kalalli, unfortunately a general attack on the education system and its teaching staff is a common knee-jerk reaction to truancy. It's an opinion that often comes from those who lack any real knowledge of what a teacher contends with in this day and age. Yes, there are bad teachers out there - like any profession. But the current lack of respect from today's children (no colour bias) is alarming - threats, and actual, physical violence from kids and their respective family members will test even the calmest teacher. Is it any wonder that those teachers worth their salt pack up and head for the private sector?

Education doesn't begin once that bell rings - it begins at home. No amount of monetry incentive or teacher harranging will ever provide solutions if there is no value placed on education in a student's family environment.

Thankfully, I am not a teacher - but I witness what my partner puts up with at school. Note the countless late nights buried in paperwork, plus the weekend afterhour activities... and wonder what the hell parents actually do for their children!

Mainstram education does not work for up to 1/3 of mainstream students. It is not just Aboriginal students alienated from our present schools.

It is not disadvantage that alienates Aboriginal students, it is culture. To treat Aboriginality like a disability that must be incorporated into non-disabled society by some augmentation is simply wrong thinking and won't work. Aboriginal culture is the positive force and strong self identity that can drive Aboriginal students, not something to be ignored or overcome.

Noel Pearson and others have said Aboriginal students should go to boarding school or move to cities as there are no education opportunities in remote communities. It is time for intelectual dinosaurs to enter the computer age and realise that a person can go from pre-school to Phd by correspondence any where on this continent, no matter how remote or their community is - and stay connected to family and country.

The negative social environment for study is not uneducated relatives, I have noticed that Aboriginal elders who were institutionally denied an education are those most insistant on the importance of education.

it is things associated with disadvantage at home (not culture) like overcrowding, poor nutrition, especially breakfast, family violence and peer group pressure. Once there is a quantum mass of truents then truency becomes a viable and tempting option that quickly becomes a habit - white or black, especially if school is alienting. Then that community has a major escalating problems in many areas including crime and paint/petrol sniffing.

Issues like education, housing, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, drug and alcohol problems etc. are all interelated - in black and white families. Any one of these issues affects the others, either positively through healing or negatively through neglect.

Aboriginal education must be one element of a holistic healing paradigm for Aboriginal communities, including other elements such as corroboree and traditional social structures such as elders councils, mens councils and womens councils.

Attempts to further assimilate aboriginal students into mainstream structures wil fail just as that same objective has failed over and over again in the past.

Aboriginal children, like every other child in this country need to be educated to join the mainstream of society or as adults they will feel like misfits. No one denies the importance of their original culture in this process either, but today's children are part of a new culture, and this is the real world they must sink or swim in.
The reality is: aboriginals wanting to work will have to leave remote communities (and their family network), and unless prepared for this real world, which must be presented in a positive way, will feel too anxious to make this move. Is not becoming educated, an unconscious form of avoidance?
Has anyone considered this perspective?

Aboriginal chidren are made to feel like misfits in the mainstream at present. That is the essential problem. Unless the nature of the mainstream changes, or alternatives are created,the problem will remain.

The reality is, right now, Aboriginal people are sinking. assimilation has not worked in the 100 years of that being government policy.

Why do people have to leave remote areas to work?. Most of our primary industries operate from remote areas, why wouldn't economic developments work for Aboriginal people based on agriculture.

If telstra can employ people in India to operate their call centres, they could set up call centres in remote Aboriginal communities too.

there are an infinite number of creative solutions to problems based on Aboriginal perspectives, but these options are systematically ignored in favour of white programs that have proven themselves to fail over and over again.

We must tackle these issues with open hearts and minds, not cling to the status-quo.

What is called for in this matter is encouragement, not money.
Money oils the wheel that squeaks, thats for sure, but this wheel has major suspention problems and its most unlikely to stop squeaking as long as money is continually thrown at the problem.
Any kid, regardless of background needs to be encouraged and on occasion may need to be strongly coerced to attend education.
All kids, in my opinion need to believe there are possibilities that can be enhanced by education. Study is not always easy or fun, but the bigger picture needs constant reiteration.
So if we are going to throw money at it, lets not be racist about it.
White, black and all shades in between should get the same. The past history is certainly shameful (on both sides) as most people would agree (except the both sides bit!), but its time to move on. Being of convict extraction, my relatives did not choose to come here. If I go to Ireland there is no handout for me, no land claim, no cultural recognition, and I doubt I could even be a citizen of the country. If I chose to live there, I would have to fit in with their plans.
I completed a diploma of conservation and land management at Qld Tafe, only to find at the end of it at was discontinued for white people and dumbed down for the murris so they could give plenty out. Now, this has totally devalued a qualification that took 18 months to achieve. If I use the diploma, I'll have to specify that its not the aboriginal version but the real one.
It dosent help me and it dosent help them either, but to the beancounters it must have a real nice shine.
Could it be covert racism?

Hello,
People think us mob predominately live in the bush or isolated locations across the country.

Check the ABS website to learn that the majority of Indigenous people live in urban and regional areas.

Secondly many never left or were forcibly removed from their country and watched as the cities and towns grew around them.

Thirdly, this means that they also face relative poverty in a relative rich surrounding and they still fall below the expected learning benchmark.

Stop thinking that we are outback and understand that you take for granted your social, geographic and cultural position so much that you cannot and never will see it from our side of the two-way mirror.

Oh yeah, and brother who thinks his TAFE course was 'dumbed down'- as a teacher- I would gladly indigenise any curriculum to allow it to reflect the need of the learners' linguist needs, lack of cultural capital and privilege you have taken for granted every day of your schooling experience.

Back to work,