Schooling and Identity Levels

Extract

Western-style schooling for Aboriginal children in New South Wales began formally in 1940. Nineteen-forty was the year in which the New South Wales Department of Education abandoned its long-standing policy of exclusion relating to Aboriginal children. Prior to this, Aboriginal children were excluded from State schools on the complaint of a white parent. From 1940 on, it could be said that Aboriginal people had achieved the right to State schooling. This is, of course, a political statement as much as an educational one. I would argue that 1940, in fact, saw the beginning of modern Aboriginal politics.

Modern Aboriginal politics, as such, began in the early 1960s when Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people walked off Wave Hill; that was the beginning of the land rights movement. The 1940s and the 1950s, however, saw Aboriginal people struggle for the human right of education for their children.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, many Aboriginal people spent a great deal of time criticising the very education systems which they fought so hard to become part of. Yet Aboriginal people have voted for this form of education with their feet. In 1975, according to Commonwealth Government statistics, there were 223 Aboriginal people in tertiary institutions in Australia. In 1980, there were 881, that is a 295% increase. In 1970, however, there were only 20 Aboriginal people found to be in tertiary institutions in Australia and that, believe it or not, registers by 1980 as being a 4,310% increase. Unfortunately, this does not reflect an equivalent 4,310% improvement in outcomes of schooling; this extraordinary phenomenon associated with the tertiary education is very much an Aboriginal adventure.