1988, the year of the Bicentenary, was considered by some as the start of a new era for Aborigines. However, despite excellent media exposure on Aboriginal issues, the bicentennial year concluded with just memories of various celebrations.

We enter the 1990s at a time of increasing change throughout the world. I believe that it is necessary for everyone involved in Aboriginal education to focus on some important issues that encompass this delicate area.

There is no more promising way of increasing the closeness of subcultural groups to their own roots and culture “than by cherishing and nourishing the speech of the home and the neighbourhood and by helping it to find the kind of expression in story, poem, play, which can communicate the spirit of the subculture to a multicultural audience.”

Engaged as we are in the essential task of assisting Aboriginal children to decode and encode a language which presents many problems to them, it behoves us to strive for the one aspect that many teachers – particularly those new to the field of Aboriginal education, and those charged with the teaching of reading to our school beginners – appear to miss. The reference, of course, is to relevancy.

How many of us, in retrospect, have been guilty of peddling irrelevant or “foreign” reading materials during our careers? Are we still guilty? Do your children readily relate to the books you present for their use? If not, then the following thoughts and suggestions may have some value in your situation, be it one where a tribal language is still the main means of communication, one where a bi-lingual program is in force, or where English (or a non-standard form of it) is the main communication medium.

I was somewhat surprised and disappointed to learn last month that a Year 9 Aboriginal student, whom I have taught since he arrived at high school last year, had broken into the Home Economics section of his local primary school and embarked on a spree of damage and destruction. What could have possessed this lad who can be friendly, helpful and positively trouble free for much of the time at school, to follow such a course of seemingly unprovoked and senseless action. My school, Murgon State High School, frequently plays host to delinquent behaviour by both Aboriginal and European descent students. In the past 16 months I have been physically threatened, sworn at and deliberately disobeyed. Fortunately for my self-respect’s sake, I have not been alone in receiving this tirade of abuse and disrespect. We have 120 Aborigines in a school of 480, and delinquent behaviour is not peculiar to either group.

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.”

The twin issues of education and employment are inextricably bound together for all Australian school students. In a recent issue, Mr. Hall discussed how Aboriginal students at Port Augusta High School are dealing with the problem; and he suggested that schools should engage in a program of pre-employment trainging.

In this article, Mr. Lewis discusses the employment opportunities for and aspirations of Aboriginal school leavers in New South Wales. Most importantly, he tells us how his Department can assist these students to find the positions which they want.

This paper treats two analytically separable but interwoven themes: Firstly, the role of the community in the educational process, and secondly, the effects of the community situation on the classroom situation, and vice versa. A major point of departure in the argument is the view that Aboriginal communities, defined here as Aboriginal settlements under special government administration, can be seen as educational agencies or institutions in a process of Westernization. At least this is how statements relating to policy and community planning can usefully be interpreted.

The aim of bilingual education is to develop a person who can think, speak, read, write and act appropriately in the language and culture of both his home and the wider society. Therefore, although for sound educational reasons the first formal reading experiences of children in a bilingual program are provided in their mother-tongue and these activities are maintained and extended throughout the child’s school life, at an appropriate time a bridge to English literacy needs to be built. Once this is done the world of English literature should be explored as far as is possible for each individual child. Sarah Gudschinsky stresses the importance of the addition of English literacy skills for pre-literate groups within a wider society when she reminds us that

She has defined a literate person as one who

The issue of selecting potentially successful students for a course of study is of central concern to course organisers. Nowhere is this issue of more concern than in the area of bridging courses designed to promote access to tertiary courses and professions in which Aboriginal people are grossly under-represented. Organisers of bridging courses are faced with the problem of identifying potentially successful candidates and designing courses to meet their individual learning needs. The problem exists because of the unprecedented nature of innovative courses catering for newly defined clientele such as mature-aged, urban and academically aspiring Aboriginal students.

A listening program geared to the interests of rural Aboriginal children was prepared and sent out to two Year S classes in the north-west of New South Wales. The class, with 19 Aboriginals and 4 whites showed measurable gains in listening comprehension at the end of the program. The Experimental Class with one Aboriginal girl and 10 white children did not show improvements in listening until the Aboriginally oriented listening program was terminated. The significance of these results, particularly for minority groups in a classroom, are discussed.

Australian society offers its major rewards to people who live in cities. Whether in employment, entertainment, housing, or welfare facilities, urban centres can generally offer more and better. This is a gross generalization, of course, but it must be seen as a major factor underlying rural-urban migration in Australia today. This is true whether migrants are Aboriginals or Europeans – despite the fact that Aboriginals generally end up in just those urban areas where the limits of the generalization can be most clearly seen.

I am one of a group of young Inala mothers who are involved in a playgroup in which we teach and learn with our children through their different stages of growth.

Each Thursday we are visited by Margaret Henry and Jeannie Barney. They offer me advice concerning different and new methods of play or sometimes we exchange methods of play and communication.

The play involved doesn’t require a set time or any expensive toys. Cotton reels, plastic containers etc., can provide hours of fun. However, we are fortunate enough to have a toy and book library from which our kids can select a toy or book for the week.

Once a month we all meet at the Inala Family Education Centre, and there we mothers have the chance to talk and our children to play. In general, we discuss and experiment with suggestions and ideas, and we get the chance to show off our creativeness in the making of an item of play for our sons or daughters.

The advantages of such a program are many. We are not only teaching our children but we’re learning with them also. We develop a relationship as friends with them, and they shall have some form of preparation for kindergarten. But, for me, there is nothing more fulfilling than to see my son repeat something I’ve shown him, and enjoy doing it.

My early years as a teacher were concerned with children labelled as slow learners. In the light of what many of them have achieved over the years – ranging from skilled trades to self-employment – I sometimes wonder whether we limit our educational horizons on occasion to expectations based on faulty or imprecise data, or to a process of conditioning; what to expect in given localities or among certain groups of children.

Fortunately, my professional reading at that time led me to Kirk and Johnson: “Educating the Retarded Child”, and to their concept of “belongingness”. They argued that the teacher accepts the child as he is, with all his imperfections and educational blemishes, his deprivations, disadvantages and differences. It is all too easy for us to hang the child’s lack of motivation and interest on the peg of social, housing or health services deficiency, and to avoid the personal and professional involvement that is a prerequisite of the committed teacher.

Unfortunately, our educational practice is such that we continue to identify minority-group children on western-oriented tests of general ability. No allowance is made for the fact that the child is unfamiliar with the language of the test administrator or indeed, of the items of the test; and yet it is well known in psychological circles that test results are only valid if the children being tested are as familiar with the test items as was the group on whom the test was normed.

The following article discusses how the Aboriginal Studies program at Alice Springs High School could be expanded and enriched by –

In addressing this question, I will briefly outline the existing types of language maintenance program models, and what schools can do about Aboriginal language maintenance in the Aboriginal community school context. I have suggested a number of guiding principles for Aboriginal schools which are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to establish a basis for dialogue and discussion from which language maintenance programs could be developed.