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The Forum > Article Comments > The urban/mainstream turn in Indigenous higher education growth > Comments

The urban/mainstream turn in Indigenous higher education growth : Comments

By Joe Lane, published 3/6/2016

In the last ten years, major successes in Indigenous higher education have been tarnished by the alienation of outer suburban, rural and remote people and the growing gap within the Indigenous population.

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I see no case for substandard indigenous specific degrees. And given an acknowledgement, we have entered the 21st century, just set aside the endless excuses, prevarication and tolerance for behavior that is mired in the stone age and conflict that was over, over a century ago?

Time to stop with the endless blame shifting of professional victims and the aggressive confrontation of folks still connected to antiquated and no longer appropriate tribalism; and indeed the corruption and nepotism that it appears to give rise to?

And stop being your own worst enemies? Take stock of where and when you are, then crack on taking advantage of what's on the table to improve the common lot and the next generation!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 3 June 2016 9:14:14 AM
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Hi Alan,

If I understand you right, I agree with you that sub-degree courses should never have been the be-all and end-all - and they never were. They were a relatively late initiative. Indigenous people have been graduating from teaching courses (at teachers' colleges) and nurses (from teaching hospitals) since the forties.

Then in the early seventies, some bright spark thought, "Gosh, it seems to be too difficult for Indigenous people to handle standard degrees, let's 'adapt' courses, at lower levels, that they can handle." So the Aboriginal Task Force in Adelaide; a two-year 'adapted' course, specifically for Indigenous students only, down the hall from the standard three-year degree for white fellas. But very soon, this was countered, perhaps unwittingly, by standard three-year teaching courses WITH STUDENT SUPPORT, at James Cook in FNQ and Mt Lawley in Perth. They worked.

But meanwhile, many universities had been enrolling Indigenous students in standard courses, Flinders from 1969 for example. For brevity, let's call these two models, the 'racist' model, or the 'Apartheid' model, and the mainstream model. Let's be clear: students in the mainstream model have ALWAYS out-numbered those in the Apartheid model.

Even in SA, the home of the Task Force, by the early eighties, the mainstream prevailed. But where there was Aboriginal Studies at a university, which type do you think had more clout with senior management ? Yes, indeed, a model which preferred to 'adapt' and write up curriculum rather than ever provide student support.

But for all that, enrolments and graduations favoured mainstream courses, nothing 'adapted' about them. Of course, Ab. Studies took the money for student support, they needed it to write up yet more courses. But even with dumb-dumb senior management support, their cachet dwindled - until they got the bright idea of asking senior management to make it compulsory for ALL students to do a unit of Ab. Studies or Ab. Culture, across the entire university (Of course, I'm writing of a very limited number of universities here). This had the double positive of also being able to get rid of those lower-level courses,

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2016 3:59:04 PM
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[Continued]

and pissing off Indigenous students altogether. So they thought.

But meanwhile, from around 1999, many more kids were finishing Year 12 and eventually coming on to university study. That didn't start to kick in until about 2003-2004, but it's been up-and-away since then: Indigenous students in degree-level and eventually post-grad courses (about 25 % of Indigenous graduates go on to post-graduate study), enrolling in mainstream courses, away from the influence of Ab. Studies. The horse has now well and truly bolted.

As well, Indigenous people have been living in cities in fair numbers since the fifties, three generations. Grandparents now have been born and raised in cities. Indigenous people are now in the mainstream and are likely to stay there, come Treaty, Sovereignty, dog's breakfast or whatever.

BUT how to re-engage those alienated populations in the outer suburbs, rural and remote areas ? What would be the point of just watching them take the 'road to Aurukun' ? And any alternative road would be to where else but through education and employment ? Who will facilitate that ? The education elites ? Not bloody likely. They're too busy sitting on important committees. So this is a problem that will grow much worse before anything is done about it, I'm afraid.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2016 4:01:59 PM
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Yes Joe and in some cases, an insult to folks who have in their number some of the smartest folk on the planet, with elephantine memories!

I remember back in the seventies, when an indigenous class in a small rural outback community in NSW? Reportedly topped the national averages in one year, due to a lady teacher who refused to accept the label "superior folk" put on first Australians.

I believe anyone who gains entry on merit should get the same (level playing field) opportunity as other folk. And consequently have their credentials recognised as being as good as the next bloke's; and not dismissed as some substandard piece of window dressing that then is virtually worthless out in the real world?
Cheers, Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 3 June 2016 4:27:52 PM
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Hi Alan,

I wrote up a lovely long reply, then my bastard computer wipe the lot. I don't have the energy to try to do it all again.

But anyway, what do you mean by "same (level-laying field) opportunity" ? That's occurred for Indigenous people only in the last couple of decades. Indigenous student support made a hell of a difference for twenty-odd years, say from the early 1980s until about 2005, but after that it wasn't quite so necessary, at least not for the children of working Indigenous parents. But that seems to be mostly gone now.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2016 6:48:11 PM
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eggzackly Joe. A level-laying field is a place where chickens come home to roost, engage in a little horizontal recreation, or lay a few free range eggs.

This reminds me of an elderly gent, whose horizontal activities had been severely curtailed due to an age related arterial problem and decided to have a full medical. The Doc checked his x rays and tutted away, finally blurting out, look I'm sorry old timer, but you're going to have to give up horizontal recreation! Wadda ya mean doc, replied the old timer, thinking about it or talking about it?

My computer regularly wipes almost completed work also and because I'm not the only one using it?

And in the news recently, identity thieves trying to glean vital information by trolling through your data even as you work at your keyboard. And resulting in some of your work disappearing even as you type!?

In any event they're wasting their time with me given the only financial transactions I conclude or conduct on line are via a load and go debit card, which I load just hours before conducting business and over an agreed or known price, which then taps out the new topped up balance on the card.

I urge anyone reading these lines to do the same where practical? Failing that ensure you run a program like the windows ten I'm currently road testing, which stores most of your data in the cloud?

I believe a degree or diploma should say only a couple of things about the holder, that no free passes were given or expected, and that the recipient is as good as his or her final passing marks indicate and that it was earned on meritorious results! Nothing more nothing less, whether white, black or brindle!
Cheers Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 4 June 2016 9:53:06 AM
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Hi Alan,

Ah yes, I remember now: I was responding to your anecdote about an outback class of Indigenous kids. Back in the 1870s, in Victoria, at a Mission called Ramahyuck, every kid in the school got 100 % for every subject. You can check this out on my web-site: www.firstsources.info - Victoria Page, 1882 Royal Commission into the Aborigines: Appendix. The Ed. Dept sent out an Inspector who rigorously checked the kids and got the same result. The Ed. Dept. then sent out two more inspectors who checked the kids and got the same result. Indigenous people themselves have smashed the myth that they are less intelligent than other people, time and again.

I think too that many people, with good intentions, 'love' Blackfellas precisely because they think they are helpless, easily cowed and herded here and there, at the whim of brutal racist policy-makers - when the truth is that, from the word go, Aboriginal people have done, within limits, whatever the hell they liked. In Rev. Taplin's Journal, you can see people at the Mission coming and going, going and coming, as they wish, working or not, as they wish, taking medicine or not as they wish, trying every trick in the book (usually only once) to get more rations, or more blankets, or grog.

Taplin's 600-page Journal really should be made into a TV series, although some single pages would take up an entire episode. I'm re-Indexing it at the moment and sometimes I laugh out loud at some of the amazing things, crazy things, that people do.

In other words, people had - and have - 'agency', and exercise it as freely as possible. They're not sheep, never have been, never will be. They can no more be herded than cats, although that myth might fit the narrative conveniently. They obviously didn't and don't always win, but by Christ they give it a good shot.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 4 June 2016 6:13:29 PM
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yep its obvious that the Indigeneous by and large did much better under the missionaries than the secularist religion which has done more destruction than good.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 4 June 2016 6:26:15 PM
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Linking issues of Education to notions of Improving Indigenous development

Morale is low among many living inside Aborigine Communities across the country. The burden is high, meaning for many families... they are emotionally exhausted. Their self-confidence is low, their life-quality is low, their sense of team spirit at ground level in many areas within community is low and their sense of enthusiasm heavy-hearted. Additionally, when you feel betrayed, you tend to be on your guard, generally distrusting others making learning or being open to wider experiences including innovation through education, more difficult.

Systemically you are right Joe Lane. The ‘… wheel is half-heartedly re-invented, only to be abandoned again’. After innumerable reports, economic and political promises not to forget the recent crushing funding cuts to Australia’s First Nations Peoples, a recurrent trauma felt came from messages on “Close Communities” (Lifestyle Choices) threats from Western Australian and the PM Abbott political quagmire. The saga being yet more perceptive proof of Australia’s continued disregard of inclusive policies that are historically adding to a disenfranchisement taking its toll on Australia’s First Nations people. Unaddressed in this context is Australia own cyclic psychohistorical story (political, military, social and economic) that reflects the impact of Australia’s repeated collective behavior neglectful of events through its historical, political-economic and cultural development across most rural areas for First Nations people.

With persistent ad-hoc political and economic ignorance and neglect over past decades, the statistics mirror today’s outcomes through elevated suicide rates, incarceration rates and other telling social and emotional indices among our First Nations people.

See Below:
Posted by miacat, Sunday, 5 June 2016 3:27:17 AM
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a) The Insult:

We all need to seriously ponder on the expectations we place on our First Nations people and the value of the relationship we offer them in return. As Warren Mundine (whom I rarely agree with on many political issues) expressed on Saturday Extra; ‘it is not about the complexities but rather the simple things’. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/improving-indigenous-development/7474050,

For Aborigine Peoples, what does Australia’s relationship mean as a whole when their world in most life-style aspects is managed and impacted by a lack of basic representation through politics, corporations and charity. Where is the trust for the informal, the marginalized and disenfranchised? Why put the cart before the horse?

b) Treaties

First? Politically, this is the most important socio-political and economic issue for our First Nations people. For them, ‘how the hell can we discuss a Constitution or true “Recognition” before the honest and proper readdress of Treaties’? The whole notion is all back-to-front.

Aside from the discussion about education (as put fourth in this article), or the quality of emotional intelligence about who needs the education most, there is the economic cost in the long-term of investing millions in a Constitution Recognition only to find it does not and can not take into account the pinnacle number of principle issues required in a official documented process of reforms needed in Constitutional avocation through points omitted in the criteria of historical past-present and future (soundness) which must address the overdue consideration of ‘forms and formalities’, as steps through an affirmative and honorable process for “Reconciliation”.

http://www.miacat.com
Posted by miacat, Sunday, 5 June 2016 3:30:53 AM
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Hi Miacat,

I got lost in your last paragraph :)

As for a Treaty, two questions immediately arise:

* What would be in it ? What issues, what clauses, who decides what ?

* Who would have the authority to sign it ?

We've heard of this idea, yet another silver bullet, for forty years now, but nobody seems to have ever teased out the answers to these questions. I suppose the problem is that usually treaties are worked out and signed BEFORE their consequences, not long after - unless I've misunderstood what magic this one is expected to bring.

So perhaps you could suggest one thing, just one thing, Miacat, which should be in a Treaty which the Australian voter can agree to, and which will make any observable improvement in the Indigenous position. The floor is yours :)

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 5 June 2016 10:53:25 AM
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It's all here Loudy,

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/selfdetermination/would-a-treaty-help-aboriginal-self-determination#axzz4AfQRUxkS

The history of the world in as sentence: "You only ever own that which you have the power to defend". Full stop.

That truism applies to Australia over the millenia, just as it has elsewhere. That Australia was some completely isolated, peaceful arcadia with a common respect for the rights of all groups is too unbelievable. It is at the basis of Aboriginal demands while a history war goes on over it.

All aborigines are invited to join 21st century Australia and to take up special opportunities given to them towards the western education needed to achieve it. There will be no treaty reached that returns the aboriginal situation to what it was before european arrival.
Posted by Luciferase, Sunday, 5 June 2016 1:36:51 PM
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Like Alan, I'm totally against special Aboriginal Degrees. I've seen some disastrous results in remote communities from" qualified" health workers and teachers. Some even life threatening.
And none of my indigenous kids or grandkids have ever enjoyed doing Aboriginal Studies" that were injected into school or TAFE courses. It seems people who write these courses don't talk to Aboriginals in remote areas because they seem to have very different concepts to those who actually are traditional and remote people.
As far as help for the disadvantaged kids, I can't speak for anywhere but NT and the Kimberley but there are still bridging courses and lots of support for indigenous kids who haven't completed high school. Mind you, the format of the classes and the type of help supplied is totally at odds with what the kids really need but that's another story.
Indigenous organisations run their own courses that only run for a few weeks, contain few requirements for literacy and total fail to help get these kids into jobs.
From where I sit, the problem seems to be that kids have no concept of reliability, punctuality and accountability. Those who don't achieve come from long term welfare homes where they have never had role models to show them that an education and or job require going to bed at a reasonable hour, getting up early five days and week and actually turning up for school and work every single day.
Most of the kids drop out after a few weeks or even a few days, unable to cope with the expected reliability.
If we are ever going to help these kids get a successful education we need to teach them consistency from the beginning of the school years and keep reinforcing that for the next 12 years.
How to achieve that with the parents these kids have is something I don't have an answer to
Posted by Big Nana, Sunday, 5 June 2016 1:58:03 PM
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I find aboriginal degrees and the following inane wastes of taxpayer money.

http://www.100positivepolicies.org.au/indigenous_rangers_fact_sheet

Once land rights and ownership are ceded, it should not be the taxpayer's responsibility to employ people to be custodians of what they own.

It does nothing to bring people into the true reality of their 21st century existence. It's just high class welfare with superannuation and workers comp insurance thrown in.
Posted by Luciferase, Sunday, 5 June 2016 2:14:10 PM
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Hi Big Nana & Luciferase,

I'm sure that there are individuals in rural and remote areas who desperately want to do something, to develop some sort of small business which actually requires effort, AND have a deep love of their country, deep enough to want to stay no matter what. With all my heart, I wish them the best.

Native title and ILUAs now extend over such huge swathes of country that even the two thousand unqualified rangers would have a hard time just to maintain the health of their environments. Feral animals and plants, water quality, control of bush-bashers and trail bikes and random shooters, control of tourists, fencing, burning-off, re-vegetation, and a myriad other problems - which would need fully qualified people in great numbers, are massively beyond them. So frankly, I don't think people have a clue about 'caring for country'.

Having employment in remote areas, even essentially no-work jobs, might keep people 'out there', especially if they have plenty of Toyotas but is probably just another round of window-dressing.

My son was probably one of the first Indigenous qualified conservation managers in Australia, very dedicated and hard-working, but he is very pessimistic about that massive 2,000-person program. Watching a group of 'rangers' loading up the Toyota with firewood the other ay, then going out and taking water samples, and temperature measurements, he was laughing at the token nature of it all. Clearly, he thought, the main work for the day was that load of firewood.

I recall my wife going to a rangers' conference back in about 2002, and passionately speaking to the Indigenous rangers about coming on to proper study. They all sat back, arms folded, glowering and, sure enough, not one took up her offer. Why the hell should they ? They already had it sweet.

Every time well-intentioned policy-makers set up such a program, it means that properly qualified people can't do the job, there's no room for them, and that, eventually, the job won't really get done. We'll see.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 5 June 2016 2:58:29 PM
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[ontinued]

Meanwhile, statistically, somehow, the majority of young urban Indigenous people from working families, perhaps the great majority, will go on to university and enrol in mainstream, degree-level (and post-grad) courses. Coming from the city, they will want to stay there, where the best opportunities are. Some racist will demand that they go out to be with their 'people' whether they like it or not, and they won't. I think those days are also gone. So two and then three, then four thousand of them will be graduating every year, at least a third of them will go on to post-grad study, in the fields of their own choosing.

So two pathways: is the urban-education-to-employment pathway causing any problems ? No, not for the policy-makers. The welfare pathway ? Yes, indeed. So as you say, Big Nana, how to get people to make the transition ? How can they, if in the first place they never experience any sort of environment which is conducive to education higher than Grade Two or Three ? If their parents never experience work ? In short, if people have no way of perceiving the link between education and employment ? School is for kids, it's child-minding, while (so they've heard) work is for grown-ups: chalk and cheese.

So people might get positions as unqualified rangers, but without necessarily understanding that it is supposed to be work, sustained work, eight hours each day of effort, mostly out of the Toyota slogging away chopping out pest plants, fencing, or laying baits for foxes, cats, dogs, goats, donkeys, wild cattle, horses, camels etc. So those jobs won't get done.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 5 June 2016 3:00:19 PM
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