Mission & Justice

Helen & Mark Hughes; 17/9/08

When we drew attention to the failures of Northern Territory schooling in April this year, our report, Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory, was said to be poorly researched, relying on sensationalist and emotive anecdotes of one-off instances. NT Education Minister Marion Scrymgour described our analysis as a flimsy and selective diatribe about remote education in the territory. The release of this year’s national literacy and numeracy test results unfortunately vindicated our analysis. The NT performed abysmally on every indicator. Queensland and Western Australia also had lower achievement levels, but they were not of the same crisis proportions as the territory. In these two states and the NT, the failure to deliver mainstream education to children in welfare dependent indigenous communities was the cause of poor performance. Not all of these communities are remote. Some are in urban locations such as Darwin. Some poorly performing Aboriginal schools in remote areas are a short drive away from non-indigenous schools that perform well.

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Andrew Alphonse; 16/9/08

Unlike other landowners from the oil rich Southern Highlands province, the Moran oil project landowners have decided that proceeds from their natural resource would be invested in developing their human resource. Moran Special Purpose Authority (MSPA) chairman Thomas Mulungu and director Agipe Pai made this known in Tari during the launching of the first ever outcome-based- education (OBE) in-service and curriculum workshop for elementary, primary and secondary school teachers in the Hela region. Mr Mulungu and Mr Pai said MSPA, which was established last year, decided to undertake and prioritise human resources development of their area and had spent more than K200,000 this year to assist schools in the Hulia local level government of Komo-Margarima electorate.The money was used to ship about two tonnes of OBE curriculum materials from the curriculum division in Port Moresby and delivered to schools in the district last week. Part of the money was used to fund a one-week OBE training for more than 100 Hulia teachers at the Dauli Demonstration Primary School last week.

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Michael Jansen; 11/9/08

More than 1.1 million Palestinian students went back to school this term, ready to face old and new risks, and challenges created by the Israeli occupation. Conditions are quite different in the three areas where Palestinians live: East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. In the holy city, the 48 Palestinian government schools suffer from lack of investment and neglect by Israel, and from the absence of a body to govern the system because the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education is barred from operating in Jerusalem. Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and is responsible for the welfare of the Palestinians who live there, has done little to improve any infrastructure or maintain or upgrade educational standards. Consequently, only half of the 79,000 East Jerusalem school-age children attend state schools, about 40 per cent go to private schools, and 10 per cent do not attend school at all. A report issued six years ago called for the construction of 1,500 classrooms but fewer than 200 have been built.

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Jonathan Hill, 10/9/08, is a qualified teacher who has worked with Aboriginal communities in Ngukurr, Minyerri and Sydney. The essay received Second Place in the 2008 Margaret Dooley Award

 A pedagogy of liberation.

Teaching in a remote Aboriginal community alerts one’s senses to the true nature of injustice that is hidden beneath our nation’s facade of ‘a fair go for all’. The indicators leap out with alarming clarity: weeping sores on the arms and legs of students, dilapidated houses that frown on the side of the unkempt roads and an overarching sense of neglect that pulses in complete contrast to the natural beauty that abounds. Apart from the failure to provide adequate housing and health care, the delivery of substandard, culturally insensitive education to the children of these remote schools is a major concern that urgently needs to be addressed.

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9/9/08; Letters; http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/ theaustralian/comments/misguided_railing/

Enough of Helen Hughes’s negative and uninformed assertions that Aboriginal youth in remote communities are leaving school “unable to read, write or count in any language” (”Gap worse for remote indigenous”, Opinion, 3/9). Enough too of her misguided railing against bilingual education when it is commonly known by those on the ground that school attendance and literacy rates are higher under bilingual education than in English-only schools with minimal indigenous community participation. Enough also of thinking that life in the mainstream is the only valid outcome for indigenous youth and their communities, and that mainstream education is the only way to achieve success in these contexts. If she were to gather data on what is actually going on with young adults across remote Aboriginal Australia she would, in fact, encounter many competent young people engaged in further study, employment and participating in the many projects existing there. These young adults generally speak a number of languages including English, are literate in English and often their mother tongue, and many have digital literacy competence equal to any young person in “modern, mainstream life anywhere”. Many are working on building skills that will enable them to develop their capacity to live full, complex lives and to raise their own children with the skills and knowledge required to deal with a rapidly changing world. They are also seeking to maintain a connection with their traditonal social and cultural world and are not seeking to escape their communities. Margaret Carew; Lecturer, Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Alice Springs, NT

Nikki Goldstein; 6/9/08;

Girlforce Friends by Nikki Goldstein is published today; ABC.

There has been a lot bubbling in the media about teen girls during the past year or so. Much is made of the over-sexualisation of teens, the increasing violence among girls and the worries parents have about the internet. All are valid concerns but they are also smokescreens for an equally dark but less-hyped issue: the broad and insidious rise of “mean girl culture”. Not just the name-calling, backstabbing and physical and psychological violence at the pointy end of bullying. It is the fundamental shift we’ve seen over the past decade in the way girls behave towards one another. Bullying today is not the exception - it’s the rule. Bitchiness is so much part of the teen landscape that girls hardly blink when a put-down comes their way. For two years I have run a forum through my website (www.giriforce.com.au) in which I talk to teenage girls across Australia. By far the most pressing topic, every week, has been how to handle the bullying, The bitchiness and isolation girls experience at school.

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Caroline Overington & Patricia Karvelas; 3/9/08

Like so many indigenous Australians, Luke Hearn left school before the end of Year 9. “Some people thought, ‘That’s it for me’,” he said. “But I wanted to make something of myself.” Now 17, and having proved he is reliable and hard-working, Luke was taken on as an apprentice carpenter and joiner last month. He was on the job in Wollongong yesterday, rebuilding dilapidated NSW public housing. He also studies at Granville TAFE. If Kevin Rudd adopts plans put forward by his business adviser Rod Eddington, there will soon be an army of Luke Hearns - 50,000 or more young Aborigines - employed in construction.

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30/8/08

 Batchelor Institute is Australia’s only indigenous dual sector tertiary education provider and fulfils a vital role in the education of Australia’s original inhabitants while also helping non-indigenous people provide services and support to this area. The Institute’s ‘both-ways’ learning philosophy is based on respect and brings together traditional indigenous knowledge systems with Western academic disciplines to provide students with pathways to successful learning journeys. Course delivery is specifically tailored to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, especially those from remote communities where English is often a second or third language and cultural traditions are strong.

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Justine Ferrari; 29/8/08

Leading indigenous education expert Chris Sarra called on teachers to embrace federal government plans to hold schools accountable for their students’ performance, describing it as long overdue. Dr Sarra, executive director of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute, said it was only right that tough questions were being asked of teachers and schools. “It’s right that we’re being asked some hard questions about performance, and it’s right we’re being made to feel uncomfortable,” he said.  “Frankly, there’s nothing to be comfortable about.”  In a speech on Wednesday, Kevin Rudd outlined plans requiring individual schools to report within three years, comparing their performances with similar groups of schools and revealing student progress or the value schools have added. The plans also include extra funding agreements to reward excellent teaching and to assist struggling schools, with an extra $500,000 for an average-sized school.

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Patricia Karvelas; 27/8/08

“Mother, I miss you so much.” With these words 14-year-old indigenous girl Sianna Eland reduced Therese Rein to tears. The Prime Minister’s wife had offered to help out Sianna, one of 21 students invited to The Lodge in Canberra yesterday, to read her work and launch the National Indigenous Literacy Project. In a room packed with high-profile authors including David Malouf and Kate Grenville, Sianna, from the Melba Copland Secondary School in Canberra, had been too shy to read her own poem and Ms Rein had risen to support her. “This is going to make me cry,” Ms Rein warned. And as she read Sianna’s words about the loss of her mother seven years ago, her tears flowed.

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