Entries Tagged: Aboriginal education

An archive of entries with keywords: "Aboriginal education"

Merri Creek School for Indigenous children

Victoria, 1846-1851

In late 1845, the minister and two deacons from the Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne sent a memorial to the superintendent of the Port Phillip District, Charles La Trobe, seeking permission to establish a day school for Indigenous children in the vicinity of the town. They proposed that the school be held in a four-roomed building, formerly occupied by Dr Macarthur, which stood on crown land situated at the confluence of the Yarra River and Merri Creek.… Continue Reading »

Australian education observed by Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko

Australia, 1903

Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who have passed away appear in this entry.

In 1903, the Russian scientist, Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko visited Australia, two years after federation. Yashchenko was an accomplished scholar whose education and graduate training included zoology, anthropology and geography. He taught at prestigious colleges in St Petersburg. His visit to Australia was a research commission on behalf of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences. … Continue Reading »

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ experiences of schooling and education: Oral histories, autobiographies, and life writing

Australia, to 2022

Contributions to Anita Heiss’ anthology, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, included authors’ recollections of their experiences of schools. Shannon Foster recalled that ‘None of the teachers at school ever talked about Aboriginal people. “They” were never mentioned.’ (Foster in Heiss, 2018) For Evelyn Araluen, being ‘Aboriginal meant I was always angry in History class.’ (Aruluen in Heiss) John Hartley remembered in third grade

being told I was not Aboriginal, because I was not black.Continue Reading »

Home Economics incl. Domestic Science, Domestic Arts and Home Science

Australia, 1888-2010

Home economics is a curriculum domain that has been highly responsive to social pressures concerning gender, especially the expected roles that girls and women should occupy in families, the labour market and society more broadly. It is a curriculum domain that came into being towards the end of the nineteenth century as an educational response to several interdependent crises and social movements that included the following:

Fig 1: Slums of Melbourne, 1930s.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schooling (2)

Australia, 1920s to 2020

Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who may have passed away appear in this entry.

In the early twentieth century the main policies and practices organising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schooling had been set. There was little concern by state governments (in this period South Australia had responsibility for education in the Northern Territory), if many Indigenous children were not schooled at all.… Continue Reading »

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Schooling (1)

Australia, 1788-1925

Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who may have passed away appear in this entry.

Formal schooling, as the invading British understood it, was alien to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Education among Indigenous peoples occurred quite satisfactorily without it. What needed to be learnt by young people was specific to their age and gender, and the local cultural ties, beliefs and practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.… Continue Reading »