The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Whitefella education won’t work > Comments

Whitefella education won’t work : Comments

By Jan Ferguson, published 21/4/2008

To achieve better educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians we need to give tangible evidence that we value their cultures as much as we value our own.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. All
I first came across Helen Hughes' name when, as an academic advisor to the Howard Government she expounded on the so-called 'failing states' of the Pacific. Her ideas blended nicely with those of the former government.

Her Pacific solutions were somewhat similar to her solutions for Aboriginal Australians, glibly describing the communal culture of Papua New Guinea villagers as socialism.

Hughes is no small time academic. She is listened to by power brokers in Canberra. She shows empathy for the downtrodden and disempowered whilst proffering hard solutions that appear to solve the problem from our perspective but with little empathy for the cultures that are under discussion - a recipe for failure anyway.

By all means read her stuff, but at the end of a 40 foot barge poll.
Posted by gecko, Monday, 21 April 2008 11:17:50 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Until indigenous communities learn that you can't emulate a western lifestyle while living in the Simpson Desert or live a traditional lifestyle while camping in Redfern, governments of all persuasions are stuck pouring money into an ungrateful cross-culture.

The author writes that 'teachers need a more sophisticated understanding of specific cultural settings before they go out to remote communities'. Well help me out here; which culture should we as 'whitefellas' take stock of? Is the one of hunter-gatherer, living in harmony with the land? Or is it the alcohol dependent, vagabond, cross-bred culture that we see in the 'traditional' dome tents with the 'traditional' clapped-out Alfa Romeo parked on the grass at the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra?

The former seems to be little more than a romantic notion shared by both indegenous and non-indigenous, sorry, 'whitefella' Australians, while the latter is a reflection of a culture under stress.

I'm sure this will be dismissed as an ignorant 'whitefella' rant but the 'blackfella' needs to know that non-indigenous Australians do shed tears for Aboriginal children growing up not understanding their traditional culture; but so many of us are also heartily sick of pandering to the whims of the Aboriginal industry.

This article fits in with the Rudd government's appraoch of nodding forlornly and appearing sincere at press conferences but not taking action that will actually address the problems.
Posted by Nigel from Jerrabomberra, Monday, 21 April 2008 1:39:30 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
annnnnd....of course... in saying:

"we value their cultures as much as we value our own."

she immediately sets up a RACIST barrier between indigenous Australians and 'other' Australians.

HOW...about.. we cease referring to 'THEIR' culture and 'OUR' culture, which are just a bees privates distant from 'THEM/US'.... and instead, focus on building ONE Australia... ONE race..and ONE culture....by

-Incorporating the good from Indigenous culture/wisdom
-Keeping the good from so called 'white' Australian culture
-Educating the people in terms of 'WE'.. 'US' in an all inclusive manner.
-Intermarriage between currently different sub cultural groups.

As the color anbd language differences and cultural idiosyncracies become more blurred, we will emerge as a new nation of identifiable character, but not a nation of MANY different characters.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Monday, 21 April 2008 2:23:13 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
And then we'll turn out "coffee coloured people by the score" - as the old hippy song goes.

The cosy idea of just blending all world cultures into one blurry one - because we can't handle cultural/ethnic diversity - is not a new one, David.

Perhaps a fine sentiment, if a trifle naive, but it would be better to learn to celebrate different cultures, not pretend that we can just merge them and all will be well.

As for assimilating cultures, nearly the whole world has already become part of the TV / supermarket culture. The blending experiment works in one sense, but does not necessarily deliver happiness.

There no need for us to be immersed in guilt, but Aboriginal issues can't just be swept aside. Amongst nations that have minority indigenous cultures, Australia's record is, I suspect, the worst.

We just need to grow up, have the maturity to honestly own up to past wrongs, do the hard yards on how to rectify past mistakes insofar as that is now possible and learn how to best move forward. A simple thing like agreeing on a national treaty would go a long way to bringing closure to the negative history that clogs our current debate.
Posted by gecko, Monday, 21 April 2008 2:47:07 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
So what's your point Nigel from Jerrabomberra? That whitefella education will work? 'Whitefella' being a term that Indigenous Australians use themelves showing that they do not identify with the wider Australia and the author includes to show she deals with the Indigenous Australian communities in person and understands the gap between Indigenous Australians and the wider Australia. Something that Helen Hughes can't say and doesn't understand. And nor can or do you for that matter!
Posted by Richard_, Monday, 21 April 2008 4:50:23 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
In Australia we see many peole with one foot in the Australian culture and another foot in a traditional culture. Perhaps, with the idigenous Australia so much damage has been done to their original culture their no place for the "other" foot to stand. The descendants know only little more tha the rest of us about how it is to be aboriginal in 1650 than the ret of us.

I think it was Toynbeee, who pointed that that marginalised societies {e.g., the Jews under the Greeks & Romans] will look towards archaism [the way things were] and futurism [justice will prevail if fight]. Australia has assimilated scores of cultures and peoles have retained traditions, except for one. Why?

The Macedonians conquered just about everyone, the Romans defeated the Greeks and Britannia, Rome feel to the Goths, the Viking invaded Nomandy [Nothmandy], then there was the Norman conquest at the Battle of Hastings, England, Spain and Portugal squashed other countries to establsin colonies, for trading monopolies. England invaded Australia. Likewise China has ruled itself abou 200 years over the past 600 years [mongols, Western entrepots]. Spain defeated the Aztecs. They say, "if you scratch a Russian you will find a Tatar".

Invasion and defeat -it is what happens.

What is wrong with being a party to the most advanced and democratic civilization the History of History?
Posted by Oliver, Monday, 21 April 2008 5:56:09 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The idea that ‘white education’ either won’t work for Aboriginal children or will somehow make them forget their culture is nonsense.
Australian Chinese, Indians, Malaysians etcetc all seem to be able to adapt and thrive in a ‘white’ education system while retaining their cultural values… are you saying that Aboriginal people are incapable of doing the same?
Posted by Mattofact, Monday, 21 April 2008 6:03:45 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yes. That's why President George W. Bush is called a Neanderthal! Because you live in the most advanced society in the history of all history!

See http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Neanderthal+george+bush&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Next why don't you search some less nice terms?
Posted by Richard_, Monday, 21 April 2008 7:52:54 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mattofact typifies the bloody-minded response of the Howard era and it's another Tory red herring. What he suggests bears no relation to what Jan Ferguson is saying. If you actually read it, she clearly says that what we've tried to keep doing plainly hasn't worked and one of the factors is a complete and utter failure to engage Aboriginal families in the enterprise. Culture will always be part of the main game for this particular colonised group, whether or not it is for immigrants from Asian countries. I suspect, however, that the dominant paradigm doesn't undermine the efforts of Asian parents to retain their own culture, even if many insist on demonising similar efforts from Muslim parents whether they're fom Asia, the Middle East or Africa.
Posted by Ngapaki, Monday, 21 April 2008 8:06:37 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Has anyone done research into which Aboriginals end up happier, healthier and more fulfilled -- those who stay with their family groups in the midst of their culture or those who leave them behind and attempt to integrate into Western society? No? Why am I not surprised?

By imposing a toxic 'culture' on people who don't have the education to know any better we provide a vast industry full of job opportunities for people like the author; but letting Aboriginals integrate doesn't provide any opportunities for anyone but the Aboriginals themselves.

Outback Aboriginals are no worse off than whites living on welfare in remote settlements in hostile territory. The only difference is that most of the whites have left; most of the Aboriginals don't seem to be able to. The most important thing we can teach them for their own welfare is "Get out and get a job!".
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 7:38:09 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Of course learning about Aborigines is valuable. I strongly support World History and Comparative Religion being taught right the way through school. But if choices must be made ancient Greece, Rome, and China are far more important and relevant for Australian school children than those halcyon days of yam farming and gathering witchety grubs.

The "Indigenous" group at the 20/20 Summit was a scandal. Jackie Huggins is a good bird and was an appropriate Chair for that committee. But given the horrific and unacceptable prognosis of children living in many remote communities, what did these six-figure salaried jet-setting carpet baggers bang on about? "Self-determination" and treaties! Newsflash! Aborigines have as much “self-determination” as any other Australian. It is called running for parliament and voting in elections.

Contrary to this group being informed by "blackfella education" we had the usual misunderstood and plagiarised nonsense from mid twentieth century Parisienne intellectuals that dribbles from these academics! "genocide," "the Other," "UN human rights" blah, blah, blah. Hardly concepts from blackfella epistemology and metaphysics.

If uniquely aboriginal industry structures and companies can make enough money to sustain their “self determination” perhaps we should seriously address this possibility. Until then they should face up to the REAL issues..
Posted by John Greenfield, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 10:08:26 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Ngapaki typifies the empty-minded attitude of the left (sorry, couldn’t help it). Again, the idea that Aboriginal people are unable to learn and succeed outside of there cultural environment it absolute nonsense, I mean please, lets be rational.
The failure of large sections of the Aboriginal community to succeed academically is not because of the complete and utter failure to engage Aboriginal families in the enterprise but it is a result of the complete and utter failure of many Aboriginal families to engage the education system.
This is not because there is nothing in the school room, culturally, to attract them but because there is a lack of educational imperative within Aboriginal culture. It is the culture itself that is the problem just as it was in many (white) areas of southern America whose occupants largely stemmed from the pre- enlightened ‘Celtic fringe’ (i.e. Scotland and Northern England) whose culture did not view education as an imperative. I am not attacking Aboriginal culture but am saying that it does not teach young Aboriginal people the maths, science, and English abilities that that they will need to succeed, ‘white’ education is the only method that can do this properly and many successful Aboriginal people today are testament to this fact.
Get the ideology out of your head Ngapaki and look at the issue rationally.
Posted by Mattofact, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 10:33:13 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"we need to give tangible evidence that we value their [indigenous] cultures as much as we value our own." - In title article

Reply: I suspect most Aussies do; but as a tradition not as functional enterprise in the twenty-first century. The era of the white Australian Coo-ee march loyalty to Britain and Empire; after Churchill wanting Curtin to abandon to save the home Isle and GB [hmm... Is it really G anymore?] entering the Common Market [1957?]; has gone. The diggers of WWI are different in many ways than Australians today, yet we still manage to hold them in highest respect.

Other Australians are asking that indigenous people to do what they have decade-by-decade themselves, adapt to their era.
Posted by Oliver, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 11:52:55 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Gecko,

Shows a typical soft-left approach to this issue. Slag off the messenger. Well unfortunately for you gecko, people like Noel Pearson actually tend to agree with Hughes.

Finally people are pushing through the momentous obstruction that Political Correctness has become. You obviously aren’t aware of the fact that most children in remote aboriginal communities are being taught by local people without much by way of teaching qualifications. And children are, and have been for a long time, been taught in a so called “culturally sensitive” manner. That is one of the reasons that literacy and numeracy are so poor in those areas compared to “whitefellas”.

I have nothing against the inclusion of Aboriginal culture in the curriculum. But “culturally sensitive mathematics” is a ridiculous notion.

You say “A simple thing like agreeing on a national treaty would go a long way to bringing closure to the negative history that clogs our current debate.”

How much closer did the apology to the stolen generations get us? Did it improve health or education or anything else in remote communities. NO it did not.

The left has long placed its trust in the primacy of meaningless symbolic acts at the expense of taking a hard look at solving the problems confronting aboriginal Australia. All it has done is perpetuate the misery of the disadvantaged.

It’s now time now for radical departure from the failed methods of the soft left and the grievance industry. We need to focus on methods of improving the lives of aboriginal children before we lose another generation to alcoholism and passive welfare. The black armband gang have had their day in the sun and its time for them to crawl back under the rocks they came from.
Posted by Paul.L, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 11:54:51 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It's nice to hear from the armchair experts, isn't it? What bothers me, however, is their utter failure to recognise that what they're advocating is precisely what we as a society have been trying to do for more than 40 years and failing dismally. And no, Mattofact, I emphatically did not advocate abandoning Western-style education. The failure lies in the system not setting a goal for remote area Aboriginal kids of reaching mainstream year 6 standard when they leave year 6, then in not properly planning how to do it and finally in making sure it can deliver. You and others might sniff at the idea that culture needs to be part of school business, but it's what Aboriginal parents what and it's what the NT curriculum says it can deliver. The subtext of Jan Ferguson's piece was that whitefella education won't work unless we recognise the context in which we're trying to promote it and act on that recognition.
Posted by Ngapaki, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 12:56:46 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
CHALLENGE.....

Has anyone done a study of the life expectancy among CHRISTIAN aboriginals?

I would bet, if I were a gambling person, that the L.E. of such Indigenous people far exceeds the current 'average'.

WHY? simple.. because the reasons for short life expectancy are also connected to low self esteem, drunkenness, drug taking, petrol sniffing.. but all of those connect back to the sense of futility and emptiness of a people who see their culture and 'dreaming' has been sidelined and made of no account by White Australians.

If you take away the cultural soul of a person WITHOUT replacing it with something else.. you have the situation that Jesus described here.

"When the evil spirit goes out of a man, it goes looking for a new home, finding none, it comes back to the original person, and..finding the home empty, tidy and clean, brings 7 more demons..and the last state of that man is worse than the first"

Sure..it sounds a little 'out there'.... but there is a lot of wisdom in it, whether or not you believe in demons.

People need HOPE...and a sense of meaning.. direction.. to feel valued, to feel truly free.

Paul says to the Galatian Christians "For freedom Christ has set us free" and how true that is!
Posted by BOAZ_David, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 6:52:50 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The ravages of a Western diet, not to mention tobacco, grog, kava and so on, strike non-christian and christian Aboriginal people alike. Despite the Biblical 'evidence' Boaz uses to support his assertion, there is no evidence that professing the faith means better health. Aboriginal people generally had a much healthier diet and way of life before the advent of the Flag and the Bible. Consequently they didn't suffer obesity, heart disease, diabetes, lung and other cancers to the same damaging extent they do today.
Posted by Ngapaki, Friday, 25 April 2008 12:51:08 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Ngapaki,

Life expectancy 2000 years ago was less than 50. No wonder they didn't suffer from old people's diseases. Neither did anyone in Europe or Africa.
Posted by Paul.L, Friday, 25 April 2008 1:31:03 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
David Quotes Jesus ,"When the evil [Aboriginal] Spirit goes out of a man it goes looking for another home" etc etc. Patent Boaz garbage and another convenient misrepresentation of the man that said "turn the other cheek".

I sometimes really wonder when you think Human Life started .

David, Australian Aboriginal Culture along with the rest of Indigenous Cultures, have seen their developement overseen by God .

He didn't start working 2000 years ago - get real .
Posted by kartiya jim, Monday, 28 April 2008 11:40:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy