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of INDIGENOUS EDUCATiONtbeVolume 36, 2007

CLIMBING the EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN:a METAPHOR for REAL CULTURE CHANGEfor INDIGENOUS STUDENTS in

REMOTE SCHOOLS

School of Education, Charles Darwin University,Casuarina, Northern Territory; 0811, Australia

Introduction

During the period from late 2001 to 2005, historicevents unfolded in a remote school for Indigenousstudents located around 480km southwest ofKatherinein the Northern Territory. The creation, developmentand implementation of an innovative, controversialand challenging educational programme culminated inthe first Indigenous students successfully completingtheir Year 12 studies from their home community. Eachof the students subsequently gained successful entryinto an Australian university based on their academicscores, rather than relying on their Aboriginality. Thisheralded a new chapter in the history of Indigenouseducation in the Northern Territory. Kalkaringi Schooland its surrounding communities of Kalkaringi andDaguragu became the sites, in which hopeful images ofa fairer and more equitable education were nourisheddespite impoverished beginnings, and a pedagogy ofhope established the foundation on which "a social andeducational vision of justice and equality" (Kincheloe,2004, p. 6) was born and enacted.In early 2002, the newly-appointed principal asked

that families from the communities of Kalkaringi andDaguragu consider the following question: "What doyou want the schooling process to do for your children?"In other words, "what kind ofpeople do you want yourchildren to become when they have completed theirhigh school education?" Rather than the more commonquestion of "what do you want your children to doat school?", this question acknowledged the crucialimportance of defining the purpose of education as afirst step in shaping a model of education that wouldengage the teachers, students and their families in thekind of change that has the capacity to transform thefuture for the next generation of Indigenous adults.When "that which is not yet" (Bloch, 1970, p. 87) iscourageously considered and defined, then everythingthat affects the school community can be monitoredthrough its capacity to contribute to the achievementof that purpose. In earlier research carried out inthe Indigenous community of Indulkana in the farnorth of South Australia, I defined this process as"backrnapping" (Hewitson, 1998). At Kalkaringi

COPYrightAgenc9Iimited(CAL) licensed copy.Further andcommUriicationpl'opihitedexccptoupayt11Cllloffec per C9,P,1i or communicationand with thelicensefrolll moreinformation on (02) 9394-7600or illfo@coPYflght.com.au. .

6

ROBYN HEWITSON

iJ Abstract

The history of remote school education in theNorthern Territory can best be summarised as years oflost opportunities, pedagogies of discrimination, anddiminished lives for those parents and children whotrusted and responded to the government's invitationto come to school. From late 2001 to 2005 historiceducational change occurred in the remote CommunityEducation Centre of Kalkaringi and Daguragu in theNorthern Territory, the site for the delivery of theNorthern Territory's first Year 12 Indigenous graduatesstudying in their own community school. At the heartof the historic achievement was a radical change inthinking about education for Indigenous students.This paper discusses some of the policy parametersand educational circumstances that preventedsignificant change in the delivery model of educationfor the Community Education Centres in addition toa conceptualisanon of how that school circumventedthe policy parameters and instituted real changefrom the ground up. The paper examines, through acritical lens, the nature of the culture change that wascrafted and built upon within Kalkaringi School and itscommunities, despite an initial and significant sense ofpowerlessness felt by families and to some extent theteachers and principal within the school. Through thedevelopment and embrace of a metaphor of possibilityand hope - the challenge of climbing the educationalmountain formed the foundation for a dedicated andcommitted enactment of an equitable educationalentitlement for remote Indigenous students.

Territory Department of Employment, Education andTraining (NT DEE'l) and the government of the daywere delighted that history was beginning to changefor the better. Kalkaringi School was termed, by thethen Minister of Employment, Education and Trainingin the Northern Territory Government, "a schoolof high significance - not just locally, but also on anational level" (Stirling, 2005).Despite these celebrations, no significant attempt

was undertaken by the Northern Territory Governmentor its education department throughout the four yearperiod to understand or make sense ofwhat transpiredin that remote community beyond collecting somebasic quantitative data. Instead, increasing attentionwas focused on promoting the historic achievementsbut the theoretical framework that underpinned allaspects of schooling at Kalkaringi, without which theachievements would not have been possible, seemedinvisible and of little interest to outsiders. Withoutexamining how and why educational history was beingchanged at Kalkaringi, the capacity of the governmentand its education department to systematise theemerging and productive pedagogies from Kalkaringi,would remain unexplored.This paper begins to address this omission,

and discusses some of the policy parameters andeducational circumstances that prevented significantchange in the delivery model of education forthe Community Education Centres, in additionto a conceptualisatton of how Kalkarmgt Schoolcircumvented the policy parameters and institutedreal change from the ground up. The paper revealsthe importance of critical theory and pedagogy informing the underpinnings of the culture change thatwas crafted and built upon within Kalkaringi Schooland its communities. Through the developmentand embrace of a metaphor of possibility and hope- the challenge of climbing the educational mountainformed the foundation for a dedicated and committedenactment of an equitable educational entitlementfor Indigenous students in this remote school.

"We make the road by walking", said Paulo Frelre(Bell et al., 1990, p. 6). These words, derived from aproverb by Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1982, p.143) inspired the transformative work at KalkaringiSchool to proceed by encouraging the people withinthe school to move past condemnation of the pastand instead use it as a focus for reflecting on howthings had come to be this way, and what could bedone to ensure a better future for its young people.Kalkaringi School relied on a conceptuallsation ofchange that was both multifaceted and complex,drawing on the work of Brazilian educator PauloFreire (Bell et al., 1990; Freire, 1972; Freire & Dillon,1985), the Frankfurt School of critical theory with

III Critical theory and pedagogy form the basis for change

In the Northern Territory there are 45,000children of school age. Of these, 38 per cent - orroughly 17,000 - are Indigenous. Importantly... around 5,000 of those 17,000 have no accessto either a decent primary or secondary school.In fact, there has never been a graduate - notone - at year 12 level of any bush school in theNorthern "Ierr'itory, This year, however, thereare four young Indigenous students and onenon-Indigenous student at Kalkaringi in year 12(Commonwealth ofAustralia, 2003, p. 16944).

On Wednesday, 18 June 2003, Federal memberfor Lingtari, Mr Warren Snowden contributed thefollowing to the ongoing discussion in the House ofRepresentatives regarding Indigenous education in theNorthern Territory:

They're growing because they've learned fromtheir peers. They've learned not what theyknew but knew they didn't know: They learnedsomething from the questions you raised. You'vegot them to thinking, so right there before youreyes their experience is changing. You're nottalking about the experience they brought withthem (Horton & Freire, in Bell et al., 1990, pp.151-152).

The eventual success of the students mentionedin Hansard in completing their Northern TerritoryCertificate of Education (NTCE) set in motion demandsfrom other Indigenous communities throughoutthe Northern 'Ierritory, each requesting that theircommunity be able to access a similar educationalprogramme, and for their children to be able toachieve similar goals. The students, teachers, schoolcommunity, and families from Kalkaringi and Daguragucelebrated their historic achievement, and the Northern

·.··.·••.. ··.······ ..·lIi'l1J.rJ'Ze 36, 2007 tbe AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL of INDlGENOUS EDUCATION

SChOOl, the emphasis on defining purpose galvanised.....................• two communities to reach towards the educational

mountain, a metaphor that was introduced within theongoing discussions between community and school.In 2002, the principal continued the ongoing

dialogue with the students, their families, and theschool and community councils offering the followingproposition; What if as parents we learn more aboutour children as they grow older? What if we learnmore about education as Our children become moreeducated? What ifwe learn more about what we don'tknow because of what our children do know? Whatifwe learn more about the world and our place in itbecause we share our ideas and listen to others' ideasin a coming together of the minds and hearts? Surelythen, we need to recognise parents and families asbelonging to a "circle of learners" (Horton & Freire, inBell et al., 1990, pp. 151-152) with school leadershipand teachers:

7

m

CLIMBING tbe EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

the work of Horkhelmer, Adorno, Marcuse andFromm; Henry Giroux's expanding work on criticalpedagogy (Giroux, 1983, 1988) and Roger Simon'swork on schooling as a project of possibility (Simon,1987, 1992) to provide an optimistic and emergingtheoretical framework in addition to a criticallanguage which had the potential to "unravel andcomprehend the relationship among schooling,the wider social relations which inform it, and thehistorically constructed needs and competencies thatstudents bring to school" (Giroux, 1988, p. xi). Thiswas crucial in changing the business of Indigenouseducation in a remote school because only throughsuch a framework and language was there theopportunity to "to recognise how the dominantschool culture is implicated in hegemonic practicesthat often silence subordinate groups of studentsas well as deskill and disempower those who teachthem" (Giroux, 1988, p. Xi).In its beginnings, transforming the remote school

in Kalkaringi was significantly tied to the fundamentaland philosophical principle of critical theory that "menand women are essentially unfree and inhabit a worldrife with contradictions and asymmetrles of power andprivilege" (McLaren, 2003, p. 69). Paramount to thetransformation concept was an acknowledgment ofthe "interactive context" (McLaren, 2003, p. 69) andthe dialectical nature of the students' and teachers'lives at Kalkaringi, thereby rejecting the historicallyunchallenged view that the students were "simplyisolated events of individuals of deficiencies in thesocial structure" (McLaren, 2003, p. 69). By focusingthe critical lens more specifically on education,the work of Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux and theapplication of the concept of "radical pedagogy"(Freire, 1985; Giroux, 1983) to the Indigenous context,the transformation plan began to take shape with"macro objectives" (McLaren, 2003, p. 71) adoptedas essential building blocks. These building blocksrejected pedagogy as "a discrete set of strategies andskills that are used to teach prescribed subject matter"(Doyle and Singh, 2006, p. 51), replacing it with a formof critical practice in which students "acquire a broadframe of reference or worldview" (McLaren, 2003, p.71), helping them to "acquire a political perspective"(McLaren, 2003, p. 71). As Freire said:

The more people participate in the processof their own education, the more the peopleparticipate in the process of defining what kind ofproduction to produce, and for what and why, themore the people participate in the developmentof their selves (Bell et al., 1990, p. 145).

The main "macro objective" was "to empowerstudents to intervene in their own self-formation and totransform the oppressive features of the wider societythat make such an intervention necessary" (Giroux,

8

Robyn Hewitson

1988, p. xi). Therefore, the "certain permanent tension"(Freire, 1985, p. 177) that existed in the nature of therelationship between the teacher and the studentmust be identified as "a tension that is reconcilable"(Freire, 1985, p. 177) and crucial for developing andembracing a "pedagogy of possibility" (Simon, 1992).A pedagogy of possibility might be defined as thepractice of teaching which "involves learning on thepart of those we are teaching, as well as learning, orrelearning, on the part of those who teach" (Freire,1985, p. 177).

Rejecting first order change

The theoretical approach that I have briefly describedrepresents the antithesis of the standard approach todelivering education in the remote school context.As a way of understanding the conceptualisatton ofchange that I previously referred to, I offer Evans'(1996) concepts of "first order change" and "secondorder change" as a means of assisting the reader inconfronting and understanding the threatening andexigent aspects of real culture change. Vaill (1989)defines "real culture change" as "systemic change at adeep psychological level involving attitudes, actions,and artefacts that have developed over substantialperiods of time" (pp. 149-50). Real culture changeOCCurs when families join the teachers, the leaders andthe students forming an ongoing sharing experiencein which everyone contributes to the development ofbeliefs about the future. As hooks (2003) said:

In a true dialogue, both sides are willing tochange. We have to appreciate that truth can bereceived from outside of - not only within - ourown group .., We have to believe that by engagingin dialogue with another person, we have thepossibility of making a change within ourselves,that we can become deeper (pp. xv-xvi).

"First order change" however, involves "try[ing]to improve the efficiency or effectiveness" (Evans,1996, p. 5) of what is already established andpracticed. The problem with this kind of change isthat it simply reorganises what an organisation does.It might restructure who processes requests; whodeals with problem a or problem b; however thefundamental values, beliefs and operating rationalethat guide why something is done, the nature ofwhatis done and how it is done remain safely untouched,unchallenged, and unchanged. First order change ismore easily initiated and controlled by governmentsand their departments."Second order change", on the other hand,

necessitates "people to not just do old things slightlydifferently but also to change their beliefs andperceptions" (Evans, 1996, p. 5). This kind of changehas the potential to threaten people's most basic

'he AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL °JINDIGENOUS EDUCATION, #

In 1999, the late Honourable Bob Collins and histeam completed a "comprehensive independentreview of the delivery of education to Indigenousstudents in the Northern Territory" (Northern TerritoryDepartment ofEducation, 1999, p. ix). The review wascommissioned to report on the following three termsof reference: (a) the views and educational aspirationsof Indigenous parents and community members inrelation to their children's schooling, with particularreference to English literacy and numeracy; (b) the keyissues affecting educational outcomes for Indigenouschildren; and (c) supportable actions for educationaloutcome improvements.The final report stated clearly that "improving

educational outcomes for Indigenous students acrossthe Northern Territory" was "the greatest challenge

The pedagogy of hopelessness locks students and theirfamilies into an educational environment that definessimple, basic, friendly and fun as the key elements toremote school education, and as Kozol suggested, ifyou do not know any different, then you are not goingto get angry, and demand something else.In order to fully appreciate the significance of the

events that took place at Kalkaringi from late 2001to 2005, it is crucial that there be some attempt todescribe the educational circumstances that precededlate 2001 both within the school, typical of many otheroperating at the time, as well as some discussion of thepolicy parameters that prevented significant change inthe delivery model of education for the larger remoteschools referred to as Community Education Centres.

III Reviewing remote school education

Everything is acceptance ... People get usedto what they have. They figure it's the way it'ssupposed to be and they don't think it's going tochange '" Ifyou don't know what you're missing,you're not going to get angry. How can you desirewhat you cannot dream of? (p' 228)

The provision of a system of teaching and learningthat fails to offer breadth and balance with challengingincrements equal to that of any other school reflects aview about the students themselves which significantlycontributes to the status quo of hopelessness. Studentsdenied access to and experience in the Sciences, manyof the humanities, areas of business and law as well asinformation technology are indeed hobbled at the gate.The resounding voices of those who have supportedthese decisions often declare cultural inappropriatenessin their defence (Meaney, 2002). Kalkaringi School'sresponse to the question of cultural appropriatenesswas dealt with as a methodological question ratherthan an imposition on educational entitlement. Kozol(1991) described the consequences of learning in anenvironment of hopelessness:

Volume36, 2007

values and beliefs and so it is often accompanied byserious and complicated consequences, but withoutthem, real culture change remains merely rhetoric.This is not to suggest that this kind of change is notworth pursuing, but it does mean that any expectationfor significant change in values and beliefs necessitatesconsiderable investment in time, ongoing and genuinecritical assessment strategies, and a willingness andcommitment by everyone involved to think and act"against the grain" (Sirnon, 1992). Second orderchange became the business of Kalkaringi School,

The history of remote school education in the NorthernTerritory can best be summarised as years of lostopportunlties and pedagogies of hopelessness, leadingto diminished lives for those parents and children whotrusted and responded to the government's invitationto come to school. Research that has reviewedIndigenous education in the Northern Territory(Northern Territory Department of Education, 1999,p. 19) has suggested that "high teacher turnover andpoor attendance" remain "the most significant cause[s]of poor learning." While these two factors certainlyhave a detrimental effect on any child's capacity tomaximise the opportunities that come from theirschooling, they do not explain the evolution of schooldays in a remote school that offers half the learningtime to its students, or a curriculum that offers two orthree of the available seven or eight knowledge areasas outlined and mandated in curriculum frameworks.These organisational constructs are noticeable signsof long-term "differential provision", a term fromJohn Coons et al., (1970) that jonathcn Kozol citesin Savage inequalities (1991) to explain why somestudents "in the economic race are hobbled at thegate", while others, outside the remote location enjoya more "preferential education" (p. 207) with a fullday's education made up of a balanced and broadcurriculum. Indigenous students attending schoolsin remote locations have not only been recipientsof the "banking system" (Freire, 1972) of education,but more harmful, has been the legitimisation of"differential provision" thereby locking students out offuture possibilities that require skills and knowledgein areas such as high levels mathematics and specialistscience strands regardless of their individual abilitiesand talents:

In the banking concept of education, knowledgeis a gift bestowed by those who considerthemselves knowledgeable upon those whomconsider to know nothing ... [This] negateseducation and knowledge as processes of inquiry'" The students ... never discover that theyeducate the teacher (pp. 46-47).

ii Pedagogies ofhopelessness and first order change

9

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CLIMBING lb. EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

facing the Northern Territory Department ofEducation(NTDE)" (Northern Territory Department ofEducation,1999, p. 17). The report openly declared that"Indigenous education must become a critical part ofthe core business of the NTDE" and would require "areal culture change" (Northern Territory Departmentof Education, 1999, p. 17) to achieve this. The reportnamed numerous direct causes of poor educationaloutcomes for Indigenous students which included"poor attendance, poor attention; teacher turnover,language learning difficulties, attrition and fragmentedapproaches" (Northern Territory Department ofEducation, 1999, p. 29). The "real culture change" thatthe review alluded to was not addressed in any sectionor chapter of the report. The report was "swept upin the urgency of a problem and the promise of asolution" (Evans, 1996, p. 38). The easier, faster andless threatening solution to what was clearly a crisis inremote school education, was first order change thatdemanded fewer alterations from people, and morealterations from structures and processes. Indeed,much of what was discussed in the review might beinterpreted as first order change. Management systemchanges, alterations to funding and costs structures,school facilities and infrastructure, staffing, access andprovision, language and literacy acquisition as well asattendance and participation were discussed in thevarious chapters as though they existed in isolationfrom each other, and without discussion of theirinteraction with the most important elements in anychange process - the people. The "interactive context"(McLaren, 2003, p. 69) and the dialectical nature ofthe problems in remote schooling remained as "simplyisolated events ... of deficiencies in the social structure"(McLaren, 2003, p. 69).

Policy and educational initiatives as impedimentsto success

In late 2001, Community Education Centres, thetype of school most often found in the larger remotecommunities of the Northern Territory, were notacknowledged as schools with secondary schoolstudents, even though many attended. In 1995, thistype of school was considered "a recent innovation"(Northern Territory Department of Education, 1995, p.179) designed to "provide a comprehensive range ofeducational services to Indigenous students in remoteareas" (Northern Territory Department of Education,1995, p. 179). There were eight Community EducationCentres in 1989 and by 1994 the number had grown to18. The students were openly referred to as secondary-aged (Northern Territory Department of Education,1995, p. 179) or post-primary students. The inventionof these labels was already a significant sign of deeplyentrenched discrimination under the guise ofprovidingan appropriate education. This distinction positionedthese students as not having earned the status of a high

10

Robyn Heuiitson

school student, and was important in the acceptedconstruction and delivery of low-level, low-outcome,educational programmes for those students, despiteits intention to "provide wider access to education ...and support tertiary courses in remote communities"(Northern Territory Department of Education, 1995, p.179). This discriminatory approach to the education ofIndigenous students in remote schools was legitimisedthrough this process. Consequently, the failure torecognise the 12-18 year old students as high schoolstudents relegated them to school pedagogics based onsimplified expectations, mismatched beliefs about theirabilities and needs, filling students and their familieswith minimal dreams and opportunities to maximisetheir potential. Essentially, these students were treatedas primary school students and it was rationalised bythe belief that limited and indeed deficit student literacyand numeracy skins were best addressed through theadoption of primary school methodologies. There wasminimal if any consideration of students as adolescentsand emerging adults. Judgements about their academicabilities defined their treatment at school. This kind ofpedagogy was not neutral:

Education either functions as an instrumentwhich is used to facilitate the integration ofthe younger generation into the logic of thepresent system and bring about conformity toit, or it becomes 'the practice of freedom,' themeans by which men and women deal criticallyand creatively with reality and discover how toparticipate in the transformation of their world(Shaull, 1990, pp. 13-14).

The status quo adopted the former functionof education while Kalkaringi School strived totransform pedagogical practices to become the latter.Despite being termed an innovation, CommunityEducation Centres failed to aim for and hence deliverequitable and commensurate education programmeswith students of the same age in more mainstreamcircumstances. The publication and distribution offoundation and general studies courses (NorthernTerrltory Board of Studies, 1995) proved to be amajor vehicle by which established views of deficitand low expectations for Indigenous students byboth government and the education departmentwere supported and reinforced. These courses werecreated under the umbrella of Aboriginal EducationProgram Initiative 17, Curriculum and Coordinationin Community Education Centres, and was a largelyCommonwealth-funded project. Although the initiativeaimed "to improve access for Aboriginal students toa comprehensive range of educational programs"(Northern Territory Department of Education, 1995,p. 1) the generic foreword within the course bookletsconcluded with the following statement: "I commendFoundation Studies and General Studies to you as

ex:_cellern bridging courses into secondary studies forAboOrllgillltU students (Northern Territory Department ofEducation, 1995, p. 1).Within the Access and Equity section of the

Introduction to the course booklets, there was ajudgement that these courses were necessary because"secondary-aged Aboriginal students ... do not yethave the levels of English language and literacy andWestern numeracy required to access secondaryacademic programs" (Northern Territory Departmentof Education, 1995, p. 2). In fact, the existence of thetwo-year courses implied and accepted the inevitabilitythat many secondary-aged Indigenous students wouldneed to complete an extra two-year programme priorto commencing secondary education, This was not thecase for non-Indigenous students, regardless of theiracademic skills. Although this paper does not attemptto assess the quality of the preschool and primaryeducational programmes operating at the time, itis reasonable to suggest that students were rarely ifever provided with a primary schooling experiencethat enabled them to prove themselves as potentiallycapable secondary students.It is recognised that students from a language

background other than English may need a longerperiod to achieve the same linguistic competence astheir English-as-a-first-Ianguage peers. Foundationstudies and general studies have been written to meetthis need and to act as a bridge into full secondarystudies (Northern Territory Department of Education,1995, p. 3).The discriminatory treatment of Indigenous students

sentenced the students to spending two more years, atleast, in primary-oriented classes, and given the size ofmany of the Community Education Centres and theattendance level within the post-primary classes, thestudents inevitably participated in a version of thesecourses as the only possible educational programmedue to classes staffed as primary classes with oneprimary-trained teacher assigned to a class.

III The culture ofminimal entitlement and expectations

In late 2001, while visitingKalkaringi School, I entereda classroom ofwhat I thought were junior secondarystudents. They were secondary-aged students whowere divided into separate boys and girls classes. Iwas Visiting the girls' class. These students were Year8 or 9 students and should have been aged between12 and 15, I met a 19-year-old girl who was sittingquietly in her chair carrying out the work that shewas supposed to be doing, and I asked her why shewas in this class. She answered, "Because it's theonly class we've got" (personal communication, 4October, 2001). I looked more closely at the workthat she was doing and I noticed that it looked a lotlike work that my own children completed in Grade4 of primary school. I then glanced at the textbooks

the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL DJ INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

that she was using and I noticed that they weredesigned for secondary students. The standard ofwork within the books and the label on the frontcover seemed mismatched. I asked the teacher aboutthe student. "Did she come to school very often?""Yes, all the time", answered the teacher. "Why wasshe doing this work?" I was told that because thesechildren attended a Community Education Centre,they were only allowed access to this level andkind of secondary education. Rosaria, according tothe Principal was able to access only half a day ofeducation each day. These students were thereforedenied 20 weeks of a full-time schooling entitlementeach year. For Rosaria, this meant that in the pastsix years of her schooling, even if she attendedevery day, she would be 120 weeks behind in herschooling than a mainstream counterpart. Surely,it should not surprise the reader that Indigenousstudents from remote schools have found it difficultto meet the level of educational outcomes requiredwithin the designated Northern Territory CurriculumFramework (NTCF) with these kinds of organisationalfeatures in place.In discussing this issue with teachers who had

taught students at the school for more than five years, Iwas told that young adults like Rosaria were faced withonly a few options for their future. Firstly, she couldremain at her local school and accept the monotonous,primary school treatment that equated English assecond language status with intellectual disability, justas Rosaria had done, with little progression in herlearning and minimal to non-existent opportunity todevelop graduate capabilities. Students could decideto leave the community and board in an urban highschool facility, but many ex-students and their familiesbelieved that these places held the same low-outcomeviews about Indigenous intellectual posstbillry; butwith more side interests to maintain a hold on studentretention. The consequence of this option was usuallyhomesickness - a very powerful motivator for studentsto return home. If a student was sent away in Year 6 orYear 7, based on the return rate of boarding studentsfrom the Kalkartngi/Daguragu communities over thepast 10 years, the chance that they would still be inthe boarding school to complete Year 11 and 12 wasminimal to impossible. There had been no communitystudent who had completed their final certificate ofeducation in a boarding school if they had left in theirfinal year of primary schooling. One female studentfrom Daguragu had been at boarding school and spentfour years undertaking Year 11, only completing threeof the compulsory 22 units towards her certificate ofeducation during that time. She was 17 years old whenshe left for boarding school, and at 21 still had notcompleted what other students would have completedin two years in a mainstream high school. This wasthe same student who completed both Year 11 andYear 12 in two years at Kalkaringi School in the years

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CLIMBING the EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

following her return from boarding school, and gainingadmission to universityThe final option was to leave school and face a future

shaped by those around them - early pregnancy for thegirls and illegal activity for the boys often stemmingfrom the boredom of having no specific activitiesto undertake each day (employment, education ortraining). This option was perhaps the most damaging.Each of the other two required a level of determinationand commitment from both the student and theirfamily There were numerous young pregnancies atKalkaringi and Daguragu, and many young men movedthrough the revolving door within the prison system.It was not uncommon to see young men spending acouple of months in prison on an assault charge, thenreleased back into the same community surroundedby the same problems and the same people only tobecome involved in further illegal activity, and onceagain, charged and returned to prison. In 2005, in themiddle school classes at Kalkaringi School, of the 50or so students from Years 7-12, nearly every studenthad a relative in prison for minor offences like failingto pay fines to far more serious crimes like murder.According to many of the students, particularly theboys, but not exclusively, prison time, or at best, courtappearances, had some level of inevitability attachedto their future.Although within the research, there appears to be

some debate over whether the lack of employment forIndigenous young people encourages illegal activityleading to arrests and prison time, or time in prisonmakes it difficult to gain meaningful employment onrelease, there seems to be a direct connection between"the importance of addressing indigenous educationin order to improve employment and therefore arrestrates" (Hunter, 1997, pp. 183-84). Hunter's researchconcluded that, "Education is the largest singlefactor associated with the current poor outcomes forindigenous employment. Indeed, the influence ofeducation dwarfs the influence of most demography,geography and social variable" (1997, p. 189).Hunter suggested that educational experience andqualifications are often used as a "screening device"(Hunter, 1997, p. 189) for the selection process ingaining employment, and for every young Indigenousperson who leaves school before completing theireducation, or remains at school, as Rosaria did toundertake an education of "busywork" (Folds, 1987,p. 49), the greater the inequity in the possibility forsuccessful employment.The pedagogy of hopelessness was fully operational

at Kalkaringi in 2001. On this day, I saw a classroomfilled with young adolescents who were not asked towork hard and indeed covered in a whole afternoonwhat most secondary students would cover in half anhour. The employment of early childhood/primarymethodology in teaching these students formed amajor part of the paralysing effect on tapping into their

12

energy, excitement and commitment towards learning.School for these students was comprised of simplemathemarics, simple English, sport and "busywork"(Folds, 1987, p.49) with activities such as "clubs" inwhich students played with various equipment for anafternoon session. How could the students complain?How could the families protest? Of the parents who hadmoved through the available educational arrangement,there was an acceptance that this was as good as itgets, and an increasing perception of the schoolingexperience as a never-ending provision of activitiesrather than an educational process of enquiry andengagement. The structure of the school's timetableonly enhanced their perception, thereby failing tosignificantly improve attendance. With a couple ofexcursions throughout a school year, a sports carnivalevery now and then, and half days of simple learning,the schooling experience for Indigenous students, likemany others in similar types of schools, was defined,maintained and unchallenged by both families andthe teachers who found themselves employed withinthese schools. Even the leaders seemed guided by theobjective of making the students happy as a means ofaddressing the constant challenge of low attendance.Over the next four years, I spent a great deal of

time with Rosaria listening to her, and observing herin group and individual interviews as well in herclasses. As part of her Year 12 studies, she eo-wrotea play called "The visions of our future", about theexperiences that led her to enrol and participate inthe senior secondary programme in 2002 and 2003.According to the play, Rosaria's dreams had not beenabout the world outside of Kalkaringi because she didnot know anything about that world. Her teachers hadtold her and her classmates, that she would not beinterested; after all, her world, according to those whostood at the front of the classroom, was destined toinclude a job at the local store ... maybe. Or perhaps,she'd get pregnant and look after a few kids livingon welfare. What was Rosaria's potential? Who cared?Rosaria's hopeless situation was a result of dozens,perhaps even hundreds of past teachers, principals,managers and line managers, ministers of education,chief executive officers doing nothing to improve hercircumstance and thousands of other students in herpredicament. Her teenage years had nearly run out,and there seemed to be no sign of change. Evansprovides some explanation when he says that:

Our capacity to cope and adapt dependscrucially on our impulse to seek meaning, tofit new experiences into a familiar pattern, ourresistance to change is not only inevitable but alsoconstructive, fundamental to learning, essentialto adaptation. Our tendencies to ignore eventswe don't understand, suppress unexpectedbehaviour, and limit innovations are ways we"defend our ability to make sense of life". It is

z

natural, even necessary that we should avoidor reshape events we cannot assimilate, for ouradaptability depends on as much on protectingour assumptions as it does on revising them(Evans, 1996, p. 27).

This analysis provides some explanation as to whystudents failed to engage in what was offered at schooland why teachers and leaders continued to delivera curriculum based on addressing their comfort anddiscriminatory beliefs about Indigenous students.Rosaria was just one of many students who did not

substantiate the information provided in the LearningLessons Review (Northern Territory Department ofEducation, 1999). She attended school fairly regularly,was attentive, had limited oral English abilities andprimary school level written abilities and she nevercomplained about the education that she was offered.She came from a family that generally supportedschool. Regardless of her capacity to improve, she didnot. Just as the educational bureaucracy confidentlypainted every Indigenous student with the samebrush, Rosaria remained at school with her potentialuntapped. She was growing old, treated as a child.Her circumstance required a change in the culture ofevery aspect that affected and denied her a capacityto improve herself. This kind of change involvedchanging the purpose of schooling.There was no evidence that any principles of equal

opportunitywere in the minds of those in governmentor bureaucracy in regard to the development ofpolicies and practices related to the delivery ofeducation for students located in CommunityEducation Centres. The notion of education as anentitlement seemed foreign to those who shapedthe schooling experience for those students. Thecommitment to ensuring that all Australian childrenhave an entitlement to accessing an education systemthat treats them with respect and dignity, and whichis not shaped from any deficit position, did not existfor the remote Indigenous student.A web of mechanisms, many with a long history

related back to the early policies of the AboriginesProtection Boards, was in play, which at best stillpositioned Indigenous children to provide "a pool ofcheap, unskilled labour" (Behrendt, 2003, p. 72) for thefuture. Legitimised mechanisms such as the creationand segregation of remote post-primary students fromthe larger 'Ierrltorian, mainstream, secondary cohort;the minimisation of school time for Indigenousstudents; policies minimising the delivery of extendedcurriculum to Community Education Centres, as wellas a barely minimal curriculum composed mostly ofbasic literacy, basic numeracy and sport or hobbies,maintained the Circumstances in which around 5000Indigenous secondary-aged students, according toAustralian Parliamentary Hansard (Commonwealth ofAustralia, 2003) found themselves. The background to

Rosaria growing older in a post-primary classroom wascomplex and deeply racist at the core. The exercisingof power to carry out systematic discriminatorypractices through the evolution of specific governmentpolicy for Community Education Centres in remotelocations was based on the legitimisation of beliefs thatprejudged Indigenous children based on perceiveddeficit attributes such as language and cultural mores,and this amounted to racism. Cole (1997) stated that:

Racism is a process, which can be intentional orunintentional, whereby social relations betweenpeople are structured by the significance ofhuman biological and/or cultural characteristics insuch a way as define and construct differentiatedsocial groups. Such groups are assumed to havea natural, unchanging origin and status. Theyare seen as being inherently different and ... aspossessing certain evaluated characteristics. Sincethese evaluated characteristics are stereotypes,they are likely to be distorted and misleading.

Underlying most of the exceptionally poor deliveryof Indigenous education is a value system that formslow expectations about the capabilities of Indigenousstudents; strong and long-standing beliefs about theneed for simple and minimal education offerings forIndigenous children; and practices from both leadersand teachers that support those values and beliefs.

Leaders contribute to perpetuation ofhopelessness

Contributing to the pedagogy of hopelessness has beenthe creation and maintenance of the unchallengedassumption that there is one approach to teaching asupposed homogenous group known as Indigenouschildren, which in turn has served to make invisiblethe diversity within the Indigenous children as arace of young people. Moreover, there is an ongoingdiscontinuity between this pedagogy and the rhetoricof expected medium to high-level outcomes defined byboth Territory and Commonwealth governments. If, forexample, Year 3 and Year 5 Indigenous students werenot able to access and master the necessary prerequisitemathematical knowledge for the compulsory numeracybasic skills test, then their failure would be assured.If this access was denied over a long period of time,then the failure would be evident as a pattern ofoutcome for those students. As Mellor and Corrigannote, "Despite improvements in Indigenous educationoutcomes, and substantial funding, there neverthelesshas been no significant reduction in the gap betweenIndigenous and non-Indigenous students in the lastdecade" (2004, p. 42).Without monitoring systems noting the exact

educational journey undertaken by each student,the quickly changing teaching force within anyremote school is unable to ensure that the requisite

13

CLIMBING the EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

mathematical skills and knowledge are developedin their students rather than repeating material thathas already been covered? If how we think about theeducation of Indigenous students in remote schoolsremains the same, and the students are thought ofas a minority group of homogenous, deficit, post-primary or secondary-aged children, then medium- tohigh-level outcomes cannot be achieved because thestudents are prevented from accessing and displayingtheir capacities and capabilities. They are preventedfrom displaying their maximum potential.Each of Australia's State and Territory Education

Ministers agreed in 1997 to support the National Goal"that every child leaving primary school should benumerate, and be able to read, write and spell at anappropriate level", and also agreed that "every childcommencing school from 1998 will achieve a minimumacceptable literacy and numeracy standard within fouryears" (Ministerial Council on Education EmploymentTraining and Youth Affairs, 2004). Moreover, despitethe establishment of nationally agreed minimum,acceptable standards for literacy and numeracy foreach particular year level, and the Northern Territory,like every state ofAusrralia-reporting aggregate studentachievement data against these common standardsto the Australian community, as well as the analysisof school participation data, Melior and Corrigan(2004) concluded that "if the level of engagement ineducation is an indicator of advantage ... the picture ofIndigenous life disadvantage depicted by this data is ableak one indeed" (p. 45).With educational funding increasingly tied to

numeracy and literacy testing with consistently,disappointing results coming from Indigenousstudents in remote schools in that testing, it is notsurprising that the most popular model of educationaldelivery in a remote school focuses primarily on simpleliteracy and numeracy. It becomes very easy and oftencomforting to simply surrender to the pressures ofthe dominant paradigm and relentlessly pursue theholy grail of improved literacy and numeracy. If,as the Commonwealth Government suggests, oureducational focus should be on the development ofliteracy and numeracy then the structure of a typicalschool day in a remote school would not surprise thereader. A day in which one portion is for literacy, oneportion for numeracy and one portion for having fun,doing sport or other activity-based enterprises mightbe defined as, not only, as good as it gets, but whatthe students need.

li!J Working towards critical consciousness

The discussion of discriminatory policies andpedagogies based on beliefs ofdeficit and hopelessnessthat have shaped the inevitability of educationalfailure for Indigenous students located in remotecommunities perhaps leaves the reader overwhelmed

14

Robyn Heioitson

by such bleakness. In late 2001, the principal of theschool shared that feeling. However, rather than waitfor a government to respond to complex educationalproblems within the remote context at a systemiclevel, it became more productive and potentiallytransformative for school and community leaders atKalkaringi School in 2002 to consider building newhopeful constructs from the bottom up and from theinside out. Leaders at the school were committed toenacting an educational "project of possibility" (Simon,1987, 1992) supported by a "pedagogy of possibility"(Giroux & Simon, 1988; Simon, 1987, 1992) as analternative believing that "if the world of self andothers has been socially constructed, it can likewise bedismantled, undone, and critically remade" (Giroux,1988, p. xix).In 2002, the main goal for the Kalkaringi School

principal, his school council and teacher communitywas to examine the exact nature of empowering ethosthat might operate as an umbrella for the educationalpedagogy operating for all the students. This becamethe foundarional challenge around which hopes fortransmogrification of their educational circumstanceand all aspects within it, was based. Two specificsteps were taken to initiate the project. Defining thepurpose of schooling and setting goals for achievingsuch a purpose while acknowledging "the terms ofpublic schooling as part of a wider democratic project"(Giroux, 1988, pp. ix-xx) were crucial first steps. Howcould discussion and debate take place in a way thatharnessed the capacity of the community, teachers,students and leaders, both within and beyond thecommunity, to utilise thetr "social imagination"(Giroux, 1988, p. xi) to envision and enact "images ofthat which is not yet"? (Bloch, 1970, p. 87).The diligent pursuit and embrace of empowering

images and hopeful metaphors can be used as abuilding block for real culture change within anyschool. What kinds of images are teachers andleaders guided by in order to construct criticaleducational models of delivery in a remote school?What if through the schooling process, children couldbecome involved in a process of "self-actualization"(hooks, 1994, p. 17) and emerge from their schoolingexperience as individuals capable and ready for"positively transforming their lives and the worldaround them" (hooks, 2003, p. xiv) through a modelof "critical consciousness" (Freire, 1985)?An active and critical consciousness enables students

to respond actively and with direction towards achievingthe kind of real culture change that challenges "thefrustrating and debilitating conditions" (Smyth, 1991,p. 17) in which they live. This applies to teachers andleaders as well who, as they become "oriented to thedevelopment of an enhanced "consciousness" of theirown circumstances", they are able to also to participateactively in reconstructing their work lives (Srnyth,1991, p. 17). In the critical consciousness model at

vott.tme36, 2007

School, literacy and numeracy becamethat students developed, utilised and maximisedthe greater purpose of increasingly reading the

world not just the words (Freire & Dillon, 1985),and increasingly solving problems rather than merelycalculating answers. The tools served the purpose ofempowerment for freedom. Clearly, skills in readingand writing are crucial enabling tools, however, theydo not provide the basis for a model of education.Kalkaringi School viewed them as tools to be usedwithin a model of education. The concern about asimple skills-based model of education was that, asPaulo Freire (1985) would say, students will be ableto read the words, yes, but they may not have whatthey need to understand the impact of those wordson themselves and their community. They may havea job, but that does not mean that will be motivatedto come every day. The simple skills-based model"continue[s] to sustain and maintain conditions thateffectively thwart reflective processes" (Smyth, 1991, p.15) thereby failing to develop a critical consciousnesswithin both teachers and their students.The depth of the challenge was increased

substantially with a closer investigation of what washappening to the so-called post-primary students.Through the establishment of a new school counciland the appointment of an Indigenous communityliaison leader working closely in partnership with theprincipal, it became apparent, through discussionswith parents and care-givers of the children attendingKalkaringi School, that they were genuinely unawarethat their children were denied their full educationalentitlement, and that no Australian child shouldbe denied access or equity to education. They wereaware that children in other more mainstream schoolscompleted a different kind of education, but they wereconvinced that the differences in educational deliverydefined the status quo. How would a parent knowabout all that was possible for their child if their ownexperiences reinforced the view that school was a placein which children never moved past the post-primaryidentity, never completed senior secondary educationand never attended university Or had important well-paid jobs? Parents in this community never saw anyonefrom their community school become a doctor,lawyer, or engineer and most people they knew wereunemployed, pregnant or in prison and suffering froma variety of serious illnesses.In the model of critical consciousness at Kalkaringi

School, everything contained within the schoolingexperience, both inside and beyond the classroombecame a catalyst for the development and masteryof attributes, knowledge, skills, understanding andabilities that enabled students to ask and respondactively to the question: "how have things come to bethis way?" and to contemplate, reshape and act uponways of improving the present. A changed futurebecame a possibility. Of course, the journey towards

(be AUSTRAliAN JOURNAL Of INDIGENOUS EDUCATION-a critical consciousness requires an all-encompassingcommitment from students, leaders and teachers aswell as the school council and community memberswho slowly became partners in this journey, and indeedlearned to enjoy the discovery and reconstruction oftheir own histories and the realities in which theywere embedded (Smyth, 1991, p. 2). This is not tosay that there were not casualties in this process.There were many. Second order change presented anenormous challenge to those who wished to retainthe status quo of the past. Once the partnershipmembers "acquire[d] the capacity to understand,to challenge, and ultimately, to transform theirown practices" (Smyth, 1991, p. 2), then behaviourchanged, and that which was impossible once,became nor only possible, but importantly shapeda new reality. As partners in a "circle of learners"(Horton & Freire, in Bell et aL, 1990, pp. 151-152),it was possible to reconstruct aspirations, hopes anddreams. As families learned about what was possibleand saw their children's capabilities, capacities, giftsand talents blossom, their hopes and aspirations fortheir children also blossomed. Kalkaringi communityrejected the pedagogy of simplicity and deficit, andchallenged the prejudicial and discriminatory policiesthat were operating, and under which KalkaringiSchool was governed. The school community decidedthat the model of education they wanted for theirchildren would focus on its purpose. At the end oftheir schooling, the community wanted young people:"who are empowered ... [and] become conscious oftheir own participation in the creation of knowledge,and of their own critical ability to conceptualiseand reconceptualise their experiences of reality"(Meintjes, 1997, p. 66).

l':' The metaphor ofclimbing the educational mountain

Explaining the concept of "critical consciousness" toother teachers, students and their families presenteda significant problematic. The leaders of the schoolbelieved that an "organizing concept" (Raffe, 2003,p. 4) or metaphor was necessary in order to conveymeaning and garner support for the critical model.Raffe (2003) stated in his analysis of the utility ofthe pathways concept, that "metaphors of travel andmovement have pervaded the policy and researchliterature on youth transitions" (p. 3). The "pathways"metaphor has been used within the education arena ininnumerable ways often to convey aspects of debatesabout the school to work transition. The concept hasalso been used to convey possibilities for Indigenouspeople's futures through visual representations invarious artworks (Australian Broadcasting CorporationAlice Springs, 2005). Developing and referringto a metaphor has its risks of course including"convey[ing] unintended meanings" (Raffe, 2003, p.4), and in the case of the metaphor of "pathways",

15

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CLIMBfNG the EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

there were three other reasons, detailed by a rangeof researchers (Cohen & Ainley, 2000; Dwyer & Wyn,1998; Evans & Furlong, 1997) why this concept wasrejected as an appropriate organising concept for theKalkaringi project.The idea of a pathway has the potential to ignore

complexity and it can create a mental image oftransitions moving in the same direction, implyingthere is no falling back or alternative means to arriveat the same destination (Raffe, 2003, p. 4). It can alsodisregard "social structure and inequality" (Raffe, 2003,p. 4) by implying that people select different pathwaysbecause they desire to move in different directions,rather than some pathways failing to be "equallyaccessible to everyone" (Raffe, 2003, p. 4). Finally,the use of the pathways metaphor can suggest thatthe only transition for students to consider is the onefrom school to work, rather than representing "family,household or lifestyle transitions" (Raffe, 2003, p. 4) asfundamentally connected to the choices that are madein regard to future employment.To climb the educational mountain was a metaphor

that was developed by one of the school leaders inresponse to the limitations of the pathways concept,and significantly and powerfully shaped the modelof educational delivery at Kalkaringi School. Theembrace of this metaphor provided a means forclarity of purpose, and provided a symbol of hopeto the community, teachers and students. It returnedsignificance to the capacity of the imagination and itsuntapped capability:

If a person were completely devoid of allcapability of dreaming in this way, if he werenot able to hasten ahead now and again to viewin his imagination as a unified and completedpicture the work which is only now beginning totake shape in his hands, then I find it absolutelyimpossible to imagine what would motivate theperson to tackle and to complete extensive andstrenuous pieces of work (Bloch, 1986, p. 10).

11 The metaphor gains momentum

Climbing the educational mountain as a metaphor ofhope, truth and strength reminded Gurindji peopleof their struggle to succeed in the first land rightsclaim at Wave Hill in 1966 lasting more than eightyears. While the notion of education as a pathway hadcreated one road for Indigenous children and anotherroad for non-Indigenous children, the mountainoffered something completely different. The mountainwas available to everyone and, in its very definition,offered a variety of individual ways that a goal can beachieved, but it introduced a respect and dignity thathad never been in any conceptualisation of educationpresented in the past.

16

Robyn Hewitson

Climbing the educational mountain acknowledgedthe need for choice - the choice to participate orto sit and watch others actively involved in life. Itacknowledged struggle - the struggle to overcomechallenges, and the unpredictability of what youcannot foresee. It emphasised the need for supportfrom others while recognising the importance ofdeveloping the strength and endurance that lieswithin every individual. It clarified that searching forknowledge through experiences and an increasingcritical consciousness, uses what has been learnedfrom a range of sources from one day to inform andshape the actions on the next.Why should students climb the mountain? What

would students see when they reached the top? Asthe graduation of the first Northern Territory Year 12students drew closer in 2003, the students asked aboutwhat would follow. What would happen when theyreached the top? Many different races and religions havelooked to the mountain seeking guidance, strength,clarity, destiny, and like the Tewa Pueblo Indians,the intention to climb must begin far away from themountain: "Keep your gaze fixed on that mountain,and you will feel the miles melt beneath your feet.Do this, and in time you will feel as if you can leapover bushes, trees, and even the river" (Cajete, 1994,p. 5). In a translation of the Quo'an made in 1934(Ali, 1934), the purpose of climbing the mountain wasmade clear, and provided KaIkaringi staff with greaterclarity in regard to further developing the metaphorfor Indigenous students and their educational journey:"It is like a traveller climbing a mountain: the higherhe goes, the farther he sees." The final contribution tothe development of the metaphor was located withinthe realm of theology: "As we climb a mountain, ourvisions broaden; we see many things, many routes,whose existence we were unaware of; we see manyconnections that we could not have possibly madebefore. As we climb higher, we want to get still higher.There are always other mountains, more difficult, morechallenging" (Phansalkar, 2004).The metaphor of climbing the mountain provided

a framework and ultimately a common language fordialogue between leaders; teachers and students;the Principal and the School Council; students andtheir families; leaders, the media, teachers and theircolleagues. Perhaps what was most surprising wasthat a number of the Indigenous leaders within theschool embraced the metaphor and its languageof strength and hope, and felt confident to sharethis in their Gurindji language in other formal andinformal settings including in meetings of which theywere members such as community council meetingsand district health board meetings. Kalkaringi andDaguragu people from both community and schooltalked about the mountain in daily conversations, inmeetings, in student assemblies, and in classroomsand shared the vision, each person gaining greater

and purpose. The mountain was drawn onii< ,whitelbo:a.rcls and on scraps of paper as conversationsi<.···<••.·.•.<.·<·belneJtlte'o from a visual representation. The metaphor

expanded to consider the bottom of thethe climb towards the top; reaching the

and life after reaching the top. The mountainexplained the difficulty of visualising

<.................. future by describing the position at the<botto:m looking upwards towards the clouds unable

see the top. If no-one has been to the top then it isto create images of things that have not existed

before, however the climb towards the mountain top< <.•.. .. necessitates deep consideration of the treacherous

of failure, and rejects any notionsimplicity.What had not been considered in the early evolution

of the metaphor were the treacherous consequencesof success. What could not be predicted in the earlyyears were the pressures that would be placed onboth students and teachers as the arrival at the topof the mountain top grew closer, and was inevitablyto become a reality. The metaphor was expanded andthe language of hope painted the mountain climbwith broad descriptive brush strokes of possibility. Theproject of possibility was described by the assistantprincipal in the following way:

Asyou travel further up the mountain, the otherlife seems so far away, and you allow yourselfto dream of new things, new futures, and newways of Iiving that respect your culture andbeliefs and at the same time create a modernculture with new dreaming. Once you havecommenced such imaglnings, a kind of paralysiscan suddenly seep into your whole body as youcontemplate the changes that must happenfor this new vision of the future to come intoreality. If for a minute you consider your owndelicate position, your threatened comfort,the threatened comfort of others, and youacknowledge the degree of discomfort that youmay initiate with another step, many back away,and return to their position at the bottom ofthe mountain. You climb the mountain to findother mountains, and slowly you seek personaldevelopment as a life long learner who sharesknowledge with others, thereby re-constructingand contributing to new knowledge andunderstanding (Hewitson, 2003).

It was difficult for the students, teachers and leadersto know exactly what would happen at the momentwhen history was changed at the top of the mountain.Despite emphasising that the climb towards the top ofthe mountain is not carried out to sit at the top andlook down on others, once there, students appearednearly paralysed to move on.

'C· 21&:& '6

Rl11 Creating hope from asking the right questions

The transformation from pathway to mountain becamea means of acknowledging educational entitlementwithout minimising or making invisible the significantconsequences of that entitlement. The term "graduatequalities", was introduced as a means of making clearthe demands on the students if the mountain climbwas to be successful. The transmogrification of thetreatment of Indigenous students within KalkaringiSchool relied on second order change and from 2003-2005, it was clear to the leadership team at KalkaringiSchool that transforming student identity was a crucialstep and one that would begin the long process ofresponding to the question of how things had cometo be the way they were. A changing student identitywas a second order change and was the enablingbrick on which a critical consciousness was built anddeveloped, challenging the essentially racist beliefs thathad become firmly entrenched in the very fibre of eachremote school, particularly in regard to determiningwho deserved an entitlement to secondary educationand how those students should be treated. Behrendt(2003) suggested that:

The tensions between Indigenous Australians andthe dominant culture are wrapped up in identity:how Australians see themselves, how they seeothers and how they want society to respect whothey are '" How societies deal with "otherness"and "sameness" will impact On their ability toallow individuals freedom from oppression andenough scope for the exercise of liberty (p. 76).

The concept of "otherness" had been used todiscriminate against Indigenous students, limitingthe educational delivery in Community EducationCentres by portraying cultural difference as anobstacle in Indigenous students' learning. A crucialpart of the project of possibility was declaringthat some things that had previously be defined asneeding to the be the same as other students andschools, in fact, needed to be different and somethings that were different in other schools, neededto be implemented in the same way at Kalkaringi.The paradox of "sameness" and "otherness" wasa constant challenge to the leaders and staffthroughout the project. Student and teacher identitywas dramatically reshaped through the introductionof secondary school assemblies; the creation ofa secondary student representative council: thenurturing of a secondary school mentor programmein which primary children regularly visited thesecondary domain and shared their work with thesecondary students and school presentation nightswhich were hosted by the senior secondary students.Teachers challenged themselves and their studentsto the achievement of benchmarks and standards

17

CLIMBING the EDUCATIONAL MOUNTAIN

that were equivalent to any other mainstreamschool from numeracy and literacy benchmarks toYear 12 results,

Critical consciousness and the project ofpossibility! tied to purpose ofschooling

The most common question asked of Indigenousfamilies around the education of their children hadbeen - "what do you want your children to do atschool?" This question had served to derail any realattempt to improve the outcomes of Indigenouschildren. The question encouraged discussions aboutselecting activities to fill up each school day, but failedto engage families in debate and discussion about theconsequences, both positive and negative, of theirdecisions to commit their children to attending theirlocal community school. The emphasis on the "whatshall we do to occupy the children each day" type ofquestion perpetuated half truths and untruths thathave been communicated to parents for more thantwo decades, like - if you send your child to school,they can become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer andwork in the community. This is a version of the truth.The simple request on parents to encourage theirchildren to come to school every day failed to makedear the insufficiency of simple attendance at schoolas a criterion for that level of success. It also failed todisclose the non-negotiable requirement of physical,mental and spiritual fitness, necessary for children toactively, knowledgeably and successfully participate,contribute and achieve in a rigorous and challengingeducational environment. Indigenous families havebeen marginaltsed as much as their children in termsof failing to receive their entitlement to the educationalprocess. What is their entitlement?Indigenous families have an entitlement to be

considered a partner in their children's learning.They have an entitlement to opportunities that willincreasingly improve their understanding of theconnection between their decisions about sendingtheir children to school, and their children'spossibilities for their future. The metaphor ororganising concept of climbing the educationalmountain produced a way of declaring an educationalpurpose of freedom and equality, and a commitmenttowards achieving a common goal with regard toacknowledging consequences for the decision andchoices that are made. What was the common goal orthe macro objective?The goal was for all Indigenous children to receive

their entitlement like any other Australian, respectingthe culture and dignity of every child withoutprejudgement, deficit thinking or pre-planned futures.The purpose embraced a hope for freedom, a desireto move past the unmonitored storing of unconnectedcontent with little or no understanding. The historyof low-level thinking experiences through low-level

18

Robyn Heuntson

intention produced pedagogies reliant on teachingcontent that starved not only the students' imaginationsof dreams of a better future, but their families as well.The starvation resulted from a failure to engage andnurture the critical consciousness.The basic skills model of education continues to

reduce the educational journey to two pathways - theIndigenous pathway that has led to predetermined endssimple in construction and unchallenging in intent.The alternate pathway of possibility was previouslyconstructed as off-limits to those who resided inremote locations until 2003. The metaphor of climbingthe educational mountain changed attitudes, actions,and artefacts that once contributed to their position atthe bottom of the mountain.

The project ofpossibility becomes a reality for Rosaria

In 2003, following significant changes to the cultureof her school, as a part-time student, Rosariasuccessfully passed three Year 12 subjects towardsthe completion of her Northern Territory Certificateof Education. Her niece who started school durlngthis time attended school around 95% of the timeand successfully completed all academic outcomesin seven curriculum areas as a Year 2 student, aswell as being awarded the academic prize for 2005.The metaphor of climbing the educational mountainprovided access to dreaming of that which was notyet, and then locating ways to achieve the dreams andtransform them into reality challenging the prejudiceand discrimination that locked students out of theireducational entitlement. The metaphor acknowledgedthat with a greater understanding of the world aroundthem and a capacity to construct new knowledge andunderstanding through a critical consciousness, manysenior Indigenous students arrive at the top of themountain and realise that:

Only at the end ofour exploring that we come tothe place where we started and know it for thefirst time. Or, like fish who discover water onlywhen they leave it, the student is so immersed incurrent local experience that it is not available tointellectual scrutiny (Egan, 1992, p. 654).

fMI Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the Gurindji people fromthe Kalkarmgt/Daguragu communities who werepartners with the teaching staff at Kalkaringi School togain equal educational entitlement for their children.I acknowledge the input from the Year 12 studentsat Kalkaringi School from 2003: Rhonda Rankin,Rosie Smiler, Meshach Paddy, Lianna Brown andSam Hewitson. I also acknowledge the support andencouragement to write this paper from School Council

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Robyn Heuiitson

:Ill About the

Robyn Hewitson is currently on secondment from NTDEET as a post-doctoral research fellow at CharlesDarwin University in the School of Education, havingcompleted her PhD from Flinders University in SouthAustralia in 2004. Her areas of interest include teacherprofessional development; Indigenous education;leadership; and critical pedagogy. For most of hercareer, Robyn has been a teacher and leader in SouthAustralia, specialising in senior secondary education.She was part of the team to conceptualise and deliverthe first successful senior secondary programmes forremote Indigenous students in both South Australia(1995-1998) and the Northern Territory(2002-2005).