ABSTRACT
Summary: Materials and methods of teaching embody a particular relationship between some of the members of a given culture and society and its young people. Educators may not be aware of the process in which they are engaged, and may believe that they are carrying out only particular activities such as teaching maths, reading, science and the like. In Australian schools, Aboriginal children are usually taught by European Australians, and ordinary problems are magnified by social inequality and cultural difference. The materials and methods of teaching in use sometimes assume this relationship to be one of disadvantage/advantage, and then the methods used resemble those for slow learners and other disadvantaged students; in other cases, these attitudes are mixed with a recognition of cultural difference as a variable to be considered; others— and these are few — derive from Aboriginal assertiveness, and attempts are made to teach within a framework of assumptions about cultural equality and independence. The picture is further complicated by the situations in which Black-White relationships arise: in particular the long-occupied areas where language and the original culture have been deeply transformed, areas where language and recognizably traditional ways exist but the land has been alienated, and areas where the land is held and language and religious life flourish.
The methods of teaching and the materials used express various forms of the relationship between Blacks and Whites, and hence are likely to undergo rapid transformation when these relationships change.
