By Richard Trudgen
“What are we going to do now? I keep my children at home and teach them real manners, law, and respect. I know if they go to the community school they will only learn to be lawless adults. They will hardly learn to read and write as I did in school in the mission days. So I keep them at home and teach them real things.” Yolngu Parent 2015
A Modern IT Answer
Almost half of Yolngu children do not attend school because they find the present schooling system, where they have to learn in English, so culturally unsafe and traumatic. The answer is a school that uses their highly effective educational language, Yolngu Matha.
In 2011, Why Warriors Pty Ltd developed a small e-learning prototype and trialled it. The response from Yolngu Leaders and parents at Galiwin’ku was overwhelming. Yolngu children, teenagers, and parents loved it.
This not only offered an effective and efficient learning opportunity for children and youth but also gave Yolngu adults the same opportunity to understand how to read and write in their own language and English. Plus, it provided a real active space for Yolngu parents to participate in their children’s learning.
Sadly, we have never been able to get follow-up funding for it despite all the talk about Closing the Gap.
The Yolngu response to the E-Learning trial Galiwin’ku – Elcho Island 2011
Yolngu parents are desperate, looking for ways to get a good education for their children. But they have limited options when it is all in English. Even bilingual schools only have bilingual programs up to the third grade. Attendance rates are much better in these first three years. However, they drop off significantly when English-only instruction is used.
Because Yolngu people speak an original Australian (Aboriginal) language, not English, they are locked out of effective, efficient, progressive learning opportunities. The current mainstream schooling system offers them very little hope, even though some Yolngu are still trying to use it. The lack of bilingual, culturally appropriate educational methodology leaves many Yolŋu students traumatised and/or struggling to learn.
This destroys the students’ real potential and leaves them marginalised and frustrated. Some become very angry against the mainstream Australian community, and some lash out against mainstream property and personnel, ending up in jail.
An effective and efficient IT solution
Why Warriors want to move ahead and develop a full e-Learning online Yolngu-centred school, once deployed, it will continue to deliver genuinely effective Yolngu-friendly education for many decades to come.
Accessed by many
This resource could be accessed by many. It could be used by Yolŋu parents and Elders, Yolngu teens, adults and children to self-drive their own learning. Mainstream schools could also use it to turbocharge the classroom experience with Yolngu Matha students.
During the 2011 trial, we heard many stories of Yolngu teens and young adults wanting access to the computers with Yolngu Matha/Engish learning modules loaded on them (computers that had no internet connection ability) to take to their rooms in town and on Homelands where they could practice the learning in a private safe learning environment. They wanted to do this to save face and not feel shame about their inability to read their own Australian language (Yolŋu Matha) or English.
Downloadable learning to write in both their original Australian language and English could also be loaded on this same platform along with many other things. All instructions (audio sound bites) would be in Yolŋu Matha. This would allow the student to have full control and complete cognitive engagement. It would also teach maths, world history and science – in Yolŋu Matha and English – through to a university level. This would be a resource that Yolŋu communities can control to drive their own learning experience, combining the best of traditional and contemporary knowledge.
