Aboriginal Children deserve better.
Apr. 5th, 2008 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsidheThe education system for Aboriginal Children outside the cities is widely known to be abominable. This has been known for decades, and bugger all has been done about it by anyone. The Left has halfheartedly tried to hire teachers (without fixing any problems of violence, or paying them enough to recompense for the isolation, let alone the difficulty), and built schools without checking that the communities were or would be prepared for the necessary changes, that children would go, could go, would stay, &c &c.
The Right simply told them it was their own fault for being Aboriginal and not moving to the cities and getting jobs.
All that changed, however, when the recent report (the latest of many over the years, all saying pretty much the same thing) suddenly awoke Howard and his gang of cronies that there was a large number of people drinking themselves to death in third world squalor. (And had been the entire time he had been in office, and decades before that, but this was — somehow — different.)
So he charges in with the army, does his level best to privatise the land of everyone in the area (by effectively nationalising the tribal land by eminent domain, then leasing it back to private buyers ... whoever they might be, as very few of the locals could afford such a concept, this being the problem in the first place).
And now there is a suggestion to try and fix the education system properly: Boarding Schools.
And the usual idiots start howling and gibbering, and in between shrieks can be heard snatches of ‘you're recreating the Mission School System! You hypocrites! I'm morally superior to you, and you're stupid, and you smell bad!’
And, as you might expect, they're wrong, utterly and completely and stupendously wrong. So no changes there.
Here, quote simply, are the reasons why the current Boarding School proposal is not like the Mission Schools/Stolen Generations:
And another point of difference here is that where we would expect children to stay in school (ie., superficially, absconding is as bad now as it was then), now it involves the parent. They are to be persuaded to keep their child at school, not have the child taken without ever asking. They are to be treated, foremost, as people. Only after serious problems arise are steps taken. No-one is saying that there aren't serious problems. And sometimes children will have to be separated from their parents. But. They will be allowed contact with their parents. They will have the right not to be trained as a domestic servant and given a job at 14. They will in all likelyhood be taught English as well as their native tongue, not instead of it (and for the record, bilingualism tends to be reflected in higher IQs: the trick is to get fluency in both languages early enough, and to have enough exposure to both to keep them fresh and vital).
None of this will stop the shrieking commentariat. Bolt, Akerson, Albrechtson, will all declaim how those hypocritical Lefties have reinstitutionalised the Stolen Generations (which never existed, we treated those boongs with all the respect they deserved, but they're like children, really).
And, as they so often are, they're very, very wrong.
The Right simply told them it was their own fault for being Aboriginal and not moving to the cities and getting jobs.
All that changed, however, when the recent report (the latest of many over the years, all saying pretty much the same thing) suddenly awoke Howard and his gang of cronies that there was a large number of people drinking themselves to death in third world squalor. (And had been the entire time he had been in office, and decades before that, but this was — somehow — different.)
So he charges in with the army, does his level best to privatise the land of everyone in the area (by effectively nationalising the tribal land by eminent domain, then leasing it back to private buyers ... whoever they might be, as very few of the locals could afford such a concept, this being the problem in the first place).
And now there is a suggestion to try and fix the education system properly: Boarding Schools.
And the usual idiots start howling and gibbering, and in between shrieks can be heard snatches of ‘you're recreating the Mission School System! You hypocrites! I'm morally superior to you, and you're stupid, and you smell bad!’
And, as you might expect, they're wrong, utterly and completely and stupendously wrong. So no changes there.
Here, quote simply, are the reasons why the current Boarding School proposal is not like the Mission Schools/Stolen Generations:
- The people involved have suggested it.
The Mission Schools were imposed, by those who knew so much better than those poor heathen savages. This is being asked for. If that's not enough... - These schools will have oversight.
No more Christian Brothers bullshit. No more shunting off childabusing teachers/principles to the next school when they get caught. Hopefully, no more child abusers, period. - These schools will provide an education
where too many of the mission schools were bout providing training, so that the girls could go off and be good house servants, and the boys good jackaroos. All too often the Mission Schools were about providing servants for the White farmers. And given that the wages were kept ‘in trust’ ‘for their own good’ meant that this work was effectively unpaid. It wasn't quite slavery, because they weren't chattel. But the difference was sometimes academic. - With these schools, the parents know where their children are.
A trivial thing, I know, but parents really do like knowing where their children are. Having them taken away by police and educated somewhere, not knowing when or if you will ever see them again, suspecting that they might get an education out of it at least is small comfort. And smaller when that's only a guess, you don't even get told that. - With these schools, the children can leave voluntarily.
The Mission were prisons. Theinmatesinhabitants could not leave without permission, often not given. Once they were in a Mission, they were stuck until they could convince someone that they could leave (often because they had a job somewhere else, see above for conditions), or they ran away. Being able to abscond is not the same as freedom of movement.
And another point of difference here is that where we would expect children to stay in school (ie., superficially, absconding is as bad now as it was then), now it involves the parent. They are to be persuaded to keep their child at school, not have the child taken without ever asking. They are to be treated, foremost, as people. Only after serious problems arise are steps taken. No-one is saying that there aren't serious problems. And sometimes children will have to be separated from their parents. But. They will be allowed contact with their parents. They will have the right not to be trained as a domestic servant and given a job at 14. They will in all likelyhood be taught English as well as their native tongue, not instead of it (and for the record, bilingualism tends to be reflected in higher IQs: the trick is to get fluency in both languages early enough, and to have enough exposure to both to keep them fresh and vital).
None of this will stop the shrieking commentariat. Bolt, Akerson, Albrechtson, will all declaim how those hypocritical Lefties have reinstitutionalised the Stolen Generations (which never existed, we treated those boongs with all the respect they deserved, but they're like children, really).
And, as they so often are, they're very, very wrong.
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Aboriginal Children deserve better.
Date: 2008-04-06 02:14 pm (UTC)Ms K's suggestion is that Rudd's Apology was not, as it has been painted by some, yet another piece of moral posturing, but rather a circuit-breaker. As in, after all the posturing of the last mob (10 years of high-and-mighty indifference to suffering and one year of sending in the tanks), he needed to say that so they could do the needful and say: please take our kids away from this and let them get a life.
It is awfully demeaning to any society elder to admit that they have failed utterly and need help. The majority of ethnic societies who have Chosen To Fail never manage it. (Hey, look at the Middle East.) I suspect this may be it. We need an amende honourable and once you give it to us, Prime Minister, then we will swallow our pride and do it.
I wish them luck. They will need it.
Re: Aboriginal Children deserve better.
Date: 2008-04-07 12:18 am (UTC)Re: Aboriginal Children deserve better.
Date: 2008-04-07 02:44 am (UTC)And what you said is what everybody HOPES the new initiative is all about. So yeah, absolutely.
Have you read When Warriors Lay Down And Die? It's truly amazing how the whole deal springs into focus when the person writing the story actually speaks the local language (Yolngu). Be warned. It's a terribly sad read.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 04:53 am (UTC)I really hope it does.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 07:41 am (UTC)