Re: indigenous cultures and educational reform

Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Tue, 31 Oct 1995 02:48:33 -0500 (EST)

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your response, and yes, I think we do need to share more
positive stories... and also to do more detailed historical accounts of
the sociocultural contexts in which these changes happened....

Talking of the Australian indigenous peoples,
I've come across an ethnographic and conversation analytic account which is
extremely interesting and helpful in helping me to understand how
Australian indigenous people respond to the dominant culture of the
newcomers; what attracts me is the ethnographic account of how their
culture resolves conflicts and builds concensus... a very nice culture from
which we can all learn something?

The article is: "Congenial Fellowship and Consensus in Central Australia",
in the book by the same author, K. Liberman: UNDERSTANDING INTERACITON
IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN
ABORIGINAL PEOPLE. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Pual, 1985.

Angel

On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, James Robert Martin wrote:

>
> Would it be productive to try and paint some rosier pictures of social
> change and try and learn from them how we might intervene. It's of
> course so easy to shoot such stories down - as naive or whatever. But
> what role does that cynicism play in frustrating change??
>
> E.g. in 1950s, in Australia, I am told by my Irish Catholic colleagues,
> teaching brothers and nuns brought their students up in a very
> traditional form of education to "beat the bastards" (i.e. the anglo
> middle class). By the 90s, the Australian Supreme Court, I'm told, had a
> majority of Irish Catholic judges, who in the celebrated 'Mabo' decision
> ruled that native people could apply to take control of crown land.
> Irish Catholic Australians take equal pride in their state and national
> political leaders who've maintained a social democratic government here
> since the early 80's - throughout the Reagan, Thatcher years elsewhere.
>
> How did this happen?
>
> There must be similar rosy stories to tell of feminist achievements.
> Isn't there something pathological about our negative feelings about the
> impossibility of social change?
>
> Jim Martin, Depat of Linguistics, University of Sydney
>
>