The Tasmanian Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee (T.A.E.C.C.) was established in March 1979 as a result of prior consultation between the Tasmanian Education Department, the Tasmanian representative to the National Aboriginal Education Committee (N.A.E.C), Mrs Patsy Cameron and Aboriginal organisations throughout Tasmania and the islands.

The Committee was elected by the Aboriginal community and consists of twelve Aboriginal people – three each from the northwest, southern and northern regions and one each from Flinders and Cape Barren Islands, and the Tasmanian representative to the N.A.E.C.

It was formed in response to a need for increased Aboriginal involvement in the area of Aboriginal education in Tasmania.

The committee’s function is to advise the Minister for Education and his department on the educational needs of Aboriginal people in Tasmania and to suggest appropriate ways of meeting these needs.

It meets every three months.

It is a significant fact that in 150 years of European settlement there is still only a handful of Aborigines working in the field of education in this state. This means that Aboriginal parents have very little say in the educational policies and programs affecting their children and they are concerned about this. Because of the fact that many Aboriginal people have had little contact with the school situation, (in fact up till comparatively recently, many, as children, were actually excluded from attendance at school) they regard it as an alien institution, representing an academic world to which they do not belong. Consequently many Aboriginal people are hesitant to approach the school under any pretext, even for the purpose of enrolling their children. They need a corporate voice, an avenue of approach by which they can make contact with educational authorities, to make known their needs and aspirations, at whatever level necessary, and to feel assured that action will be taken in response to these needs.

With the object of providing a corporate voice for Aborigines in the educational scene in 1977 State Consultative Groups were set up in all states except Western Australia. Here in Western Australia, the need was seen by the Education Department to provide for organization at the grass roots level, and to plan for regional committees throughout the State. In September 1978, I was transferred from a classroom to the Aboriginal Education Branch as a community liaison officer, to instigate and facilitate the setting up of these committees, and to this date initial meetings have been held for this purpose in the following towns each serving a particular region: Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Kellerberrin, Narrogin and Moora. At each meeting the keen response from the local Aboriginal community has indicated that this move to establish regional committees has their full approval and support. It is expected that by the end of 1980 a committee will have been established in each of the Education Department’s regions.

I was a teacher at the Small settlement school in 1977. It was not a good year for the school by any reckoning and I thought I would leave it at that when I left in December of that year – the day after school finished. Put it down to experience, let all the sordid little details dissolve in time. But they didn’t and I never got Small settlement out of my mind. In 1978, I visited the school anew and this paper is a result of my observations and interviews.

It was written with teachers in mind, particularly young teachers going into Aboriginal schools for the first time. However, it may have more general interest: many features of the school’s history are characteristic of the history of Northern Territory administration. A cursory acquaintance with some of the things that have gone on before may help to provide a basis for the courage and awareness needed for working effectively in an oppressive environment. A historical perspective may assist teachers and others in approaching their clients with the humility appropriate for making their work interesting and their influences positive.

In an earlier article (The Aborignal Child at School, Vol.7, No.3, 1979) I explored the idea that we, as teachers, may transmit our attitudes and expectations to our pupils through our accommodating and non-accommodating moves towards them. I suggested that we might observe such moves if we monitored our language behaviour against our intentions, as these are modified by our beliefs and attitudes, and by the on-going interaction. I proposed a model to help us explore the motives underlying our own accommodating and non-accommodating behaviours; to help us explore how these motives affect the kinds and extent of shifts we make; and to help us explore the effects of these shifts on the whole class or on groups of individuals within the class. I indicated that the aim of such exploration would be to sensitize us to the extent to which our language behaviour signals, both overtly and covertly, our own attitudes and expectations to our pupils.

I would now like to look more closely at some of the items in the tentative list of ‘measures’ of accommodation that I detailed in that earlier article. In particular, I would like to look at questions in the classroom; at how teachers organize talk and use talk for organizing; and at joking in the classroom.

The Aboriginal Studies course outlined here was conceived by Jennie Fraser, a member of the Woy Woy Aboriginal community. In 1979 Jennie, who lives in Woy Woy with her family, approached the principal of Woy Woy High School with a proposal to introduce Aboriginal Studies within the school. The principal, in consultation with the Social Science and History masters, agreed to the idea and responded by allocating for Jennie Fraser’s proposed course, a segment of the Years 9 and 10 Social Science program.

This showed considerable flexibility on the part of the school and left Jennie Fraser with a commitment to develop and participate in the teaching of an Aboriginal Studies course in 1980. She realized the constraints on the program, her own lack of teaching experience worried her and the curriculum aspects of developing a unit were of concern to her. However, she had expertise in Aboriginal Studies, and with the assistance of the school, was able to meet appropriate resource personnel. She contacted the Curriculum Consultant (Aboriginal Studies) and several visits and planning workshops were arranged for consultation which was beneficial to all parties concerned. During this process she met with the N.S.W. State Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and a workshop was organised to consider curriculum rationale at which she was able to discuss approaches to designing a unit. Alan Fidock, from the Curriculum Development Centre, attended this workshop.