While it is important that Australian teachers are made aware of their failures in teaching many Aboriginals to master literacy (Salmond, 1977; Duncan, 1974) there is a danger of developing a general expectancy that children of Aboriginal descent will be poor performers at school. Resnick and Robinson (1974) emphasize the influence of parent and teacher expectations on the expectations of the children themselves. Teachers’ expectations are particularly important for Aboriginals learning academic skills at school. It is the teacher who can grade learning tasks to ensure the child gains success through his own personal effort, a fundamental experience if low expectations are to be raised (Gurin and Gurin, 1972).

The purpose of this paper is to examine data from the ACER Literacy and Numeracy study of Australian 10 and 14 year olds in 1975, as it relates to the Aboriginals in the sample. On the basis of this evidence it should be possible to draw some conclusions about the successes and failures of Aboriginal pupils in reading and numeracy.

But, are these same values held by non-tribal Aboriginals in contemporary Australia? Certainly conventional wisdom suggests that they are (Eckermann, 1973, p.470). Similarly, there is widespread acceptance of non-Aboriginal Australians as individualistic, future oriented, preferring ‘doing’ to ‘being’, and placing emphasis on mastery over nature (Binnion, 1976, p.34). Is this so?

It is uncertain when the last exclusion of children from a public school, merely for having some Aboriginal ancestry, actually occurred. In 1937, the Commonwealth and States’ conference on Aboriginal matters recommended assimilation as a general policy rather than protection, particularly with regard to the detribalized, part-caste Aboriginal people. In 1938, the New South Wales Public Service Board in its report on the Aborigines Protection Board, recommended the policy of assimilation be implemented in schools. In 1940, the Aborigines Protection Act was amended. The Aborigines Protection Board was renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board and restructured to include Aboriginal members. The complete responsibility for the education of all Aboriginal children was transferred to the New South Wales Department of Education. Almost overnight, the policy of segregation was changed to assimilation.

This article stems from several requests by teachers and librarians, following our April article (Vol. 6 No. 2) for information about books that are popular with Aboriginal children who use the facilities of the Oodnadatta School library.

In our two and a half years of operating this library, we have gained a reasonably clear insight into the likes and dislikes of our readers. While the supply of lists is useful because, obviously, books successful in one libarary are usually popular in another library, the librarian must take into account the local factors which will probably influence the type of book the borrower will favour. While I don’t wish to labour this point for the readers who may be well aware of these factors, there are several people who have written to me, who would be interested.

Most factors are inter-related and readily fit the socioeconomic situation of the borrower. For example, the Aboriginal people of Oodnadatta are very much fringe dwellers with respect to western society, although they easily outnumber the non-Aboriginal members of the community. Their mother tongue is a version of Pitjantjatjara (Yankuntjatjara), though most speak sufficient English to be able to communicate with Europeans. The school teaches only in English with an emphasis, in the lower classes, on standardizing grammar, using the Queensland Van Leer Foundation Language Project.

Most teachers of Aboriginal children are well aware of the difficulties they have in identifying with the characters of most classroom readers. Obviously, publishing companies have to consider their market when preparing series of readers on a viable commercial basis, and hence the characters and their situations reflect the life-styles of the bulk of Australian citizens who live in large urban sprawls, and enjoy a reasonable standard of living which is reflected in their material possessions.

A different language background also makes the task of using the conventional classroom reader difficult. Children with an Aboriginal language, or even Aboriginal English as their first language, need greater emphasis placed on certain patterns found in standard English. I feel this is especially important, as the bulk of material any person can read will inevitably be in standard English form.

At Oodnadatta School we are overcoming these problems by the development of our own sets of readers. Some are purely experiential and have a limited life equal to the need to relate to that experience, while others are based on certain language patterns we feel need specific development in our program. To work out these patterns, we have used ideas formulated by the Van Leer Foundation Experimental Reading Project in Queensland.

In March 1977, an Aboriginal Studies Curriculum Committee was officially established by the South Australian Education Department. The committee has representatives from primary and secondary schools, colleges of advanced education, Aboriginal and Historic Relics Section of the Department of Environment, Libraries Branch, and Principal Education Officers. Although meetings of the full committee are held on a regualr basis to plan on-going tasks and to review material being produced, the main impetus comes from the five sub-committees that have been formed :-

Primary sub-committee

Secondary sub-committee

In-Service sub-committee

Materials and resources review sub-committee

Aboriginal liaison sub-committee

The co-ordinators of the sub-committees also meet on a regular basis for planning and progress reporting so that the on-going program is continually under review and viable.

Myths express what is significant during man’s experience, and so communicate at a deeper level than other stories. They should never be treated as pre-scientific attempts to explain how things began. The creation of myths met a much more profound and basic need.

In presenting myths to children, there are many methods that can be used. Rather than just presenting one or two myths and leaving it at that, significance is gained by presenting children with a collection of myths on one topic, for example, creation or fire, from a variety of places around the world. Children will find the values of literary objectives that the myths have in common. With guidance from the teacher, they will see that the myths are true to man’s experience.

Programs should allow for as much involvement of the pupils as possible during their study of myths. Integration with as many subject disciplines as possible, particularly the expressive arts, should come naturally. This gives the pupils a chance to convey thoughts of what the myth tells them or their group. The working out of a ritual dance, the making of music to accompany it, the writing of poetry, and the numerous art activities can be effective ways of saying what cannot be expressed through ordinary language. It is man’s imagination that has to be stirred and not his rationality. The celebration and the performance of these student fashioned rituals are the culmination of this study and can impregnate a very deep unconscious movement in the performers and witnesses.

On Friday, June 23, 1978, between 9 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., an Education Department Staff In-service Conference, organised by Port Augusta’s Central Primary School, was held at the Davenport Aboriginal Adult Training Centre (DAATC), on Davenport Aboriginal Reserve, Port Augusta.

The conference was called, and largely organised by the principal of Port Augusta’s Central Primary School, Mr Ian Westley, with the co-operation of the students and staff of the DAATC, and the Davenport Cultural Club. It was chaired by Ms Catherine Guinness, Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies at Torrens College of Advanced Education. Attending were the staff of Central Primary, the students and staff of DAATC, the students of the Aboriginal Pre-vocational Course at Port Augusta College of Further Education, representatives of all public primary and secondary schools in Port Augusta, representatives from the Adelaide Head Office of the Education Department, as well as visitors from Hawker and Adelaide. In all, between 50 and 60 people were present.

The conference was divided into parts, separated by lunch provided by the Davenport Cultural Club. The first part was taken up by talks given mainly by Aboriginal people, and the second part was for the teachers present to discuss the problems they had teaching Aboriginal pupils, with a summing-up by Mr Ian Westley and Ms Catherine Guinness.

A most important aim is to bring our people our cultural history because, without it, we will be spiritually dead.

The study centre at 108 Smith Street, Collingwood, was established because of the urgent need for such centres within our Aboriginal communities.

One aim is to have a community controlled centre of which our people can feel a part. We encourage our people to participate actively in programs that they feel are important for our survival in today’s society.

Our people today are much more aware of the education system and see it as negative and racist towards not only our Aboriginal people, but also other races.

A most important aim is to bring to our people our cultural history because, without it, we will be spiritually dead. Our history did not start in 1770 but was alive, full, and rich thousands of years before the invasion.

This year in the post primary section of Yirrkala school my sister, Djuwandayngu and I have been teaching the students ways of understanding the two cultures; that is, the Balanda and the Yolngu ways. Our aim was to make the children aware of their culture and to give them a little bit of knowledge about the Balanda people who work closely with the Yolngu people.

We started out by teaching about the kinships system; from there we built on all the important things in the Yolngu ways. This took in marriage system, relationships, clans and the most important one, land. Land, we felt, was the most important issue because it concerns Yolngu people throughout Australia. The children already know about the fight for land and about the people who are concerned with it. We told the children which land they belong to and why it is very important to their fathers and grandfathers and to them. We told them what sacred things made our land. Then after this we invited older men from the camps to tell them more stories about Yirrkala and our other lands. We talked about our land at the present. Why are we going back to our own countries and making outstations of our own? Where do we get the money for all the things we need like iron to build houses, pipes for water, windmills, pumps and so on?

Not only did we teach about all the things that are mentioned above, but we also taught the children how to write in our own language, Gumatj, by using different activities to do with important Gumatj words.

In the past our school system failed to attend to the educational, social, and emotional needs of Aborigines. By accepting the simplistic and convenient notion that a more advanced technology reflected a superior social, spiritual, cultural, and educational development we were able to justify the denial and denigration of the Aboriginal character, culture, and history in the very schools we compelled Aborigines to attend.