Australian curriculum

Many teachers will have come across the FIRST Framework.

I’m writing this to offer words of caution in relation to this.

While the First Nations Australian Advisory Group (FNAAG) to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority endorsed the First Framework, it is not workable in most States and Territories of Australia.

The FIRST Framework was written as a guide to assist teachers and schools to engage with their local First Nations communities to support the implementation of the Australian Curriculum (AC).

In many areas of Version 9 (V9) of the Australian Curriculum there is First Nations content that must be taught, for example a content description (CD) in Year 4 History allows for students to learn about ‘the effects of contact with other people on First Nations Australians and their Countries/Places following the arrival of the First Fleet and how this was viewed by First Nations Australian as an invasion’ (AC9HS4Ko4).

This content is supported by content elaborations – optional elaborations that provide suggestions of ways to teach the content. One such elaboration for the above CD is ‘exploring early contact of First Nations Australians with the British, including individuals such as Pemulwuy, Windradyne and Bennelong, and considering the differing perspectives of the interactions between Europeans and First Nations Australians, and how interactions could be interpreted as negative for one group and positive for the other’.

Now, the FIRST Framework acknowledges that some teachers may be nervous about teaching First Nations content and states that ‘The best way to address this fear is by reaching out to your local community and explain what you are trying to teach and respectfully ask for advice’.

This works well in Australian States such as New South Wales, that advises ‘When planning and programming content relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, teachers are encouraged to: involve local Aboriginal communities and/or appropriate knowledge holders in determining suitable resources, or to use Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authored or endorsed publications; and to read the Principles and Protocols relating to teaching and learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, and the involvement of local Aboriginal communities’.

https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/diversity-in-learning/aboriginal-education/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-principles-and-protocols

The infrastructure in Victoria, through the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Incorporated (VAEAI), is a State-wide community based organisation representing Local Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups across eight regions. VAEAI recommends consulting with Aboriginal people and Aboriginal sources for information and suggests that we ‘Try to work with local community people and Elders, and always respect their intellectual and cutural property rights’. (This is where the FIRST Framework falls down – there is not mention of ICIP (Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.)

Recently, I have been contacted by First Nations and non-First Nations teachers commenting on the inappropriateness of the FIRST Framework. These comments include:

. There is no acknowledgement of First Nations Knowledge Holders’ Cultural and Intellectual Property.

. An acrostic FIRST (F – find out about; I – Indigenous knowledge and voices; R – Respectful partnerships; S -Supporting student learning; T – Time) is neither culturally responsive nor culturally responsible.

. There is no mention of payment to First Nations Knowledge Holders.

. It assumes that all teachers are non-First Nations

. There are 378 schools in the greater Adelaide area. Take a random number – say 10 teachers in each school – 3,780 teachers. How would the Kaurna Board and/or the South Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Consultative Council manage to develop ‘respectful partnerships?

. It’s all take, take, take … no mention of giving back to Knowledge Holders.

About my interests

Growing up as an Aboriginal child in Tasmania was quite a challenge. But despite the overt and covert racism, I developed and maintained a longing to know more and more about my country’s people and history.

This led me in different directions, most notably a growing awareness of what can be termed racism bred from ignorance, in children’s books and in history texts. For, as Bolkus states ‘Books form opinions and attitudes, [and] have a major influence on children’s relationships with each other and society’ (Bolkus in Hanzl, 1994, p. 162).

One of the greatest affronts to Aboriginal children of today, and probably more so of my contemporaries, is the pretence that they do not exist, ‘that they are somehow invisible’ (McVitty, 1982, p. 9). While a primary school teacher in the late 60s and early 70s, it was impossible to find a text that portrayed Tasmanian Aboriginal people as living, breathing and passing on aspects of their culture. Instead, all the resource material available to students and teachers portrayed an ignorant, stagnant culture.

Many years later, after moving to Canberra and working with the ACT Department of Education, I attended a seminar facilitated by Bronwyn Davies, at which time she used the words ‘speak the world into existence’. I learned much later that this was a simplistic spin on Paolo Freire’s statement that ‘Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which men and women transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it’ (p 88).  From that time I wanted to name the world, to change it.

I had many questions. Why does a threatening cloud have to be black? Why does a vicious dog have to be black? Why does a dangerous bend in the road have to be black? Black Tuesday. Black Friday. Black Spot … There is a passage in The Last Don that often comes to mind ‘On racial problems, he wrote an essay on language in which he insisted the blacks should call themselves “coloreds” because “black” was used in so many pejorative ways – black thoughts, black as hell, black countenance – and that the word always had a negative connotation except when used in the phrase “simple black dress”’ (Puzo, 1996, p 106). I would add another that is quite puzzling – it is always good when one’s bank account is “in the black”.

Phrases such as black ball, black sheep, are full of negative connotations as was de Bono’s black hat. (Initially my PhD was to be called “De Bono de bastard”). Children grow up with associating black with something negative. In my PhD, I was going to expose this and use my research to educate the world.

Thanks to my supervisor, Professor Read, I came to understand that I wouldn’t live long enough to undertake the research necessary and so, with much encouragement my research project went off in another direction, albeit with reference to some of those ghastly stories from my childhood and adolescence.

Researching my Country’s history was an exciting, but sometimes harrowing experience. While I was aware of many of the atrocities carried out, to actually see in John Batman’s handwriting, that he had no choice “but to shoot them” was the catalyst for a series of nightmares that lasted for some time. To read of a proud man left to die from dysentery left me feeling incredibly sad; learning how Aboriginal women were treated by sealers makes me angry. But above it all is the resilience of Tasmanian Aboriginal people who have survived the depredations to maintain oral cultural traditions.

Ultimately, I decided to write an historiographical narrative – a chronological story of seven Aboriginal people and their experiences of education and the parallels existing in mainstream education. The paradox for me was realising that mainstream schools were being established at the same time as genocide was taking place. On the one hand, children and young people were guiding the lucky and the free in the core values of Christianity – values that include the words Thou shalt not kill – while a bounty was being placed on the heads of humans. The Tasmanian Government, in February 1830, offered a bounty of £5 per Aboriginal adult and £2 per Aboriginal child captured alive.

Governor Arthur’s office did issue a statement in relation to the bounty in that it was only for Aboriginal people caught while engaged in aggression in the settled districts, but how many Aboriginal children would be “engaged in aggression”?