Across Australia many exciting developments are occuring in Aboriginal education. This section of the journal is planned so that teachers throughout the country can share with each other their thinking and their innovations, so that good ideas and successful practices can spread. In this issue we present a variety of reports.

In the Walgett Primary School there are 256 children who fit into the category of part-Aboriginal. This is 49.2% of the total school enrolment. In 1970 it was 42.9% and this 6.3% increase represents the trend in Walgett over the past few years. For quite some time teachers in Walgett have been conscious of the need to do something special for the Aboriginal children. Successive teachers and administrators have approached the problem with typically varying degrees of dedication, and always with what we might term a “conventional approach”. Predictably, results varied, and as late as 1969 35% of Aboriginal children left the primary stage either substantially or totally illiterate. This state of affairs was attributed to a degree of mental deficiency which some believed to be genetic. I shall return to this fallacy later.

During 1969 a number of factors contributed to a change in attitude, and consequently in approach, and since then marked advances have been made. It would hardly be appropriate to examine these in detail here, but certain points can be made with a degree of certainty.

Increasing attention has been given in recent years to the effects of various factors upon the academic achievement of ethnic minority group children. In those Australian states where there are schoolswith significantly large proportions of Aboriginal children, special programs have been devised and implemented.

The Department of Education in Queensland has been involved throughout the past decade in the development and refinement of both techniques and materials designed to foster the academic attainments of Aboriginal children. One program involved the employment of Aboriginal adults from a local community to work along side of teachers in and out of the classrooms as para-professional teachers’ assistants. This program is currently in the ninth month of a twelve month pilot study in the Cherbourg Community School.

The role of these assistants is regarded as being essentially mediatory. Primarily the objective has been to increase the degree of home/school and parent/teacher contact with a view to closing the knowledge and understanding gap existing between the school and the community generally. It is hoped to increase parental awareness and appreciation of the aims, ideals, and processes operating within the school environment. Conversely, it is hoped to acquaint the teachers with a more thoroughgoing understanding of the cultural, socio-economic, and familial backgrounds of the children they teach.

In implementing the project it has been considered that changes within the school itself can have only limited effect on the educational development of children, and that the ultimate success of any intervention program depends on the involvement of the children’s families.

The author of this article wishes to point out that his comments are taken from his own direct experiences involved in the Aboriginal situation in West Australian Schools. They are not necessarily, therefore, the views of the West Australian Education Department.

It appears that there are several groups when one talks about Aboriginal children in general in Australia. Any person who has any Aboriginal blood is termed an Aboriginal. These groups have different hereditary and environmental backgrounds and thus give differing responses to stimuli.

In Western Australia, Aboriginals are of either country or town origin. There are vast differences between a third generation town Aboriginal and one who has only just walked in from the desert. Again one must differentiate between town and mission Aboriginals and also between the full blood and the part Aboriginal. The situation is s vast that one can speak about Aboriginals and their education in Western Australian Schools, only in general terms.

School can have a tremendous influence on the Aboriginal child. It can be a sanctuary or a place which he tries to avoid. The task of the educator is to make school interesting, yet a useful means of conveyance into 1973. Personal experiences indicate that success lies in motivation – kindness and interest. There is a broad spectrum for Aboriginal children in academic and social achievement. Many are school leaders, have high reading ages and excel in dance, music, sport, art, crafts and written work. Under ideal situations it appears that many Aboriginal children have greater potential than some white children. There must then be other factors which cause Aboriginals to fail to make full use of their talents and abilities.

Education outside the four walls of the classroom has long been an integral part of the program of social change at Yuendumu School.

In mid October, while 80 children from the middle part of the school went on a trip to Alice Springs, the Post Primary School undertook an educational experiment which lasted for three days. There were 35 young men, 20 young women, 4 Teaching Assistants and 5 teachers involved. We chose one of the most dilapidated empty houses in the village, and undertook to renovate it. It stood empty and bare in a line of houses. Not a window or door or chimney adorned any of the 6 houses in the line; the water tanks were broken, the gardens arid, and the walls and floor, both inside and outside, were covered with unsubtle graffiti and an occasional graphic display.

The school strongly feels that it must be a servant of the community. Its service must be conspicuous, and its actions undoubtedly speak more persuasively than words. So we undertook the venture in the belief that education will bring tangible results,

Our specific aims were two fold:

a. to repair the house, then give it to a young married man who applied for it and promised to look after it.

b. to show that anybody can repair a house, so long as he is prepared to work. In other words, we hoped that others would follow suit.

Since Amata Aboriginal school commenced late in 1968 we have followed a policy of respecting the wishes of the parents. One such wish was that their children learn to read and write their own language as well as learn to speak, read and write English: Hence, the policy regarding language teaching at Amata school stands: “to teach literacy in both languages.”

Basically, the means by which we attempt to meet the demands of this policy consist of beginning all instruction in and about Pitjantnatjara. Then, once a level of proficiency has been attained, (mainly a sound phonetical grasp of Pitjantjatjara) the particular child is moved to a class where instruction is almost entirely in and about English.

Thus, the infant grades’ language lessons are mainly Pitjantjatjara. We have been fortunate in the past to have a European teacher who could, before two years in the area, speak Pitjantjatjara fluently. She could, thereby, teach the infant children about Pitjantjatjara.

Now we have Aboriginal teacher aides who are doing the same job, with a European teacher as part of the teaching team.

Once a child is proficient in Pitjantjatjara the next move is into grade 3 where European teachers, with the assistance of an aide, take over the child’s instruction. In fact, by this stage, the child has attained a few phrases of English speech and can write some basic words.

Presently, the grade 3’s (for want of a better title) range in age from nine to sixteen years, and are divided into a class for boys and a separate class for girls, this being the expressed desire of the boys. It is mainly the grade 3 boys’ class which will be discussed here. However, most of what is mentioned is also applicable to the class of girls.

An action-research program currently going on at the University of Queensland is seeking to help Aboriginal mothers extend their vital role as primary educators of their own children. A number of parent educators are working at home with the mothers on ways in which they can introduce their children to basic concepts they will need at school. Three of the parent educators, themselves Aboriginal mothers, talk here about what they think schools can do for their children.

In January/February 1973 at the request of the Minister for Education, the Hon. Kim E. Beazley, an Advisory Group was set up to make recommendations for the implementation and development of a program involving teaching in Aboriginal languages and the incorporation in the school curriculum of further elements of traditional Aboriginal arts, crafts and skills. The members of the group were:

Dr. Betty H. Watts, Reader in Education, University of Queensland, Mr. W.J. McGrath, Inspector of Schools, Aboriginal Education Branch, and Mr. J.L. Tandy, Department of Education, Canberra.

It is believed that many teachers will be interested in the thinking behind the bilingual education program and the manner of its recommended implementation.

The extracts which follow set out the rationale and the recommended progress through the educational program. The recommended roles of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff members will be outlined in the next issue.