The racialised educational landscape in Australia: listening to the whispering elephant

Abstract

Recent political and educational policy shifts within Australia have renewed concerns with achievement and engagement ‘gaps' when Indigenous and non-indigenous school students are compared. The position taken for this article however, hopes to demonstrate that this shift is unlikely to result in improved outcomes because of an ongoing failure to account for the racialised underpinnings of the Australian educational setting. To illustrate this, the body of the article offers four ‘Chronicles' that draw attention to the pervasive presence of negative racialised assumptions that contribute to sustaining educational inequities. The Chronicles are based on my experiences as a classroom teacher, and subsequently informed by exposure to ideas from Critical Race Theory as a graduate education researcher. The narrative style adopted here accepts the assertion that Chronicles are a valid, suitable and insightful approach to analyse and learn about racialised discourses and practices. The ambition for this article then, is to demonstrate the salience of CRT as a theoretical, methodological and analytic approach with much to contribute with enhancing understanding of Indigenous schooling and contemporary education research.

Keywords:

• CRT
• chronicles
• Indigenous education
• close the gap
• racialised landscape

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Carolynn, Bob and Liz for their ongoing support and suggestions they offered throughout the development of this article. I would also like to express my appreciation to the supportive and constructive comments made by the reviewers for improving this article.

Notes

1. The juggling elephant metaphor is adapted from More (2008).

2. While far from universally agreed upon, the use of Indigenous to refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is wide-spread. I am placing ‘indigenous education’ in quotation marks in acknowledgement that it is a contentious and confused discursive regime that warrants caution.

3. In 2007 the incoming Rudd led Labor government campaigned on making significant changes to the education sector, referring to their strategy as an ‘Education Revolution.’

4. The Closing the Gap: Education Strategy (DET 2009) policy established targets explicitly focused on attendance and retention of Indigenous students.

5. The notion of being a ‘white ally’ is problematic, as exemplified by Riggs (2004) cautionary tale of ‘good’ white people accosting ‘bad’ whites in the pursuit of being positioned as ‘better’ white people.

6. This journey is undertaken mindful of Ahmed’s (2004) warning that when studying Whiteness that the process renders what is characterised as invisible, into a visible form, however for non-whites, the process makes what is already seen, as visible in a different form.

7. Bennelong lived locally to Sydney Cove, and in 1792 he (and two others that died) travelled to England. Upon his return, his life was irrevocably changed, becoming an outsider that was not accepted by the colonists or his own people. The iconic Sydney Opera House is located at ‘Bennelong Point,’ a potent symbol of Australia as a White possession.

8. This version is a reproduction of the original 1859 painting by John Gilfillan. The 1859 version is lost, while the Calvert copy is held by the National Library of Australia. It can be viewed at http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an7682920.

9. It is unclear who is responsible for this version, though Schlunke (2009) notes that this reproduction was accompanied by a change of title – all three versions have slightly different titles.

10. This painting is held by the Museum of Sydney, but it can be viewed on the website for the National Gallery of Victoria at http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/gordonbennett/education/04.html.

11. A longitudinal study conducted by Queensland education researchers.