Perhaps we shy away from saying it lest we be called conspiracy theorists, but it looks as though the purpose is to return to a White Australia, assimilationist policy.

And Yes Bruce. It’s almost as if Howard read 1984 as an instruction manual, Duplicitous Despotism for Dummies or something. It’d be funny if it were fictional!

For anyone with some insight into the Whorfian, or perhaps an insightful reading into 1984, this whole industrialized language annihilation ploy has disturbing implications.

The fact that this is all occurring around the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum (today) is all the more depressing.

Having been in the NT working with remote community schools for 4 years, I’ve got some grasp on what happens with the ‘no strings money’. Firstly, it’s not really enough – or it’s not going to the right places. The school here is overcrowded. There’s not enough accommodation for teachers. There’s no training programs in place for local assistant teachers (who mostly work casually and so at school holidays are left without income). At the moment both the school’s photocopiers are broken and the nearest person who can fix them is hundred of kms away and probably very busy. The kids who come to school come from incredibly overcrowded houses and usually haven’t had a good nights sleep and may or may not have had food to eat and may or may not have money to buy some lunch. If they’re in preschool or transition then they barely have any English skills and so each day are completely bewildered by what white people are saying to them and why white people are doing what they do. Their white teacher usually has little understanding of their first language and few skills in cross cultural communication and so teacher/student communication is often poor – with the student having to do all the work to accommodate the culture of the teacher.

I can go on and on and on but these are some of the challenges that are faced in remote schools. They are huge, but we’re still here trying.

One of the things that will improve English outcomes is if teachers actually have a grounding in Teaching English as a Second Language, but this rarely happens. 5 year olds with no English start school and their curriculum is aimed at them as though they are first language English speakers. When that happens, of course things are going to go wrong. And of course kids are going to find it hard to engage with school, thus problems such as bad behaviour, poor attendance etc. etc.

Why should parents be held responsible for this by having their (often) only source of income cut, when there is a lot the education department/government can do to improve its service delivery.

I think a much more positive thing would be to look at how we can improve the education programs that are already in place rather than forcibly reduce the quality of life of Aboriginal ppl which is already pretty rotten. Here’s four straightforward things:
- decent classrooms
- training programs for local teachers/assistant teachers
- ESL training for European teachers
- adequate accommodation for teachers.

The thing about Mal Brough is that his statements are based on nothing except what ‘grandparents have told him’ and what he’s seen. Who makes policy without looking at reports/facts etc.??? How ridiculous. If you want to learn more about Aboriginal education, then please read ‘Learning Lessons – an independent review of Aboriginal Education in the Northern Territory’ by Bob Collins. It is very good.

Iain, I would be interested to know how educated you are regarding Aboriginal Education in remote Australia. Please read the ‘learning lessons’ report, it will give you a much better grasp on the problems faced.