NT Intervention a great failure for Aboriginal students

Vanguard February 2011 p. 8
Nick G.

Indigenous students in traditional communities in the Northern Territory have failed to benefit from the racist Intervention.

The Intervention was said to be a response to the Little Children Are Sacred Report which identified a wide raft of problems besetting Aboriginal communities and issued 97 recommendations for addressing them.

It is no surprise that most of the recommendations were ignored.

The Intervention was really a racist land grab aimed at opening up to local and overseas monopoly capitalists vast areas of the Northern Territory to which Aboriginal communities had won land rights over the last thirty years.

For Aboriginal students in remote communities the most important aspect of schooling was the development of proficiency in their own language.
(Use of the word “remote” itself reflects a problem of language: it reflects a white and city-centric perspective. For the people living in traditional lands, what is “remote” to an outsider is home and what is really remote is the location of the power structures that interfere in and threaten Aboriginal communities.)

Language and culture in schools was the first issue discussed in the Report’s section on education.

The Report noted: “Non-Aboriginal teachers are unable to explain concepts in a way that Aboriginal students can understand. The Inquiry has been told that concepts need to be explained in the local Aboriginal language. This goes well beyond simply understanding the English words. Forcing Aboriginal children to merely learn English words without learning the actual concepts is intellectually limiting those children. Teachers themselves need to be bilingual so they can then teach concepts in the students’ first language…A strong cohort of bilingual and trilingual teachers trained in cross cultural sensitivities is essential and of prime importance for the NT education system.”

To give effect to respecting the first language of Aboriginal students, the Report recommended the NT Education department “ensure all teachers in remote schools consult with local communities as to any appropriate modifications” of the curriculum.

Neither Territory nor federal politicians were prepared to honour the recommendations of the Report on schooling in remote communities.

Quite to the contrary, they maliciously began the process of devaluing and undermining the teaching of Aboriginal students in their own languages. Instead of embracing cross cultural sensitivities as community leaders, they trampled upon them as servants of multinational corporations.

Nowhere was this more clearly seen that in respect to the first four hours of the school day.

The Report had expressed the view that “Hopefully there will come a time soon where these children are greeted in their own language upon arrival at school.”
Where that had been the case in a number of remote community schools, the Department ordered that the practice cease.

Instead it ordered that all schools teach the first four hours of each day in English.

The effect was to clearly communicate to Aboriginal students that school was not for them, was not for their needs or their self-esteem and growth. As a result, non-attendance rates sky-rocketed.

At Lajamanu, 550 kilometres south-west of Katherine, attendance rates plummeted from 60 per cent prior to the introduction of the “First Four Hours” policy to 47 per cent in November last year. At Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, attendance rates fell from 59 per cent to 34 per cent over the same period. Angurugu has seen a 17 per cent drop since 2008, while Gapuwiyak School declined by 35 per cent.

In defence of these shocking figures, the NT Education Department lamely explained that its policy on the First Four Hours had been misunderstood.

However all it could offer by way of addressing the problem that it has created is a fallback to the carrot and the stick: rewards for students who attend regularly, fines for parents whose children are repeatedly absent from school, and extending the school year to force children to catch up for time missed due to the requirements of their own culture including sorry business and ceremonies.

End the racist Intervention now – Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs!