Education -- Initiation!

Extract

Education as a form of initiation has severely affected Aboriginal children as they endeavour to live in ‘two worlds’.

Education involves the initiation of a child into society. At an early age a child attends school where he or she learns attitudes, values and beliefs that are seen as desirable.

Australia’s early white settlers saw that the Aborigines had no buildings and no formal institutions, this led them to draw a distorted view of Aboriginal education. Coming from the European situation where classrooms, boarding schools, and university buildings represented learning, they concluded that Aborigines were completely without any system of education.