The Role of Racism
Parbury argues that:
‘The history of Aboriginal Education cannot be separated from the prevailing attitudes of the wider Australian community to Aboriginal peoples since invasion. It is easy to be outraged, blame education departments or Aboriginal Protection Boards or governments. Just as easy to forget that none of this could have happened without the consent and connivance tacit or open, of the wider community’ (1999, p.64).
The influence of scientific racism was particularly significant in policies and practices in regard to formal education. As late as 1926, the Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne argues that the structure of the Aboriginal brain rendered Indigenous Australians to be a ‘child race’ and were ‘ill-suited to higher forms of education’ (cited in Parbury1999, p.71).
According to Indigenous author and elder, Ruth Hegarty, who attended Cherbourg school in the 1930s and 1940s:
'Mr Crawford who was the headmaster said we would never achieve because we were black people because our brain couldn't contain as much as our white brothers (cited in Strong & Smart Foundation 2004) (Sarra 2008, p.119).
‘The history of Aboriginal Education cannot be separated from the prevailing attitudes of the wider Australian community to Aboriginal peoples since invasion. It is easy to be outraged, blame education departments or Aboriginal Protection Boards or governments. Just as easy to forget that none of this could have happened without the consent and connivance tacit or open, of the wider community’ (1999, p.64).
The influence of scientific racism was particularly significant in policies and practices in regard to formal education. As late as 1926, the Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne argues that the structure of the Aboriginal brain rendered Indigenous Australians to be a ‘child race’ and were ‘ill-suited to higher forms of education’ (cited in Parbury1999, p.71).
According to Indigenous author and elder, Ruth Hegarty, who attended Cherbourg school in the 1930s and 1940s:
'Mr Crawford who was the headmaster said we would never achieve because we were black people because our brain couldn't contain as much as our white brothers (cited in Strong & Smart Foundation 2004) (Sarra 2008, p.119).
Parbury, Nigel. 1999, Aboriginal Education” A history. In Craven, Rhonda (ed) Teaching Aboriginal Studies. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin.
Sarra, Grace. 2008. Cherbourg State School in Historical Context . The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. Vol. 37: 108-119.
Sarra, Grace. 2008. Cherbourg State School in Historical Context . The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. Vol. 37: 108-119.
The Example of Cherbourg
Grace Sarra notes that early on ‘the primary purpose of the [Cherbourg] school was to discipline and control -certainly not to "educate". Thus, in the Inspector's report of 1910, we read:
'The appearance of the children was in every way pleasing and their progress in the school satisfactory. No one could help remarking their bright intelligent faces and neat tidy appearance or feel anything but admiration for the splendid control and discipline exercised by their young teacher (Office of the Visiting .Justice to Home Secretary's Office, 1910, emphasis added)’ (Sarra 2008, p. 114).
During the 1930s a new curriculum was introduced by the Principal at Cherbourg school which covered only four grades. It remained in place until 1953 when it was replaced by the new Queensland state education syllabus (Sarra 2008:115).
Historian Tom Blake has argued that at Cherbourg school:
'Within the classroom, the basic objectives were to continue to give a "very elementary knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic". To accommodate the "native mind", the amount of time spent in each grade was considerably longer than the usual twelve months ‘(Blake 2001, p. 61).
'The appearance of the children was in every way pleasing and their progress in the school satisfactory. No one could help remarking their bright intelligent faces and neat tidy appearance or feel anything but admiration for the splendid control and discipline exercised by their young teacher (Office of the Visiting .Justice to Home Secretary's Office, 1910, emphasis added)’ (Sarra 2008, p. 114).
During the 1930s a new curriculum was introduced by the Principal at Cherbourg school which covered only four grades. It remained in place until 1953 when it was replaced by the new Queensland state education syllabus (Sarra 2008:115).
Historian Tom Blake has argued that at Cherbourg school:
'Within the classroom, the basic objectives were to continue to give a "very elementary knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic". To accommodate the "native mind", the amount of time spent in each grade was considerably longer than the usual twelve months ‘(Blake 2001, p. 61).
Blake, Thom. 2001. A dumping ground: A history of the Cherbourg settlement Brisbane, University of Queensland Press.