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The Australian government has\u00a0allocated tens of millions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0to commemorate the anniversary of Cook\u2019s voyage to the South Pacific and Australia in 1770. Though several events have now been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, others will take place online.<\/p>\n This could also be an opportunity for teachers to disrupt the same white-washed versions of colonisation (brave, heroic and necessary) taught in Australian schools for centuries.<\/p>\n There is a plethora of\u00a0education policy<\/a>\u00a0mandating teachers incorporate Indigenous perspectives across year levels and subject areas. But in practice, this is much harder to do without Indigenous perspectives becoming trivialised or tokenistic.<\/p>\n Many teachers\u00a0don\u2019t feel confident or capable<\/a>\u00a0to include Indigenous perspectives in their classrooms.<\/p>\n In\u00a0our recent study<\/a>\u00a0in a cluster of primary and secondary schools, teachers were paired with Aboriginal community members to plan and deliver lessons. Initially, teachers reported feeling ill-equipped to genuinely include an Aboriginal perspective.<\/p>\n One teacher said:<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always felt that I wasn\u2019t very good at embedding Aboriginal perspectives in my lessons. It was always, for me, seen as a tick-box, and I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box, and that\u2019s it[\u2026] you didn\u2019t want to step on any toes, and you didn\u2019t want to offend anyone, so you just touched \u2013 you just skimmed the surface.<\/p>\n Teachers involved in the project had the best of intentions and a fierce willingness to learn. Some had been teaching for more than 20 years and openly admitted their ignorance towards Indigenous dispossession and the way schooling was used as a vehicle of colonisation.<\/p>\n Another teacher expressed the problem of not having adequate skills to teach Indigenous perspectives: Without Indigenous perspectives in the classroom, or with only tokenistic inclusion, students\u2019 views on Aboriginal peoples, colonialism and \u201cAustralian history\u201d are more susceptible to negative media and social attitudes.<\/p>\n This leaves many non-Indigenous students ill-equipped to think critically about the world they live in.<\/p>\n As one teacher said: Some teachers feel protective of the formal curriculum. In this instance, Indigenous perspectives become a tick-the-box policy, something to add into the lesson, but not so much that it interferes with the \u201creal\u201d learning outcomes.<\/p>\n But what are these \u201creal outcomes\u201d?<\/p>\n In the NSW curriculum, the stage two (years three and four) unit \u201cFirst Contacts\u201d, provides the earliest comprehensive glimpse of world exploration and the colonisation of Australia. The\u00a0key questions for inquiry include<\/a>:<\/p>\n Note the use of presumptive (\u201cgreat\u201d) and passive (\u201csettle\u201d, \u201cexplorers\u201d) language in these questions. The last dot point also raises concerns about how teachers will challenge entrenched whitewashed versions of history.<\/p>\nPolicy isn\u2019t enough<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nI\u2019m blatantly aware how Anglo the room looks. But I guess I don\u2019t want to do something that is tokenistic [\u2026] I don\u2019t agree with tokenistic things. I think you\u2019ve got to do it and do it well and I think to just have an Aboriginal flag in the corner, oh and now we\u2019re going to do dot painting and, oh, right, now we\u2019re going to do \u2013 you know? It\u2019s kind of a bit insulting, really.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIf at school we teach it as tokenistic and then the media teaches it as, you know, stereotypical, then how are we going to produce the next generation of people that will work towards reconciliation and recognise the things of the past but move forward without these stereotypes, you know?<\/em><\/p>\nI\u2019m just following the syllabus<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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