Education and the Australian Indigenous People - Essay Example

 Education: The Social and Historical Context Education and the Australian Indigenous People in the Northern Territory In Australia, the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders are one of the disadvantaged groups in society. The moment their lands were invaded by the West, these indigenous people have trouble making it on their own and today, many of them have become dependent on because of their inability to find work due to literacy and numeracy problems. The Australian government had tried to amend and implement an educational system which it deemed appropriate for the indigenous people. However, studies and researches have shown that the indigenous people are not much better today than they were decades ago. The failure of education where the indigenous people are concerned is reflected in the Northern Territory educational condition where the learning gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous children are greatest than anywhere in the commonwealth. The failure of the Australian aboriginal education implies the failure of the government to prepare the indigenous people to secure for themselves a gainful, self-reliant and honorable place in society. The education of the Australian indigenous people, which officially began only in the 1950s, had been assessed as an utter failure. Factors like the Eurocentric nature of the education reflective of the White Australia myth and a pervasive racial atmosphere in school, among others, were blamed for it. In the study made by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody of 99 aboriginal people, it was reported that 8 people did not have primary education, 40 did not go beyond primary level, 20 did not finish primary education, 2 had attended secondary school, 3 received TAFE education but only had finished a course and none had attended a university at all. The underpinning of this failure however was seen as lying in the history of aboriginal education in Australia characterized as assimilationist tending to bring down aboriginal culture and substitute the deemed superior culture of the British and the Christian faith (Craven 1999 pp 53-67). Realizing the need for a new approach to aboriginal education, the Commonwealth Parliament enacted the Aboriginal Education (Supplemental Assistance) Act which created the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy Acknowledging the need for a national strategy to turn around aboriginal education for the better, an Aboriginal taskforce was subsequently appointed (Craven 1999 p 65). It was also in the late 1990s that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) came out with a Report on Rural and Remote Education which stated that there was little participation in education by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all levels and that they were therefore ill-equipped to compete in the labour market (Hughes 2008 p 1). Yet, in veering away from an assimilationist system of education, the government has fallen into the trap of converting the educational system for indigenous people into an exceptionalist one. An illustration of the failure of such system is that of the Northern Territory. This Australian federal territory is 1, 346,200 square kilometers in area and has a population of 207,000, one-third of which are indigenous. Statistics in education in this territory show the immense difference of literacy and numeracy between indigenous and indigenous schoolchildren. In 2005, literacy benchmark was attained in Year 3 and 5 by merely 39% indigenous students and by 36% in Year 7. The percentages dipped much lower in remote communities. A year before that, only 20% of the indigenous students passed the literacy benchmark in Year 3 and a mere 21% in Year 5 (Barlett pp 3-4). This is in contrast to Urban Indigenous who attained, for the year 2004-2005, benchmark literacy at 57% and 62% for Year 3 and 5, respectively. Non-indigenous schoolchildren, on the other hand, achieved 87% and 91% literacy for the said years, respectively (Hughes 2008 p 7). As to retention rates of students who stayed in school from Year 8 to Year 12, the 2004 statistics show that the overall rate in Australia was 75.7% but only 39.5 for indigenous schoolchildren (Boon p1). Anent higher education studies, indigenous people are a slim minority in degree courses and are even declining in the past years as shown in the Department of Education, Science and Training reports with a decrease of 15% in 1999 and 2000 and then again in 2003-2004 (Powell & Lowly 2008 p 25). Not only is there a generally low literacy percentages of indigenous schoolchildren in the Northern Territory but school enrollment and attendance are also significantly low. Statistics showed that there was an overall failure of the Northern Territory Department of Education: 130 students out of 200 who entered Yirara Secondary College in Alice Springs in 1999 had numeracy and literacy level similar to that between a 5 year old to a 7 year old non-aboriginal school child; participation of 4 year olds was 15%-20% lower compared to non-aboriginals, and; preparatory school registered at 57.7% compared to 91% of non-aboriginals. In Maningrada, Northern Territory alone, the average school attendance is tacked at a mere 64% but could drop as low as 20% on any week (Hughes 2008 p 1). The depressing part is that the failure of the educational system respecting the indigenous people particularly in the Northern Territory have condemned them to welfare dependence because they were unable to land themselves with jobs, earn for their living and own their own houses. Thus, while most indigenous Australians viz., 76%, were purchasing their own homes in 1996, only 26% of the indigenous people were able to do the same. Many indigenous people were incapable to meet the demands of their own homes like enough facilities for their household (Boon p 1). An exception was noted with students who are able to enroll in mainstream Australian schools because their parents either work and live in open society or used their royalties to send their children to mainstream Australian schools. In addition, these schoolchildren were able to keep up with non-aboriginal school children in primarily non-aboriginal schools only after two years of remedial schooling (Hughes 2008 p 2). According to records, the Northern Territory has 258 schools, 216 of which are government schools whose student population consists, on the average, of 45% indigenous students, and 44 private schools of which 35% percent of its enrollees are indigenous children. Out of the 216 government schools, 10 are Community Education Centres and more than 50 are Homeland Learning Centres which are located in remote communities. Statistics show that indigenous enrollees in all levels are much lower than non-indigenous children in all levels in all schools but especially in the primary and secondary levels. However, attendance is even lower (Hughes 2008 p 2). Parents of indigenous children have been blamed for these failures. Author Helen Hughes, however, who wrote on books on indigenous people such as Lands of Shame: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ‘Homeland’ in Transition and Strangers in their Own Country: A Diary of Hope maintains that they are not the primary cause. According to her, the underlying factor of such failures is the fact that aboriginal schools are substandard schools, with a curriculum separate and different from mainstream Australian schools (2008 p 5). Moreover, a study made by the Denver Development Screening Test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test showed that parental factors, like maternal education, were less of a predictive factor in a child’s school performance than family income, for example (Leigh & Gong 2008 p 8). Indigenous parents understand that although their cultural heritage and language must be handed down to their children for posterity there is a need for their children to be educated the way mainstream Australian children are educated, with emphasis on English fluency and under the same school curriculum. Fluency in English, a necessity in the labour markets, cannot be attained by a separate school curriculum implemented on aboriginal schools. Neither are schools lacking in basic facilities such as adequate room space, libraries, computer facilities, science laboratories, art rooms, gyms, ablution blocks, electricity and even basic materials such as books, paper, writing and drawing materials conducive to learning (Hughes 2008 pp 3, 5-6). The so-called separate curriculum is implemented in Homeland Education Centres and Community Education Centres in the Northern Territory. To start with, indigenous children are taught in the vernacular although the requirement is for pre-school children to be taught using 15% English of the time accelerating every year until Year 4 in which 50% of the time shall use English as the medium of education. The reason for the persistent use of the vernacular is that the teachers and teachers’ aides themselves do not read and write in English and use the vernacular as their medium of communication (Hughes 2008 p 8). In addition, the contemporary perspective taken by modern educators of perpetuating ethnic culture and tradition, perhaps to atone for the errors of the past, have led to an exceptionalism in modern Australian aboriginal education that have not worked towards making the indigenous people independent and self-reliant. As earlier discussed, extreme eurocentrism and dogmatic Christian conversion which underlie the education of aborigines in the past caused its failures. Yet, the total turn-around of the present educational system resulted in an exceptionalism that relegated reality to the background. Since aborigines cannot speak and write the language, and have no mathematical or computing skills they cannot qualify for such jobs in marine or ranger occupations. Thus, they become reliant on non-indigenous people even for basic community works such as shooting wild pigs or repairing boats and vehicles (Hughes 2008 pp 8-9). Then there is the myth being perpetuated, even by the Australian Research Council (ARC), who believed that aboriginal children are different from the average schoolchildren with respect to their abilities to learn mathematics, language or other forms of learning. The belief is that unless learning is formulated in accordance with aboriginal culture, these schoolchildren will not be capable of really understanding them. Thus, the ATC is commissioning several projects that will develop a curriculum culturally ‘suitable’ to the indigenous school children. As a result and illustration of this thrust of education is the textbook called Wombat Divine which is about Australian fauna and flora combined with Christian myths and used from Years 1 to 10. The textbook do not come as individual textbooks for each school child but as a large laminated text for the entire junior and another for the entire senior level (Hughes 2008 p 9). It has been established through research that the most essential component in education is the quality of teaching. In the Northern Territory however, many of the members of the teaching staff hired before the NT Teachers Registration Board was established, were under-qualified. As of 2008, there are 4, 572 teachers hired but 712 of them were holdover of the pre-2005 period and lacked the essential qualifications of proficiency because their assignment to remote areas resulted in the wearing down of their literacy and numeracy skills. Another problem is the fact that many of those teaching in Homeland Centre Schools in remote areas are not permanent residents of the places and have to be fly-in two or three times a week to the localities. This kind of situation does not allow teachers to be integrated into communities and help in remedial teaching, adult literacy and similar activities. On the contrary, school work and activities are hindered by such fly-in conditions as the whole school cannot begin unless the airplanes carrying these teachers arrive (Hughes 2008 pp 11-12). The failure of indigenous students to do well in the primary and secondary levels is a determinant factor in the decision to enter higher education along with political factors like scholarships, enabling course and costs. And even if the indigenous student gets past the secondary level, entry into the tertiary level might proved to be difficult. Indigenous students may find many difficulties towards a tertiary education in the form of lack of enabling programs for those who sorely lacked the academic background to purse higher studies, a non-conducive external environment like racism and discrimination (Powell & Lawley 2008 pp 27-28). The failure of the Australian indigenous educational approach is likewise highlighted in the study done by Zubrick and associates. There were three points which emerged in the Zubrick study. The first is that that there was no progress in the education of indigenous students as the gap in student attainment between indigenous and non-indigenous students in 1965-1966 is the same as in 2001-2004. This is in contrast to the situation in the United States where the gap between the whites and Hispanics was narrowed down from 1948 to 1978. Second, the gap between the two widens as they reached Year 3 to Year 7 which implies that the gap grows as the children reaches upper levels of schooling. The implication here is that improvement of the educational system especially in the early school years is necessary to narrow the gap initially and prevent a widening thereof as the years advance. Third, the Zubrick study showed that comparatively, the gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous in Australia is wider than the gaps of similar groups in Canada, USA and New Zealand (Leigh & Gong 2008 pp 5-6, 10). The failure of the Australian educational system where the aborigines are concerned may be due to the fact that the government, in totally veering away from the error of the past where education was largely assimilationist, have overdone it by taking the extreme side of exceptionalism where the indigenous schoolchildren are given a school curriculum separate from mainstream schools. Yet, by doing so, the government has rendered the indigenous helpless and with small chances at competing in the labour markets once they are out in school. With numeracy and literacy skills not only inferior comparatively but also inadequate for these indigenous people to handle decent jobs, no employer is bound to hire them for their services. Government must take the middle ground and arrive at a compromise which will eventually make the indigenous people self-reliant, competitive and useful citizens. References: Barlett, Claire. A Tale of Research Design in an Exceptional Context: Evaluating the Implementation of the National Accelerated Literacy Program in the Northern Territory. http://www.aare.edu.au/07pap/bar07196.pdf Boon, Helen Family, Motivational and Behavioral Links to Indigenous Australians. http://www.aare.edu.au/07pap/boo07027.pdf Craven, Rhonda & National Federation of Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups (Australia) 1999, Teaching Aboriginal Studies, Allen & Unwin. Hughes, Helen Indigenous 2008, Education in the Northern Territory, CIS Publication on Indigenous Affairs. http://www.cis.org.au/policy_monographs/pm83.pdf Leigh, Andrew & Gong, Xiaodong 2008, Estimating Cognitive Gaps Between Indigenous and Non-indigenous Australians, http://econrsss.anu.edu.au.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/CognitiveGaps.pdf Powell, Brendan & Lawly, Meredith 2008, Australian Indigenous Students Tertiary Education Choices: Exploring the Decision to Enter Higher Education and Choice of University. http://www.adcet.edu.au/anzssa/ Appendix How the research was conducted: The following are the steps conducted for this research: 1. First, a log-in to the Macquarie On-line learning was made. 2. Library Support was selected and clicked. 3. Option # 2 was selected which was to visit the Online Library by clicking http//: www.library.mq.edu.au 4. Research databases was selected and in the search field the word “education” was entered. 5. A listing of databases appeared on the Informit page and a search was made for “education of indigenous children” 6. Databases appeared and appropriate options corresponding to the research were checked. Read More