Teenagers in the Western world are increasingly vocal in their demands for “relevance” in their school experience. Young Aboriginal men in their teens (although perhaps not fully conscious of what they are doing, or able to verbalize their feelings) are also “demanding” relevance in their school experience by several kinds of passive resistance. Two examples of this resistance are, that attendance at some Northern Territory schools is extremely low, and that young men trained in various trade courses are generally working in other trades. The educational system, of course, is not solely responsible for this situation, but we should respond to this new “post colonial” mood in Aboriginal communities. Examples of the “post colonial” era are: that Aboriginals know they are free to resist white pressures to work or attend school, or in fact to do anything “white”; that local Aboriginal councils are assuming much more responsibility for local management; that local Aboriginals cherish their new found power to say which white people can or cannot live in their community, and so on. Our prediction is that if schools don’t move with the times we will find that schools in Aboriginal communities will soon begin to appear to Aboriginals as the last “white strongholds” in these communities; that is “white” in terms of initiatives, in terms of ultimate authority, in terms of environmental setting, materials used, times at which things are done and content of what is taught.
For the white teacher to say, “But I’m open to Aboriginals taking more initiative”, is hardly practical because the Aboriginal teenager has not learned to be sufficiently aggressive or expressive to take initiatives in the face of the technologically dominant white teacher; therefore the first initiative-to-allow-initiative must be taken by the white teacher.
