The name is absent

325

This cannot be attributed to lack of interest. It was the
result of considered policy. The Principal held the view that
*

it was the adults who wished to maintain ethnic cultural attachments -

*

the students, Aboriginal or migrant, in his view, wished to be
•Australian’. The aims of the school for alt ethnic groups was
therapeutic in intent.

The philosophy of the school was to.locate the school within
the wider community. ∙ This philosophy was borne out consistently
t

in practice; school rules, for example, were the ’rules’ of conduct
perceived to be those obtaining in the wider community.

An Aboriginal teacher-aide appointed to the school was allotted
work in the book-room, rather than working with Aboriginal students
as was the case in most other schools. This was consistent with
the policy of the school not to separate out Aborigines.

A further rationale behind this appointment was that the Aboriginal
children would see the aide as a member of staff and identify with
her as a successful person, rather than seek her help in ’Aboriginal’
problems.

While it was possible to identify students as Aboriginal through
Aboriginal secondary grants schemes, classroom teachers were not
necessarily aware that they had Aboriginal students in their classes.
The policy of not adverting to, and much less encouraging, cultural
f
differences and a highlighting of ethnic origins caused a problem
in carrying out the present research project.

As part of the process of administering Schedules Iand II,
class teachers who knew the students well had been asked to collect
the material as each student finished, and abstract from the total
group, the responses of Aboriginal children. The aim of this
procedure was to avoid publicly identifying students as Aborigines
4

ɪpublie identification of Aboriginal students was contrary to
policy in all the schools except Port Augusta High School, where
the students were a visible, easily identifiable group.

<<   372   373   374   375   376   377   378   >>

More intriguing information