Contesting the curriculum in the schooling of indigenous children in Australia and the United States: From eurocentrism to culturally powerful pedagogies

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 64-89+139

  Hickling Hudson, Anne ^a   Ahlquist, Roberta ^b  

^a QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Australia)

^b SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042318863     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/345837     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, "Introduction: Beyond Dichotomies," in their Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 1-38, quotation on p. 4. Settler societies are defined by these authors as "societies in which Europeans have settled, where their descendants have remained politically dominant over indigenous peoples, and where a heterogeneous society has developed in class, ethnic and racial terms" (p. 3). The authors note that the concept of white settler societies is a racialized and gendered hegemonic myth of origin, contested by antiracist movements seeking policies that redress the exclusion and oppression of indigenous and some migrant groups (p. 8).
2. Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg, "Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness," in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America, ed. Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, Nelson Rodriguez, and Ronald Chennault (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), pp. 3-30.
3. Australian indigenous peoples, referred to as Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, comprise several ethnic groups connected with different ancestral lands, speaking different languages and bearing different nation names. They are a range of skin shades, and the term "black" is as much a political as an ethnic term.
4. Joel Spring, Deculturation and the Struggle for Equality (Burr Ridge, Ill.: McGraw Hill, 1999); Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
5. Joel Spring, Deculturation and the Struggle for Equality (Burr Ridge, Ill.: McGraw Hill, 1999); Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
6. Racial ideologies, now scientifically proven to be invalid, are central to Eurocentrism. They have changed slightly from one era to the next, but include beliefs that humans are biologically categorized into races such as Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid, and that these races are arranged in a hierarchy of intelligence and civilizational qualities, a belief in the social ills of miscegenation or race mixing, and a belief that some races are culturally incompatible (see Sandra Harding, ed., The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]). The belief in a race/culture hierarchy is so strong that many teachers, socialized into Eurocentric assumptions of superiority, see no need to engage seriously with non-Western cultures and knowledge systems in their study or teaching. Anne Hickling-Hudson, "When Marxist and Postmodern Theories Won't Do: The Potential of Postcolonial Theory for Educational Analysis," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 19, no. 3 (1998): 327-40; Roberta Ahlquist, "Whose World Is It Anyway? Multicultural Science from Diverse Perspectives," Comparative Education Review 44, no. 3 (2000): 356-63, and "Critical Multi-cultural Mathematics Curriculum: Multiple Connections through the Lenses of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Social Class," in Changing the Faces of Mathematics: Perspectives on Gender, ed. Judith Jacobs, Joanne Becker, and Gloria Gilmer (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2001), pp. 25-36.
7. Racial ideologies, now scientifically proven to be invalid, are central to Eurocentrism. They have changed slightly from one era to the next, but include beliefs that humans are biologically categorized into races such as Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid, and that these races are arranged in a hierarchy of intelligence and civilizational qualities, a belief in the social ills of miscegenation or race mixing, and a belief that some races are culturally incompatible (see Sandra Harding, ed., The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]). The belief in a race/culture hierarchy is so strong that many teachers, socialized into Eurocentric assumptions of superiority, see no need to engage seriously with non-Western cultures and knowledge systems in their study or teaching. Anne Hickling-Hudson, "When Marxist and Postmodern Theories Won't Do: The Potential of Postcolonial Theory for Educational Analysis," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 19, no. 3 (1998): 327-40; Roberta Ahlquist, "Whose World Is It Anyway? Multicultural Science from Diverse Perspectives," Comparative Education Review 44, no. 3 (2000): 356-63, and "Critical Multi-cultural Mathematics Curriculum: Multiple Connections through the Lenses of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Social Class," in Changing the Faces of Mathematics: Perspectives on Gender, ed. Judith Jacobs, Joanne Becker, and Gloria Gilmer (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2001), pp. 25-36.
8. Racial ideologies, now scientifically proven to be invalid, are central to Eurocentrism. They have changed slightly from one era to the next, but include beliefs that humans are biologically categorized into races such as Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid, and that these races are arranged in a hierarchy of intelligence and civilizational qualities, a belief in the social ills of miscegenation or race mixing, and a belief that some races are culturally incompatible (see Sandra Harding, ed., The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]). The belief in a race/culture hierarchy is so strong that many teachers, socialized into Eurocentric assumptions of superiority, see no need to engage seriously with non-Western cultures and knowledge systems in their study or teaching. Anne Hickling-Hudson, "When Marxist and Postmodern Theories Won't Do: The Potential of Postcolonial Theory for Educational Analysis," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 19, no. 3 (1998): 327-40; Roberta Ahlquist, "Whose World Is It Anyway? Multicultural Science from Diverse Perspectives," Comparative Education Review 44, no. 3 (2000): 356-63, and "Critical Multi-cultural Mathematics Curriculum: Multiple Connections through the Lenses of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Social Class," in Changing the Faces of Mathematics: Perspectives on Gender, ed. Judith Jacobs, Joanne Becker, and Gloria Gilmer (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2001), pp. 25-36.
9. Racial ideologies, now scientifically proven to be invalid, are central to Eurocentrism. They have changed slightly from one era to the next, but include beliefs that humans are biologically categorized into races such as Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid, and that these races are arranged in a hierarchy of intelligence and civilizational qualities, a belief in the social ills of miscegenation or race mixing, and a belief that some races are culturally incompatible (see Sandra Harding, ed., The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]). The belief in a race/culture hierarchy is so strong that many teachers, socialized into Eurocentric assumptions of superiority, see no need to engage seriously with non-Western cultures and knowledge systems in their study or teaching. Anne Hickling-Hudson, "When Marxist and Postmodern Theories Won't Do: The Potential of Postcolonial Theory for Educational Analysis," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 19, no. 3 (1998): 327-40; Roberta Ahlquist, "Whose World Is It Anyway? Multicultural Science from Diverse Perspectives," Comparative Education Review 44, no. 3 (2000): 356-63, and "Critical Multi-cultural Mathematics Curriculum: Multiple Connections through the Lenses of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Social Class," in Changing the Faces of Mathematics: Perspectives on Gender, ed. Judith Jacobs, Joanne Becker, and Gloria Gilmer (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2001), pp. 25-36.
10. National Center for Educational Statistics, Population by Ethnicity, 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, 2000).
11. James Jupp, ed., The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and the Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
12. Christine Bennett, "Genres of Research in Multicultural Education," Review of Educational Research 71, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 171-217.
13. Kincheloe and Steinberg, p. 15.
14. Ibid.; Nelson Rodriguez, "Emptying the Content of Whiteness: Toward an Understanding of the Relation between Whiteness and Pedagogy," in Kincheloe et al., pp. 32-62.
15. Belinda McKay, ed., Unmasking Whiteness: Race Relations and Reconciliation (Nathan, Brisbane: Queensland Studies Centre, Griffith University, 1999).
16. John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 4.
17. John Willinsky, "Curriculum after Culture, Race, Nation," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 20, no. 1 (1999): 89-112.
18. For recent population figures in the United States, see National Center for Educational Statistics, Population by Ethnicity, 2000. For population figures in Australia, see Jupp. Estimates of the number of Australian Aboriginal people at the time of the British Empire's intrusion into Australia vary from 700,000 to a million, while estimates of the Native American population living in the United States and Canada before the European invasion vary from 15 to 60 million. If South America and Central America are included, it is estimated that during the 1400s there were over 100 million people. In comparison, Europe is estimated to have had a population of 70 million during the same time period (compiled from Carl Waldman, The Atlas of the North American Indian [New York: Checkmark Books, 2000]; and Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., "Introduction," The Native Americans: An Illustrated History [Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1993]).
19. For recent population figures in the United States, see National Center for Educational Statistics, Population by Ethnicity, 2000. For population figures in Australia, see Jupp. Estimates of the number of Australian Aboriginal people at the time of the British Empire's intrusion into Australia vary from 700,000 to a million, while estimates of the Native American population living in the United States and Canada before the European invasion vary from 15 to 60 million. If South America and Central America are included, it is estimated that during the 1400s there were over 100 million people. In comparison, Europe is estimated to have had a population of 70 million during the same time period (compiled from Carl Waldman, The Atlas of the North American Indian [New York: Checkmark Books, 2000]; and Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., "Introduction," The Native Americans: An Illustrated History [Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1993]).
20. For recent population figures in the United States, see National Center for Educational Statistics, Population by Ethnicity, 2000. For population figures in Australia, see Jupp. Estimates of the number of Australian Aboriginal people at the time of the British Empire's intrusion into Australia vary from 700,000 to a million, while estimates of the Native American population living in the United States and Canada before the European invasion vary from 15 to 60 million. If South America and Central America are included, it is estimated that during the 1400s there were over 100 million people. In comparison, Europe is estimated to have had a population of 70 million during the same time period (compiled from Carl Waldman, The Atlas of the North American Indian [New York: Checkmark Books, 2000]; and Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., "Introduction," The Native Americans: An Illustrated History [Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1993]).
21. Spring (n. 4 above); Brian Murphy, Dictionary of Australian History (Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1982).
22. Spring (n. 4 above); Brian Murphy, Dictionary of Australian History (Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1982).
23. There are a disproportionate number of Indians in the U.S. prison system. For example, in Montana, the state with the fourth largest number of Native Americans (6.2 percent of the state's population and 10.3 percent of the student population), 15.8 percent of the male prisoners and 27.8 percent of the female prisoners were Native American. In Australia, the imprisonment rate for indigenous adults is over 14 times that for nonindigenous adults. In 1997, almost 19 percent of the adult prison population and 40 percent of children in corrective institutions for children were identified as indigenous. AusStats (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 4704.0 (1999a), The Health and Welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@nsf/Lookup/NT00003B36.
24. See "Interesting Facts on America's First People," http://www.theramp.net/kohr4/interestingfacts.html, AusStats 4704.0 (1999a), p. 3 (accessed July 6, 2001).
25. Based on a 3-year average (1997-99), the poverty rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives was 25.9 percent. For non-Hispanic whites, it was only 8.2 percent; for African Americans, it was 25.4 percent; and for Hispanics, it was 25.1 percent. Poverty goes along with substandard social conditions in health, housing, education, and life expectancy. In Australia, life expectancy is an estimated 56.9 years for indigenous males and 61.7 years for indigenous females compared with 75.2 years and 81.1 years for other male and female Australians. Housing is problematic, with 31 percent of indigenous peoples owning homes compared to 71 percent of other Australians, and with 50 percent more indigenous peoples living in overcrowded or substandard dwellings compared with other Australians (Austats 1999a).
26. Alcoholism for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is 57.3 percent, compared to 7.4 percent for all other ethnicities. Suicide for Native Americans is 24.5 percent, over twice that of the rest of the population (approximately 10.4 percent). The cause of death of Native Americans by homicide is 25.5 percent, compared to 10.4 percent for the rest of the population.
27. See http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/jar/INAR.html (accessed July 6, 2002), pp. 1-4.
28. AusStats (1999b), Educational Attainment, available at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/ABS...3677eca2569de002539f41OpenDocument (accessed June 19, 2001).
29. Howard Groome, "Education; The Search for Relevance," in Aboriginal Australia: An Introductory Reader in Aboriginal Studies, ed. C. Burke and E. Burke (St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1994), pp. 140-56; Spring.
30. Spring, pp. 102-3.
31. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992).
32. Interview with teacher A, visit to school 1, field notes, Australia, 1998.
33. Interview with teacher B, visit to school 1, field notes, Australia, 1998.
34. Visit to school 2, field notes, United States, spring 2001.
35. See http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/̃jar/INAR.html.
36. Interview with principal, school 4, field notes, Australia, 2001.
37. I b i d.
38. I b i d.
39. Christine Sleeter, "Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelming Presence of Whiteness," Journal of Teacher Education 52, no. 2 (March/April 2001): 92-106.
40. Kris Johnston, "Learning to Be White," in Traveling Tracks, ed. Lorraine Johnson-Riordan (Goolangullia, New South Wales: University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, 1998), pp. 29-32.
41. Merridy Malin, "Mrs. Eyers Is No Ogre: A Micro-study in the Exercise of Power," in Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and "Our" Society, ed. G. Colishaw and B. Morris (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997), pp. 139-58.
42. Noel Pearson, "Rebuilding Indigenous Communities," in The Enabling State: People before Bureaucracy, ed. P. Botsman and M. Latham (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2001), pp. 132-47.
43. Claudine Michel, "Re-reading Disney: Not Quite Snow White," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 17, no. 1 (1996): 5-14; Frances Rains, "Indigenous Knowledge, Historical Amnesia, and Intellectual Authority: Deconstructing Hegemony and the Social and Political Implications of the Curricular 'Other,'" in Kincheloe et al., pp. 317-32.
44. Claudine Michel, "Re-reading Disney: Not Quite Snow White," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 17, no. 1 (1996): 5-14; Frances Rains, "Indigenous Knowledge, Historical Amnesia, and Intellectual Authority: Deconstructing Hegemony and the Social and Political Implications of the Curricular 'Other,'" in Kincheloe et al., pp. 317-32.
45. Mark Fettes, "Indigenous Education and the Ecology of Community," in Indigenous Community-Based Education, ed. Stephen May (Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters, 1999), pp. 21-41.
46. Michael Christie, "Galtha: The Application of Aboriginal Philosophy to School Learning," New Horizons in Education no. 103 (November 2000): 3-19; Teresa McCarty, A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2002).
47. Michael Christie, "Galtha: The Application of Aboriginal Philosophy to School Learning," New Horizons in Education no. 103 (November 2000): 3-19; Teresa McCarty, A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2002).
48. Beverly Slapin and Doris Scale, Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992); Clare Bradford, Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
49. Beverly Slapin and Doris Scale, Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992); Clare Bradford, Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
50. Daphne Meadmore, "The Pursuit of Standards: Simply Managing Education?" International Journal of Inclusive Education 5, no. 4 (2001): 353-65.
51. Michael Apple, "Racing towards Educational Reform: The Politics of Markets and Standards," in Multicultural Curriculum: New Directions for Social Theory, Practice, and Policy, ed. Ram Mahalingam and Cameron McCarthy (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 84-107.
52. Caroline Gipps, Beyond Testing: Towards a Theory of Educational Assessment (London: Falmer, 1995).
53. Jon Reyhner, interview, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, March 27, 2001.
54. Kenji Hakuta and Rafael M. Diaz, "The Relationship between Degree of Bilingualism and Cognitive Ability: A Critical Discussion and Some New Longitudinal Data," in Children's Language, vol. 5, ed. K. E. Nelson (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1985), pp. 319-44.
55. Megan Suarez, "Aboriginal English in the Legal System," Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 27, no. 1 (1999): 35-42; Anna Shnukal, "Language in Learning at Thursday Island High School," Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 24, no. 2 (1999): 42-52.
56. Megan Suarez, "Aboriginal English in the Legal System," Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 27, no. 1 (1999): 35-42; Anna Shnukal, "Language in Learning at Thursday Island High School," Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 24, no. 2 (1999): 42-52.
57. Christie.
58. Teresa McCarty and Lucille Watahomigie, "Indigenous Community-Based Language Education in the USA," in May, ed., pp. 79-94.
59. Stephen May, "Language and Education Rights for Indigenous Peoples," in May, ed., pp. 43-66.
60. Anne Hickling-Hudson and Marilyn McMeniman, "Pluralism and Australian Teacher Education," in Teacher Education in Plural Societies: an International Review, ed. Maurice Craft (London: Falmer, 1996), pp. 16-26; Elizabeth Hatton, "Dealing with Diversity: The Failure of Teacher Education," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 17, no. 1 (1996): 25-42.
61. Anne Hickling-Hudson and Marilyn McMeniman, "Pluralism and Australian Teacher Education," in Teacher Education in Plural Societies: an International Review, ed. Maurice Craft (London: Falmer, 1996), pp. 16-26; Elizabeth Hatton, "Dealing with Diversity: The Failure of Teacher Education," Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 17, no. 1 (1996): 25-42.
62. Hickling-Hudson and McMeniman, pp. 21-22.
63. Spring (n. 4 above).