Ideas@TheCentre
Overcoming a culture of low expectations
A recent article on Indigenous education in Canada (‘How we fail Aboriginal students’) http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/fail+aboriginal+students/3537770/story.html could well have been about Indigenous education in Australia. The article describes how a young woman won every student-of-the-month award in Grade 9 at her small reserve school. But when she transferred to the city, she discovered she was far behind her peers. She felt disillusioned and lost. In Grade 10, she dropped out of school altogether.
A similar tale (though with a different ending) is that of Tania Major (Young Australian of the Year in 2007). Major was considered an A-grade student in her home community of Kowanyama, and was shocked to find herself a D-grade student when she transferred to boarding school in Brisbane. But rather than throwing in the towel and dropping out of school, Major worked hard to catch up with her peers.
Both these examples highlight the different standards between remote community (or reserve) schools and mainstream schools. Unfortunately, most Indigenous students have neither the strength nor the support to overcome this gap in their education.
The fact that such different standards exist between remote Indigenous schools and mainstream schools is a travesty of justice.
Although rewarding students who perform better than their peers in remote schools with high grades may be well intentioned, it does them a grave disservice if the standards are lower than in other schools.
It can, as the example from Canada illustrates, lead to students feeling disheartened about education altogether. It also reinforces negative perceptions of Indigenous ability – that Indigenous students are somehow less capable than other students.
While many Indigenous students living in remote communities come from impoverished backgrounds with disruptive and, in many cases, dysfunctional lives – these factors should not be used as reasons for low expectations of them. Rather than lowering measurement standards, schools should ensure that Indigenous students have the support and extra tuition needed to overcome their disadvantages.
This is exactly what Noel Pearson is doing with his radical competency-based learning Academies in Cape York, where school starts at 7.15am and continues to 4.45pm.
Having separate schools for Aboriginal students is not necessarily a problem; indeed, many private schools cater for different cultural and religious groups without encountering any of the problems that plague Indigenous schools.
The biggest hurdle that many Indigenous students face is overcoming the culture of low expectations that schools, teachers and, in many cases, even their own families and communities have of them. Within every child is the potential for success; it just needs to be nurtured.
Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
