There can be no ethnic group in Australia that displays as much diversity as the Australian Aborigines. Their lifestyles range from hunting and gathering in the most remote corners of Australia, through a more settled existence in outback country towns and on the fringes of towns and cities, to an ongoing struggle to survive in the hearts of Australia’s biggest cities. What is it that unites all Aboriginal people regardless of where they live? Many people, white Australians especially, seem to think that it is the racial characteristics, skin colour and “blood”, which makes an Aborigine. To these people, the darker a person’s skin is, the more Aboriginal they are. When this sort of thinking predominates, as it so often does, many Aboriginal people start finding themselves robbed of their Aboriginality. People tell them that they are only half or a quarter Aborigine, or a “part Aborigine”.

Bamaga stands on the tip of Cape York and adjacent to a number of Torres Strait Islands. Both Bamaga and the Islands are included in the one administrative region.

Parents of students on the Torres Strait Island communities are still confused as to what schools or education are providing for their children. Parents have been desperately hoping that education would improve their ways of living as they were led to believe. As it now stands, more and more parents are becoming disillusioned after receiving evidence of the inadequacy of the Western education system for their culture and beliefs.

Just as computer delivered instruction in urban Australian schools remains an unknown quantity, its role in tribal Aboriginal schools and in urban schools which increasingly cater to tribal children is even more unclear. There are some exciting possibilities for Aboriginal education. Computer courseware can provide the highly visual, graphics oriented type of instruction which appeals to Aboriginal children and may tap their learning style. Also, the new technology should be able to overcome limitations of bilingual programs set by the cost of producing language materials for many different language groups. For example, with the Prologic Authoring Language (PAL), it is a simple matter to work through a developed program and change the text from one language to another.

Twenty high contact Queensland Aboriginal children of mean age six years were tested on two measures of capaciy to process information (cf. Case, et al., 1982 and Halford, 1984) and on two newly devised tasks to measure levels of thinking based on cultural knowledge. The results indicated that these children possess capacity to process information that is the same as Caucasian children of the same age. Because these children have underlying capacity to learn tasks to the same level as any other child the results have implications for schooling. It is intended that this initial trial testing will be followed up in a larger study.

This article is addressed to issues that cause stress in children, but are not outward and obvious such as illness or lack of food and shelter.

From the point of view of a child psychiatrist, separation from important members of the family (or threat of separation) is one of the major stresses of childhood, particularly in the child under three years of age. Unfortunately, cultural influences from Anglo-Saxon sources have been one of the main sources of untoward separation of young children through hospitalisation or assessment at distant places. This was in ignorance of the harmful effects of separating young children from the person they are attached to most.

A dramatic increase in the number of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders undertaking teacher education courses in Colleges of Advanced Education and Universities has occurred over the past ten years. In 1976 it was estimated that there were approximately 59 Aboriginal Teacher Education students throughout Australia (Anderson § Vevoorn, 1983:122). Today, in one institution alone - James Cook University - there are almost double this number. It is estimated that there were approximately 400 Aboriginal/Islander student teachers in 1985.

All children, black or white, learn a lot more outside the classroom than inside it. All normal children, by the time they go to school for the first time, have already learnt to speak their mother tongue, have learnt who they are and where they fit into their family or community, and have learnt a vast range of behaviours which are appropriate (and inappropriate) for members of their culture. They have learnt all these through the informal process of socialization which affects all members of every culture throughout their lives. In traditional Aboriginal society, for example, hunting and food preparation skills, the traditional law, patterns of land ownership and important stories from the past, were all learnt informally in the daily life of the family. Only some sacred knowledge would be transmitted formally in a ceremonial context.

Aboriginal Studies is becoming increasingly popular in schools. Here are some South Australian findings and thoughts on how to teach it.

Historically, universities and colleges have been preoccupied with studying Aborigines, and to a much lesser extent Islanders, doing research on them, and teaching about them. In the mid 1970s, however, the then Mt Lawley, Townsville, and Torrens Colleges of Advanced Education independently launched special entry, indigenous teacher education programs. By providing personal, social and academic support for an enclave of Aborigines and Islanders within white institutions, it was hoped that students would be able to learn to cope with the demands of tertiary education and graduate with the same qualifications as other students in the colleges. With varying degrees of success, this has happened, such that this enclave support model has been adopted in a number of other colleges and in universities, and is now the most important single reason for the increased number of Aboriginal and Islander students in tertiary education.

This definition of Reeonstructionism has been written from a Western point of view. However, with modification, the philosophy of Reeonstructionism can easily be adopted as my philosophy of Aboriginal Education.

Firstly, Brameld states that ‘Reeonstructionism commits itself to a building of a new culture’. In analysing the statement it can be said that Aboriginal culture and Western culture must form a new culture through the bonding of each culture. However, it must be noted that each culture will retain its values, customs and traditions, but must readily accept and try to understand the values, customs and traditions of the alternate culture. The result will be a new cultural group.

Some members of the Central Queensland Aboriginal Corporation for Cultural Activities recently attended an in-service seminar. The focus of the seminar was on the teaching of Aboriginal students. The group identified a number of concerns relating to the participation of resource people in the classroom. These matters are given wider circulation in the interests of making more effective use of the valuable expertise which is available in the Aboriginal community.

Perhaps the key concept amongst the list of concerns is that of empathy with the Aboriginal visitors to the classroom. A clear understanding of the skills, life experience and the guest speakers preferred means of relating to children will help to ensure a productive and satisfying outcome both for the speaker and the students.