Our school has 30% of culturally different children of Aboriginal ancestry,. This, in a primary school population of 180, represents a significant proportion. This group can be, and is, defined by colour of skin, facial features, and different life style. Membership of this group is decided both by public opinion and by other members of the group.

Our town with a population of some 600 people is representative of many small rural communities with a significant proportion of people of Aboriginal descent. Some of these families, about 30%, live in houses provided by the Aboriginal and Island Affairs Department which are of comparable standard to those of the white people in the town. The remainder live in shanty type settlements which are common to such towns and which are usually located on the town outskirts.

There are many benefits gained by employing Aboriginal Teacher Aides. These include:

1. (a) The employment of such people as Yvonne Walker at this school, to undertake work of an experimental nature, in teaching untried courses in language to Aboriginal children.

(b) The self-respect gained by Aboriginal people in working with teachers in responsible organizations.

(c) The decreased reliance on Social Services and consequent upsurge in desire to obtain responsible positions. (One Aboriginal person recently asked me if the Police Department have aides).

(d) The efforts made by employed aides to attempt to standardize their social interaction through accepting norms in dress and general conduct.

At an In-Service Course for Teachers of Aboriginal children held in Perth in February 1973, Mr. D. Ibbotson reported on the study being conducted by his College. In this study, teachers in the State were asked to provide information relating to their pupils, on

(a) general difficulties and problems of language, behaviour, attendance, organization, parental support (or lack of it).

(b) problems, interest and successful ways and means in curriculum areas of Spoken English, Written English, Mathematics.

Teachers were also asked to comment on curriculum areas of greatest and least success.

I feel rather diffident in opening this topic as there are some of you who are far more experienced in this field than I am.

I think that, in talking about the Aboriginal people, some basic premises should be stated first. The Aboriginal people had a highly developed tribal system and a much higher ethical structure than the white man has. By contrast, an excellent study of Australian values is contained in a book by Ronald Conway, a Melbourne Psychologist, called The Great Australian Stupor. His equation of the Australian value system is as follows:

Material Wealth = Pleasure = Happiness= Reason for Living.

He writes –

Whereas the Aboriginal trod his enchanted earth for centuries on tip-toe, leaving the delicate balance of nature of a tired continent intact, the white settler preferred to greet the touchiness of Australian climate and soil with a murderous impatience.

When the white man came to this continent he took the best land for agricultural purposes. He broke up the tribal system so that the Aboriginal people were left leaderless and landless. Now we expect, in our schools and other aspects of our society, that the Aboriginal people will bridge the gap to a super-industrial civilization (with its questionable value system) in two or three generations.

In the first issue of The Aboriginal Child at School extracts from the Report were presented to show the rationale of the bilingual education program and the major recommended model, showing progression in the use in the school of both the Aboriginal and the English languages.

The extracts below show the Advisory Group’s conception of the teaching team, and of the separate but complementary roles of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal teaching members.

The Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commissioni in its Report in May 1973, considered the needs of disadvantaged schools. Many teachers in remote areas will not yet have had an opportunity to read this report and we felt that you would like us to make available to you some of the committee’s comments on disadvantaged schools.

9.5… The Committee has chosen the term “disadvantaged” in relation to schools drawing a high proportion of enrolments from neighbourhoods having certain characteristics known to be generally associated with a low capacity to take advantage of educational facilities. This is not to say that all children coming from such neighbourhoods achieve poorly in school. Low-income families may be emotionally richer than affluent ones. Nor can poor families be described as culturally or socially deprived in any general sense, for the cultural life of home and neighbourhood may be as sustaining, and the social experiences as broad, as those of any type of family. The poor are disadvantaged in their relative lack of power in society, in the absence of any cushioning against adversity, and in the paucity of the kind of experience which is helpful to success in school and society.