Noel Pearson
November
28, 2009
For
many Indigenous Australians public school education is their only option, many
of these families live in isolated, low socio-economic pockets of the country
and are naturally fed into the local public school. So what happens when the
public system continues to fail these students? This
failure is occurring in what Lane (Aboriginal researcher from South Australia) calls the
embedded population, that is families living in the passive welfare world (The
Australian, 2009). This includes most if not all-Indigenous groups in the Cape
York area and other remote communities where traditional language and cultures
are still strong.
In 2009 the Rudd Government made education for disadvantaged
children a particular focus of the Labor parties educational reform agenda but Noel Pearson who the director of the Cape
York Institute for Policy and Leadership and says “For two decades I
have witnessed the cycle of public revelations of failure, followed by the
announcement of new policy frameworks and budgetary allocations. More
experienced Aboriginal leaders have witnessed this Groundhog Day for three or
four decades now. But these cyclical policy commitments have never led to
sustained solutions” (The Australian, 2009).
The focus now should be on the implementation of charter school
reform within Australia, it’s a formula that was implemented in North America
nearly 20 years ago and that has proven to close the educational gap between
‘historically excluded racial and ethnic groups’ (Wells, 1999). Like American,
Australia’s public education system seem to be grounded in what Wells (1999)
describes as a narrow Western based understanding of merit (pg. 177), that is
“one best system”. But while children from wealthy ‘white’ families were
receiving the most challenging education, poor student of colour were left with
an education that prepares them only for menial jobs (Kozol, 1991). Its this
kind of inequality in the system that sparked comments from Pearson:
“To those who say that there are green shoots and glimmers of
success and examples of hope, I'm sorry I can't take my focus off the glass 90
per cent empty, rather than being thankful for the glass 10 per cent full. Because
I know what that 90 per cent empty translates into when those beautiful
children who miss out on the social justice ticket become adults, jail, ill-health
and early death” (The Australian, 2009).
Although Charter Schools still meet with a great deal of
resistance with Australian unions, the hope is that with the continuing failing
of current systems the case for a new reform will only gain momentum. The
improvement of indigenous education will have a fold on effect to other areas
such as employment, housing and health and until this is addressed successfully
there will continue to bet yet another ‘great’ unjust bestowed upon the
Indigenous Australians.
Noel Pearson (2009) The Australian
Kozol, J
(1991) Savage Inequalities: Children in
America's Schools, Harper Perennial: USA.
Wells, A.S., Lopez, A., Scott, J. & Holme, J.J. (1999). Charter
schools as postmodern paradox: Rethinking social stratification in an age of
deregulated school choice. Harvard Education Review, 69(2), 172-204 http://hepg.metapress.com/content/K34475N478V43022
No comments:
Post a Comment