Why the word gap?
Morton, R. (16/9/2013).
Kids find how far words can take them, The Australian, pp.3.
I chose this article as the subject is of particular
interest to me. The article discusses the gap in literacy standards between
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and other Australian children.
The fact that Aboriginal children will often have their native language and
will learn English as their second language cannot in my view, answer why there
is such a gap. Australia is a multicultural society and Australian schools
reflect this with students from different nationalities and LBOTE students, why
don’t these students have results like our indigenous students?
Indigenous children experience lower literacy rates in their
communities; in remote communities only one in five students meet the minimum
reading benchmarks in English. These children are not illiterate, they speak
their own languages. The author emphasises the importance of teaching these
students English literacy to give them more options in the future, but not to
the detriment of their first language. The story was written as students from a
remote Kimberly school have published books on their own lives, which their
Elders have translated into the first language of Walmajarri. Having the same
book in both languages to read side by side is helpful to these students
literacy development.
There is an obvious inequality in Australia between the
indigenous population and what seems to be the rest of Australian society
including the people from non British backgrounds. This white privilege needs
to be fully recognised and society needs to address the underlying issues of inequalities
faced by indigenous people. Indigenous people and their culture need to be
recognised and remote schools require extra funding. The way students are
examined and presented information is disadvantaging these students (Ford,
2013). The article raises an important point; we should not replace native
languages of indigenous children with English. I believe it is extremely
important to encourage students to learn English and retain their native
language but also encourage cultural pride and knowledge. Australia has changed
and will continue to change; it is imperative we do not leave indigenous
communities behind. It is time we took a good look at the education system and
make indigenous culture recognised and revered!
Margot Ford (2013). Achievement gaps in Australia: what
NAPLAN reveals about education inequality in Australia, Race
Ethnicity and Education, 16:1, 80-102, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2011.645570
McIntosh, P. (1992) White Privilege and Male Privilege: A
personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s
studies, In M. Anderson & P.H Collins (eds), Race, Class, and Gender: An anthology. Belmont, CA, Wadsworth Publishing.
Couldnt agree more! Whilst Australia has clearly made some significant changes to the way that Indigenous Australians are treated in all aspects of life, especially education, the changes previously made are not enough and it is no longer appropriate for us to ride on the coat-tails of changes made in bygone times. As long as inequality continues to exist, so shall the need for reform in order to improve, and maintain such improvements, in the education system.
ReplyDeleteI think a major point within this debate of the achievement gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia is the fact that there is a significant problem in cultural relevance of the content currently being taught in schools to Indigenous children.
This is by no means a new problem. Dr Roberta Sykes gave a lecture years ago at the University of New South Wales where she expressed this cultural irrelevance through the example of Indigenous children being required to learn to spell vacuum cleaner despite not even living within near distance of carpet.
Another example that has been raised in textbooks on how to teach Indigenous children is ensuring that the phrase "the first" is seldom used because of the derogatory connotations it implies as it represents a lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous history. Examples given included the incorrectness in the way that we teach colonisation as well as the fact that it is disrespectful of non-Indigenous teachers to say something such as "the first Blue Mountains crossing." Many Indigenous people crossed those Blue Mountains long before the colonisers ever did.
If teachers do not make a conscious effort to change their teaching methods in order to start appropriately teaching Indigenous students - the achievement gap will unfortunately continue until eventually we have regressed back to the starting point of completely segregated education.