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 purpose of this paper is to help the practitioner in multilingual environments by making him or her aware of the need to establish a sound operational base from which to work before agonizing over the practicalities of the implementation stage. In essence, the paper seeks to show teachers that much of what is successful today in terms of school-based curriculum development is, in fact, grounded in theory: theory that is readily understood and useful to educators working in a variety of contexts.

Today, in the Torres Strait, the schooling process appears to be widening the educational gap between white Queenslanders and their Islander counterparts„* Teachers as curriculum developers, along with parliamentary heads and state education department dignitaries, must realize that problems of this kind can be grappled with initially only from within the geographical context. In other words, the problems of the oppressed must be solved by the oppressed who, first of all, need to understand their position and then transform it. But if problem transformation is going to take place from the inside, as has been suggested already, then it must include an examination of the role of the school for, according to Raskin.

Teaching Aboriginal children often conjures up thoughts of being stoned or speared alive and many people contemplating a career in teaching, Or actually teaching, shy away from the thought of teaching Aboriginal children. But do they really know what they are missing out on:

The University of Adelaide has taken a unique step in Aboriginal relations by establishing a Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (C.A.S.M.) in Which Tribal Elders have been given the status of visiting lecturers. (Uni. of Adelaide, 1975) A Committee, headed by the Deputy Vice Chancellor, in 1976 summarised the results of their discussions on the position of the C.A.S.M. program in the University of Adelaide as follows:

Jigalong is an Aboriginal Community some 180 kilometres by road from the large mining centre of Newman in Western Australia’s Pilbara area. Originally an Apostolic Church mission, it is now an incorporated Aboriginal Community. The Community owns and operates a cattle station which is a large employer of workers from the Community. Nearby stations also employ Jigalong people as workers. The Community is made up of about 350 people who originally came from the Western Desert Region of Western Australia.

I am in my second year of teaching at Jigalong. During this time I have attempted to establish a program which suits 14 to 18 year-old boys and is designed to help these boys find work in the local pastoral industry. It is hoped that some of the ideas developed in this article will be of interest to others when they find themselves posted to a remote Aboriginal community.

Yirara College is a secondary boarding school for tribal Aboriginal students from throughout Central Australia. The College is 8 kilometres from Alice Springs but takes students from 40 separate communities, in a radius of about 800 kilometres or more from Alice. This includes the southern two-thirds of the Northern Territory, and some communities in South Australia and Western Australia. The

College is entirely residential, and caters for male and female students. The curriculum, which follows Northern Territory Department guidelines, is aimed at adjusting students to reach Year 10 (the N.T. Junior School Certificate), and thereafter have the opportunity to enter various further education courses and colleges. Emphasis is also given to social education in its broadest sense, and vocational education. After leaving Yirara, the majority of students return to their own communities to fill positions of skill, where and when available.

“They can’t be educated”, say the critics. “Send them south to boarding school, beyond the influences of tribalism”, say the unsympathetic. “Why try to school the young while the unschooled elders negate their new-found skills?” say the liberals. “Education is disruptive and diminishes tribal authority”, say the ignorant.