Essay on Education Indigenous Paper
The position of indigenous people in Australia was historically inferior compared to European colonists and their descendants, who have comprised the mainstream part of Australian nation, because they have got the dominant position in Australian society. White Australians ripped off all the profits of the fast economic progress of Australia by getting access to education, better job opportunities, health care services, and other benefits brought by economic and technological progress of Australia, whereas indigenous Australians remained inferior to them and could not stand on the equal ground compared to the whites. Today, they are still in the worse position compared to the whites because they have the limited access to education, while the equal access to education could have provided indigenous Australians with better job and socioeconomic opportunities.
Invasion and colonial frontier
European colonists arriving to Australia had a priori biased and prejudiced attitude toward the indigenous population of Australia because of their experience of contacts with other civilizations of ‘savages’, whom they treated as being absolutely inferior to themselves. Violent confrontations were a feature of the ‘frontier’ as it moved across the continent. In Tasmania, the ‘Black War’ continued for over a decade and martial law was declared from 1828-1832 (Ryan, 2012). However, the biased attitude toward indigenous Australians persisted for decades and centuries. Colonists disregarded rights of the indigenous population and established the social order that matched their interests. In such a situation, they developed their own system of education, where there was no room for indigenous Australians.
Protection and segregation
White Asutralians, who held the dominant position in society viewed the indigenous population as a ‘dying race’. Such racial Darwinism laid the foundation to the policy of the state intervention into policies determining the life of the indigenous people that led to their segregation. In such a situation, even the protection of the indigenous people led to their further segregation because they were protected within their communities but they still remained unprotected in face of social biases and stereotypes.
From the turn of the century governments around Australia adopted the policy of protection which enshrined contradictory but intersecting sets of philanthropic, ameliorative, punitive and even genocidal rationales, and which resulted in a convenient ‘double speak’ of stated humanitarian concern and agendas of segregation, assimilation, genocide and profound neglect. This mix seemed to enable everyone, from city humanitarian to brutal frontiersman, to feel comfortable with their stance and convinced that right was being done (Haebich 143). Moreover, they were absolutely unable to compete with white Australians in the labor market because they had neither education, nor skills, nor abilities, nor resources to challenge the position of the whites. Instead, they could count on low- or semi-qualified jobs that determined their low socioeconomic standing in Australia.
Assimilation and the Stolen Generations
The Stolen Generations became indigenous people taken from their families in terms of government and missionary programs, which resulted in their forced removal from their families. The noble goal of their ‘civilization’ resulted in their loss as a generation of indigenous people, living within their society and communities. At the same time, stealing indigenous children was an integral part of the life of society since the time of colonization. Some colonists wanted to see whether Indigenous people could be ‘civilized’ and in the process the gained children who also worked for them as domestic servants. Explorers valued the knowledge of country that even very small Indigenous children possessed (Reynolds, 1990, p. 165).
The Stolen Generations history was an attempt to ‘civilize’ the indigenous population but, as the matter of fact, this attempt has brought little positive effects because the Stolen Generations were rather forcefully assimilated in the white mainstream culture and society by losing their indigenous identity pointblank. On the other hand, this policy did not create better educational or employment opportunities for indigenous people of Australia. Instead, those, who were left aside, remained disintegrated and still had limited access to education and, therefore, had a few opportunities to succeed in the mainstream society. In such a way, the education system remained enclosed and indigenous Australians did not have an opportunity to have the equal access to education.
Education System of Australia and Indigenous People
The historical discrimination of indigenous people in terms of their access to education resulted in the disadvantaged position of indigenous Australians and their limited access to education. For example, at the moment, only one-quarter (25%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 years and over reported Year 12 or equivalent as the highest year of school completed, compared with about half (52%) of non-Indigenous people (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). In such a way, education remains to be a privilege for the whites, whereas indigenous Australians do not have access to education. In this regard, there are objective reasons, such as the location of indigenous communities in remote areas, and subjective reasons, such as biased and prejudiced attitude toward indigenous population. The recent efforts of Australian government aimed at the elimination of inequality in the access to education for all Australians, but the gap between white and indigenous Australians persists.
Conclusion
Thus, the discrimination of indigenous population of Australia was the historical trend that determined the currently disadvantageous position of indigenous Australians in different fields, such as education. The discrimination since the time of colonization, the segregation and persisting inequality resulted in the inferior position of indigenous Australians compared to the whites. In this regard, education is the field, where barriers between white and indigenous Australians are still wide and the government should enhance its efforts to close the gaps.
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