I found it a deeply painful experience to leave school, after 12 years, not being able to spell, read my handwriting or write correct sentences. I didn't have a clue where the comma was supposed to go, and I avoided at all cost writing things on paper because I was embarrassed.
But unlike most remote Indigenous children who finish their education almost completely illiterate, I was able to find work as a roustabout and later a shearer. It was in the shearing sheds that I met a lot of other bashed-up boys, courtesy of the clenched fist of the 1970s Education Department. I thought I was the only one, but I was far from alone. You will only find us in statistics, faceless and anonymous.
After more than 50 years and literally hundreds of billions of dollars of a failed state run education system for, among other children, remote Aboriginal children, it was disheartening to read the comments of Liberal Federal Member for Leichardt Warren Entsch and the rhetoric of State Labor Education Minister, Kate Jones.
Both sides of politics have been united in their response to the demise of the Direct Instruction teaching method being used in Aurukun Aboriginal Community School in FNQ. The American prescriptive teaching method, Direct Instruction, was introduced by Noel Pearson through his Good to Great Schools five years ago. Entsch suggested after Pearson pulled out of the school that 'there'll be dancing in the streets'.
I hardly think so. These streets are paved with despair, cultural depression and generational trauma. And Jones claimed her 'focus was on improving educational outcomes for the community'. Well, in 50 years they haven't had one win, and they never will.
The article posted on the ABC's web site claimed a mainstream curriculum will 'help solve some of the problems we've seen in recent times'. That is not true. The education department has produced far more Indigenous prisoners than students. I couldn't get an education with a mainstream curriculum and I am white, had access to health care and lived in a working class suburb.
But neither could most of my friends. The veiled attitude to our poor academic performances was that we came from a bad family. Not much had changed on that score, particularly with Aboriginal families. It is the education department that is broken. It is run by people who have never failed at school, never felt the shaming effects of their