The Irrelevance of Literacy

Extract

A research report published last year has shaken the very rationale for Aboriginal literacy programs. Eve Fesl says that for the first time, Aborigines have had the chance to say what they want, and that their views are very different from those who have sought to educate them.

Copies of the report, Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities are available from Australian Government Publishing Service bookshops in all States.

There was incredulity in education circles late last year when Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities reported that many Aborigines rejected literacy.

The project, instigated by Anglo-Australians, began with the assumptions of an Anglo value system. There was an assumption that, just as literacy in English had aided, for example, the peasant classes of England in their efforts towards upward social mobility, it would also be the panacea of Aboriginal social ills. That Aborigines might not concur was never questioned.

Even non-Aborigines on the steering committee, who had some inkling that literacy would not be warmly embraced by all Aborigines, were surprised at an overall rejection of English literacy per se.

Yet Aborigines were not surprised, and if one cares to look closely into the past, one sees many abandoned literacy programs – testimony that Aborigines have never wanted them.