Formal Education and Aboriginal Children

Extract

All children, black or white, learn a lot more outside the classroom than inside it. All normal children, by the time they go to school for the first time, have already learnt to speak their mother tongue, have learnt who they are and where they fit into their family or community, and have learnt a vast range of behaviours which are appropriate (and inappropriate) for members of their culture. They have learnt all these through the informal process of socialization which affects all members of every culture throughout their lives. In traditional Aboriginal society, for example, hunting and food preparation skills, the traditional law, patterns of land ownership and important stories from the past, were all learnt informally in the daily life of the family. Only some sacred knowledge would be transmitted formally in a ceremonial context.