As an expert in diseased English, which is bureaucratic jargonese calculated to confuse people who can only understand plain English, may I translate this for the ordinary OLO reader?

Gems Church is using flowery language to disguise the fact that indigenous education is a very expensive farce, where one should not expect that indigenous students are ever going to attain parity with every other student in the education system. One suspects that Gems is perfectly aware that aboriginal children are non too bright and they don't care if they are educated anyway. And they won't go to school unless you drag them along, kicking and screaming.

This is a real problem for the public service bureaucrats who's job it is to educate aboriginal children, and since it is the legally above reproach that aborigines are as intelligent as everyone else, then these children should be able to attain the same marks as every other student. Especially since the educators know that it costs three times as much to educate a remote area aboriginal child as other children, and the only thing that this wasted money achieves, is a safe job and a secure profession for the educators.

The Education department's solution, is to provide "indigenous" students with an "indigenous education" which will hopefully make school so fun and attractive for them so that they will bother to attend. This "indigenous education" will make certain that they are happy, fed and culturally aware, its just that they won't be able to read, write, spell, or do sums at anywhere near the same level as the rest of the student body.

So Gems has to prime us for abject failure, while at the same time telling us that we should keep bankrolling failure. She leaves off with a threat that Australia might be breaking the infamous Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, if we don't keep coming up with the cash. This Declaration basically says that every indigenous person is equal with everyone else in society when it benefits them, and more equal with everyone else when it does not.

Well said *LEGO*

I would point out in addition that guvments across this country continue to show contempt for proper legal process when it comes to that obtaining of "informed legal consent" by refusing to provide appropriate interpreters for explanations and refusing to provide translated documents, as and when legally required.

The only appropriate course of action is to return to the Original Australians their Sovereignty, their own places etc etc to do things their own way.

Whilst the current generation of ugly Australians are not directly responsible for the variety of genocidal campaigns of the past, the rape, the pillage, the wholesale slaughter, theft of property, theft of babies and children, the poisoning of water sources and the "gifting" of diseased blankets, you are all largely responsible for voting for foul individuals who maintain the results of this, and the dumping of these people at the bottom of the economy.

Largely, the Original Australians reject you, and so do I.

In a so called multicultural country, why are our schools not full of talented, bi and multi lingual teachers?

The biggest problem with the education system in this country is the small minded, dim witted twits making the decisions and the solution to that simply requires the "axe" not buckets of money.

Errrrrr, I don't think you read all of my post, Mr Dreamon. (That is a singularly appropriate name).

Do you have comprehension problems? Well, I guess that it what a "progressive" education system results in.

Lego - education in Australia is very eurocentric - it centres non-Indigenous British based knowledge as the only true path.

That may be fine if it was promoted honestly as 'this is education so people can fit and function in mainstream Anglo society'. However, entry and acceptance into mainstream society is not that simple as your somewhat rambling patronising post shows. It is conditional for those from outside of that culture - conditional by all and sundry who feel it is their god-given right to decide who is or isn't acceptable.

Lego, if you are such a learned soul, perhaps you can answer why it is that when Indigenous people gain the highest academic standards available they are unlikely to gain recognition, or employment in our learned halls of higher education?

Education as the panacea for improving Indigenous people's life circumstances is simply a colonialists myth because of the underlying erroneous belief that Indigenous people are less competent than non-Indigenous folk.

Racism continues to the alarming fall in employment of Indigenous academics in our universities. Universities seemingly preferring anyone else rather than an Indigenous academic.

Racism continues to enable clowns to assert that they are some sort of expert on Indigenous people and issues, handing down grandiose edicts that are unfounded and ill-informed. The funny part of it is that these clowns don't realise how foolish they really are.

Decades of self determination brought down the black curtain that shielded such dreadful goings-on as the abuse of women and children to flourish out of sight and out of mind. As well, aboriginal children grew up functionally illiterate in English through idiotic multicultural policy that preferred local languages to English.

The author could refer to the many reports paid for by taxpayers over many years, including reports by the government's own auditor, the Australian National Audit Office that detail over years the waste and lack of accountability.

in Regional Wa the indigeneous kids that do the best seem to be the good sportsmen and women. Problem is at the end of the day only a very small percentage are going to make a living from it along with a small percentage making a living out of dot paintings.

Character rather than education is really the issue. The ability to turn up for work, see past tribalism and rid oneself of the victim mentality would see far more gainfully employed than more millions being spent on 'indigeneous' education.

The title of this thread says it all, REMOTE.

What do they expect.

Mainstream education has failed us miserably since & due to Goaf & his silly deciples. It's so blatantly obvious but the educated can't see it due to that failure.
I found many indigenous children are rather bright but they're being dragged down by the guilt industry agenda soldiers. Ignorant white teachers also have a lot of negative impact.
TV & violent computer games are also highly destructive to their naturally healthy mentality.
I have seen many bright & friendly kids totally ruined when they started school.

So much bullsh!t, so little time :)

Where to start ? Well, for a start, there are now more than thirty three thousand Indigenous university graduates. 33,000. Maybe another two thousand this year, or about 18 % of the 24-year-old age-group, the vast majority in urban areas, and in mainstream courses.

This is quite an improvement on the two hundred in 1980, and the three thousand, back in 1990. Back then, a high proportion of graduates (but never more than about 30 %) were confined to fields like Indigenous (or Aboriginal) studies, Aboriginal Administration, Aboriginal Health, etc.

But since about 2005, thankfully, the @rse has dropped out of Indigenous-oriented Studies and degree-level enrolments in mainstream courses has risen more than 60 %. I wouldn't be surprised if fewer than 5 % of enrolments these days are in Indigenous-oriented courses.

Around six thousand Indigenous people have qualified in mainstream teaching courses. More than four thousand have qualified in maonstream nursing courses, and perhaps a thousand in law courses.

Yes, there are drastic problems for people in remote areas, but not too many Australians generally graduate while living in remote areas. And in any case, the vast majority of jobs for qualified people are in urban and semi-urban areas.

Fortunately, the vast majority of Indigenous people now live in such areas. For all the teeth-gnashing and rending-of-hair, much less than 10 % of all indigenous people live in hole-in-the-wall remote settlements, and even most of those people would spend a hell of a lot of time sort of window-shopping in nearby towns and cities like Alice Springs or Port Augusta or Cairns.

Indigenous students - particularly women, who outnumber men by two to one - are seizing opportunities at university education. Their 'leaders', and a huge proportion of Indigenous academics at universities, seem to have abandoned their own people, in order to build careers lecturing to captive non-Indigenous student audiences and flying off to extremely important overseas Conferences, in Hawai'i in our Winter, and in Arizona in our Summer.

[TBC]

[continued]

So the fragmentation of the professional Indigenous population - and the population generally - will proceed apace, thanks to the self-interest of those academics.

Indigenous affairs is indeed a wasteland of thwarted opportunities - save for the rapid growth in graduate numbers. By 2020, I'm confident that there will be well over 50,000 (fifty thousand) Indigenous university graduates, the vast majority in standard, mainstream fields of study. And by 2034 - barely twenty years away - there could be one hundred thousand Indigenous university graduates, almost all in standard, mainstream fields of study, and making up around 20 % of the entire Indigenous adult population.

of course, by that time, the current crop of 'leaders' will be distant memories.

And hopefully, in the next generation, Indigenous commencing students will move away from 'helper-role', welfare-oriented courses towards science- and business-oriented courses. I long for the day when Indigenous people can be PEOPLE with their own quirky interests, and study whatever the hell they like.

Joe

Gemma, I agree; children in remote communities should be taught by people who have grown up in those sorts of places, who share or at least understand the culture and can teach in the students' first language.
The priority for remote education has to be enough indigenous teachers to satisfy the needs of those areas, and the Principal has to be one of their own. No matter how well intentioned, if the boss man or woman is a whitey, that undermines budding confidence in being able to 'make it' in the wider world.
More money, more facilities, more gimmicks will do nothing if the people doing the teaching are 'foreigners' and incompetent.
A good, sympathetic teacher is worth a room full of computers in an air-conditioned impersonal modern facility.
There is no truth in the white supremacist notion that our indigenous people are less intelligent - indeed, the fact that they survived, culturally intact, for tens of thousands of years without destroying their land, tells me they're a lot smarter than the invaders who have done so much harm to this land that there's doubt it will be able to support us in a few centuries.

Ybirp,

Yes, you're right that Indigenous people - all people - are equally intelligent, that's not an issue. So let's not try to divert this difficult problem down that side-track.

Whether teachers are Indigenous or otherwise, surely the key for the teaching of children in remote settlements is how to ensure that they can access, tap into, the opportunities in the world that they may wish to participate in, ALWAYS assuming that they can match effort and attinment of other children. This is not only vital but certainly possible - as the school at Bamaga has amply demonstrated - and it is clear that ALL Indigenous children can achieve as much as any other children.

I do recall when I was working in career workshop sessions (what we called AICAP: the Aboriginal and Islander Career Aspirations Program) with Indigenous children here in South Australia in the nineties, occasionally some hot-shot official or bureaucrat would be heard to say that 'not all Indigenous children could go to university'. I came to assume that this was code for 'I don't think any of these kids can get to university' - this coming from both Black and white bureaucrats.

How wrong they were. But how much damage they must have done, indirectly, since then. How many Aboriginal children's dreams - and those lovely kids were so full of so many ideas, dreams, aspirations, hopes - were dashed by those elitist b@stards, with their delusions that only a Precious Few could succeed.

Aboriginal kids can achieve anything they aim for, if they put the effort in. They don't have to be locked into some phony 'cultural' bird-cage. There are Aboriginal vets, optometrists, dentists, accountants, human resource managers, conservation managers, you name it.

Let's not go down yet another racist path which assume that they can do nothing but Indigenous this or Indigenous that. The Indigenous kids of tomorrow shouldn't have to lock themselves into some cultural strait-jacket just to squeeze out some sort of career in Indigenous studies, teaching bullsh!t to bored non-Indigenous students. .

Joe

Considering the assistance available to any indigenous I'm surprised the number of enrolments & outcomes is not higher. I wish non-indigenous kids would get so much opportunity.
If the mother is indigenous or white & the father indigenous then there's help everywhere you turn however if the father is non-indigenous it's all denied. It is severely racist on the authorities' part.
Oh, sorry I didn't realise I'm not supposed to disclose that.

I am a racist, and I think it self evident that most black ethnicities have mean intelligence IQ's significantly lower than whites and Asians. That does not mean that there are no smart blacks, but that whatever the ratios of low, median, to high IQ that exist in whites and Asians, are not in the same proportions in most black ethnicities. I obtained my (illegal) attitudes after reading that monumental scientific work "The Bell Curve", personnel observation, and the fact that the only excuse the liberals could dream up to explain endemic black dysfunction was the racist premise that, "blacks are victims of white oppression."

Examples of black dysfunction which could only be caused by low intelligence, keep surfacing. This article is another one. The fact that aboriginal children get "indigenous education" as opposed to the same education given to every other child, clearly cross connects with my premise.

The European system of education just happens to be the world standard which is adopted by every advanced and successful culture. If some cultures can not keep up, then what does that tell you about the concept of equal intelligence?

You use the example of "aborigines" obtaining high academic standards. One "aborigine" who sued Henry Bolt over Bolt's assertion that he was not aboriginal, claimed that the was 1/64th aboriginal "and the rest is mongrel." Like Bolt, I can not accept that a person like that Tasmanian "aboriginal" activist who has blue eyes and blond hair, is "aboriginal" at all.

Before you accuse me of contempt for aborigines, I deny that. My position is, "let the truth be told, though the heavens may fall."

The reason why the lives of full blooded tribal aboriginal people are not improving, despite enormous investment by state and federal governments, is because we have done away with the paternalistic programs of the past which took for granted that people barely out of the stone age were minors, who were unable to make mature decisions as to their own welfare.

We gave them "Equality", the right to drink, and we wondered why we got catastrophe.

Joe Loudmouth, I agree. I was sticking to topic, referring only to the problems in remote communities in which there is a reluctance to go to school - especially primary - as they see no relevance in it.
If our city primary schools were staffed with people of other cultures for whom English is a second language - people who did not share our literary, mythological, cultural heritage, and who considered themselves and their way of life superior, then it is more than likely the kids would opt out.
Once hooked, of course, when the kids from remote communities see the value of educatiuon and have had some success - because that's the crux of the problem - nothing succeeds like success, then the normal, mainstream education is the way to go.
Individual & LEGO, your last posts are sad inditements of your own education and upbringing. But I realise there's no point in arguing, people will believe what they want, despite the facts. If it makes you feel better to believe you're part of a superior race, then it would be cruel to disabuse you.

Hi ybgirp.

"My culture and upbringing" taught me that all races were equal, and I was once very condemnatory of racists. But what stuck in my craw was the constant refrain from so called "anti racists" that all black dysfunction everywhere, was the product of white oppression.

Now, my culture cannot train me to recognise racism, and then get upset when I see it as plain as day in the statements of the so called "anti racist" movements. One aboriginal activist who was quoted in "The Australian" newspaper, even claimed that the endemic corruption in ATSIC was all the white fellas fault, "because the government had approved the candidates."

Your own racism is very noticeable where you claim that aborigines are "a lot smarter than the invaders" and that white teachers are "foreigners." Yoohoo ybgirp, you can hardly wag your finger at "racists" if you are one yourself.

The "Intervention" by the Howard government (continued by the Labor government) looks proof positive to me that both sides of parliament are fully aware that tribal aborigines simply do not have the emotional maturity to manage their own finances.

It has been pointed out, over and over, that the primary problem with aboriginal dysfunction is alcohol. The right to drink alcohol was a product of the "equality" agenda so beloved of humanitarian egalitarians. Anyone who opposed aboriginal equality purely because they were horrified at what would happen if aborigines got the right to drink, were shouted down as "Racists!" From the appalling outcome of that policy today, could I opine that the "racists" were right all along?

Gemma was wearing her rose coloured glasses when she wrote this.

She is correct in that for education to have benefits, it needs to have relevance. Probably the reason some old subjects, Latin for instance, are no longer widely offered.

However for any kind of education to be effective you have to start with not the Educator but the Educatee ...

The child who is "School ready" has been reared in an environment where they've had sufficient nutrition for normal physical and neurological development. They also need to have been adequately nurtured by parents and/or carers to have gained social, language and living skills within a range commensurate with age.

If any or all these needs have been neglected and especially if the child suffers or been affected by poor health, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome or other congenital or birth related injury, he/she is at a gross disadvantage to start with. What's more, this disadvantage is likely to impact whole of life.

Adding to this, the child expected to attend school daily needs to have had sufficient sleep, clothes to wear and food in their belly. Even if the school environment was made as exciting as a Theme Park, children lacking these basics would not, could not cope with a 5 day week regime.

So before more money is wasted on educating more teachers, providing more classroom resources, examining, re-examining and re-designing the curriculum - the children must be in a position to be able to take advantage.

Whether Gemma likes or not - in many remote communities this is the main problem.

If I were to be spending the $$$, every school would have a kitchen, hired cook and weekly rations delivery to provide a nutritious breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack to these kids before anything else - plus a daily multi-vitamin pill. That would be an appropriate start AND a great incentive for kids to turn up daily. It would also probably be the most cost effective efficient way to improve the health of indigenous youngsters at same time.

Lego, you're an idiot and your views would be repugnant to decent Australians.

Aboriginal 'leaders' have a genius for inventing, and constantly re-inventing, the wonky wheel - something that didn't work the first time, or the second time, but that's about all they can come up with. So it is with so-called bilingual education, which has almost never been bilingual but only monolingual in the local language, the language of the teacher's aides. No wonder intelligent kids end up illiterate and innumerate.

What seems to have worked very well over the last decade - pace Gemma [see above paragraph] - is precisely rigorous and mainstream education:

* Indigenous university students have abandoned Indigenous-focussed courses.

* Indigenous women are now commencing standard university study at a HIGHER rate than NON-Indigenous Australian men, and at twice the rate of Indigenous men.

Perhaps the measure that we should be looking at, for improvements, is the ratio of Indigenous women's commencements to non-Indigenous Australian women's commencements - about 65 %, which would very roughly correspond to the different degrees of urbanisation and class differences.

The Indigenous population in remote settlements make up barely 10 % of the total Indigenous population. The great majority of them are in regular touch with local urban life. I live in hope that the young women will, out of sheer desperation, move into rural towns and semi-urban towns to find work and to seek out education opportunities, for themselves and/or for their children. There is not really any future in remote settlements the way they are being dominated these days by the drunks and bashers.

If something isn't working, give it a miss, find something else. I hope Gemma can spend some time in a remote settlement and realise how much of her words are just worn-out, but endlessly recycled, prattle.

Joe

Divine_msm " every school would have a kitchen, hired cook and weekly rations delivery to provide a nutritious breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack to these kids before anything else - plus a daily multi-vitamin pill. That would be an appropriate start AND a great incentive for kids to turn up daily. It would also probably be the most cost effective efficient way to improve the health of indigenous youngsters at same time."
Excellent idea.

I am crushed, Loudmouth. And terribly hurt.

Of course, you know, this means war?

Your premise is, that people who are not racist are "decent", and those who are racist are "indecent".

Your problem is, that like so many white Australians, we are sick and tired of always being blamed for aboriginal dysfunction by white hating racists like you. It was "Nugget" Coombes, the former head of the Australian Council for Aboriginal Affairs who dreamed up the concept of aboriginal "self deturmination" and the setting up of "aboriginal only" apartheid areas on former cattle ranches and mission stations. It was the Socialists who bequeathed to aborigines the right to drink.

This policy of alcohol fueled "self deturmination' was enthusiastically endorsed by the aboriginal "Big Men" leaders who saw it's potential as a cash cow,which seems to benefit no one but themselves. I quote Justice O'Keefe in NSW who headed one inquiry into aboriginal financial scandals in which he angrily proclaimed that "black leaders are ripping off their own people."

This failed policy has resulted in the creation of totally dysfunctional aboriginal settlements which are entirely dependent upon the taxpayer for their continued survival, and where economic progress is prohibited forever. Within these "self governing" communities, violence is endemic. Aborigines make up 24% of the NT population, but of the 17 murder victims in the NT in 2002, 15 of them were aboriginal.

"Indecent" "racists" like myself opposed this stupid policy from the beginning, Loudmouth.

Egalitarians like you are just amazing. You create a social catastrophe by your arrogant insistence on creating policies based upon the unobtainable ideal of human equality, and when it fails miserably, you blame the people who opposed it.

Individual & LEGO, your last posts are sad inditements of your own education and upbringing.

ybgirp,
Please explain where there's no fact in my post.

you're part of a superior race
ybgirp,
When did I ever even hint at this ? You're making statements about others' statements but you're not quoting, you're inventing. First of all when I look at Australians today I fail to see anything remotely looking like superior on the contrary. There's nothing superior about being handed a most beautiful country only to have a race amongst themselves to see who can ruin it faster.
Mainstream education in Australia is brainwashing gone wrong & the indigenous have totally different values to those academic morons who persistently interfere with peoples' lives.
If anything the morons could learn from a couple of indigenous.

"ybgirp,
Please explain where there's no fact in my post."
individual, I was referring to your apparent attitudes towards non-white people as expressed in your writing.

"you're part of a superior race
ybgirp,"
Actually, individual, I wrote: "If it makes you feel better to believe you're part of a superior race, then it would be cruel to disabuse you."
Again, it was the impression your comments made. If you didn't intend others to draw that conclusion, then you should take more care in your choice of words.

As for the rest of your post, I have the impression that you might agree with me just the teensiest bit on some issues :)

apparent attitudes towards non-white people
ybgirp,
you're making the same mistake as most who think they know but don't. After 34 years of residing in various indigenous communities I don't actually have an attitude as such, I have experience & you mistake experience with attitude. It's wrong & counter-productive to dispute peoples' experiences. By all means dispute the remarks of City folk when they guess about others but do not dismiss experience. We in the Bush get swamped by short term career bureaucrats & therefore we are qualified to express our opinion of them due to our experiences with them. When those overpaid & overmollycoddled pains leave they leave nothing behind that would tempt the locals to even consider having good memories of them.
If you were to actually think about what you read you'd find that I don't blame the indigenous in general, they're getting manipulated just as much as the brainwashed in Urbania.

Hi LEGO,

I partly apologise for my remark earlier - I read the first sentence in one of your earlier posts and wrote you off - I should have read further.

As an erstwhile supporter of 'self-determination', I would cautiously agree with you that it has been a con. I don't think Aboriginal communities ever intended to be genuinely self-determining in the sense of trying to build up an economic base, and run all their own affairs themselves, and strive for a measure of self-sufficiency and independence.

I would still support Land Rights, but in the full awareness that people were more interested in getting mining royalties than building up their own economies.

There's not a lot I believe any more about, say, Aboriginal history. I don't have much faith in 'community' - and if we reversed the question: "is 'community' part of the solution, or part of the problem ?" then we would have to face up to some very uncomfortable truths.

[TBC]

[contd.]

Somebody commented above on poor school attendance - but ask yourself, if everybody around you is doing okay living on welfare, and your parents and uncles and cousins have never had to look for work, it's a safe bet that you won't ever have to, either - 'so what's the need for schooling ? You won't have to ever develop any skills, you'll be okay.'

'The old men seem to know how to get more out of Canberra, with their magic, and white fellas can do it all for us anyway, there's always one more sucker who will do the most ridiculous things for us. Yeah, you will have to put up with violence, booze, unutterable boredom, lifelong poor health' (but don't worry, life's usually pretty short for people in remote 'communities').

So low school attendance amongst the children of the lifelong-welfare population is no mystery. It's a bit harder to get away with in the towns and cities, when you know that there are opportunities slopping around everywhere if you look for them.

But in remote settlements, those holes-in-the-wall, maybe the last thing anybody should be doing is listening to people there - of course, they will ask for yet more to be done for them, and make effectively impossible demands - feed our kids, wash my feet, clean my house, give me another fridge or TV, pay my rent.

Meanwhile, in the cities, Aboriginal kids are steaming through Year 12, and going on to trades and uni: the equivalent of about 1.2 young-adult age-groups is enrolled at uni at any one time, overwhelmingly in mainstream courses, Gemma, and maybe quite a few are in genuine trade-training as well. It's a grind, but it's happening.

While remote settlements are dead in the water. And What's that definition of insanity of Einstein's again ?

Joe

Dear Lego,
Well said. However coming from non indigenous and non native English background I found current Australian education system non discriminatory rather concerned about indigenous students. I don't see lack of opportunities for indigenous students if they want to progress further. Rather I find it more challenging for non indigenous students to compete in real life where option to access in jobs and education are limited. We can say we need a merger of non mainstream education with mainstream education. Mainstream education cannot be denied for indigenous student. We need to have a working NBN to deliver education remotely. My personal view is, all the remote places should have basic access of education, hospitals, shopping centre, cultural centre etc. While indigenous students enjoy more opportunities than non indigenous students, they all should take advantage of it.

Apology gratefully accepted, Joe. And welcome Alanur Akand.

My fundamental premise, here on OLO, is that we as a society can not create effective governing policies if we continue to take for granted that all human beings have equal intelligence, and therefore equal rights. The principle of equal rights is a noble one, and one that should always be considered when proposing policies.

But the fact that this is based upon a fallacy, is self evident when you can see that legislative organisations constantly need to make exceptions to the principles of equality, in order to make things work. The issue of aboriginal education is a case in point.

As I understand it, pure blooded aboriginal people have measured IQ's around 70, which is very low indeed. Such people tend to be tribal aborigines still living in stone age communities of family, clan and tribe groups. It was fashionable for the "angry young men" of the 60's to proclaim that all humans were of equal intelligence, and they demanded "self determination" and "independence" for black societies everywhere.

But their attitudes were built upon the false premise of human equality. Giving tribal aborigines equality with whites, resulted in giving them the right to drink alcohol, and that created a social catastrophe.

Prior to equal rights, tribal aborigines lived on reservations in the care of "protectors" who looked after their interests, maintained order, made certain that the kids went to school, and that the parents worked for their own upkeep. It was accepted then that aboriginal people were not intelligent, but they could be trained to become productive and accepted. My premise, is that this outcome was better than what has transpired.

The fact that we now have "aboriginal education", which is clearly meant to take into account low aboriginal intelligence supports my premise. But what the author of this article seems to be suggesting, is that this fiction of aboriginal equality of intelligence should be maintained through the application of novel excuses. And taxpayers should keep pouring in bucket loads of cash to continue to maintain this fiction.

City folk generally have no concept of what life is like in remote communities. Generally, it is white Australians trying to connect with Black Australians in schools in town. In over 20 years teaching (in the city), I am convinced that I am just the wrong colour for my indigenous kids; they need blackfellas who've worked their way through whitefellas Uni, who know the language and relate to the culture that the kids know.
That said, I think mainstream education is limited by one-dimensional teachers, the emerging National Curriculum (non-differentiated curriculum) and Naplan-centrism which imposes pressure on schools to get results that are quantifiable. Real-life learning has intangibles you can't put on a league table; and indigenous kids (in my experience) are universally practical, real-life people - they can spot a fake from 2 miles away. Winning their respect is a long-term project not often achieved by white teachers. The ongoing battle for the teacher is waged against the standard three problems: abuse / neglect, alcohol and drugs.
There are remote area Christian schools in WA who seem to be getting on with the job - people in town like me could learn a lot from working models in remote areas, but the challenges of remote area education are formidable. Hats off to people working in these tough environments; these sorts of teachers have the qualities and commitment of 19th century missionaries (ie the helpful ones who succeeded in helping out).

Loudmouth, there are many kids both black and white who are never going to be university material. Under the current system you have to not attend classes to fail in many of the courses being offered. Also, by the turn of the century, at least 95 percent of Australians under the current definition, will be aboriginal because of inter marriage. I suspect that a majority of the current crop of aboriginal graduates are only one quarter or less aboriginal.

Only time will sort out the education problem for aboriginals. Money is certainly not the answer.

David

Thank you, David, it's good to know what sort of racist crap people are feeding on these days.

Joe