Stimulus pictures can be either one of the most valuable or one of the most misused of teaching aids. If they are simply displayed for an indefinite period, around the classroom walls as decoration, they will quickly become valueless. However, an imaginative teacher should find relevant study prints of value over a wide range of teaching methods and subject areas.

In compiling notes on the use of the set of pictures produced by this Branch, a number of guiding principles were followed. The notes are simply an introduction, not a comprehensive course. Each teacher, each class and each situation will cause the use of the pictures to vary, making it impossible to produce detailed courses with general applicability. Even if such a prescriptive course were possible, we would consider it highly undesirable. The value of the prints will be enhanced to the degree to which they are used creatively, according to the needs of the particular situation.

The notes will seek to present more of a generalised framework to assist teachers in developing their own methods of utilizing the pictures. Various ways of using study prints will be listed and types of questioning and interaction strategies discussed.

Some determinants of educability for Aborigines are discussed and such problems as integration aid involvement in decision-making by Aborigines reviewed. The role of the teacher in effective communication with Aboriginal children and Aboriginal communities and related aspects such as teacher expectation are considered. Research findings in behavioural science which relate to belief systems and attitudes are considered for inclusion in teacher education programs for the teachers of Aboriginal children. In conclusion, some proposals are made concerning teacher education programs.

Aboriginal children are confronted with numerous problems coping with the school system. An Aboriginal child is torn between the extremes of two cultures; the dominant white culture and Aboriginal culture.

The dominant white culture perceives the Aboriginal culture to be different and at worst, very inferior. The Aboriginal culture is resigned to the white culture’s perception of it, because this perception is reinforced in the reality of the dominant white situation.

The Aboriginal race is seen by many whites as lazy, irresponsible, uneducated, and a burden to society. The white Australian perception of Aboriginals as an ethnic group is still, in many ways, one of inferiors. Aboriginals have encountered white superiority since white settlement. Aboriginals were hunted and destroyed as vermin, and at a later stage, those that survived were placed on missions or reserves. At the time this seemed an effective solution, but it did in fact take Aboriginals away from their tribal lands, which were an important part of their culture. The Aboriginals were degraded and culturally ruined. Although there has been a small effort by white authorities to help Aboriginals, Aboriginals still have a strong feeling for white hostility and dominance.

The Aboriginal child is a product of these two widely different cultures, but he is forced into a white school system, which still, in many ways, merely tolerates his Aboriginal heritage.

In country areas of Australia it is not a rare concept for multi-grade classrooms to exist under the instruction of one or two teachers. However, even within the structure of single teacher schools, there is usually a grade structure within the classroom, where the teacher divides the children into grades and the blackboard into grade areas. This works efficiently if the children in each grade section are of the same academic level and of similar chronological age. In many cases the teacher can call on the senior students, when they have completed their work, to help the juniors, and in this way the teacher surreptitiously sets recapitulatory and revisionary work for all the students. The big ones helping the little ones is an efficient concept in small school teaching, especially if the children are of European extraction and have had a fairly continuous educational exposure.

In an Aboriginal school or a school with an enrolment of predominantly Aboriginal children, the assumption that the children have had a continual exposure to education cannot be made, and if made, can be very detrimental to the educational development of the child. A teacher arriving in an Aboriginal community peruses reports and other information regarding the children and after several weeks of teaching and testing, sets up “grade areas”. Here the dangers creep in.

Most Aboriginal children are lacking in the basic European competitive instinct and do not wish to be singled out as superior students. They seem to believe in the words of Eldridge Cleaver that, “Competition is the law of the jungle and co-operation is the law of civilization”. Perhaps the Aboriginal people are more civilized than those of the European west.

As in previous years, the school at Mornington Island has considered that one of the major disadvantages of the educational program here has been the lack of opportunity for interaction with other children, and the experiencing of other aspects of life which are so readily available to children living on the mainland and particularly those nearer to large centres of population.

Over the past two years, with financial help from the Aboriginal Secondary Grants Scheme and Disadvantaged Schools, plus local help-, children in the upper grades have had the opportunity to visit various centres of interest such as Cairns and hinterland, Mt. Isa and Brisbane.

The evaluation of such educational tours is a long term process and made even more difficult as many of the children leave school, but from what has been ascertained, it is felt that such tours to European centres, though of value in developing a variety of concepts, did not totally satisfy the needs of our school or meet with the major objectives of developing the need for a sense of responsibility within our younger people who will be required to be the leaders of the community in the future.

In previous tours our Aboriginal children observed Europeans at work and play, but rarely saw any of their own skin involved in outside life, and then only in labouring types of work. With this thinking in the background, and an enthusiastic report from Doomadgee about their trip to Papua New Guinea last year, we considered the possibility of visiting another country.

In this article I attempt to point out the types of children I worked with, the problems they had, and some of the ways I attempted to overcome these problems.

The basic idea was for me to work from 2.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. helping under-achievers master some fundamental language skills. This appears very clear-cut. However, I think, as the article progresses, the Inala nightmare suddenly grows upon you. I write informally throughout this article – the work was much the same. Within a broad framework plan, the spontaneity and understanding needed in unexpected situations flourished best. Some incidents and sayings are dispersed throughout the work.

“Tonight Wayne, why don’t you be an ordinary teacher like the ones at school? Come in and roar at us.”

“It’s going to be hard, we’d know it’s just a game.”

“Come on Wayne, it’d be good. We’ll act like we’re at school and you be the teacher.”