EDUCATION AS ASSIMILATION

At present, the education system is felt by Aborigines to be an instrument of assimilation: children are there to be changed; to unlearn what their parents and kin have taught them; to be weaned away from the loyalties that have made them Aboriginal. The result is evident in the fundamental conflict that characterises black-white relationships throughout Australia. The importance of this source of conflict within the education system was highlighted by a task force of Aboriginal women who reported:

There is a widespread demand among teachers, especially Aboriginal teachers and those who are training them, for an independent professional review of the Aboriginal educational system. There are serious doubts about the wisdom of a system which places the highest levels of decision about education in the hands of politicians and their officials who see its purposes almost solely in terms of the needs of industrial and commercial employers for acquiescent employees, narrowly skilled to meet their needs, or who see education as the instrument to impose the drab uniformity of the managerial industrial society on all who pass through the school system.