Rural and Remote Education - Victoria
Rural
and Remote Education - Victoria
Meeting with Koorie workers
in Bairnsdale, 11 November 1999 - notes
This meeting was
attended by 8 members of the Bairnsdale community including the Youth
Worker attached to 'Voices of the Future', the Gippsland/East Gippsland
Co-ordinator for Home and Community Care, a Koorie Juvenile Justice worker
and several Koorie Educators.
Koorie Education
Development Officers
There are 2 in East
Gippsland, both based in Bairnsdale. They assist every school with 5 or
more Koorie students. They liaise with principals and teachers to discuss
curriculum, programs, welfare and other issues.
Koorie Educators
Koorie Educators
directly support Koorie students in individual schools.
"In the last 18 months
the number of Koorie students at Bairnsdale Secondary College has increased
from about 45 to 66. That presents a huge management problem for just
one Koorie Educator. We have several students at risk there for all different
reasons. We've been looking at establishing an Annex School within the
school. This year especially has been difficult because there's been a
Year 7 intake of 23. Many of them come with poor literacy levels, low
self-esteem, behavioural problems. They come to school with all sorts
of baggage, including lack of discipline. We believe that maybe the solution
is to set up something separate where we can socialise the kids and settle
them into secondary school, getting on with the timetable and getting
on with their education. We spend too much time doing that. It's very
hard work, very stressful."
"If a Koorie Educator
stays in the job for 20 years or 30 years, the very top bracket is $26,000
a year. They are the experts who get loaded down with every issue for
every Koorie kid in the school. That's not fair."
"Their job is not
teaching. It's arbitrating and counselling and all this kind of thing.
If you brought in a qualified counsellor you'd have to pay them a lot
more than the pittance these guys are getting. Yet the school can't function
without them there. They've got life experience that's given them the
qualifications to be there. To expect them to hold a piece of paper to
get a proper payment is really rubbish. They've got skills that no university
could give them."
"The teachers can't
cope with the kids, so we have to cope with them. Our duties are just
as hard as a teacher. At least we're prepared to try and cope with the
problems. Don't they know how to get a kid to participate? What sort of
training did they have?"
Koorie teachers
The Koorie teacher
training program run by Deakin University was mentioned. There was funding
to train 41 teachers over 4 years. Most if not all of those 41 qualified
Koorie teachers, however, were "poached into other areas, like ATSIC"
and didn't end up teaching in schools.
The comment was made
that the same things happen to the best and most experienced of non-Koorie
teachers.
Koorie students
'Voices of the Future'
reported no Koorie involvement at present. "There are lots of reasons
including financial, no parental support. But the main reason is that
the kids feel completely and utterly isolated from the white kids there."
"Our kids are floating
around town with no identity. Nothing to say or tell them about their
culture. They're having to cope with pain and stress and what happened
to the generations before. Their families are abusing alcohol. The kids
get molested, discriminated, racist abuse. It takes a kid 15 years to
understand what an education system is about. They don't come in with
any understanding from the generation before. The teacher only has one
method of teaching and one method of communicating. The system needs to
learn respect for our culture and how to build some self-esteem in our
lives. The school system needs to change for us; it needs to come half
way. Koorie Studies is one of the most important way of changing; and
support for Koorie Educators."
A couple of years
ago there was a very successful program of providing Aboriginal adults
to sit with Aboriginal students in the classroom to get them to focus
on what the teacher was saying and to organise themselves. This was particularly
successful to help the children settle into the secondary school. "Aboriginal
kids feel a lot stronger if they've got an adult with them. And teachers
were seeing that there are Aboriginal people in the community who are
respected and capable." This program was discontinued for lack of funds.
Koorie families
and communities
"A lot of issues
in the Koorie community are holding the Koorie community back. We need
to talk about these things. Our community is full of disease and a lot
of it leads to mental illness. And that stops our people developing in
education. Koorie Educators aren't concentrating on curriculum and academic;
they're concentrating on welfare and social issues. Our kids come to school,
often having been up all night - there's a party all night at home . A
lot of Koories are creating their own barriers. We've got to get smarter
or we're going to dissolve and disintegrate.
"Conquer and divide:
the land's been conquered and divided us with money. That's the reality.
We've got to unite otherwise we're going to drink ourselves into the grave.
In a fortnight we've had 4 deaths: 2 overdoses (heroin), 1 suicide of
a 24 year old and 1 elder of the community contributed to his own death
by his own lifestyle. I'm not blaming anyone - I'm just stating the facts.
I'm sick to death of our young people being told to leave school and the
issues not being spoken about. We're pointing the finger at all the non-Koories.
We've got to start getting together and pulling together."
"When I go into the
homes of the old people their health has been ruined - mainly by alcohol.
They've got the shakes. In the mainstream they consider old people to
be 50 years and up. In the Aboriginal HACC it's 37 and up. We've got young
people as young as 12 drinking daily. That's got to be affecting their
development. I'd like to take some of those young ones and let them listen
to what those old people are saying. I could do that if I wasn't bound
by client confidentiality. Drug and alcohol workers talk to them but they
haven't seen the true impact - apart from the funerals."
"We've had one funeral
a week in the past few months. And everyone goes to every funeral. It's
not like in the white community where maybe a dozen people turn up. So
it's a real impact. Where's the counselling? We don't have counsellors.
Who talks to our kids? And who talks to our staff members? Nobody. We
sit together and talk and try to help each other. But we're not trained."
Resources
"We are constantly
battling for resources - especially financial resources - to put things
in place. The only funding we can access is if we go for a KODE school:
Koorie Open Door Education schools. We'd like to have a public meeting
with the Koorie community to see what they want. People have said before
they don't want to be separate in a KODE school. Schools help us out a
little bit out of their global budget. But most of that is earmarked so
we've got to go and beg. We seem to be begging most of our lives and mostly
the answer is no. We get the funding for pilot projects but there's no
more after that."
It was commented
that the ASSPA [Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness] Committee
at Sale College was being "run by staff. They're saying where the money
should go. Whereas actually it's the parents' and children's money."
Teacher awareness
"In South Australia,
before a teacher gets a job, they would have had to do cross-cultural
studies. There are several regional centres with high Koorie student populations.
The Koorie Educators have to run professional development programs. When
we do that we've got to run around begging for resources. It's not compulsory
so if they choose not to go to PD days - they're not over-rapt in Aboriginal
PD days. You struggle to get half a day. If you say a whole day, they
turn up their noses. If you say you want to take them to the Aboriginal
Co-operative and put on a dinner for them, a lot of them don't want to
go and eat the food because the food might be dirty. We did it one day
and they came down and found out different. But they choose to do whatever
they like. We're called in as education workers to sort out the problems
(in the schools) and we don't always get these people taking on our suggestions.
Why do we have to battle all the time to get people there and to create
awareness when there's a model in South Australia?"
Another Koorie Educator
reported a comment made to him 4 years previously when he was discussing
a PD event and planning to provide Koorie food: "Don't give them Koorie
food - a lot of my friends don't view Aboriginal people as humans."
"When we set up PD
days within their schools the same things happen. A lot of the teachers
have given up. We get told - even by Koorie parents - 'You're the worker,
you're getting paid, you deal with it'."
"There's racism there
within the teachers. I get teachers who don't even say g'day to me. Look
at me and just look away. There's that misperception there on acceptance."
Aboriginal Studies
"I believe that Aboriginal
Studies should be compulsory on the curriculum. For too long non-Aboriginal
people think we eat other people. Quite a lot of non-Indigenous Australians
probably haven't met an Aboriginal person. There's schools in our State
and Aboriginal kids in those schools who don't know anything about their
heritage. I learnt about mine when I was about 36 years old. People ask
us why we're so advantaged all the time. And some people ask whether there's
a work ethic amongst us. In this region, when missions were set up they
put shovels and rakes and pitchforks in our hands. And our people did
grow the best crops in this region. When they went to market they got
the best sales. The non-Koorie farmers kicked up so our market gardens
on the reserves were closed down. That goes for livestock as well. Our
culture is alive - it's a little bit sleepy but it's alive and vibrant.
It should be compulsory from primary to secondary. It is only taught in
sprinklings."
Co-Commissioner Roberts
advised the meeting that Aboriginal Studies is a VCE subject but only
offered in 12 schools in the State.
"VCE level is too
far. It should be from very young years. And part of not only staff training
but also student learning. We have in this area a trained primary school
teacher (Koorie) who's capable of writing curriculum in Aboriginal History.
But there's no funds available to employ her for that. If that was done
that could help to break down the barriers and the attitudes. We have
some really skilled older people in making artifacts but they sit at home
because no-one wants to use their skills. They should be doing their craft
and teaching it to the young people. But their skills are not valued."
"The racism won't
change until Koorie culture is compulsory in the curriculum."
Race relations
"At the secondary
school here, if there's a fight, the Koorie kid might not even be anywhere
near it, but they'll always pin it on him. The Koorie kids will be named
and they might not even know that it was even on. They get labelled straight
away. That gets the kids just so made."
"Those issues have
been pretty full on this year. They've been dealing with it by suspending
the Koorie student for a term or for the whole year. The secondary college
down the road - the way they deal with the Koorie kids after a couple
of incidents is to put them out the door."
This was confirmed
by the other Koorie Educators present. "When the kids muck up, they get
kicked out of school. And it's for a good long period of time. The kids
see it as grouse: 'We're out of that system, we don't have to deal with
it any more'. White kids get put on in-school suspension which means they
sit outside the office and do their work all day. The Koorie kids don't
get that opportunity to feel like part of the school. It's 'You follow
these rules - and we know you really won't and we know you really can't
- or you're out'. The kids need to feel a part of the school, to feel
ownership of the school and to feel valued and accepted. Then they might
start accepting other cultures in the school and the rules of the school."
"There's teachers
around who've got really bad attitudes towards Aboriginal people. Just
because the town feels they can't work beside Koorie people - it runs
through the police force as well. They blame young Koorie people for what
the other youth do."
"They can be walking
down the street and they'll be pulled up. If they don't give their names
they can be put in the van. Yet they won't do it to the white kids. You
wonder why our kids have got the chip on their shoulder and they're feeling
really resentful and angry. It just goes on too much. The police or the
school ring us up and say 'Come down and help us sort out these problems'.
Half of them are made by themselves."
"The Aboriginal population
is 2% but in the prison system it's 45%. We've got Aboriginal people assaulting
other Aboriginal people and the police sway 'That's a Koorie issue - you
deal with it'. That's been going on for years."
"The Koorie kids
are racist within themselves. Those who want to be part of the school
and obey the rules get called coconuts."
"The other students
say racist names to our kids and our kids deal with it with their fists.
They come up before the court and the ones who did the name-calling walked
free. In the court, it was such bad things they had said against the Koorie
people - racist comments - the court wouldn't even read them out in the
courtroom."
"We're still fighting
for exactly the same things our elders have fought for for generations."
Last
updated 2 December 2001.
