Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 9 | September 2018 | Seite 23

VC’s corner
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Indigenous leadership is developed and
empowered to take this direction, to lead
us, to find a way forward when our political
leaders seem unable to.
Language is central to the discussion.
It identifies who we are and where we
come from. Western educational systems
are supported by written and spoken
language; we record our history in written
stories and encourage our children to
read them. Aboriginal history is contained
in song and spoken stories, in dance, in
painted records of Dreamings that tell the
history and lessons, rather than in written
words. And yet our educational system
does not provide for First Nations’ cultural
engagement, let alone language instruction.
Australia has invested enormously
in migrant and refugee programs to
facilitate integration, particularly language
instruction and testing, with education
programs specifically structured around
learners for whom English is a second
language (ESL). This also has been an issue
for most children in Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander communities for the past 200
years, but apparently we can ignore the fact
that, for most, English is at least a second
language. They don’t need ESL support
in school? Yolngu people speak a dozen
dialects of a language group known as
Yolngu Matha. English is a second (or 13th)
language for many Yolngu.
Australia’s Greek communities, as but
one example, run regular Greek schools
to teach their Australian-born children
Greek language, culture, dance, songs, and
build pride around their Greek heritage.
CDU runs a wonderful Greek language
and culture program because of the
significance of the Greek community in
Darwin. Likewise, young Australians with
other rich European and Asian heritages
are encouraged to learn and maintain
the language, dance, culture and folklore
of their forebears. Again, at CDU we
have a significant Chinese language
and culture program, supported by the
Chinese government-funded Confucius
Institute that we host with two Chinese
partner universities.
So why do we find it so hard to empower
the same respect for the heritage of our
country’s first Australians? Why don’t we
expect all young Australians to learn their
local Aboriginal language, the Dreamings
that explain the country and its being?
This is heritage, this is nationalism of the
first order. The lack of commitment to this
philosophical intent says much about the
gap that exists in our approach to equity
and our lack of respect for the knowledge
systems that are inherent in this nation’s
First Peoples and missing from our
educational framework.
CDU has a Yolngu studies program
and is teaching Yolngu Matha language,
creating learning resources in language
and supporting two-ways engagement
in teaching Yolngu history, culture and
knowledges. We run a language program at
Garma for visitors.
In 2009, CDU began a program with
Catholic Education in the NT, called
Growing Our Own, to provide a generation
of qualified Indigenous teachers for remote
schools while maintaining the intercultural
aspirations of Indigenous communities in
the Territory. It champions our capacity to
deliver effective programs through genuine
partnerships that address crucial, regional
needs, and is designed to offer significant
research opportunities and professional
development regarding best practice
‘both-ways’ teaching and learning. Most
importantly, Growing Our Own is a holistic
approach to Initial Teacher Education with
a unique blend of pastoral and academic
case management and a place-based
emphasis whereby pre-service teachers
study in situ in their home communities
while working as assistant teachers.
An educational strategy like this is a
significant step to improving the rates of
successful student transition into Western
learning systems. These teachers are
committed to staying and working in their
communities. Their impact is so much
broader than just having good teachers in
community schools. It would be great to
have this sort of program supported in the
public education system.
I found myself challenged at Garma and
reflecting on issues around education for
children in remote communities where
English is not their first language, where
health issues – such as the high rate
of middle-ear infection – severely and
negatively impact children’s ability to learn,
and on the aspirations of Dr Mandawuy
Yunupingu’s vision for a bush university
to deliver community-relevant education
and literacy.
The Garma commitment to ‘both-ways’
learning is empowering. But 20 years on,
we still do not have a system nationally that
comes close to supporting this enriching
knowledge exchange for young Australians,
let alone to empower Indigenous
Australians to embrace their own heritage
in their early schooling years.
The lack of a contextualised assessment
of literacy and numeracy does not just
impact CDU in relation to ATSI students.
Indeed, much of what we deliver as a
university – our ability to improve lives and
help to change the world – is work that
also causes us to be profiled as having
some of the lowest completion rates and
highest attrition rates in the country for
non-Indigenous students. The problem is
not what or how we deliver, but rather how
these metrics are defined for the types of
students we service.
At CDU, we have a key role to build
aspiration in communities, with families
that have not had prior engagement with
education past secondary school. We
have to engage students in secondary
schools, in remote communities – often
with vocational skills training courses to
help them prove their ability – to help them
build a way forward to secure employment
through skills development, and for those
with the aptitude, then to encourage them
to pursue a higher education degree.
These are the roles of a university: to
work with the communities it serves, to
develop skill sets for business and individual
economic development, to assist engaged
policy development based on quantitative
data and credible research and analysis,
to never stop looking for better ways
of doing things, for broad community
empowerment, and knowledge acquisition
and dissemination. And in multicultural
communities, as in Indigenous communities,
that means both-ways learning.
All too often we assume that our
knowledge systems are the only ones that
exist, that our way of doing things is the
way that everyone else should behave, that
anyone who does not understand us needs
to learn our ways. For 200 years, a much
older collection of knowledges, languages
and cultures has struggled to survive, to be
recognised as having worth, to be given at
least equal if not greater prominence.
It is not too late for us to embrace the
learning, knowledge and history that sits
with our First Nations people. We need to
do this to build a better and more powerful
tomorrow – both-ways learning – together.  ■
Professor Simon Maddocks is vice-
chancellor and president of Charles
Darwin University, Northern Territory.
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