J.Zhang

Confronting The Problem of Marginalisation in Aboriginal Education

AARE Conference Paper, Brisbane, 1997

Q. Jane Zhang

In this presentation, I will discuss the issues associated with the

problem of marginalisation in Aboriginal adult education. I will try

to underline the psychological and cultural assumptions that constrain

the way we see the world and that influence the way we think and act in

a way to inhibit the teachers and students in this field to attain

greater achievements. While the discussion is focused primarily on the

Northern Territory context, some of the issues raised may be relevant

to the broader Australian context and may well have their parallels in

other aspects of Aboriginal people gaining more control over their

affairs.

Aboriginal students as "Other" has historical roots

Constructing Aboriginal students as 'Other' in Aboriginal education

has its historical roots. In the history of colonisation Aboriginal

people have been constructed by Australian society as marginal group or

as "Other" and have been treated as "Other". They were denied as human

beings, suffered total suppression and dispossession in the early days

and then were constrained by restrictive laws and controlled through

institutionalisation during which period Aboriginal people were treated

by White society as if they were enemies in war times (Hodge and

Mishra, 1991) . Under the protection policy and assimilation policy,

Aboriginal people have been further constructed as a voiceless group.

When they were in missionary schools, boarding schools, public schools

since the white settlement, the government agencies and teachers have

been acting as Aboriginal student's representatives to think for them

and to speak on their behalf. When Aboriginal students came to

colleges and universities as adult learners, we academics also helped

to construct and further marginalise them as 'Other' by treating them

differently.

Early in 70s, Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory expressed

their desire to have education like white people do. Here's some

extract quoted from Penny's report on the training of Aborigines for

Teaching in the Aboriginal schools of the Northern Territory.

' W(oman). 'We want better qualifications, We want it to be at the

same level as European teachers.'

W(oman). 'Some of us know a little bit about education and we want

more. We want to become qualified teachers, same level as Balanda teachers.'

W(oman). 'I am a T.A. and I want to tell you how I feel about not being

accepted by the education department.... All of us are interested in

our goals of teaching and want to be on the same level as white teachers. '

M(an). 'We want education just like Balanda, To be well qualified like Balanda,

We want our people, both men and women to be a teacher, not like now, a well

qualified teacher....' (Penny, 1980, pp.78-79)

Twenty years time down the track since the first Aboriginal training

course set up for Aboriginal adult learners, government surveys show

that Aboriginal education achieved less than in other fields (Turner,

1997). And there are far less Aboriginal people working in

universities and colleges. I believe that this is partially the

consequence of marginalisation in Aboriginal adult education. As

Aboriginal people are constructed as "Other", Aboriginal students are

not trusted to be able to think and speak for themselves and the above

statements have not been taken seriously, or not heard .

It has been a long practice that government controlled and white people

patronised Aboriginal students and the excessively long dominance of

the white society over Aboriginal people is still very much potent in

today's Aboriginal education.

Marginalisation in today's Aboriginal Education

The history of continuous oppression since the colonisation of

Australia in 1788 has generated the demands for self-determination and

self-management on the part of Aboriginal people. It has also

generated tension between Aboriginal people and white people.

One of the dilemmas in Aboriginal education, as a consequence of this

is "that the work of linguists and anthropologists that highlighted

cultural and linguistic differences is now used by some to justify and

rationalise aiming for other than equitable educational outcomes or

goals." (Walton,1993,p.43) There is a tendency that some research

findings about cultural differences, such as Aboriginal world view,

traditional learning styles, etc. are used to rationalise what

Christie called 'educational pantomimes' in which 'the students and

teachers negotiate coping strategies that they are dysfunctional in

terms of academic goals' (Walton, 1993,p.63). During the process of

negotiation, requirement of units is often compromised and standard is

lowered down to suit individuals due to political or personal reasons.

As a matter of fact, Aboriginal "students are normally not required

to perform at the same level as non-Aboriginal students studying

towards the same award or same level of an award" (McDaniel and

Flowers, 1995).

In reality, the problem of marginalisation has a political and

ideological nature and applies at 2 different levels in Aboriginal

education:

At the institutional level,

In curriculum development, some courses designed for Aboriginal

students are structured in such a way that it marginalises Aboriginal

students and limits their capacity of learning. Because of the

structure and requirement of certain courses, Aboriginal students are

equipped with limited western educational knowledge and trained

specifically for Aboriginal schools in their home communities. While

acknowledging their strong traditional and cultural knowledge , should

Aboriginal students be compensated for the deficiencies in subject

matter knowledge and skills required for a person to be qualified as

teacher in Australia's educational system?

If we say that any educational system is of a political nature

(Frieire, 1975), it must be especially so in Australia's Aboriginal

education as a consequence of white control and the history of

colonisation in the past. It seems to me that some issues are over

politicised sometimes by non-Aboriginal experts and some powerful and

articulate Aboriginal people. While designing a course, some units may

appear to be just for the sake of political correctness, nothing

concrete for the students to build up their foundation for further

studies or for future career. For instance, in a teacher training

course in NT, a couple of units in a strand called 'Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander Language and Literacies' have been developed as

a result of community consultations to help the students maintain

their own languages and cultures. In practice, the problem facing the

teachers and students are:

1. no lecturer can actually teach the students any Aboriginal languages

because of the diversity of languages the students speak.

2. most students can get RPL for the unit if they speak an Aboriginal

language.

It turns out that units like these become something that only stay in

the curriculum document to make it look 'cultural apropriate'.

At individual level,

It is twofold: teachers as deliverers of the course and Aboriginal

students as the participants of the course.

Pedagogically, on one hand, teachers are sometimes 'baby sitting and

baby feeding' Aboriginal students till their graduation day. 'Some

even make excuses for students' lack of progress ' (Tesling & Sulivan,

1997).

The protective attitudes towards the students implies that Aboriginal

students as "Other" cannot represent themselves, cannot even know

themselves as subjects or objects of discourse. On the other hand,

some Aboriginal students, ignoring the course requirement and their

goals of learning, welcome this kind of protection because it is less

challenging and easy to cope with. This protective attitude is often

the means to set up Aboriginal students to fail.

Politically, teachers are ambivalent when answering the students'

request and hunger for English language and the knowledge of dominant

system. Although most teachers realise that student's poor literacy

skills become the major obstacle in the process of teaching and

learning, the intention of not to make black white, the fear of

assimilating Aboriginal students seems to have more power in practice.

Therefore, although Aboriginal students are constantly told that

their literacy skills are poor and need to be improved, they are not

taught systematically how to improve it. It is like as if the

person 'were forever tasting and never eating, always have his plate

tickled upon the emotional side, but never getting the organic

satisfaction that comes only with the digestion of food and

transformation of it into working power.' (Dewey, 19??).

Since Aboriginal students have been continuously marginalised

distinctively as "other" in many aspects of education, An educational

experience of equal quality to that being provided to non-Aboriginal

people is sometimes denied to Aboriginal students.

Two dimensions of marginalisation

There are two dimensions of the marginalisation in Aboriginal education

. On one hand, some teachers of Aboriginal students are "othering"

their students by compromising requirement of units and lowering down

the level of performance or compensating the knowledge of Aboriginal

culture and languages for the deficiency of English literacy skills and

the knowledge of modern technology. On the other hand, some

Aboriginal students unconsciously or consciously "other" themselves by

negotiating with the lecturers and pursuit the lecturers to treat them

differently out of sympathy of their literacy difficulties and cultural

differences which often makes the lecturers compromise unit requirement

even further.

It is argued 'that the sources of this form of education lie in a

mixture of economic, professional and emotional factors, including

educator's fear and ambition, and hunger of universities for student

numbers'(Foley, 1995, p.205).

It is apparently a complex issue. Here I'll try to define a couple of

professional and personal factors which enhance the problem of

marginalisation in Aboriginal education.

Professional factors

First factor that enhance the marginalisation is to do with the nature

of teaching.

Teaching, including its administration is seen as a highly stressful

profession, perhaps more stressful than many others. This is because

of the powerful interpersonal demands of the job and its attendant

roles as well as its large task demands and expectations. It is

especially so in a cross-cultural context such as in Aboriginal

education. It appears that teachers in Aboriginal education are much

less confident of their roles due to political pressure or

mis-interpretation of the theory of self-directed learning. Often,

they do not have ownership of the workshops or the subjects which they

deliver because the intended learning outcomes are negotiated with the

students. At the end of the day, whatever the students have learned,

teachers have least to show attainments in the basic subjects from the

students per unit of teacher effort and time. The questions often

forgot to ask are:

'Does the student know what he or she is supposed to know for the award

he or she is studying towards?'

' The students may be able to identify their short term needs, but do

they have enough knowledge and experience to know what they need in the

long term?'

"Will this kind of education benefit students?"

The second factor is to do with people's philosophical belief. As I

mentioned before, some teachers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal,

believe that Aboriginal knowledge and experience should compensate for

deficiencies in their English literacy and numeracy competency. Some

believe that to demand Aboriginal students to have good commond of

English will assimilate Aboriginal students into the dominant culture

because English language is insaperable from its culture. Hence, The

improvement of English literacy is not specifically done through one

particular subject, but integrated into every subject delivered to

students. In most cases, the subjects taught to Aboriginal students

are both new and foreign concepts , as well as the medium of

instruction English is unfamiliar. Students often struggle to master

English literacy skills and at the same time try to understand the new

concepts. Because of poor literacy skills, student's comprehension

and understanding of new subjects they are studying remain low and

superficial. However, as a result of compensation, some students

can pass the course even if their English literacy is very poor and

their knowledge of a subject is limited. This result in that those

students become academically handicapped upon graduation.

Thirdly, there is philosophical and psychological confusion among

teachers and students.

Generally speaking, education is always directive. The question is to

know towards what and with whom is it directive. 'Education is not

just a happening for teachers and students. it has a directive nature

we cannot deny. While accepting the directive nature of education, the

teacher cannot manipulate on one hand, and cannot leave the students by

themselves on the other'(Freire, 1987,p.157).

However, it is not always easy in practice. Traditionally, educators

have tended to swing from one end of the pendulum to the other.

(OIheoma, 1997, p.74). It is particularly true in the practice of

Aboriginal education because of its political nature. Teachers used to

control the students under the protection policy and the assimilation

policy. With the awakening of Aboriginal people and the introduction

of the policies of self-determination and self- management, teachers

tend to give up the control and directive to students. The

contradictions and problems in reality are not confronted and analysed.

The interrelationships among many discourses remains undiscussed and

ignored.

Personal and emotional factor :

Sometimes, lecturers find it hard to fail a student due to political

pressure and, othertimes, as McDaniel and Flowers analyse, 'may be due

to the deliverer's fear of the possibility of being confronted or

questioned by a group of powerful Aboriginal adults over such things as

the demand for a certain level of performance or the enforcement of

course assessment policy. This fear may be due to a self-serving wish

to avoid possible unpleasantness'. (McDaniel and Flowers, 1995, p.240).

Very often, teachers find it difficult to make hard decisions on

non-performers. Some lecturers, to avoid unpleasantness caused by

confrontation of powerful Aboriginal students, tend to compromise the

requirements of the units to let students pass under the explanation "

the students are from Indigenous cultures and very knowledgeable in

their own society" (personal communication). So , as a result,

non-performers are often passed as a recognition of differences in

culture and value systems.

What is neglected in the process of teaching and learning seems to be

the connectedness between Aboriginal education and the global picture

of the political, cultural and social development of the wider society.

The consequence of the marginalisation

While being treated as 'other', Aboriginal students are not required to

perform at the same level as non-Aboriginal students studying towards

the same award or same level of award. There could be much more room

for a hidden curriculum, which in turn, would marginalise Aboriginal

students even further. As the students can get a pass on

non-performance or limited performance, student's communicative

competence is low upon their graduation.

Communicative competence here refers to 'the individual's ability to

negotiate meanings and purposes instead of passively accepting the

social realities defined by others....Communicative competence

requires, beyond individual facility in speech situations, a knowledge

of relevant issues and the conceptual frameworld that influence our way

of thinking.' (Bowers, 1992,p.2)

As a consequence, Aboriginal graduates with low communicative

competency have extreme difficulty competing in an open job market with

non-Aboriginal graduates. As McDaniel and Flowers assert:

'While it is to their credit that most Aboriginal graduates at

enrolment express a wish to work in Aboriginal-identified positions for

the betterment of their own people, the reality is that having

experienced such an education, they have little choice but to move into

such positions. Once employed in identified positions, such graduates

often come to the realisation that they cannot independently perform

tasks based on non-Aboriginal skills and forms of knowledge to the

level required' (McDaniel and Flowers, 1995, pp238-239).

Treating them as 'other' or ask to be treated as 'Other' leaves them

with minimal vocabularies and limited capacity for negotiating new

definitions and understandings. Lacking communicative competence will

lead to lack control of their society to make it a "being for

itself"(Freire, 1972) therefore, 'their society will continue to depend

on the outside country, this is the fate of any dependent society.'

(Freire, 1972, p.130)

What can we do?

"If we are to avoid the worse aspects of invasion, our aim must be to

begin where people are and discover with them where it is worth going"

(Head 1977, quoted by Foley, 1995, p.50).

For teachers working with Aboriginal students in solidarity means to

support and provide resources for learners, and to challenge and extend

them, but never to patronise them. Empowerment is a common term used

in Aboriginal education, however, empowerment is not something that

teachers can do to or for their students. It is a social act just as

liberation is. The problem of marginalisation must be confronted by

both parties as part of empowerment.

Teachers of Aboriginal students should transform their own reasoning

from naiveness into realistic and critical reasoning so that they are

able to create the conditions which respect their students' wisdom ,

their own ways of seeing, feeling, and reasoning and then go on to

create further conditions which enable students to grow.

As a country of migration, most Australians have multiple identity but

we hardly consider the multiplicity of self and identity. Therefore,

when Aboriginal students come from one culture into another culture and

try to reconstruct themselves, teachers are concerned that the students

may lose their identity.

In reality, bilingual or trilingual people are "continually walk out of

one culture and into another (Anzalidia, 1987, p.77). When they come

out of one culture and into another, they are to form a new

consciousness, they are "in all cultures at the same time" (Villenas,

1996, p.77).

In this view, Sofia Villenas suggests that the key to resist "othering"

and marginalisation is to use the 'multiplicity of identities in order

to tolerate and welcome that contradictions and ambiguities'

(Villenas,1996, p.87) .

If the goal of Aboriginal education is to develop student's academic

ability, to nurture and support cultural competence, and to develop

a sociopolitical or critical consciousness, so that Aboriginal

students will be able to fill the knowledge gaps from their previous

education in order to cope with the rapid changes in society's

structures, the main task for both teachers and students in the area

of Aboriginal education probably be the decolonisation of mentality.

We both need to understand that whether due to political or cultural

reasons, in the final analysis our consciousness is socially bred. We

can not separate our subjectivity from our social objectivity.

Education of today is useful to people only if it is of quality,

therefore, we are forced to challenge the reality as we head towards

the 21st Century. As teachers of Aboriginal students, we should

confront our marginalisation of "othering" Aboriginal students, whereas

Aboriginal students should be challenged to confront their own

marginalisation of "othering" themselves.

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