ABSTRACT
For Australia's Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, education remains one of the main forces still maintaining them in a colonial relationship with all other Australians. It is no exaggeration to claim that all of the eight separate state and territory education bureaucracies that control Australian education still place 'civilizing' as the primary aim of aboriginal education. 'Civilizing' in education now means overcoming or changing those traits in students that are seen to stem from their Aboriginality, and are judged to impede their gaining competence in the set of core learning that constitutes the essential curriculum.
