A far more interesting article would entail Prof Hughes being removed from her cultural familiars and describing her experiences in being thrust into an Aboriginal community - particularly one like her subjects are from, which isn't subject yet to the stereotypical dysfunctions that are grist for the mass media and CIS mill.

Clearly there is gross under-resourcing of education in the community about which she writes so disdainfully. However, she doesn't propose any real solutions, but rather relies upon her readers to infer that assimilation is the only future for residents of even relatively successful Aboriginal communities.

I heard Hughes talking about this on RN during the week, and I couldn't help but notice the 'missionary' tone in what she said. Notably, she avoids any consideration of actually providing reasonable services to these communities, but instead implies that they should be vacated.

That would be very convenient to the mining companies and other pastoral and business interests upon whom the CIS depends for patronage and funding, wouldn't it? Incidentally, if real social researchers wanted to conduct the kind of study upon which Hughes' article is based, they would have been subject to the scrutiny of a properly established research ethics committee.

Was this the case in the erstwhile professor's "research" that is presented here?

My sentiments exactly CJ,

Helen Hughes who completed a BA (Hons) from the University of Melbourne in 1949 and an MA (Hons) in 1951.

Her scholarship focused on the history of the Australian steel industry from which she published as her first book.

Her most recent publication "Lands of Shame' was simply pathetic.

Besides reading like something from a 1960's Readers Digest, it was so poorly researched I wondered how the publishers thought it was anywhere near the quality of scholarship one usually expects -especially when discussing Indigenous people and affairs. But then I discovered the publishers were the CIS. (Centre for Idiotic Scholarship)

It’s not at all difficult to make a link between her call (in this publication) to privatise Aboriginal lands and her STEAL industry interests

Bushbred writes they "Can't quite make out what you are getting at" in relation to my post about Bushbred's "lets keep the Indians on the reservation" mindset.
Parents from Arnhem Land send their illiterate daughter down south for an education. A women helps in this education process. Bushbred and others attack the women who is helping without knowing the parents or the child or the womens effectiveness as a helper. Not only is there a clear case of "lets keep the Indians on the reservation" mindset, but a quite bold presumption that the parents know less about whats good for their own daughter than does Bushbred and like minded souls on the Internet.

Still can't understand your mindset, Sillstone. In fact, it seems as if you are twisting an actual fact of Aboriginal parents and families battling to fit into standard white bush schools just after WW2 into a conundrum.

All I said was that my wife and I were concerned when a black father complained about his children forced to learn the white version of Australian history since the First Landing?

If you are trying to argue that your woman teachers had or have a truer history for the young natives to ingest, well okay, then, my wife and I would fully agree with you.

Just wonder whether you have had personal experience of mixed bush schools just after WW2. Or are you too young to fully understand?

Rainier >”Perhaps if the girls didn't have Hughes studying them like her own lab rats, taking notes, staring at them endlessly like an old deranged carpet snake, they may have felt more relaxed, enjoyed the moments, and understood the contexts?”

What a monumental pile of S_H_I_T. Typical of the bleeding hearts. Shoot the messenger. Of course aborigines in remote communities aren’t having problems with literacy and numeracy. The real problem is our shock and indignation that after thirty odd years of throwing money at the problem we are actually going backwards. After all who are we to expect that these children should be able to read and write?

Many of these communities have been brought undone by the very people who proclaim to be acting in their best interests.Rainier if you can’t stand hearing the truth from a whitey how about listening to what Noel Pearson has to say. Someone with the guts to cut through the PC nonsense.

Pearson > “There is an ahistorical tendency in contemporary policy discussions about indigenous communities. As if the problems of these communities are not themselves the product of earlier "in the best interests" policies devised by bureaucrats and politicians."

Almost entirely made up of the "helping professions" liberal progressive types

Pearson >“A significant minority of students from these areas [Cape York and NT] leave school without having acquired ANY literacy or numeracy skills, and are therefore unlikely to participate in the real economy. This is the most critical disaster in Australian education.In Cape York, Year 2 diagnostic tests reveal that 60-80per cent of indigenous students have below benchmark literacy and numeracy skills. Nearly all indigenous students in Cape York are two to four years behind the mainstream standard.”

Pearson >“real self-determination is about Indigenous people taking responsibility for the results, and I can tell you the results that are out there at the moment are very, very miserable and shameful. And, you know, it is a measure of our performance that - it's a measure of our performance in fulfilment of what we have called self-determination, that the results are so miserable.”

HoHum >”The real question is do ANY of us make any real sense or even begin to understand this TV created "world" described in this essay.”

OMG. Did you just compare your pathetic PC Gen Y angst with the massive misfortune that is the failure of education in remote aboriginal communities? It is people like you who are responsible for the continuing failures to help aboriginal communities and their people attain even basic standards that we in the wider community take for granted.

The recent decision by Judge Bradley to grant a pedophile time to prepare a defence based upon the foundation that he was, by molesting the boys, introducing them to Islander “mens business” cultural practices is typical of a soft-left gone barking mad with cultural relativism.

Your specious attempts to explain away an obvious and disgraceful situation that afflicts a great many children in remote communities is only hurting the people you are supposed to be helping. Ignoring the elephant in the room seems to be an occupational specialty of the current soft-left.

Bushbred > “Just wonder whether you have had personal experience of mixed bush schools just after WW2?”

Bushbred again goes off on a tangent only marginally related to the topic. It would be alright if it was ever going to return to the topic but it never does. I challenge you to TRY and relate your ramblings to the existing problems under discussion.

The simple fact is that before these children can decide which side of the fence they want to be on the history wars they need to be able to “READ” and perhaps “WRITE". Until then its all pie in the sky self indulgence for the lefts cultural warriors. Unfortunately, like the islamo fascists, these cultural warriors don't seem to care what collateral damage they wreak in their qausi-religous quest for political correctness.

Susanai. Noel Pearsons writings on the subject are solid gold for anyone interested in actual analysis and problem solving as opposed to political correctness and the appearance of doing something.