(Mrs Yvonne Bolton was appointed in 1977 to the position of Aboriginal liaison teacher, State Department of Education, New South Wales. Among Mrs Bolton’s responsibilities are – planning and helping teachers to implement programs that will be of benefit to Aboriginal pupils; liaising with Aboriginal communities.

Mrs Bolton did her own teacher training in Sydney, 1957-59, and during her period as a classroom teacher taught infants’ classes and moderately mentally retarded children.

She is a member of the Adult Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee.)

(This paper was presented by Mrs Doreen Jones, Aboriginal teacher aide, at the Wilcannia Nyngan Conference, February 1977.)

I think I was lucky to have been chosen for the teacher aide job in Wilcannia. Before I found out I had the job, I was told the other lady had got it. I was down hearted in a way but thought to myself, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t have been able to do the job anyway.” (I found out differently.) Before I knew where I was, I was on the bus for Sydney for training for the job.

The training in Sydney has helped me a great deal. (I am willing to help the teachers with the Aboriginal children in every way I can.) I will never forget my first morning at school. Believe me, I was really very very nervous and I just didn’t know what to do or what I was in for.

On my arrival, I was standing on the opposite side of the office when I noticed one of the lady teachers getting out of her car; she came towards me and gave me a nice big smile (I won’t forget it) and said, “Good morning, how are you this morning?” I answered, and thought to myself, “It’s not as bad as I’m thinking it’s going to be.” Believe me, this teacher made me feel really welcome on my first day.

(Mrs Anne Madsen is an Aboriginal teacher aide at Bloomfield River. Originally she came from the Cairns area, and so writes from personal experience, of the importance of getting to know your community. She presented this paper in December 1977, at the Aboriginal Teacher Aide Conference, Gatton.)

The first two years at Bloomfield River were very busy ones for our family as we were building our house and improving our property so we didn’t have much time for much else at this stage, but as time went on the Mission manager paid us a visit, and over a cup of tea he and his wife invited us over to the Mission to do our shopping and to church services, also just for a visit to have a talk and a cup of tea. My family and I accepted this invitation and we became very good friends. This helped quite a lot with the people also.

(In this contribution by Mrs Barbara Coolwell to a recent issue of Bora, the sharing of news and ideas about educative procedures, and the sharing too of a sense of the worthwhileness of the job, may suggest new avenues of communication to readers in other schools elsewhere in Australia)

I came to Australia in 1972 after teaching Nigerian boys in West Africa for thirteen years. My first experiences suggested to me that many slow learners and children with different cultural backgrounds from the majority were inadequately catered for at the standard Queensland high school.

When a scheme was proposed to aid such children (mainly Aboriginal) in our school, I volunteered to be one of the teachers. The scheme involved creating two small classes for the beginning Grade 8 students, with each class having a home room, and spending core time each week on English, Maths and Social Studies with one teacher. The core subjects took up about 25 periods each week. I was initially thrilled by the thought that at last I could begin tackling problems which had previously aroused in me feelings of defeat.

The tour was undertaken to take advantage of the $200 per head travel allowance allotted each Aboriginal and Islander student as a part of their yearly Federal Grant. As the majority of Weipa North Grade 8 Aboriginal and Islander students are in a special class, we felt we were not going against the aims of the grants system, which is to ensure the Aboriginal and Islander students the same chance to join school tours as other students.

In areas where children’s first language is an Aboriginal language, the very nature of the Aboriginal language itself poses complex problems, not only for the child learning English but also for the teacher whose basic first step in solving these problems is to understand what the problems are. Except for a few fortunate teachers who were given some linguistics in college, (a rather recent innovation) and a few conscientious people who have taken courses later, most of us who teach in Aboriginal schools know far too little about linguistics. We therefore don’t know how to approach some language problems in the classroom or, even worse, we don’t recognize that the problems exist. Some teachers who have tried to do something about their lack of knowledge have been put off by technical linguistic terminology, phonetic script and so on.

This small article is an attempt by a teacher who is NOT a linguist, to show his fellow teachers who are NOT linguists, that we can still understand the linguistic problems in our classrooms, and have therefore a reasonable chance of coming to grips with them.

Stereotypes “can be defined as the attribution of general psychological characteristics to large human groups.” (1. Tajfel, p. 150). Often stereotypes have their origin in historical and cultural traditions though the prevailing social climate may also be an influence. Bettelheim and Janowitz (1. p. 48) distinguished between two types of stereotyping:

1. 1) the superego variety with traits such as over-ambition, craftiness, shrewdness and slyness;

2. 2) the id variety with derogatory traits such as lack of ambition, stupidity, laziness, lack of inhibition, dirtiness, smelliness and over-sexiness.

In this paper I will draw attention to some basic considerations which my research* would suggest are needed in curriculum development in Aboriginal studies. The research is aimed at identifying basic research findings from which propositions can be formed and constructs for curriculum development formulated. This will enable practical classroom procedures and methods, as well as curricula, to be developed. There is no body of educational knowledge in Aboriginal studies particularly, or ethnic studies generally, which allows a theoretical framework for the curriculum developer to work from. The following considerations may be useful in this regard.

Firstly, what does one mean by curriculum, and why refer to curriculum development? Generally, curriculum researchers refer to the curriculum in a much broader way than has been the custom traditionally. (Musgrave, 1974; Hurst, 1974; Walton, 1971; Stenhouse, 1975). For the purpose of this research, the curriculum is considered as the experiences the child will meet with at school as the result of the planned efforts of the school to meet its aims and objectives. This is wider than the old concept of the curriculum which had to do with courses of study in the classroom and planned syllabuses. In the new sense of curriculum, all aspects of school life must be considered. Therefore, a particular model for curriculum development will be suggested, but more essentially what will be stressed is that a model for curriculum development be followed. Intuitive leaps in the dark have seemed to be the pattern, albeit well intentioned.