Child Involvement in Tribally Oriented Schools

Extract

Teachers of Aboriginal children have been concerned with the eventual end results of their teaching efforts for some time. We have probably all asked ourselves the impossible question, “Where are we going in Aboriginal education?” I remember attending a conference at which we were to discuss the topic, “Where are we going and why aren’t we getting there?” Needless to say, the discussions were as vague and undirected as the topic. Surely this will always be so whenever we attempt projecting our thoughts into the future of another culture. We simply cannot predict what the future holds for the children we teach.

I would suggest it would be more valid and beneficial to our students if we carried on more discussion about Aboriginal children’s needs and abilities as individuals, then design our programs to suit the child and his environment. I believe generalizations have helped in creating the situation of deprivation we see on any reserve or mission, town or city. Generalizations have probably helped in making the school day utterly irrelevant for many Aboriginal children. Specifically, this is more likely to be so wherever Aboriginal schools have either adopted in toto programs designed for other schools or have been instructed to follow a program written by educationists who have perhaps only a shallow appreciation of a particular area. It is probably true to say that in most areas people who don’t live on the reserves and missions simply do not know what is happening on these places. They cannot know of the personalities involved in the programs they write. One wonders if the Watergate scandal would be with us if Richard Nixon had spent more time than the reported three days a month in the White House. He simply didn’t know what was happening either. So then, we cannot afford to generalize in Aboriginal Education and we need the autonomy necessary to enable the staff on the particular mission or reserve to create what they consider to be a relevant program. And within that program, the optimum development of the individual student must be catered for.