Which is of course to say that "God" is a white man, and preferably an English man too.

How patronizing to suggest that "aboriginal" children should listen to the words of Jane Austen, Keats, the Bronte sisters, Dickens and Queen Elizabeth.
What has listening to the words of Queen Elizabeth got to do with being "educated"?

Or to listen to the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

How many of the hundreds of millions of ordinary white-skinned human beings both here in Australia and world-wide too, listen too or read the works of the above authors. Or intentionally listen to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart or any classical music.
Is this what they watch and listen to on their broad screen plasma TV's in their living rooms or in their private multi-media home entertainment rooms/dens/theatres.

You know all of the people who eagerly (faithfully) watch Big Brother and "Reality" TV, and all of the rest of the junk that is the common fare on TV, especially commercial TV.

Is the kind of stuff that many of our politicians and leaders even read or listen too? John Howard was famous for his disdain for "high" culture - literary, musical and visual. And as far as I can make Julia Gillard does not have much time for it too.

And what about Gina Rinehart? A supposedly "successful" person who now wishes to exert some kind of influence on the future of Australia.
Which is of course her perfect right to do so.

Without education our aboriginal population can only continue to rely on welfare. It is not necessary to take this advice from white Australia, Noel Pearson has been advocating and promoting it for years. The difficulty lies in getting this message widely accepted, by aboriginal communities, and providing them with an educational environment they are anxious to return to each day. The involvement of community elders in the educational system may help.
O'Shea Launceston.

Dear Babette,
you'll excuse me if I don't get caught up in the romance you've imagined for yourself, as well as OLO, pseudo-Australians, aboriginals and English literature. It's hard to conceive of a more offensively twee article than this no doubt fondly-recounted but deluded offering. And I'm sorry but if this is an example, you're not even a good writer; the way you belabour the migratory bird simile for instance. And if the OLO compendium goes into a time-capsule I'm afraid it'll be a skewed and infamous document for future generations to ponder. I migrated to OZ at the age of 10, for 10 quid in 1970, no strings attached (I'm a proud radical atheist btw), and am bemused at your downplaying of the white Australia policy (still alive in spirit), and your ignorance, or feigned ignorance, of the treatment meted out to Indians in Australia in recent years--especially when you're a member of the commonwealth!
But this pales into insignificance compared to your advice that pale skinned aboriginals should ditch aboriginal culture for the "the glories of Shakespeare, the music of Bach and Beethoven and the art of Leonardo da Vinci". Worse still you say, "I believe it is lack of language skills" that prevents aboriginals from prospering. So it has nothing to do inequality? with generational racism, disadvantage, revulsion and ridicule? Personally, I think I'd have an attitude too, and a persecution complex at least, if I knew I was considered by many, past and present, to be the missing link, and was reviled and hated, or suspiciously tolerated at best!
But no, aboriginals just need elocution lessons and some Shakespeare! And if they don't take to it, "make them"!
Of course it's always been "the white man's burden" to civilise the primitive breeds, hasn't it? Indeed English lit's how we tamed India, and our own working classes.
You're a perfect example of post-postcolonialism.
Despicable!

Without education
O'Shea,
Don't overestimate education. The most basic factor is the will to move on. Education is only the vehicle.
Just today they were talking on the radio that there are thousands of jobs which will end up going to backpackers because our own people don't want to work their way up. They expect to start at the top. That's the mentality.
I see so many schemes fall by the wayside year after year. Hundreds of thousands of Dollars & barrow loads of good will down the drain. All because no one wants to learn. Then, ten years on the discrimination bandwagon starts rolling again dead on time.
Indigenous Australians are not alone there, plenty of homegrown & imported folk that fit that category.
Bring on National Service.

Babette,

It seems that you see little value emanating from indigenous culture when it comes to education and integration in the greater milieu that is modern Australia. You suggest that embracing the language and expression of high European culture is "liberating".

"In northern areas of Australia, Australian Aborigines, like tribes in southern Africa, had no written language - their learning problems are different from Jewish immigrants from Europe, or Vietnamese boat people..."

All languages possess a similar sophistication and power of expression.

In his book "The Language Instinct:, Steven Pinker writes:
".....There are stone-age tribes, but there is no such thing as a stone-age language. Earlier this century, Edward Sapir wrote "When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.""

What we have in Australia is one dominant culture swamping another. Apparently it's up to the Aborigines to jettison their cultural building blocks in favour of the dominant paradigm. That Australian Aborigines seek to hold on to their indigenous roots amid the dysfunction that accompanies European colonisation should be reason for applause. I'm always puzzled by the arrogance of European culture in its capacity to devalue the intelligence and learning ability of cultures "it" perceives as backward.

Make no mistake, all languages have their equivalent to Shakespeare in the lessons handed down through the generations

Babette, some would argue that your article is very naive and purports a simplistic view.

>> Racist insults melt away if you can respond with a quote from Shakespeare <<

Bollocks!

.

Poirot, just quietly ... well said ; )

Babette - seems you fancy the mantle of John the Baptist. The question is not really how much Australian Aboriginals would gain from a rigorous education - undoubtedly it would be a great deal. The question, however, should be how the 'dominant' culture can provide such an education, when it does not even value a rigorous education for its own - as can be deduced from the comments to date!

veritas,

"the comments to date" are a recognition of the consummate arrogance commonly expressed by apologists for European culture over the cultures they have vanquished.

Are you holding up modern consumer culture and its gaudy and vacuous entourage as the pinnacle of man's evolutionary consciousness? How many muddled-headed, couch potato, telly-watching examples of our brand of "rigorous education" could tell you anything they gleaned from European high art of literature?

Deep immersion in English may have served Babette, but if the whole of the Indian continent had gone the same way, there would be precious few left to tell of the grandeur of their own culture.

"Make no mistake, all languages have their equivalent to Shakespeare in the lessons handed down through the generations".

Indeed Poirot. The precious irony our patronising Babette fails to realise, like most conservatives I suspect, is that none of the literature or music she worships is transcendent in the sublime ways she imagines. According to modern philosophy neither Shakespeare nor the others can transcend their cultural pontificating--that is their language games--into a universal realm. There is arguably no universal realm, just the chatter adapted to and by the activities and sensual experience of those beings crawling on the planet's face; modes of indigenous communication with no extension whatsoever, just projection--including those mysterious intimations gleaned from the unrepresented (by language) phantoms we can never know, because they don't actually exist. Only what's configured by language, made sense of--our illusions--exists for us; the rest is confabulation, a conjuring and fetishising of ignorance, like the dreamtime.

See Wittgenstein and Lyotard,--and Shakespeare, who also perceived the joke I suspect.

" According to modern philosophy neither Shakespeare nor the others can transcend their cultural pontificating--that is their language games--into a universal realm."

Thinking of a scene from one of the Star Trek movies (The Undiscovered Country) where a General Chang makes a remark about Shakespear sounding better in the original Klingon.

An interesting piece on the use of Shakespear in the Star Trek universe at http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/star.trek.html

I'm not convinced that an apreciation of old English writers is going to help indiginous children in quite the same way that the author seems to suggest. I suspect that an over emphasis on that stuff during my own school years by teachers did amazing things to dampen the enjoyment I got from story writing as a younger child (and provided a massive distraction from learning some of the other parts of written english which would have served a greater purpose).

Our education systems do seem to struggle to provide a workable mix of education experience and outcomes for a lot of children with flow on impacts into adulthood, indiginous and others. For many schools fail to foster any real love of learning and that's a tragedy.

R0bert

Just to point out the complexity of something so simple, people of whatever race & community large or small, evolve differently. Just look at how technologically advanced the Mayans & Chinese were or those who inhabited present-day Egypt. Or the Romans, the Greeks etc.
What the "experts" fail to comprehend without fail is that it's as simple as one goes the other arrives.
It's always been like that & will continue like that.
The notion that one lot is more intelligent than the other must be taken in context of era.
Yes the Australian indigenous were stone-age but so were the europeans 5000 years ago.
The european will be the next to re-enter stone-age & perhaps it is the Aborigines turn to rise next to go a long way. Presently, it certainly looks as though the ball is in their court.

*Well the English of Shakespeare, Keats, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen, not to mention Queen Elizabeth II, is like a foreign language to the Aboriginal school children playing truant in our north*

Sorry Babette, but you have it exactly backwards and not just for
Aboriginal children. As a kid I was forced to learn and hear this
stuff as part of English and there is frankly nothing more boring
to a boy then Jane Austen. No wonder kids play truant and arn't
interested in school, if English teachers force this stuff on kids.

Find out what interests kids, find out what their aptitudes are
and get them to read what they enjoy. Then they will take to it
enthusiastically and easily. Force Jane Austen and similar down
their throats, as you propose, will give them every incentive to get
the hell out of school as fast as they can, by any means that they
can think of.

Just a little more on the subject of the sophistication of all linguistic form. Here's another passage from "The Language Instinct" comparing the technical construction of Kivunjo - a Bantu language - and English:

"The English construction is called dative.....The corresponding Kivunjo construction is called applicative whose resemblance..."can be likened to that of a game of chess to checkers" The Kivunjo construction fits entirely around the verb, which has seven prefixes and suffixes, two moods and fourteen tenses, the verb agrees with its subject, its object and its benefactive nouns, each of which comes in sixteen genders (To a linguist, the term "gender" retains its original meaning of "kind")...."

Fascinating!

It seems that the kind of things taught and learned have to be pertinent to the lives of those who are learning them. Babette's learning was pertinent to the life that unfolded for her. If she'd been schooled in European classics but had remained in India, those things may have faded in significance as she was immersed more in Indian culture. There is a often a great gulf that exists between the the things one is taught and the pertinence of such in one's life...I agree with the others that children should be encouraged to read what interests them and what has meaning in their lives.

Babette, many thanks for your view and article.

I invite you to view my website www.whitc.info/

Arthur Bell.

“Without education our aboriginal population can only continue to rely on welfare.Posted by O'Shea”

But O'Shea, we “are” educated ! And welfare is the way to go !

On the “Dole” five hundred dollars a fortnight is “good money” to us !

Arthur Bell

“All because no one wants to learn. Posted by individual”

But individual, we have learnt !

With “billions” alocated and dispenced to us each and every year in every aspect of our lives, as Aboriginals.

Ha ! How much do youse get !?

Arthur Bell.

“Our ancestors existed with absolute minimum possessions. With no need or desire for anything more.
What's happening today is simply a continuation of this.
This reasoning by the Aboriginal Victim Industry ( A.V.I ) that Aboriginal People aspire to the same as Anglo and Other Australians is flawed.
We would certainly desire accept and even expect what they have.
But for us to outlay and to expend the time and effort to obtain them seems,
Not Culturally Appropriate”

extract from www.whitc.info/ Arthur Bell.