainbow Connection song?" He liked to "paddle" the children with other teachers watching as witnesses when the children were naughty and once threatened me with the strap (I decided to runaway if that ever eventuated). The quality of the education was extremely poor because there just isn't the teachers available to teach a range of subjects to high school kids. Some children flourish simply because of the size of the teacher to child ratio but I basically begged to leave that school and won that round a year later. These are very expensive schools and I feel sorry for the kids that go to them, and sorry for the parents who think their children are getting a quality education if they pay through the nose for it. In terms of the philosophy it is based on, it is no different to what children are taught by their parents, by their church, sunday school or youth group - it just means that they are surrounded by it and never come across anyone with a different worldview. From the point of view of parents - it means that they never have to worry about their child straying from their faith. Otherwise known as brainwashing. Of course we later found out that the principal of Christian Heritage College was charged and pled guilty to sex abuse against pre-teens back in the 1960s. He was originally charged with 4 cases of sexual abuse including a 9yo boy which he was going to plead not guilty to but they dropped charges of two of the boys and went ahead with the other two. Years of sexual abuse this was and once he pled guilty he was given a sentence of 2 yrs and 8mths and lost his teacher license. It doesn't really feel enough, does it?
Yikes! 2yrs 8mths for a school Principal abusing children? Perhaps these "Christians" should also have "special character" punishment rather than the mainstream - venture to wonder what punishment could be found in "Christian Heritage" teachings?
Far out, thats messed up.
Gd help me I laughed at 'Dropping Kevin off at Ponatahi Christian School'.
I was like "which one's Kevin, again"? I'm going to Hell. If I believed in it.
This sort of thing is exactly why I am against school vouchers in the U.S. I'm sure there are plenty similar schools here receiving government funding.
As for Sean Plunkett: I hope he gets the life he deserves, like maybe a nephew like Kevin. I might be a little angry.
I simply cannot understand how we allow religion-affiliated schools to exist. Just because millions of people believe in complete nonsense, doesn't stop it being complete nonsense. It's about time we grew up and started taking responsibility for who we are.
It's just ridiculous to give them the same funding. You can't have your religious cake and eat all the funding too, imo.
Amen! errrrr I mean "Fuck yeah!"
If you’re in Aotearoa you can also vote from today - advance voting has opened! Skip the queue!
Great isn’t it? I wish they’d call this the election fortnight instead of an election day. And cut off the politicking from now too... I think we’ve all had enough
I've so had enough.
Amen.
My kid went to a hugely popular and highly sought after integrated Presbyterian college in the lower North Island. (Why I got sucked into that bullshit is beyond me. Ahh hindsight huh?). One day she phoned me, distraught, and I had to go collect her. Turns out at age 14, her class were told to write a letter home to their parents explaining that they were “pregnant with God’s child”. She doesn’t go to that school any more.
Good grief! I wonder how many of the more godly parents would just have fainted dead away at “Dear Mum and Dad, I’m pregnant....”
I imagine happy clapper Luxon will continue to be a party to ignoring situations like this.
Also: is adverse to all manner of godliness,
'Adverse?'
Averse
Oh, I just realised what happy clapper means. Cheers.
I recommend ‘Straight white American Jesus’ podcast on Christian nationalism and the wilder shores of fundamentalism. Also Byron Clark in his Substack Feijoa Dispatches talks about the Christian nationalism of Alfred Ngaro and the New Zeal party
Byron Clark does GREAT work. Felt very honored to have shared some of his stuff in the past here on Webworm. A very smart dude!
My kids went to a state integrated CoE primary school in the UK. It was five minutes from our house so seemed the best choice. How I remember the gasps and muttering and outright glares from many parents in the playground the day my son gave out invitations for his Harry Potter themed seventh birthday party. To compound matters, we’d presented the invitation in an ‘evil’ Macbeth-style spell format. Of course, now we know JK is a TERF, I’d be a similarly po-faced arse about a Potter party.
Those poor kids. It really hurts my heart to think of little kids being taught they are intrinsically bad, and that they’ll live their lives feeling ashamed and scared because not only are they bad, but the world is a terrifying “spiritual battleground” 🥺
As an aside, the spiritual battleground with its roaring lions immediately brought the image to mind of the mini-series that was made of The Shining. It had Rebecca De Mornay, Stephen Weber, and Courtland Mead (from The Little Rascals) in it. Switch the hotel for a school, but keep all the other creepy stuff, including the topiary lions that come to life, and that’s what Ponotahi Christian School sounds like to me.
Hoo boy that is WILD. We've sent one of our kids to a state integrated special character school - a very ordinary Anglican one where the special character seems to mostly be the ability to charge parents extra "donations" 🤣 . The curriculum is solidly MOE approved (yes I checked lol it has a very good science program and none of this abstention-only sex ed rubbish). I genuinely thought state integrated meant the school had to follow the NZ curriculum, but this Carterton bizzo is deeply worrying.
See - that Anglican one sounds fine. That's how it's meant to work. And being state integrated definitely means you need to follow the curriculum - but it's like the MoE is so dopey, they just don't seem to care very much - or very quickly.
It's utterly bizarre to me.
I have reached out for more clarity.
I'd be really keen to know why the school is named Ponatahi. There is no direct te reo Māori translation, but Te Aka states 'pona' is knot, to knot, to tie up. And 'tahi' is 1. For not including Māori as per their ERO report, I find it weird they have a te reo Māori name with no immediate indication of why they chose that name on their website..
so they can fly under the radar to a casual observer. If you called it "Batshit crazy fucktards crusading on utter nonsense" it wouldnt fit on the sign.
🤣
My initial assumption was that's the name of the area? But yes agree completely, it's wrong on so many levels to use a te reo Māori name yet let down Māori in what appears to be EVERY SINGLE aspect 🤯😡
Yes it's a name in the area but definitely not where the school is located (the street it's on is opposite the street I live on). It's a brethren school.
What I think always amuses me is that your religion, or your belief in your religion, is so weak that you can't possible even THINK about opposing views. Like, learn about evolution. Learn about the opposing theories. Unless you, or your religion, is weak, it's not going to cause problems.
This. So much this.