Teenagers in the Western world are increasingly vocal in their demands for “relevance” in their school experience. Young Aboriginal men in their teens (although perhaps not fully conscious of what they are doing, or able to verbalize their feelings) are also “demanding” relevance in their school experience by several kinds of passive resistance. Two examples of this resistance are, that attendance at some Northern Territory schools is extremely low, and that young men trained in various trade courses are generally working in other trades. The educational system, of course, is not solely responsible for this situation, but we should respond to this new “post colonial” mood in Aboriginal communities. Examples of the “post colonial” era are: that Aboriginals know they are free to resist white pressures to work or attend school, or in fact to do anything “white”; that local Aboriginal councils are assuming much more responsibility for local management; that local Aboriginals cherish their new found power to say which white people can or cannot live in their community, and so on. Our prediction is that if schools don’t move with the times we will find that schools in Aboriginal communities will soon begin to appear to Aboriginals as the last “white strongholds” in these communities; that is “white” in terms of initiatives, in terms of ultimate authority, in terms of environmental setting, materials used, times at which things are done and content of what is taught.

For the white teacher to say, “But I’m open to Aboriginals taking more initiative”, is hardly practical because the Aboriginal teenager has not learned to be sufficiently aggressive or expressive to take initiatives in the face of the technologically dominant white teacher; therefore the first initiative-to-allow-initiative must be taken by the white teacher.

While conducting research intended to explore the underlying thoughts and assumptions held by non-Indigenous teachers and policy makers involved in Aboriginal education I dug out my first book on Australian history which had been given when I was about seven years old. Titled Australia From the Beginning (Pownall, 1980), the book was written for children and was not a scholarly book. It surprised me, then, to find so many of my own understandings and assumptions about Aboriginal affairs and race relations in this book despite four years of what had seemed quite liberal education in Australian history.

From a child’s point of view, some of the main concepts of the language-experience approach to the teaching of reading are:

What I think about, I can talk about.

What I talk about can be expressed in other ways.

Anything I write can be read.

I can read what I write and what other people write.

What I say and write is as important to me as what other people have written for me to read.

This approach was adopted at Koonibba school at the beginning of last year in an endeavour to try to make reading more meaningful and interesting for the children. Excursions became a vital part of the language program. Each week the “classroom” was found somewhere within a hundred mile radius of the reserve. Places were visited along the coast as well as areas beyond the dingo-proof fence. Transport varied from trucks, land rovers, boats, canoes, buses, station wagons, on foot, utilities and a tugboat. The premises that reading should come from the child’s experiences and that all children want to read and write were adopted here. The child’s wish to communicate with others about the excursion was also capitalized upon.

The Director-General of Education in 1982, Mr. D.Swan, stated that Aboriginal education had two purposes: to enhance the development and learning of Aboriginal students and to enable all students to have some knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Aborigines and their cultural heritage (Aboriginal Education Unit, 1982, p.5). Unfortunately, today Aboriginal students still do not enjoy compatible success and participation rates to those of non-Aboriginal students. They are predominantly taught irrelvant curriculums and faced with inappropriate teacher classroom management and discipline styles. Subsequently, many Aboriginal students view schools as alien and hostile places. Schools do not meet Aboriginal students’ needs and problems of low self-esteem, motivation, academic achievement and a sense of safety and belonging often occur. Aboriginal students often do not behave in the same manner as non-Aboriginal students and teachers should be aware of the purposes of Aboriginal students’ behaviour and of the family and cultural influences which shape Aboriginals’ feelings, attitudes and values. There is a need in our schools for the inclusion of more Aboriginal perspectives in curriculums and for teachers to become aware of the need to change the way they teach and interact with Aboriginal students.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the problems associated with the monolingual approach to the education of Aboriginal children. It does not set out to cover all of the problems experienced by vernacular-speaking children when English only is used as the medium of their primary formal education. By revealing some of the main areas of difficulty, though, it is hoped that bilingual education will be seen as a valuable tool for overcoming many of the problems.

Part I of this article outlined the findings of a 1987 study of attitudes of Aboriginal students in 19 New South Wales Central Schools. It showed that, despite higher attrition rates, Aboriginal children seemed to be as favourably disposed towards their schools as were their non-Aboriginal peers.

Part II, drawing from the same Central Schools study, compares the perceptions of teachers in these Central Schools according to whether the schools were ‘predominantly Aboriginal’, ‘significantly Aboriginal’ or ‘non-Aboriginal’.

Teaching reading and writing to older Aboriginal children can be one of the most satisfying teaching tasks in the Northern Territory. Most of these students have a culturally different background from the teacher’s. Their perception of a topic therefore may be quite different from the teacher’s. A good teacher will value this difference and use it:

Despite growing initiatives in Aboriginal-designed educational facilities, most Aboriginal children still undertake their schooling in mainstream classrooms where methodology and organisation have evolved according to a white Australian tradition.

The school system is an institution relentlessly perpetuating the stereotypes and social order that have been Australia’s since the British occupation. Aboriginal children are seen to ‘underachieve’ in terms of a system designed to meet the needs of the dominant society. While ‘underachievement’ may be slightly diminished by adjustments in teaching styles, these changes should be part of an overall classroom strategy that is based on an understanding of Aboriginal characteristics and cultural traditions, and a realisation that Aboriginal children’s behaviour reflects their experience of a largely racist society.

Racism certainly exists amongst primary school children in Australia. Through both experience in school and teaching, the authors have noted marked prejudice amongst students. This prejudice takes the forms of slurs, name calling, recitation of myths and stereotypes, and occasionally violence, and is directed at all minority groups, but notably Aborigines and Asians.

Students in minority groups have most likely been on the receiving end of this prejudice during their school lives and, because of this, may have felt alienated and humiliated. In this paper it is proposed that the teaching of race relations and cultural understanding is one method teachers may use to decrease the racial attitudes of the white non-minority students.

Language is an important part of a child’s total development as a person. Through language the child learns the behaviour patterns that are expected within his society, the society’s religious beliefs, and how the society sees the organisation of the world around it.

“Language is a powerful force of socialisation or the preparation of a young person for later life in a social group.” It has a vital function in “accumulating and transmitting culture” (Bostock, 1977, p.6).

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.

I doubt that anyone would disagree with the need to establish a positive teacher/child relationship in any classroom situation. The fact is that most young children are expectant of this happening and are conditioned by their home environment and experience to relate to the school and the teacher. There is no doubt that this attitude tempers any sense of strangeness and assists in the development of a feeling of security so necessary to a successful school experience. Many of the steps taken to foster a positive relationship between teacher and pupils occur spontaneously and as a result of mutual interaction, on the basis of a common cultural background. In the case of Aboriginal children in a class situation, this common cultural background cannot be presumed to exist. Many aspects of the Aboriginal culture are vastly different from the European one, not the least of the differences being that the very concept of the school institution does not belong to the Aboriginal culture.

Some understanding of the basic cultural differences is necessary to provide for the building up of a feeling of mutual trust and ease. Suggestions, hopefully of a practical nature, are offered to facilitate this most important aspect of a class teacher’s responsibilities, for without it, I am convinced little meaningful learning will occur.

The following article has been based on personal experiences and dealings with over 40 teachers and three different principals during the period 1976–1981, while at the Mornington Island State School. It is also based on discussions with teachers from other communities, advisory teachers, principals and inspectors during this period.

The article intends to look at the meaning of burn-out oomplaoenoy and how this syndrome so easily affects teachers and other workers, especially in remote Aboriginal communities. Although the article strongly supports all the recent innovations and planning in the area of curriculum development, conferences, and support systems in Aboriginal Education, still, that most fundamental criterion is missing – selection of teachers to work in these isolated areas with these innovated programs.

More importantly, the article also hopes to show what happens to the majority of teachers in these particular areas and how the burn-out oomplaoenoy syndrome operates. Perhaps the reader may then realise why such schools have enormous staff turn overs. Perhaps, also, education authorities should view these proven burn-out teachers in Aboriginal Education with greater understanding, support and value.

It remains my strong belief that each and every one of us is capable of working in •burn-out’. It is, however, much easier to adopt ‘complacency’. ‘Burn-out’ is that period of time during which one strives to work at maximum level and efficiency. Set-backs and failures are brushed aside and the person keeps attacking, keeps forcing himself to reach goals pre-set by himself or by others. By forcing ‘burn-out’, working to the limit, however, one can soon become burnt-out. Burnt-out is a dangerous time for the individual. Either he recognises the situation and opts for complacency, or he ‘cracks’ and is in that situation of being of no use to anyone, or he leaves the situation.

The aim of comparative studies in education is to improve our understanding of our own problems of education at the national level. In the words of Phillip E. Jones (1973:24), “Comparative education can lead us to understanding, sympathy and tolerance”. More than that, it is hoped that it can lead to improved circumstances for Australia’s most disadvantaged minority group – the Aborigines.

The Aborigines were the first people to have a social system in Australia. That system, however, has undergone dramatic change in the last 200 years at the hands of ‘white’ migrants. Changes in educational policy in Australia have been largely a reaction to what the ruling majority has regarded as the ‘Aboriginal problem’. Schooling for Aborigines thus moved, early this century, from an era of mission schools and reserves to ‘formal’ schooling which was introduced in the 1960’s. Policies then shifted in turn from ‘assimilation’ to ‘integrationism’ to ‘self-determination’ and self-government’ for the Aborigines.

Indigenous people have been for a long time deprived of financial benefit from their knowledge. Campaigns around the stolen wages and the “Pay the Rent” campaign highlight this. As does the endemic poverty and economic disenfranchisement experienced by many Indigenous people and communities in Australia. Recent enterprises developed by Indigenous people, such as the sale of art works, can be seen as examples of people receiving remuneration for tangible products deriving from their knowledge. Also, tourism involves the sale of selected knowledge in context. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a rich and expanding area of enterprise development which supports the development of knowledge and its use in enterprise. While such work depends on the owner’s, or in this case Indigenous, control of the knowledge, it can open up new avenues for enterprise development. Knowledge about local land can be included in children’s computer games, knowledge about successful projects can be shared between communities through the immediacy and multimedia format afforded by online environments, and government reports and statistics can be accessed and analysed by Indigenous groups, given tools that suit a community’s abilities and needs. In particular the way in which ICT can be adapted to individual requirements make such tools ideal for communities which form such a varied and complex environment. The author believes it is important that Indigenous communities not only benefit from ICT by taking control of the technology for their purposes, but are also part of its creation and design to suit their aspirations. ICT is a highly flexible technology which can be tailored to many different enterprises. This paper presents some of the projects being developed at the University of New South Wales and suggests how these can be extended.

Mr. Russo from Yalata has written about a project which he is initiating at his school; one two-minute movie film has already been made. Other teachers might like to follow his lead.

Basically my idea was to take a movie of certain aspects of the present way of life of the Yalata people with some reference to the past. Examples include:

– life stories of noted people,

– carving boomerangs and wombats,

– cooking of different foods.

It was envisaged that the films would be taken by me initially and perhaps by the people and children themselves, after some teaching in night classes in movie taking.

It was felt essential that agreement of the School Council be obtained before the project was undertaken and that final edited film should be presented to the Mission and School Councils for preview, review and a final decision about its distribution. The people should not only be informed and participate but also be given the opportunity to take some (if not all) of the responsibility for the presentation of the material.

With the permission of the Superintendent and two Aboriginal people a short two minute movie film was made. It was divided into two parts. The first part concerned David Edwards, a Reserve foreman and his work and the other showed Mervyn Day, an Aide in the school, taking a craft class.

To further aid my presentation before the School Council and the community (shown at a local film evening) an English and Pitjantjatjara dialogue made with the help of Mervyn Day was played.

The following paper is based on experiences gained in schools in North East Arnhem Land. While it is likely that the situations as described are applicable to other areas, the authors do not claim that there will always be direct comparisons. Too often the wider Australian community regards Aboriginals as one people with one set of common needs whereas even limited experience soon reveals a great diversity amongst these people in terms of language, customs and environment and consequently a great diversity of needs and necessary solutions.

In schools throughout Australia the desirability of and need for community involvement become more apparent every day. To quote the Karmel report Schools in Australia,

“After almost one hundred years of public schooling a reappraisal of the relationship of the school to the wider society is taking place in Australia, as it is in most industrialized nations. The isolation of schools is being questioned as is also the idea that education should be confined to formal institutions and concentrated heavily upon those who have not yet entered employment.”

We have now reached the stage where the desirability of community involvement in education can be taken by most as a self evident truth and we can look”back in wonder at the times when such an idea was radical or not even considered.

In Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory the opportunities for involving the community in the school are probably greater than in the wider Australian society. For example, the families are easy to contact, they are generally open to suggestion and they do not have preconceived notions as to the “proper” way in which a school should be run. However, too often we have taken community involvement to mean the fund raising activities of Parents’ Committees and left the real problems of initiating genuine involvement well alone. (The activities of the School Council at Hermannsburg are a notable exception; there may be others).

These are the views on the current position of Aboriginal disempowerment in Australian society, expressed by Lois O'Donoghue (1995: 5).