Current orthodoxy in aboriginal education.

The "Australian Journal of Indigenous Education" ("A.J.I.E.") is published twice a year by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. It purports to be "the only journal for educators that is specifically devoted to issues of practice and policy in Australian indigenous education". What can we learn from its recent issues: Volume 24 (1), 1996, to Volume 28 (1), 2000?

WHY IS INDIGENOUS EDUCATION IN CRISIS?

There is virtual consensus among contributors that indigenous education is in a mess. Hillary Colman-Dimon of James Cook University, an indigenous Australian, considers that "Western education for Aboriginal people on remote communities" has been a failure. Terry Wooltorton, a non-Aboriginal academic at Western Australia's Edith Cowan University, describes current Aboriginal education as a whole as "characterised by low academic success, low retention and high rates of discipline breaches". He may well be reversing cause and effect, and in any case there is little agreement among "A.J.I.E." writers about the main reasons for this malaise. Explanations offered can be divided into two main groups. First there are claims related to white invasion and subsequent oppression. Secondly, there are assertions that indigenous Australians reject most mainstream education because it is largely irrelevant to their needs. Weaknesses within indigenous communities themselves are sometimes admitted, but are generally regarded as consequences of white racism. Currently fashionable educational theory and teaching methods are indicted very rarely.

WHITE RACISM

"A.J.I.E." frequently features attacks on white Australians, past and present, usually by other white Australians. Hillary Colman-Dimon claims that Aboriginal education "continues to be experienced as a vehicle of oppression, assimilation, intrusion and alienation", full of "racial abuse and vilification from teachers, negative comments about families, prejudicial treatment". The Department of Social Work in the University of Queensland asserts that many Aborigines are so badly affected by the loss of their traditional lands many years ago that they "choose to deaden the pain by resorting to substance abuse".

Irene Calgaret, a Nyungar woman from Bunbury, Western Australia, can recall being "forcibly removed from my family, from the love and warmth and security of my home". She describes her mission days as "child slave labour". Hardships included being "deloused with kerosene", made "clean enough to eat the food God had provided for us", sent to bed at 6.30 p.m after a prayer, woken up at 6.00 a.m., and being forced to help with domestic work and preparation of meals. She concedes that "the education taught us was of good standard" and that she and the other part-Aboriginal children were of equal standard to the rest when they went to a government secondary school. However, she asks, "How on earth did white people, who had invaded our country, decide that the indigenous people of Australia, with a history of more than forty thousand years, were not capable of caring for and looking after their children?" Subsequently she hints at possible reasons, such as "the habit of drinking" and domestic violence. She also complains that "some Aboriginal communities still don't have running water or flushing toilets". Unfortunately, her own educational proposals seem unlikely to produce plumbers or electricians from her own people who can rectify these deficiencies.

Sophia Gool and Wendy Patton of Queensland University of Technology allege that racism and discrimination are "powerful deterrents for Aboriginal students' participation in school", although they concede that "the high rates of Aboriginal unemployment" arise largely because "their general lack of education and qualifications means that they can seldom compete in the labour market".

Jacky Huggins, then editor of "A.J.I.E.", ran lengthy excerpts about her experiences as a student teacher from her memoir "Sister Girl":

   "[My] motivation turned to despair on my first meeting with some members of
   the school staff who had arrived at the motel to pick up our excess
   luggage. As the door opened, to their amazement there I stood. I had seen
   that look so many times before, the look that tries to belittle one's
   confidence, that asks `Hey, what gives you the right to be here?' or says
   `so you're the student teacher and -- you're black'. Only Aboriginal people
   know what it feels to be degraded in this way, to feel the taint of racist
   jibes.

      Ablaze in green and gold bicentennial colours, the school was
   ethnocentrically Anglo ... I was initially allocated to a married
   conservative middle-class supervising teacher ... Her lack of interest in
   Aboriginal education was quite evident ...

      I would not have even attempted to plan a geography lesson with the
   students as, like the Bob Hawke treaty, it would introduce `pie in the sky'
   for the victims ...

      The white education system has much to learn from Aboriginal people;
   indeed, white Australia should be looking to Aboriginal expertise in
   describing the nature of geography."

From her own account, Huggins was an arrogant and disastrous student teacher, but this did not inhibit her progress to becoming a member of the National Council for Reconciliation.

Douglas Morgan and Malcolm Slade of Flinders University argue that the "Aboriginal Australian `Dark Age' began when the survivors of initial contact were `protected' by Europeans on missions and reserves". Morgan and Slade fail to acknowledge that many Aborigines were genuinely at risk and that protection was adopted from humanitarian motives. They recognise that "policies of assimilation and integration did not deny Aboriginal Australians participation in Australian schools", but add that "the missions and reserves were geographically isolated, preventing equal participation and benefit from mainstream education". These considerations led Sir Paul Hasluck to seek to give, in the first place, part-Aboriginal children a better chance in life by attending mainstream schools.

ALLEGED IRRELEVANCE OF MOST SCHOOL WORK

R. G. Smith of Maningrida Community Education in the Northern Territory laments that mainstream education "in its formalising and timetabling of educational processes, its preoccupation with literacy and largely mainstream concepts and skills, repudiates much of the current Aboriginal world". Curiously, Smith considers timetables utterly foreign to Aboriginal thought. One Aboriginal teacher with whom Smith works refused to use a computer because it was "Balanda [white man] stuff", and another woman colleague scorned a "rather sophisticated new telescope", because "she wanted to teach her children Aboriginal science, not Balanda astronomy".

Terry Wooltorton provides a transcript of interviews with a Year Eight Nyungar boy, Malcolm, and one of Malcolm's teachers. Malcolm explains that he does not attend school every day because "it's boring -- "the work, gotta write all the time". He objects to his teacher because "she always worry about school rules". In a typical lesson, Malcolm will "just write one to ten on the page" and soon afterwards will start to draw.

PROJECTS TO SUSTAIN ABORIGINAL IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Gilbert Van Kerckhoven of Denmark, Western Australia, tells of "an Aboriginal Christmas Celebration" with, at its centre, the legend of Wargyl the Rainbow Snake. He may not know that in the 1996 census 71 per cent of Aboriginal respondents claimed to be Christians, and fewer than three per cent to believe in a traditional Aboriginal religion.

Veronica Dobson, Rosalie Riley, Jeannette McCormack and Debbie Hartman describe an Arrernte Early Childhood Project aimed at influencing parents and children who "are losing that strong Arrernte that we have". They accuse non-Aboriginal teachers of paying too much attention to achieving irrelevant "standards", but add that there are "too many family groups involved" which squabble, and that drunken parents cannot tell stories to their children, who instead sit in front of television screens and absorb ideas alien to traditional Arrernte ways. This article suggests that it is almost impossible, even if it were desirable, to keep Aboriginal children within cocoons of traditional culture.

Judith Selby of Bundaberg North State High School, Queensland, cites an Aboriginal student, Jason, who hopes to get a job after leaving school. Jason wants "to do massage therapy or work in the mines", jobs with little in common, but he appreciates that success in Year Twelve would help towards either goal. Jason's school achievements include certificates for basketball, rugby league, touch football and athletics: all worthy and commendable, but Jason may look back with regret on a lack of any achievement in maths, English, science and other basic school subjects.

THEORETICAL DISCOURSE

Sue Jude believes that in racial societies "oppressed groups" are forced to become "cynical" and alienated from education. She fails to acknowledge that Chinese in Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere, and Jews and others in many countries, have responded to racial oppression with fervent positive engagement into educational opportunities when these arise.

Elizabeth Mackinlay of the University of Queensland's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, insists that "prior to colonisation indigenous women and men enjoyed a gender status and role which was based on equality and complementarity." Mackinlay does not mention family violence, mainly directed against women and children, which concerns so many Aborigines today.

Professor Johann Le Roux, on exchange at the University of New England from the University of Pretoria, holds that all persons classified as Aborigines have preserved "their original pre-European identity" and that "contemporary Aboriginal culture and language retain the crucial distinctive features of Aboriginality". This view, sometimes known as essentialism, was until very recently denounced in South Africa by opponents of apartheid as racist and reactionary.

By way of contrast, Cecily Willis, who had recently completed thirteen years' teaching in Arnhem Land, contributes a most insightful review of Stephen Harris' "Two-Way Schooling: Education and Cultural Survival". Harris "advocates a separation of domains in the schooling system in order to perpetuate `traditional' Aboriginal culture and identity". He expressed his alarm that "academic success in the Western school system could seriously undermine Aboriginal identity", whereas Willis's fear is that lack of success in Australian schools condemns further generations of indigenous people to poverty and dependence on others for basic goods and services. In effect, Harris offers a new racism wrapped up in euphemistic anti-racist rhetoric.

CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY

Maggie Young of the Shepherdson College on Elcho Island in the Northern Territory describes how her class of ten-, eleven- and twelve-year olds transformed their classroom into a cafe, in order to make school more "relevant" to life outside it. Through role-play, Young holds, the students will "learn social skills, solve problems in real-life situations, learn cooking skills, skills in handling real money, ordering food literacy and numeracy skills, and emphasise the importance of Hygiene and Nutrition as well". Apparently the whole school year was spent in this extended project.

John Fanshawe, a lecturer in Queensland University of Technology, observes that "effective teachers of adolescent Aborigines" are likely to be warm and supportive, to make realistic rather than unrealistic demands, to act in a responsible, businesslike and systematic manner, and to be imaginative and original. This has been widely held to be the case for teachers in general, but there can be no harm in restating ancient truths.

ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS

Some contributors consider that any testing of Aboriginal children is bad, since it stimulates a competitiveness ostensibly alien to Aboriginal culture, although Stuart Grimley concedes that "Aboriginal people seem to use the sporting arena as a means towards more competitive ends." Perhaps he had seen Cathy Freeman in a race or watched Aboriginal footballers.

A. L. Barnes, of the Division of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at Murdoch University, notes that the indigenous "students here do not favour assessment methods that test memory but not necessarily understanding". Yet memory is an essential building block of understanding. Pet-owners would be nervous if vets cannot remember which part of an animal's anatomy is which. But Barnes favours assignments free from "the stressful artificial environment of examinations", and fears that oral and practical examinations may also be inappropriate if students are "intimidated by the teacher conducting the assessment".

NON-INDIGENOUS ACADEMICS AND INDIGENOUS CONTROL

Most contributors favour indigenous control or "ownership" of all knowledge relating to indigenous life and culture, past and present. Sister Anne Gardner, then Principal of Murrupurtyanuwu Catholic School in the Northern Territory, explains how she decided to "let go, to move away from the dominant role as Principal". Sister Gardner holds that "Aboriginal people never act as `leader'." Perhaps the Church of Rome might become more relevant to indigenous persons if it abandoned having a "leader"? Teresita Puruntayemeri, her successor, suggests that one way for Aborigines to share the burdens of leadership is to "perform different dances in the Milmaka ring, sometimes in pairs or in a group".

Professor Le Roux was shocked to learn that "about 80 per cent of available published manuscripts" concerning Australian indigenous education have been "written by non-Aboriginals". John Budby and Dennis Foley ask: "does academic licence [concerning research on indigenous communities] apply in these circumstances, or are Elder members of the Australian communities the custodians of knowledge and the ones who should approve its sharing across other cultures?". The delicate problem of "cultural ownership", implied here, also arises concerning the Internet: it is vitally important to let the whole world know about Aboriginal traditional thought, yet equally necessary to confine its secrets to proper custodians. But one doubts whether Budby and Foley would tolerate similar knowledge censorship exercised by, for example, R.S.L. members concerning Australian armed forces' history.

UNIVERSITIES AND THE INDIGENOUS

Professor Le Roux and Myra J. Dunn examine "Aboriginal student empowerment" in the University of New England, a worthy institution that, we are told, resists "racism, systemic bias and structural violence" with which "Aborigines have been marginalised, disempowered, impoverished and dispossessed". Yet Le Roux and Dunn find other factors, unconnected with racism and colonialism, which inhibit Aboriginal educational success: such as "lack of parental encouragement", "deficient English language skills", "peer group influences antipathetic to formal education" and "poor academic discipline and motivation".

Various education lecturers and students from Central Queensland University describe a project inspired by "Action Learning", which claims to be experience-based and to avoid prescriptive methods. They created "a more tactile learning environment" involving "holding hands, touching and hugging". All three men among the eight indigenous student teachers engaged in this generously staffed project dropped out by the end of the year.

Boards of censorship will have extensive powers over schools and universities if Dennis Foley has his way. Reviewing Debra Adelaide's "Serpent Dust", he writes that "hatred and frustration surged through my veins" on reading her account of Aboriginal women who are "slippery as an eel outside, inside as hot and soft as any man could ask". He declares that the "negative stereotyping mixed with culturally unacceptable material of traditional birth is difficult to tolerate" and that Adelaide's story "should not be a reader for impressionable teenagers". In addition, Foley maintains that personal tutors, combining the skills of Oxbridge dons and experienced nannies, must keep indigenous students out of "the city, its lights, noise and nightclubs", since otherwise they are "like lambs to the slaughter". If his plan were actually carried out, of course, cries of "paternalism" would rend the skies.

Arthur Smith laments circumstances precluding the rapid promotion he considers Aboriginal academics deserve. These include the necessity to "upgrade qualifications whilst learning to survive and succeed in an often complex and culturally unfamiliar environment". He also laments that "the language of instruction is almost exclusively English"; "the curriculum and pedagogy of university study in Australia is still fundamentally either Eurocentric or North Americanised"; and "indigenous staff are invariably heavily involved in establishing a political beachhead in universities".

Josephine Ryan of the Australian Catholic University's Aquinas Campus, Ballarat, aims to consolidate in Aboriginal children their distinctive way of learning, and to ensure they are not contaminated by Western ideas. How long before the Rainbow Serpent replaces the Cross in the Australian Catholic University, and before the names of culturally insensitive dead white males such as Thomas Aquinas are expunged?

BATCHELOR COLLEGE

The most remarkable article is by Paul Buckley, who interviewed five experienced non-Aboriginal teachers in Aboriginal schools in the Northern Territory. All five had supervised students from the Territory's Batchelor College, the largest specialist institution for preparing indigenous teachers in Australia. Their comments include:

   "The high attrition of graduates is a real concern ... most graduates seem
   to have very little sustainable skill due to scant attention being given to
   core curriculum of the system within which the graduate works ... many
   courses fail to meet the needs of the children the graduate is expected to
   teach ... [T]his can lead to a conflict situation when the community's
   aspiration of an English-only school is not reflected in the Batchelor
   College's philosophy of two-way schooling ... The Batchelor College and
   government political agenda are confusing for the educational stakeholders
   within a community.

      The teacher education courses do not attempt to teach ethics or
   professional standards. This can and has led to major conflict in a school
   situation between the rights of the child and expectations of the teacher.
   Batchelor College and places like that are great places for social justice,
   but they are not educational institutions ... Real hard core pedagogy,
   whether mainstream or Aboriginal, is sacrificed for the `social justice
   thing'. E.S.L. [English as a Second Language] strategies are not addressed,
   the promotion of good planning and evaluation technique is not taught and
   there is little or no reference to the Northern Territory core curriculum
   ... Some of the staff are far too removed from the actualities of the
   classroom ... Batchelor College and the courses undertaken need to engage
   in good sound pedagogy and stop playing political games.

      Batchelor College's glossy image hides ideological claptrap which is far
   removed from primary school needs. It affirms superior attitudes and pushes
   bright stars dependent upon their political correctness ... There is a
   greater input into the political rights of individuals rather than the
   responsibilities of the teacher, mechanics of teaching and duty of care ...
   This can be seen in issues such as punctuality, assuming a reasonable work
   load and absences ... [T]eacher education courses at Batchelor College

   encourage a dogmatic and self-righteous view of ideal models of teaching,
   whether or not they meet community aspirations for the school ... No
   liaison with the schools or the communities actually takes place ... In
   many cases students did not complete or attend practicums but were passed
   by the college. Tutors often do the work for the students and lecturers do
   not have recent primary school experience. They are selected to positions
   dependent upon their political correctness rather than primary school
   experience or effectiveness as teachers or role models ... Batchelor
   College operates on inverted racism.

      The [student] teachers are all politically correct, but largely lack
   skills to run a class without a great deal of additional support. I
   wouldn't really mind this but they are encouraged to believe that they are
   teachers in their own right, when really they are not all that well
   qualified ... There is enormous pressure placed upon supervising staff to
   pass student practicums with no regard to the actual performance ... This
   would not be tolerated if a non-Aboriginal student delivered the same
   standard ... Many of the staff of Batchelor College have not lived for any
   long period on communities and therefore have not had their political
   correctness tested every day. Their ideologies are never challenged by the
   realities of teaching in real time in a real school."

One well understands in the present political climate why the five interviewees wished to remain anonymous. Paul Buckley must be congratulated on writing the article and the editors on publishing it.

A response by Leon White to Buckley was published in the next issue attacking Buckley's good faith. White suggested that critics, such as Buckley, of current orthodoxy in Aboriginal education wish to "return to times when racist, sexist, paternalistic, patronising and fascist behaviour was an unchecked element in the culture of schools and education providers".

CONCLUSION

The 1997 "Australian Reconciliation Convention", chaired by Dr. Ken Boston, the New South Wales Department of School Education's Director-General, called for "mandatory Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Studies in all primary and secondary schools, and in post secondary institutions", and "mandatory cultural awareness training for practising teachers". Many who give their support to such courses have little idea of what these will be like. It is people like the contributors to "A.J.I.E." who will devise them. You have been warned.

PROFESSOR GEOFFREY PARTINGTON is a Faculty Member of the School of Education at the Flinders University of South Australia and is a commentator on social and political issues.