Opinion by Charles Henry
Concerns about the direction of education are no longer confined to staff rooms or academic journals. They are increasingly voiced by parents, employers, and community organisations - including those involved in outdoor recreation. The question being asked is blunt: are we witnessing a dumbing down of education, where independent thought is displaced by ideology, particularly around climate and “green” narratives?
For organisations represented by Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand, this is not an abstract debate. Education shapes how future decision-makers, planners, and regulators think about land, water, risk, and human activity outdoors. If critical thinking is weakened, the consequences spill well beyond the classroom.
From teaching how to think to teaching what to think
Education has traditionally aimed to equip students with tools: logic, evidence evaluation, debate, and the ability to test ideas. Increasingly, critics argue that this has shifted toward prescribed conclusions, where certain viewpoints are treated as settled moral truths rather than propositions open to scrutiny.
Climate change provides a clear example. There is broad scientific agreement that the climate is warming and that human activity plays a role. That does not, however, mean that all policy responses, timelines, impacts, or trade-offs are beyond debate. Yet in many educational settings, questioning assumptions about urgency, scale, or consequences is discouraged or framed as moral failure rather than intellectual inquiry.
When students learn that some questions are effectively off-limits, they learn a dangerous lesson: conformity matters more than reasoning.
The rise of ideology over literacy
A recurring complaint from employers and tertiary educators is that students are arriving with:
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weaker basic numeracy and literacy,
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limited ability to interpret data,
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difficulty distinguishing evidence from assertion,
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and discomfort with disagreement.
At the same time, curricula appear increasingly crowded with values-based content, often presented in emotive or moralised language. Environmental and “green” ideology frequently sits at the centre of this shift, not as a field of study to be analysed, but as a framework to be accepted.
This is not education in the classical sense. It is social conditioning, however well intentioned.
Why this matters for outdoor recreation
Outdoor recreation depends on people who can assess risk, understand trade-offs, and think practically about complex systems. Rivers, forests, coastlines, and ecosystems do not behave according to slogans. They respond to geology, weather, land use, time, and human intervention - often in counterintuitive ways.
When future policymakers are trained to see human activity primarily as harm, and restriction as the default solution, the result is predictable:
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access closures “just in case”,
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policy driven by worst-case scenarios,
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limited tolerance for uncertainty or adaptation,
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and diminishing respect for local knowledge.
Many recreationists already experience this mindset in planning processes where outcomes appear predetermined and consultation feels performative.
The intolerance of dissent
One of the most troubling trends is the growing hostility toward dissenting views, even when those views are evidence-based or professionally grounded. Students learn quickly which opinions are safe to express and which invite sanction - social or academic.
That environment does not produce robust thinkers. It produces cautious ones.
Ironically, science itself depends on challenge, falsification, and debate. A generation taught that questioning consensus is dangerous will struggle to innovate or respond creatively to real-world problems - including environmental ones.
Green ideology versus environmental stewardship
It is important to draw a distinction. Environmental stewardship - caring for land, water, and wildlife - is deeply embedded in outdoor recreation culture. Hunters, anglers, trampers, and paddlers often have the most direct stake in healthy environments.
What many object to is not care for nature, but ideology that elevates abstract models over lived experience, and moral certainty over practical outcomes. When education frames humans as inherently harmful and nature as fragile to the point of exclusion, it undermines the very connection that fosters care.
People protect what they are allowed to know, use, and value - not what they are told to fear.
A wider societal risk
Education that discourages independent thinking does not stay in the classroom. It shapes regulators, journalists, lawyers, and politicians. Over time, this narrows the range of acceptable debate and weakens democratic decision-making.
Outdoor recreation is often an early casualty because it sits at the intersection of environment, land use, and risk - precisely where ideological certainty is most tempting.
A role for organisations like CORANZ
CORANZ does not need to take positions on education curricula to recognise the danger of unquestioned orthodoxy. It can, however, advocate for:
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evidence-based policy,
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respect for complexity and uncertainty,
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genuine engagement with affected communities,
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and the preservation of critical thinking as a public good.
Healthy environments and healthy democracies share a common requirement: people who can think for themselves.
Final thought
Education should empower young people to question, test, and reason - not simply to align. If we lose that, no amount of ideology will compensate for the loss.
For outdoor recreation, the stakes are high. The future will be shaped not just by what the next generation believes, but by whether they are still allowed - and taught - to think.
Very good article — too many accept the word of politicians, bureaucrats and the media the latter which over the last decade has lost its integrity and therefore credibility.
The Department of Conservation justifies its policies (e.g. ecosystem poisons) by press releases which journalists print with no balance as to any alternative view/facts and the gullible majority of the public accept it as true.
Why does the media run to extreme green groups like Forest and Bird and publish an article that is based on ideology rather than facts? What is the other side of the story which may well be the reality rather than an ideological fantasy?
New Zealand’s vegetation is aggressive and over millions of year adapted to avian browsing (e.g. moa, kokako, kereru and even insects, beech leaf roller) and has developed strong defence mechanisms such as divarication of branch structure, thorns and even toxins. Browsing is a factor in the ecosystem’s functioning.
NZ outdoors folks need to develop an open way of thinking – and questioning of the “official” narrative.
Albert Einstein said “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Don’t blindly accept opinions ir edicts laid down by politicians and bureaucrats.
The freedom of outdoor access and its public nature is a part of the egalitarian society the European settlers established.
Talking about public conservation land in New Zealand, it is often – too often – called DOC land. That is incorrect and dangerous. Firstly it belongs to the people and governments are elected to serve the people.
Perhaps you did not realise that. You had accepted what the government and the department and the media say?
Here’s the dangerous part of it. New Zealanders government is proposing to approve the sale or disposal of over half of of the land owned by us but DOC are stewards of.
Under new proposals, the only land classifications which would not be for disposal are national parks, nature reserves and wilderness areas, and also sites with World Heritage designation.
The rest is up for grabs. Think when you hear of a proposal like this. Tell the government and all political parties (since its election year they might listen this year), hands off.
It is not DoC land, it’s public land belonging to you and me.
Do you not think the horse might have bolted and those of us who understand are behind the eight ball and the old adage that the squeaky wheel gets all the oil has got the lot, apathy is letting us down.
I have watched since the 1960’s as the education system has been slowly but inexorably captured by the young idealistic scholars – many of whom chose teaching because they failed University Entrance. A common phrase I remember from my late academic years was “Oh well, if you don’t get into University, there’s always Teacher Training College”. That’s not to say a few very dedicated students aspired teaching but in my view the vast majority saw it as the only way to avoid actually working for a living!
Cynical, well yes, but nonetheless I have been witness to the migration of the teaching profession to more and more radicalisations – again not all but far too many! How to root of the good from the bad? The wheat from the chaff? Now that’s the $64m question.