What I Believe
I believe democracy begins in the classroom. When education systems become prescriptive and centrally controlled, we don’t just lose pedagogical autonomy — we erode the foundations of democratic society itself.
Democratic citizens aren’t produced through authoritarian education. If we want thinking, questioning, engaged citizens, we need thinking, questioning, engaged students. And that requires thinking, questioning, engaged teachers with the professional freedom to respond to their students’ needs.
I’m concerned with how power operates in our education system and the democratic price we’re paying for recent curriculum reforms. The investigation into the curriculum refresh takeover revealed how a small, ideologically aligned group managed to discard years of work by hundreds of educators, replacing it with a prescriptive approach that limits teacher autonomy and student possibility.
How This Started
I’m a New Zealand teacher who began filing Official Information Act requests in 2024 about education policy changes I was witnessing. What started as professional curiosity became systematic documentation of competitive authoritarian techniques operating in real-time in a top-rated democracy.
My Discovery Process
Through persistent investigation, I obtained over 100 pages of government documents proving systematic use of competitive authoritarian techniques in New Zealand’s education system. This gave me comprehensive real-time documentation of democratic backsliding methods identified by scholars like Levitsky & Way.
What My Evidence Shows About Competitive Authoritarianism
The government documents I obtained prove competitive authoritarian techniques:
- Democratic processes maintained as facades while being systematically bypassed
- Advisory groups used to legitimize predetermined outcomes
- Emergency provisions exploited to avoid oversight
- Legal frameworks retrospectively adjusted to create legitimacy
- Temporary capture mechanisms converted into permanent institutional control
Connecting Theory to Practice
Through analyzing this evidence, I’m documenting how competitive authoritarian techniques identified in academic literature actually operate in practice. The methods I documented mirror those observed in other democracies under stress, but provide unprecedented real-time documentation of theoretical frameworks in action.
My Current Work
I continue investigating competitive authoritarian techniques alongside my full-time teaching, developing methodology for early detection and connecting empirical evidence to established democratic backsliding theory. I share my findings through physical reports and make my research available for comparative politics research.
Why My Research Matters for Democracy Defence
Democracy dies through competitive authoritarianism, not traditional coups. My documentation provides empirical evidence of how theoretical frameworks operate in practice, offering early warning methodology that democracy professionals need to detect backsliding before it becomes irreversible.
Background
My strength lies in writing, which is how I prefer to communicate with the world. I keep notebooks for scribbling and sketching, and read widely across fiction and non-fiction.
I’ve collaborated with world-renowned cognitive scientist Professor Guy Claxton and learning expert Becky Carlzon on resources for developing student learning dispositions, and my investigative work has been shared widely within New Zealand’s education community.
Beyond education, you might find me riding my bike to work, running on the beach with my dog Pluto, or sitting with a book, feeling the sun on my face—creating space for noticing and thinking beyond the immediate demands of the day.
Democracy Begins In The Classroom 