Traditions of schools and schooling in Australia
Australian schools and classrooms are not culturally or historically neutral sites. They acculturate individuals by reinforcing dominant social and cultural practices, authorising particular forms of knowledge and knowledge production, and guiding students to develop a sense of their place in, and belonging to, the world around them. Schools are complex bureaucratic institutions which, alongside other powerful institutions, such as the media, churches, and government, are grounded by ideologies and practices that have been deemed critical to and for the national interest. Schools also reinforce a history and a national identity that only selectively considers Indigenous peoples’ contributions or experiences to both.
The act or art of teaching is also not free of the impact of politics or ideology although the institutionalised norms of schools are often invisible to those whose social and cultural values mostly align with the dominating cultural framework. Subsequently, mainstream education systems have distinct ways of transmitting, defining, authorising, and applying knowledge, and for the most part, this framework reflects and reproduces dominating non-Indigenous cultural values, practices, and worldviews which continue to be framed by settler-colonialism.
Settler-colonialism refers to an enduring process whereby particular knowledges and understandings about the founding of Australia are circulated through social, cultural, historical, and institutional fields. The international doctrine through which the colonisation of Australia was deemed justified was that of terra nullius – empty land – and this continues to be an invisible, but powerful regulator of contemporary thought. While January 26, 1788 was the start of an invasion on Indigenous countries that was executed with violence, contagion and targeted legislation, the persistence of terra nullius thinking continues into the 21st century. Terra nullius philosophies in curriculum and pedagogy reinforce notions of the enduring resilience and pioneering spirit of settler-colonists and their descendants, and pair it with contemporary national identity and prosperity. Once they enter the schooling system, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are also exposed to these one-dimensional representations of Australian-ness which render Indigenous peoples invisible or inconsequential, or exoticised; rarely equal and almost never sovereign.
Indigenous education policy in Australia can be seen as a reflection of the political agenda toward Indigenous peoples that has spanned Australia’s history. From the first decades under the guise of civilising, Christianising, and educating for domestic servitude and service to the colonies, to assimilating to integrating, and more recently toward reconciling, schools have been central to the attempt by the colonies to resolve “the Aboriginal problem” (Fletcher, 1989). The multiple and intersecting legacies of this history have manifested in alienation and exclusion for Indigenous peoples, and they continue to mar Indigenous participation in education today.
With notable exceptions, a large focus of Indigenous education research is oriented to the identification of issues stemming from the culture, family, and socio-economic backgrounds of Indigenous students. In their research with families in the Northern Territory, Lea et al. provided a notable exception (2011), with research that busted the tenacious myth that Indigenous peoples lac...
