Is there a teacher in Australia who hasn’t, at some time or other, had a class who were bored and uninterested? While the students might find the lessons tedious, it’s certainly no fun for the teacher to be confronted with students who are listless, restless and convinced that what you have to say isn’t worth listening to.

In the Admission Studies course for Aborigines, the students were required to learn about meeting procedures. Very few of the students had ever been to a formal meeting and it is probably fair to say that they regarded the subject as dull, pointless and irrelevant. Eric Hayward was the Aboriginal lecturer who was trying to teach this subject in a formal manner. He wasn’t succeeding - both he and the students were frustrated and little progress was being made. As a consequence the lecturer gave a great deal of thought about how the teaching of meeting procedure might be made more relevant to the students. He wanted to provide the difficult terminology with practical meaning and set the learning in a real world context. While these goals were quite clear, it took some time to decide on the teaching methodology which should be employed. A method was needed which would make the lessons more interesting and relevant to the students. The method adopted had to ensure the students learnt about meetings and how they are formally conducted.

Balga Senior High School is located in the Perth suburb of Balga and draws many of its students from surrounding areas which are made up of Homeswest flats or Homeswest Housing Estates. Many of the students who attend Balga Senior High are from low income single parent families and as such the school is mindful of the program it offers. Out of a school population of about 900, seventy would be Aboriginal. The reasons behind the initial move to appoint a teacher with special responsibility to Aboriginal students to Balga Senior High School can probably be traced back to 1984, when Aboriginal parents in the Balga area expressed concern about current education trends and their implications for their children.

James Cook University of North Queensland currently offers an affirmative action program enabling Aboriginal and Islander people to enter teacher education programs. This program - the Aboriginal and Islander Teacher Education Program (AITEP) - began in 1977 at Townsville College of Advanced Education, now amalgamated with the university. In July 1987, there were about 130 undergraduate students enrolled in teacher education programs, having entered the university through AITEP. A similar program in community welfare now operates with over 20 students enrolled. Currently there are possibly around seven Aboriginal or Islander undergraduates who gained direct entry to university and four graduate students, including three who began their undergraduate studies through AITEP.

Kava has been introduced into Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia. Persons from Yirrkala in North East Arnhem Land visiting the South Pacific region on study tours have been impressed by their welcome in Kava bowl ceremonies, and some of them hoped that the Aborigines might use Kava instead of alcohol.

In 1983 many Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land used Kava, and much more was used in 1984. By 1985 it became a social epidemic or ‘craze’ in many communities. Rings of people of both sexes and of all ages often sit together under trees around Kava bowls for many hours. They may drink up to a hundred times the amount normally drunk in the Pacific Islands by the same number of people in the same time.

It is important that we all recognise the historic significance of the occasion we have just witnessed. That is the presentation of university degrees to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. And also the fact that traditional Aboriginal people have received university degrees.

When the fleet of British warships and transports led by H.M.S. Supply entered Botany Bay on the 18th of January 1788, the white invasion of Aboriginal Australia had begun. Captain Arthur Phillip in Supply was followed over the next two days by H.M.S. Sirius, six transports and three store ships. On the 26th January the Frenchman, La Perouse, with the ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, arrived at Botany Bay and remained there until the 10th of March, 1788. Because of the open nature of the bay, its shallow water and the lack of plentiful fresh water, Phillip decided to move the settlement, and on the 25th January sailed to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in Supply, with the transports following on the 26th of January. The white invasion and occupancy of Australia started in reality when the whole of Phillip’s fleet and colonists were anchored at the east of Sydney Cove. On board Phillip’s eleven ships came 736 male and female convicts, 17 convict children, 211 marines accompanied by their wives and children.

Sometimes, when I am ironing, or driving, or just sitting in the sun, I think of Edie, and I cry. I cry inside, because those of us who are now elderly have been brought up not to show emotion publicly. I cry with frustration and sorrow, because I know that I have let Edie down, and I feel heavy and helpless because it is now too late to say: “Tell us more about that, Edie.”

The following is a brief account of the achievements of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultative Committee (QATSICC) in Innisfail.

Torres Strait Islanders are frequently characterised by other Australians as caught between two cultures. Evidence and speculation that the majority of Torres Strait Islanders have neither ‘made it’ in the white mainstream world nor live exactly and traditionally as their ancestors did, sometimes lead to the glib perceptions that Islander people are members of neither world and are caught somewhere between the two.

Implicit in this line of reasoning is the perception that the identity of Torres Strait Islanders in the contemporary world is an ‘either/or’ proposition - either Islanders must, in order to remain Islanders, remain totally traditional or they must, in order to survive at all, become totally assimilated into the dominant society. This erroneous and simplistic view of the choices open to Islander people ignores the value of the school in providing a cultural synthesis rather than a cultural replacement.

In the Northern Territory there are an estimated 400 Outstation or Homeland Centre communities, 63 of which have requested some form of schooling. These are family groups ranging from approximately 12 to 35 in size who, since the 1970’s, have been returning to live on land with which they have a traditional affiliation. Typically, the families are small groups consisting of the clan leader or traditional landowner and members of his immediate and extended family.

The co-operative nature of Aborigines can adversely affect their ability to succeed in a competitive schooling system. This can be substantiated by an historical study of various native groups.

Essentially, the competitive learning processes involve a participant consciously persisting in attempts to achieve superiority, i.e., a better relative position with regard to the goal than an opponent can achieve (Owens, 1982, p.l), while the co-operative form of learning involves students interacting to achieve a mutually shared goal. It is not the aim of this work, however, to conclude on the merits of each of these educational instruments. Nevertheless the defence of the competitive system of learning in relation to Aborigines cannot be upheld on inherited or genetic grounds. As a result, most of the arguments that follow discuss the inadequacies of our present competitive system and its inability to cope with cultures that are dependent on co-operative means of behaviour.