On the basis of my own experience as a teacher in Torres Strait from 1968-1972 and feedback from preservice teachers studying “Education in Torres Strait”, I have decided to provide teachers and principals new to the region some background information on the context in which they find themselves. My position is that education is constrained by its present socio-political context which has been shaped by its past.

The Director-General of Education in 1982, Mr. D.Swan, stated that Aboriginal education had two purposes: to enhance the development and learning of Aboriginal students and to enable all students to have some knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Aborigines and their cultural heritage (Aboriginal Education Unit, 1982, p.5). Unfortunately, today Aboriginal students still do not enjoy compatible success and participation rates to those of non-Aboriginal students. They are predominantly taught irrelvant curriculums and faced with inappropriate teacher classroom management and discipline styles. Subsequently, many Aboriginal students view schools as alien and hostile places. Schools do not meet Aboriginal students’ needs and problems of low self-esteem, motivation, academic achievement and a sense of safety and belonging often occur. Aboriginal students often do not behave in the same manner as non-Aboriginal students and teachers should be aware of the purposes of Aboriginal students’ behaviour and of the family and cultural influences which shape Aboriginals’ feelings, attitudes and values. There is a need in our schools for the inclusion of more Aboriginal perspectives in curriculums and for teachers to become aware of the need to change the way they teach and interact with Aboriginal students.

Much of the literature on Torres Strait Islander, as well of Aboriginal, education begins from the assumption that oral traditions and cultures have a profound effect on educational achievement. But how easy is it to plot Islanders on an oral/literate continuum (cf. Goody, 1978)? The purpose of this paper is a critical examination of a sociolinguistic model designed to describe Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal peoples in terms of oracy and literacy by Watson (1988). As part of her attempt to explain mathematics education as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, her continua attempt at an analysis via a theoretical framework built on socio-demographic and linguistic differences between orate and literate traditions. Watson (1988, p.257) suggest that, “...there exists the same type of continuum linking use of Torres Strait Islander languages and English.”

Children living on a number of remote outstations or homeland centres in Central Arnhem Land have had access to European style education for nearly twenty years now. The Northern Territory Education Department employs visiting teachers who make regular visits to some outstations to work with Aboriginal teachers and children in these small ‘remote’ communities. The visiting teachers mostly live in a central larger community and use the central hub school as their base. A number of these hub schools or C.E.C.s now have homeland centre education resource buildings which provide the base for the provision of educational services to homeland centre schools.

Otitis Media or middle ear infection is more common in Australian Aboriginal children than in any other population. The associated hearing loss causes added learning difficulties for these children particularly when learning a second language.

We are all aware of the results of numerous prevalence surveys taken over the past 25 years which suggest that 25 - 50% of all Aboriginal children in school classrooms are likely to be suffering a significant hearing loss at any one time (Neinhuys, 1988; Quinn 1983; Stuart et al., 1972, 1973; Willis, 1985). The incidence of infection varies from place to place and seasonally as well. In some school populations as many as 54% of children have been shown to have significant hearing loss (Quinn, 1985). There is a widely held view that a fluctuating conductive hearing loss over a long period of time can prove to have serious implications on the child’s developing behaviour, language competence and educational performance.

Language develops our thoughts and shapes our understanding of the environment. Through working in different schools I have noticed that English plays a key role in the acquisition of school mathematics. Not only is the mathematics syllabus expressed in English but those students growing up using English appear to have a view of their world that is far more compatible with this mathematics than those students who use an Aboriginal language. The worldview of students using an Aboriginal language would appear to be very different.

Preparation and support programs for teacher trainees were instituted in South Australia in 1978. By that time, only thirteen Aboriginal/Islander people had ever graduated as teachers in South Australia. Since that time, and by the end of this year, over one hundred awards will have been completed in South Australia, eighty percent by people who had been prepared and enrolled through special entry preparation and support programs such as ATEP (Aboriginal Teacher Education Program) at Underdale and the Magill Early Childhood Education Program. Graduates now work across the range from pre-school to tertiary education. Around seventy percent of graduates are in classrooms, with another fifteen percent otherwise involved in education. Very few, if any, are employed.

Bilingual education was introduced by a new Federal Labour Government in 1973 when the Northern Territory was still a Commonwealth Territory governed from Canberra.

The Queensland Department of Education has instigated, planned and supported, over a significant period of time, various programs to enable Aboriginal and Islander entrants to become trained and qualified teachers. Such programs have included for example:

In 1988 the Aboriginal Education Policy Task Force called for broad equity between Aboriginal people and other Australians in access, participation, and outcomes at all stages of education. Aboriginals are not achieving a comparative level of success at school compared to non-Aboriginals. Symptomatic of problems in our schools are, the over representation of Aboriginals in lower classes, the high drop-out rate of Aboriginal children and their low participation rates in the senior years of high school. Some 17% of Aboriginal youth continue their schooling to year 12 compared to 49% of all students (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1988, p.7). The failure of Aboriginal children to achieve at school has been widely interpreted as an individual failure on the part of Aboriginal children. Poor attainment has been attributed to lower I.Q. and ability, inadequate home environments, and poor parenting and not to the inadequacies of the education provided, to prejudices Aboriginal children face or to the active resistance by Aboriginal people to the cultural destruction implicit in many educational programs (McConnochie, 1982, p.20). An examination of the determinants of school success shows that Aboriginal children’s cultural values, beliefs and practices and Australian schools are often in conflict. To improve the outcomes for Aboriginal children schools are required to assess whether or not they are catering for the inherent needs and talents of individual Aboriginal children.

The failure at school of Aboriginal students from traditional backgrounds has generally been ascribed to cultural differences. This study, however, investigated the relationship between Aboriginal children's learning and hearing loss. Aboriginal students with hearing loss were found to be different in that they used the highly verbal teacher-oriented behaviours, which were associated with school success, less than other students. There was evidence that some students with hearing loss used alternative peer-oriented learning strategies with some success. Also compensatory practises by teachers, including using Aboriginal teaching styles, appeared to assist some students with hearing loss.