Falling short

It's been a full-on three weeks since my last blog. I had laid it out so that I would have a final push to prepare for the Onehunga Half, then a week "off" to do our education audit, and then to swing back into training the week after. What did I get? Well, that familiar story.

The week before the race I ran mostly at night for once. I tend to be a morning runner but with so much going on in preparation for the audit, an early morning blessing at a new campus one one morning I decided to switch to flip it. Evening is not my preference, for one, I would have to do it before dinner as it takes too long to digest dinner, run, then have the body settle down. On the Tuesday I did a "double tempo" which is a longish run with two patches of fastish pace. The first stretch I ran through the familiar Balmoral and Three Kings streets at the target paces before I dropped pace for the "rest" period. I was making my route as I went along and thought I would have enough distance to do the second stretch and be back in good time for dinner if I traversed into the St Andrews Road and Manukau Road.

St Andrews Road isn't a good running road in several places. There is one section where there is minimal footpaths on both sides, and in the section I was going to traverse across it had a part where the thin footpaths were well-separated from the road with a grassy verge. This meant that to cross it I would have to be mindful of cars and then run across possibly uneven grassy ground, cross the road and overcome something similar on the other side. I did 99% of that smoothly and it was only when I hit the footpath that I rolled my ankle on a slopping concrete edge. The previously sprained left ankle. 

I ran a few more paces with full sensory focus on that ankle and though it had the usual "light twist" feeling, there was no pain, no issues with movement or flexibility, and after a few more hundred metres I thought it was nothing and proceeded into my second tempo. 

The next evening, since it was a rare week of running in the evening, I went to a social running club that I would attend from time to time in the past. There were some really fast youngsters doing the 10kn route and I was pretty happy to try my best to keep up with them. But at the 8km mark I noticed a distinct change in my left ankle it became sore in places it hadn't been for months and my whole confidence it its stability disappeared. I kept going at a slower pace and eventually crawled back to shop where it starts and finishes. I did my stretches, chatted a bit and then went home. On the way home I tried running but strangely didn't feel any issue. That gave me the confidence to test it the following evening but again, the ankle was just useless after about 5km and I aborted the run. This was three days before the event and I decided to not run at all for the two days before and then see how I would be. 

Sprint forward to race day, I did my warm-ups and felt nothing amiss. It started and I was right on my planned pace and really enjoying it... until about 8km when that familiar feeling came in. I had to drop pace and though it was a manageable level of discomfort it was then the focus of everything. The route itself was beautiful - I wish I could have just enjoyed the running and the scenes without thinking about my ankle with every stride. Surprisingly, the pace was sustainable and I crossed the bridge and went to Māngere Bridge and back. People were passing me but I was fine. 

It was about the 15km mark that something strange happened. I realised I could go faster, close to my pace at the start of the race. I crossed back across the bridge and was looking forward to registering a time similar to my last race. However, maybe because I was unconsciously changing my gait to go fast on a hopeless ankle the stresses on my body had changed and at 18km my left hamstring pinged. 

It was pain and I had to stop. I gave it a rub and tried again, and stopped. I stretched it thinking it was cramp, and tried running and couldn't. I could walk but I couldn't extend strides without pain, and so it was walking that I did back to the race base. DNF. 

At least that meant that I could focus on the education audit with plenty of sleep. That week went by in a flash and all signs are that it went well. For all my fears about them making something out of nothing, or the students (or staff) saying something that is misinterpreted, the final summary meeting alluded to nothing out of place. The executive team as a whole was relieved to have a smooth audit done and dusted. 

As for my hamstring, I occasionally jogged over the road that week and I could feel the tightness and planned to give it at least a week. My regular physio was booked up for the week so I got a time in the future but I gave it my own treatment. It was only on the Monday morning that I gave it a kilometre run and found both the ankle and my hamstring fine. I extended on the Tuesday to 5km and again, no issues. Then came lockdown but Wednesday evening I gave it a 10km tempo run and while I felt the hamstring it didn't impede my pace at all. Even so, having felt it on the run, and noticing some tightness the following morning, I had two days of running rest.

Finally, bring on the weekend, I ran 26km and 21 km this morning and though my body feels a little tired for all the work I hadn't expected from them for two weeks, both the hamstring and the ankle did nothing out of the ordinary; the ankle feels a bit more flexible than in the days before I rolled it. I'm going to rest tomorrow and hopefully start back to my normal training again.

So, I feel back on "track" though in lockdown. In three more weeks I have the third in the series of three half marathons, the Tāmaki River Half. It is probably after that that I'll know if I should aim for the Auckland Marathon, which is 10 weeks away.

Whaowhia te kete mātauranga - Fill your baskets of knowledge

The zeitgeist is a funny thing. There probably hasn't been a year where the passions of people aren't tied up in some cultural moment, and at every moment it is easy to believe that there wasn't a time more contentious and polarised on certain issues than the current time. It might be that recency bias, that is, that every moment is just as controversial and you only perceive the current and recent times to be moreso because of amnesia. But perhaps the world really is becoming more complicated with a tipping point of pluralism and technology has both been reached where sudden the once settled world is now lacking the blacks and the whites of an earlier age, and now we have a confusing grey.

I tend to subscribe to the latter idea and there are 101 examples of late, whether it be antivaxx movement(s), Critical Race Theory and, now, New Zealand's own indigenous culture war flare-up: the equal recognition of mātauranga Māori in our education system. Missed it? Here is a taster from the Herald. The letter that kicked off the kerfuffle is here. My own synopsis of it is that the Ministry of Education now insists on mātauranga Māori to be included in NCEA alongside "Western science" and with equal status. This triggered a lot of fire and heat, the misuse of the word "racist" prematurely, followed by a lot of views expressed by a whole range of people that verge on, and often go well into the deep dark valleys of racism.

The term mātauranga is broad as a dictionary reference should give you an overview. It comes from the word mātau which means wise, smart and knowledgeable. From my understanding, mātauranga should cover the knowledge and understandings gathered from the te ao, and shared down the generations. This you could translate as "science" but there is a separate word for that: pūtaiao. In the definition linked above it shows that it has also been used as the Māori word for "education" and "science". Some formal translations that involve it are force-fits for modern concepts as well as the evolution of the language for modern uses. 

So the battle-lines in this tussle? Well, there is what I would call "the white scientist in a white coat" (no, they're not just pākehā). Let's just call it the white-in-white view. Opposing them is a view that is more relativistic - let's call them "the woke". Both have their own beliefs and biases. White-in-white view has two oversimplifications - that there own craft is pristine and non-racial on the inside in how it works; and, in the way it is traditionally learned, objective world knowledge on the outside, and perceived in that way by students and society. The letter discusses quite rightly that what we see as modern science is not western and its goals are universal. This is an enlightened view but one that does not necessarily come from the education system, nor how it is seen. Let's have a look.

The history of science or development is often plotted with these points: Aristotle - Galileo - Newton - Einstein - modern science, or some such variation. It is not an isolated view that European cultures did all the heavy lifting to hoist us up the tree of knowledge, for where are the coloured people? The gaps are many -  the conceptualisation of zero in maths (Indian), gunpowder and paper (China), the gap between Aristotle and Galileo (about 1800 years) where European cultures burned the classic books as heretical, where Arabic libraries retained the language and pushed it forward. The fossil evidence for this is clear in language where al-cohol (which was isolated by al-Khwarizmi) and al-gebra (Jābir ibn Ḥayyān) which both were developed in this time. The modern body of knowledge we call science has been blessed with the contribution of all world's peoples, and it is often the acceptance of "foreign" ideas that things get a move-on. The vanguard of the white-in-white, the letter writers, know this implicitly if not explicitly.

Behind the white-on-white line, there is quite a faction of cultural conservatives that decry and moderation of the white secular mainstream that prevailed before. The Don Brashes of this world are in here who would rather let bygones-be-bygones with respect to Māori, insist that we are all equal under the law and things should just move on. There are many who see no purpose or need for progress, or see it as a threat. (Sidenote: I met an old friend yesterday who'd trained as a high school teacher but now is homeschools his son full-time due to his concerns. Though he didn't raise the topic of Māori, it was about the slide away from just teaching children knowledge, but the increasing priority of education on what to think. I'd include him in this camp.)

Louder behind the line though are people who vehemently do not like these changes, the kind who would say "Māori can have the foreshore but only if they go fishing in waka and with spears" (paraphrasing my father); or willfully throw around strawmen saying that Māori science would be teaching the pantheon of gods who were responsible for creation and natural forces, that biologists should know Tangaroa; botanists, Rongomātāne, and the meteorologists should consult Tāwhirimātea. I would say that these go into the realms of racism.

 

I have only had a brief review of how Ministry of Education recommends the teaching of mātauranga Māori. As this was specifically brought up by academics in the science faculty at the University of Auckland, it was interpreted solely in the context of science, and this has narrowed down what is meant to be a wider focus. It is intended that mātauranga Māori and te ao Māori (the Māori world) are included, where "possible and appropriate", into the curriculum, achievement standards and assessments, and treating these equally and not with Māori content being the add-on, the one that you need to leave the room for, etc. Art and architecture, for example, could easily have this component; right now, in my organisation none of the "creatives" have any idea about Māori design, which are now in huge demand. 

But its not just meant for an "ends" approach where having appropriate and equal treatment of content will result in a more complete graduate. I read into that part is to make it clear that other cultures' accumulated knowledge and wisdom are all valued and that your identity in turn has value. There will be a lot of people who pooh-pooh this idea. I do not know how much research "stock" is behind the more woke perspective that providing safety and dignity ends up with better outcomes overall. I just know people who do not feel they have a place in an institution opt out of it. The white-in-white view would be that provision of the best learning techniques with the best information, regardless of where it comes from, is the best way to develop the potential of our students. It probably served me well, and the co-signers probably did well too. I do not know whether there is any research "stock" in this, either, apart from the obvious result being that an elite do arise from it, a few Māori, but the overwhelming majority of them not.

With respect to science, there is still a lot more to be said than just recognising the fact that the Polynesian oceanic navigation techniques were top-notch and led to the location and migration to New Zealand, and to sail to Madagascar in the west and possibly to South America in the east as early as the 12th century; or the cultivation of kūmara in New Zealand conditions; or the development of medicine with New Zealand plants. It is to show that Māori and their ancestors were not merely war-like primitive stone-age people but developed through observation and experimentation, just as readily as those in other cultures. European science had the foot-up from their own cross-fertilisation of ideas through invasions, immigration, competition and communication, but both cultures had the same potential to achieve. They were just placed in different environments. 

New Zealand public schools are now a common environment for students of all cultural backgrounds and there needs to be an equitable approach, and the chance to know they can achieve. Māori students demographically speaking are out-competed by other Polynesians and other immigrant cultures for an array of reasons. 

I for one think the changes are a good start at least at addressing one of those reasons, and making the rest a bit broader minded and appreciate the achievements that sprung up from this place.