In this blog I am going to talk about the impact of social justice and ethnic identity of Aboriginal youth in Australia. According to the student enrollment’s dada of NSW government schools in 2012, 6.3% are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. It shows there is a significant number of an Aboriginal student in the school system. Because of their ethnic identity, I wonder if they have received equal distributive justice, compare to the non-indigenous young?
In Gewirtzs’s opinion, that distributive justice can be tended to divide into two categories. One is the equal opportunity, another one is equal outcomes. The fact shows that indigenous students have unequal opportunity to receive education, for example, 60% of Aboriginal children is significantly behind non-Aboriginal children by the time they start Year One. Only 40% of Aboriginal children who stay at school until year 12, compared to 76% among non-Indigenous children. There are many other data all reflecting this kind of situation in the same way. Certainly, we can’t see very positive education outcomes from the Aboriginal community groups. (http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/education/)
On 3rd of August 2013, from the STRINGER, an independent news website of Muti-Award Winning Investigative Journalism. I was shocked by the title of “Australia’s Aboriginal children – The world’s highest suicide rate”. The news shows that Australia’s Aboriginal youth suicide rates remain high, cruelly disproportionate to the rest of the Australian population. The suicide rate doubled for youth between ages 10 and 17. The data shows, it up from 18.8 per cent to 30.1 per cent. In contrast to non-Aboriginal youth suicides, the data dropped from 4.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent (Gerry 2013). There is a huge difference between indigenous children to non-indigenous children.
Furthermore, there is also a large academic achievement gap exists between non-indigenous and indigenous students in all States of Australia (Ford, 2012). Because of the colonial and the intrusion of western culture, Aboriginal education have both endured and changed over time. Despite non-indigenous people intend to ‘improve’ upon, it is a way to destroy their knowledge and teachings (Cadzow, 2013). For example, in 2004 among the Australian education system, only 0.7% of all teachers in Australian were indigenous Australian, Anglo-sax teachers become a majority teacher group, who might not have a lot of experience to teach and enough knowledge to accommodate Aboriginal kids or communities. They teaching in western style, such as Aboriginal students are requested to answer questions with critical thinking in the class. Sometimes teachers might misunderstand their behaviour, such as avoid of eye contact with teachers is thought to be offensive. If indigenous students’ number is low in normal class, as a minority group, teachers might even ignore or victimise them, without high expect to their learning results. That we can say it is a kind of “soft racism”.
Moreover, in some parts of Australia, Aboriginal people have ‘a huge hesitation’ about the embrace of Western education. On one hand, many Aboriginal people are afraid of losing their children to a bigger world, and their children losing their traditional ethnic identities and culture (Koori Mail ). On the other hand, all the horrific Aboriginal history, for example the pain of the Stolen Generations, makes Aboriginal who is a part of Australian society feeling like victims.
Children is the future of a country, Aboriginal children should receive more care and have a better life in the future. In my opinions that Australian government has responsibility to balance the social distributive justices which can make this original residence of Australia have a sense of belonging and happiness.
Reference:
Gewirtz, S. (1998). Conceptualizing social justice in education: mapping the territory. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4), 469-484.
Margot Ford.(2012). Achievement gaps in Australia: what NAPLAN reveals about education inequality in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education. 16:1, p83.
Allison Cadzow. (2013). A NSW Aboriginal Education Timeline 1788–2007. Aboriginal education timelines in NSW. New South Wales Government: Aboriginal Education Board of study. From：http://ab-ed.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/go/aboriginal-studies/timeline/.
Koori Mail 'Education, recognition hot topics at Garma', 482 p.3
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