Abstract

A paper entitled Aboriginal Education: What is the Need for Separate Development? examines the idea that, in its widest sense, education is that part of the enculturative experience that, through the learning process, equips individuals to take their place as adult members of society. Inherent in this claim are a range of questions about the learning experience that will be addressed. The questions are: What is enculturation? What is the distinction between education and socialization? Whose culture is regarded as the essential experience in a society? What processes are used to ensure enculturation? What is the relationship between education and culture? What are the outcomes of any such relationship? These questions will be addressed using illustrations from contemporary Australian Aboriginal society with schooling as a focus. Enculturation subsumes education and socialization. Socialization is the unconscious learning that consists of the life-styles of each culture. The process of enculturation is said to be fundamentally important in determining the way each of us sees the world, but its use is problematic at the interface of traditional Aboriginal society and modern western technological culture.

Schools are seen as cultural artifacts fashioned to meet the needs of the dominant culture and in need of change. A theory of cultural capital and habitus, concepts of production, reproduction, ideology and hegemony are employed to give a framework to show how schools function to enable the dominant culture of their middle and upper-class constituents, and to disable Aborigines. This is so despite the idea that cognitive rationality is internally valid provided it is evaluated within its theory of knowledge. It will be seen that the enculturation does not necessarily mean 'success within the dominant culture' and this raises some doubts about the value of regarding Australia as a pluralistic society. One mechanism of schooling will be discussed in detail: cultural message systems in relation to Aboriginal socialization in order to show that schools are not able currently to incorporate Aboriginal interests. The context within which education takes place is added to the other message systems of schools. Control over this message system by Aborigines is seen as a useful tool for them to counter the negative effects that the other message systems have on their children's learning.

In a rapidly changing culture, such as the Western technological -type that has been imported into Australia, education is separated from socialization. This is a challenge to the traditional culture of Aborigines. There is some doubt about whether Aboriginal culture can be taught in any meaningful way in schools as they currently function. Based on outcomes to date, a successful Europeanized version of culture is not easily packaged for Aboriginal consumption either. It would appear that the two goals of an education system with a universalistic orientation, namely changes in values to an achievement orientation, and retention of a pride in Aboriginal cultural identity, are incompatible.

How Aborigines intend to meet their own needs is seen to be partly a matter of self- determination and will have to include changes in adaptation to western culture, but will also require a measure of accurate analysis and action on the part of the dominant society. One implication for education is the possibility of separate development under the control of Aborigines in a form determined by them and which allows for varying acculturation to non- Aboriginal culture. Various features of Aboriginal culture indicate that western technology needs to be integrated, with Aboriginals in control.

Groups of Aborigines in isolated areas are finding confidence in moving back to small groups to educate themselves in a manner that is supportive of their social structures. They need a new political alliance to sustain these initiatives. Since they are not yet perceived as a major political threat, a new social system is not likely to develop from their efforts or from those of any other educational reformers. However Aboriginals may be able to ease themselves into the realities of twentieth century technology through community control of the fourth message system of schools: its context, and thereby influence their childrens' education via the other message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation.

Patrick FitzsimonsAuckland Institute of Technology,New ZealandAboriginal Education: What is the Need for Separate Development?

IntroductionThis paper discusses the reproduction of existing social inequalities in Australia in relation to the causal mechanisms within schools of the educational failure of Aborigines. Rather than using a methodology of 'cultural deficit' or 'linguistic deprivation', schools will be seen as cultural artifacts (Harker, et al.,1985:143). A theory of cultural reproduction (Bourdieu,1974), and notions of ideology and hegemony (Gramsci, in Simon,1982) will be employed to show how schools function to enable the dominant culture of their middle and upper-class constituents, and to disable Aborigines. It will be seen that enculturation does not necessarily mean success within the dominant culture. Mechanisms of schooling will be seen to function to the advantage of the dominant culture in a predictable way. One mechanism is discussed: message systems in relation to Aboriginal socialization. The discussion will suggest that schools are not able currently to incorporate Aboriginal interests. Culture will be viewed dynamically and as both reproduction and production. How Aborigines intend to meet their own needs will be seen to be partly a matter of self- determination, and will have to include changes in their adaptation to western culture. It will also require a measure of accurate analysis and action on the part of the dominant society. The discussion also encompasses a critique of pluralism which is seen as a rhetorical ideal that serves political rather than educational ends. One implication for improvement is State or Federal Government economic support for a

measure of Aboriginal self determination. Separate development is not seen to be in the interests of either Aborigines or the dominant white society. The discussion follows Harker et. al.,(1985:175) who propose an explanatory cultural hegemony model of educational failure and inequality. The model is based on the following factors; the nature of community power structures; social class analysis; the political economy of education, which assumes a limited pool of ability and resources; the presence of social conflict (as opposed to an assumption of consensus politics) and; the class and culture-specific nature of existing school practices. Inherent in the discussion are a range of questions about the cultural learning experience that will be addressed. What is enculturation? What processes are used to ensure enculturation? What is the distinction between education and socialization? Whose culture is regarded as the essential experience in a society? How does ideology function to inhibit change? What is the relationship between education and culture? What are the outcomes of any such relationship for a pluralistic society?

The Process of EnculturationEnculturation is a learning experience. Thus the notion of culture is relevant to education. The process of enculturation is fundamentally important in determining the way each of us sees the world (Burtonwood,1986:18). 'The essence of a culture is to be sought in the material and intellectual symbols to which people respond in their social relations and in meeting their basic needs' (Cohen,1971:19). Enculturation subsumes education and socialization. Socialization is the unconscious learning that is the life-styles of each culture. It is the predominant mode of shaping of mind in social systems in which kinship is the primary principle in the organization of economic, political and other social relations. One of the salient features of kinship is its emphasis on particularistic criteria in design and evaluation of behaviours. The relationship between kinship, socialisation and education has been suggested by Cohen who says,

The qualitative role played by socialization is in direct proportion to the extent to which the network of kinship relations coincides with the network of personal relations. Correlatively, education tends to increase proportionately with the degree to which the network of kin relations fails to coincide with the network of personal relations.(Cohen,1971:22)

This explanation suggests that there are tensions inherent in the relationship between Aboriginal socialisation and the education that supports the Western technological society. In a rapidly changing Western-type culture, such as has been imported into Australia, education is separated from socialization. The network of kin relations does not coincide with the network of personal relations. Daily life is compartmentalized to a large extent. In contrast, in a traditional Aboriginal setting, education and socialization are very close. For example, the myths and legends are bound to the concrete realities of daily existence. Childrens' instruction in the theories of totemic life is reinforced in their daily observations. In the traditional Aboriginal life-

style, there are three distinctive elements. Firstly, the people who were visited and those with whom everyday living was shared were related. Secondly, there was emphasis on maintaining the status-quo, a looking to the past as a guide to the present and the future. And, thirdly, it was an intensely religious society which acknowledged spiritual ties to the land it occupied; to kin descended from the same mythical beings; and to the authority of elders who were learned in the ways of religion and involved in sacred affairs and so came nearest to communing with the controlling forces of nature.(Lippman,1981:11)

In traditional societies among the mechanisms of socialisation are,

the family, kin, the peer group, and the group's manipulation of guilt and ridicule. Members of a child's descent group are obligated to participate in the child's upbringing through a rule of joint legal liability. Manipulation of guilt by close kin in a very limited universe causes emotional involvement and is resistant to later change efforts. Conformity is thus ensured to small group pressures. Such socialization is in tension with school message systems and is not effectively altered by formal education. The younger the child is during the socialization experience, the less likely will be any change, and schools are trying to bring about change at a later stage. Adults too, will not stray too far from their familiar group's place or rules, as their self esteem is closely allied to the approval of the group. Thus, if a standardised curriculum and formal and stereotyped instruction were introduced, the particularisticly oriented sector of the culture's value system would be subverted because such means of instruction are designed to serve universalistic values.(Cohen, 1971:32).

Aboriginals have a problem, as does the state, if they aspire to the formal education of the dominant culture when their traditional socialization is in contradiction to it. Schools cannot currently separate socialization and education easily. They can educate only those whose socialization fits with the school's definition of reality and that in turn is defined, as Williams (1981:189) says, in large part by that group's relationship to the dominant economy.

Aboriginal Culture in Perspective.Aborigines and Europeans have not made a successful adaptation to each other's cultural institutions over the last two hundred years (Rowley, 1980). There has been historical resistance to white settlement, they suffer severely dsyfunctional social conditions, and are involved in legal land and mining interests disputes. Aborigines are not officially recognised as culturally different from the European settlers. There is a reluctance to offer them a treaty that would recognise them as a sovereign nation (Bell, 1990:32). Historically Aboriginals have been perceived by the white Australians as a problem. Dr. C Bryan from the Mosely Royal Commission on Aborigines said in 1934, 'I wish to speak of the half caste and the breeding out of the half caste the black man whose presence

irritates us and who is in addition a standing menace to our dreams of white Australia' (In Tuesday Documentary, TVNZ Channel 3. 30 October 1990).

How then can we explain the worth of Aboriginal culture when it seems to be irrational and failing when seen from a European perspective? Horton (1982) proposes a notion of universal rationality in opposition to relativism and presents a programme for the cross-cultural study of human thought systems. He assumes a strong core of human cognitive rationality prevalent to the cultures of all places on earth. He says that 'central to this common core of rationality is the use of theory in the explanations, predictions and control of events' (Horton,1982:256). A theory of universalism of rationality allows for comparable concepts, and intentions. The goals of explanation, prediction and control are of more or less equal importance in all cultures but the yield from pursuing these goals is greater in modern Western technical cultures that in others. By employing the notion of universal rationality, differences in styles and patterns of thought can be explained. In different technological, economic and social settings the logic of the context dictates the use of different intellectual means to achieve the same ends (Horton,1982:257). Everyday discourse ('primary theory') (Horton 1982: 259) provides the bridge for crossing from one culture to another. He says that primary theory does not vary much from culture to culture but rather is limited in its capacity to predict and control the events of life. It is the nature of the secondary theories that allow for differences in explanation. In Western cultures it is,

the competitive setting that is the leading part in stimulating theoretical innovation not by practically significant experiences and problems, but by configurations of experience selected or devised specifically for the purposes of inter-school warfare. As a result, we get a progressive divorce of secondary from practical life. Such a divorce has been a major feature of the development of Western modernism. (Horton,1982:246).

The competition between Western secondary theories is absent from cognitive life in traditional societies. 'Where the economy is such as to encourage a high degree of occupational specialization, then occupationally specific sub-cultures and ranges of experience will develop, providing a source of hetrogeneity' (Horton,1982:255). Encouragement is thus given in Western technological society to the development of theoretical pluralism and competition.

The tension between Aboriginal culture and Western society is evident when we compare the theories of knowledge of the cultures. Karl Popper (Harker,1985:67) distinguishes between natural and normative laws which are explanatory systems for interpreting contradictions inherent in everyday life. Natural laws are those used for describing the events of nature, and the normative laws are the norms, prohibitions or commandments which forbid or demand certain modes of conduct. Traditional cultures do not have sharp distinctions between the natural and normative laws. 'It is understandable

that those who think in this way may believe that the natural laws are open to the same modifications as are normative laws and that natural regularities are upheld by sanctions as if they were normative' (Harker,et,al.,1985:68). In traditional cultures no distinction is made between sacred and everyday knowledge. They are both manifestations of a sense of wholeness. Sacred knowledge is contained in the interpretation of the group's past through mythologies which

... act as charters of present social institutions rather than as faithful historical records of the past. (...) In a traditional culture with an oral mode of transmission, individuals have little perception of the past except in terms of the present whereas the annals of a literate society cannot but enforce a more objective recognition of the distinction between what was and what is. (Goody & Watt,1968:34).

In the Western scientific culture it is evident that the 'literate individual has in practice so large a field of personal selection from the total cultural repertoire that the odds are strongly against his (or her) experiencing the cultural tradition as any sort of patterned whole' (Goody, & Watt.1968:58): hence the development of pluralism. Traditional cultures are consensual and knowledge is legitimated by ancestors. These cultures are intellectually conservative and their focus is on day to day happenings. Change is unperceived and slow and there is an absence of alternative beliefs and explanations. 'There is little if any explicit critical monitoring of secondary theory. In terms of general criteria of empirical adequacy or consistency there is a limitation of scope which stems from the fact that the coverage of secondary theory is centred on experience that is of practical significance' (Horton,1982:243).

The traditional cultural life of Aborigines is very different from that of the dominant culture. Their culture represents a consistency between the overall institutional structure of the society and its methods of enculturating its future adult members. The life of the Aboriginal is concerned with maintaining harmony with nature, rather than in the exercise of authority or power over it. Contact with Europeans has destroyed their traditional dependence on the ecological environment. Contact has also caused many aspects of their social structure to become dysfunctional thereby contributing to the disintegration of traditional Aboriginal society. Their traditional preference for a value orientation emphasising harmony with nature contrasts with a Western cultural belief in the ability to master the environment that mediates educational achievement in their dominant society.

Learning to become a member of traditional Aboriginal culture contains an arbitrary element. What is fundamental to the community is not questioned. A change in this arbitrary element would appear to be desirable. Aborigines might be able to explain away a few anomalies with a certain degree of panache in the face of Western technological cultural challenge, but under their present chaotic social conditions (see Sommerlad,1976:38),

they need a new set of commitments. This is not to deny the value of many aspects of traditional life, which, through self-determination, they may wish to retain. It seems possible for Aboriginals to contemplate adopting a mastery over the environment orientation and achievement behaviour while at the same time retaining traditional beliefs. Contrary to a commonly held notion, there is no logical contradiction between scientific knowledge and many forms of superstitious belief. There is evidence (Jahoda in, Sommerlad, 1976:56) to show that among Africans such beliefs survive education up to and including the university level. This is reinforced by Cohen (1971:20) who suggests that the adoption of material items of another culture does not necessarily involve the reshaping of modes of mind. Since a majority of Aborigines still retain much of their traditional belief system and yet live a non-traditional life- style (Broome,1983), Cohen's (ibid) ideas could be usefully applied. Watts (Bell,1990:34) reveals that Aboriginal people have distinctive structures and characteristics of their own as well as structures in common with the mainstream society.

Aboriginals are born into their social group and inherit its culture but for most of them the socio-economic rewards are available through successful adaptation to the dominant Western culture. Cultural success within modern capitalism depends on capital accumulation and consumption. Aboriginals are not a unified cultural group and have varying degrees of adaption to the dominant culture. To the extent that they adopt Western cullture, Aboriginals will also recognise the mainstream socio - economic rewards as part of their enculturation. Thus culture seen as reproduction and used in a metaphorical sense, if pushed too hard, can obscure processes of relative autonomy and change. Acceptance of the inevitability of enculturation amounts to a reification of culture. Culture is a set of phenomena which can be analysed at a level that is autonomous from the individual bearers of that culture (Burtonwood,1986:11) and since people can communicate across cultures, barriers are not insurmountable. 'A social group or a society as a whole should be thought of separately from it's culture' (Bullivant,1981:2). Culture seen as constraint and as reproduction therefore needs to be tempered with the idea of culture as production.

Cultural PluralismThe essential problem addressed in this section is how to balance knowledge preserved from the past with the rapidly expanding knowledge generated in the present. In a society with a heterogeneous population the means of achieving these twin aims is simpler than in Australia where there are both traditional and modern cultures represented. The current dominant ideology lends support for the view that Australia is a pluralist society with many constituent ethnic groups whose cultures are based on traditions and who express a desire to maintain the central mores of their cultures.

Modern cultures are progressive and competitive; knowledge is reality tested for its predictive and explanatory power. They are intellectually dynamic and change is deliberate and often rapid. There are alternative explanations competing for attention. One of these explanations is the

ideology of cultural pluralism which depends in part on the belief that all cultures are of equal absolute value. The group that dominates is said to depend on the fair play of competing oppositions i.e., democratic process. But democracy is a problematic notion. The meaning of democracy can be located on a continuum ranging from the ideal of a participative version at one end to the Australian dominant Westminster style parliamentary- type at the other. In this latter model there is opportunity for those who understand and have influence in the institutions to use tactics such as lobbying, pressure groups and power to control the situation and for the dominant group to rule with up to 49% of the population opposed to them. One group's ideology is legitimated at the expense of other groups' interests. Thus the claim that a parliamentary democracy is culturally pluralistic is questionable. In the ideal democracy, cultural pluralism includes basic ideas about equal opportunity for all people, respect for human dignity, and the power to control the significant environmental and psychological forces impinging on people. It also includes recognition, acceptance and support for all cultures A glance at the socio-economic rankings indicates that this is not the result in Australian society. The resulting inequitable distribution of wealth in Australia has been documented by Raskell (Bates,1986). The middle and upper- class groups comprise fifty per-cent of the population but they have cornered about ninety per-cent of the wealth. Aborigines, on the other hand, suffer disproportionately from unemployment as over seventy per-cent of the Aboriginal potential workforce is made up of manual and domestic labourers and only two per-cent have positions of responsibility in the dominant economy (Howe, 1977:65). If position in the economy influences access to school message systems through the development of the 'correct' habitus, (Bourdieu,in Harker,1985:141) then with such a large proportion of their population located on the margins of the secondary job market, Aborigines cannot 'equip' themselves to take their place as an adult member of the dominant white society but are enculturated for an economically marginal existence. For most Aborigines school qualifications are not accessible. Such socio-economic disadvantage on the basis of discrimination or for any other unfair reason is the antithesis of the idealism and reverence for universal human rights inherent in Australian ideals of a political democracy. Australia is committed ideologically, in theory at least, to democracy, but protecting and catering for individual as well as group rights in a democracy points towards the essence of the pluralist dilemma. The democratic protection of individual and group rights risks weakening the cohesion of the nation state by interfering with the enculturation imperative: the need to have enough of a common culture passed to each generation of children' (Bullivant,1981:14). Nash (1990:168) puts the need for cultural reproduction even more strongly when he says 'the reproduction from one generation to the next of the social relations of production and the cultural symbols ordering those relations are as essential to the maintenance of society as biological reproduction itself'.

The driving force for change from traditionalism to modernism is, according to Horton (1982:251), the change in the mode of transmission from oral to literate and the pace of environmental change. His major point is that

cognitive rationality is common to all cultures and produces different outcomes in specific economic, technological and social settings. In multi-ethnic societies the cognitive rationality of the various groups are in competition for legitimation, and yet only one, the Western scientific version, has dominated. Cognitive rationality is internally valid for all cultures provided it is evaluated within its theory of knowledge. But 'when written transmission comes in alongside oral it profoundly shakes the view of the past encouraged by the latter and thus highlights the differences between the present state of society and various earlier states' (Horton,1982:251). The dominant culture of Australia is a modern one and there has been since the middle of the nineteenth century a high pressure for, and resulting rate of, change. Written modes of transmission encourage comparisons and competition and therefore challenge traditional Aboriginal cultural values. Currently one specific set of cultural traits has greater instrumental utility within the power structure of Australian society.

MulticulturalismMulticulturalism is one educational response to the belief in pluralism as a model of society. Two broad models of multicultural education currently dominate thinking about the nature and causes of differences in opportunities and outcomes in schools (Harker,1985:172). The first is the compensatory-meritocratic model which emphasizes equal access to schooling and social success through an education which is substantially the same for all children. The second, the liberal-multicultural model, emphasizes varied outcomes from schooling and varied types of schooling. It argues for the recognition of these outcomes as being of equal worth and not subject to any absolute standards of excellence. Both models are unable to alter or explain adequately the cultural bases of educational and social achievement, and each is conflict with the other.

On the one hand, the proponents of multiculturalism and humanist cultural retention, grounded in a belief in the necessity of preserving distinctive cultural lifestyles, fail to take sufficient account of the existence and nature of conflict, cultural hegemony and cultural capital in the wider society. They assert that solutions to the problems of inequality can be achieved by introducing multicultural studies into school programmes. This approach fails to recognize the social structural determinants of oppression. Their preferred solution is likely to result in the encapsulation of the mass of children within the very social structure which oppresses them. The end result of these programmes is therefore the establishment of that paternalistic tolerance which perpetuates and legitimates the political, economic and cultural hegemony of the white Australian English-speaking upper-middle-class male.(Harker et.al.,1985:174)

Given the facts (Raskell,ibid., Harker,et.al.,1985:13) about the structural socio-economic inequality, the ideological claim that Australia is a pluralist society is rhetorical or at best normative. It serves to maintain the dominance of the white ethnocultural group which controls the access that Aborigines have to social rewards and economic resources. Part of

this control is exercised through education where the problem is in deciding how much diversity to allow in curriculum planning as against the degree of centralised control necessary to have at least a minimal common core selection of the culture transmitted to each generation of children. If the society is to survive, it is essential that its culture is passed on to its children and 'this key fact may well be the underlying reason why all approaches to catering for pluralist elements in society could be doomed to fail' (Bullivant,1981:X). Thus multiculturalism as a curriculum model is an ideology that is used as an educational response to the pluralist dilemma and as such might be better seen as a political rather than an educational response (Gibson,in Bullivant,1982:236).

Inherent in this discussion is an assumption of social justice which is seen as the provision of equal access to the means of obtaining political, economic and social power regardless of ethnic background. Thus if we accept cultural difference while ignoring the political and economic realities of society, we encourage a model of multiculturalism which is likely to produce the very kinds of monoculturalism which it seeks to eradicate, while posing absolutely no threat to the entrenched power of the dominant cultural group. Schools and teachers in isolation from other social institutions (e.g., the economy, the family, religion, or political forces) are not able to effect the major societal changes demanded by the goals of multiculturalism. This is also true of the modification of attitudes in children which are developed and sustained by a wide variety of influences, of which the school is only one and, possibly, a relatively insignificant one. It poses something of a dilemma for Australia which claims it is a pluralist nation- state. One strategy is to take action in the social and political fields with the objective of getting the criteria of 'success' broadened to incorporate criteria from knowledge codes other than that of the dominant cultural and social fraction. Until this latter task is accomplished the education system cannot claim to be multicultural or even bi-cultural.

Dominance Through IdeologyIdeology functions to maintain the status quo. In a modern technological society, the view of human nature often presented as the 'best', 'natural' or 'real', is an ideology which has as its philosophical foundation the priority of the individual over the collective. The individualistic view encapsulates the twin strands of reductionism and biological determinism. Reductionism explains the properties of complex wholes in terms of the units of which those wholes are comprised. Biological determinism explains human behaviour through a belief in the fixing of human nature by our genes. The presentation of phenomena are in the form of opposing dualisms and dichotomies (fact from value, practice from theory etc) from which we are meant to choose. An opposing view of human nature denies biology and acknowledges only social construction. This latter view is equally deterministic except instead of biology we have culture. The fact that not all cultures are embued with the individualistic priority, suggests that a dialectical relationship between the properties of the opposing cultures needs to be considered if we want to evaluate Aboriginal culture.

The concept of hegemony can be used to describe the processes by which the domination by one group over another is seen as the 'natural order' of things. It is, 'a set of meanings and values which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in a society, a sense of absolute' (Apple,1979:5). Ideological belief is the mechanism for ordering and legitimating the irrationalities of daily life. Belief in the value of schooling as it is currently wrongly represented as a means to equality can therefore be seen as ideological. However the ideology can be contested and therefore the hegemony can be altered.

Ideology as used in a non-perjorative sense is a pattern of beliefs and concepts both factual and normative which purport to explain complex social phenomena with a view to directing and simplifying socio -political choices facing individuals and groups (Gould,in Bullivant,1981:11). Every human way of acting which hides the true nature of society, built as it is on contrarieties, is ideological. Any claims that cultural institutions have this ideological function is not an attack on the character of those who originate these institutions but only states the objective role such realities play in society (Horkeimer,1989:8). Ideologies can take the form of substantive statements (truth claims) or normative statements about the nature of society and its education system. These are essentially descriptive statements, and can be tested to see if they are accurate by examining the facts. Normative statements are ideal claims about what the future of the society should be. They are clearly prescriptive and cannot be tested for the truth of their facts but they can be given consistency tests. If normative claims are not consistent or of some substance, they can be labelled as rhetorical. An ideology is used by its holders to maintain the status-quo in society. Opposing it can be one or more counter-ideologies and their supporters who try to promote activities which seek a change in the prevailing state of affairs. Confrontations and tensions are generated between the various ideological groups. The resulting confrontations serve the purposes of: 'legitimation, negation and specification' (Vaughan & Archer in Bullivant,1981:12).

The first process in securing dominance through the use of ideology is in legitimating dominance and the use of assertion which also function to legitimate educational philosophies and practices. There are counter -ideologists who attempt to establish a counter-ideology and try to negate the sources of the legitimation of the dominant group's ideology. By these means both groups try to gain credibility by showing that 'they are not just words but are possible of realization in terms of concrete programmes' (Bullivant,1981:12).

The second means to ideological dominance is through a group's control over knowledge. As Martin (1978) suggests,

the dominance of some parties implies their capacity to define interests and identities, to monopolize access to knowledge and it's construction

and to assert that certain knowledge is valid, irrespective of whether it has been validated in the way claimed or not. To the extent that certain parties dominate the construction of knowledge to the exclusion of others, the knowledge so produced is ideological. (Quoted in Bullivant,1981:12).

A third means of ideological dominance is through the ruling out of certain things as objects of public knowledge. An example is the devaluing in education of other that Western technology and its supporting scientific explanations and processes. Challenges to the decision makers are thwarted or suppressed regardless of the validity of the challenge.

A fourth way of maintaining ideological dominance is by not making clear the details of the ideology. Phrases and slogans are used to obfuscate issues so that, for example, one set of words can be used for many occasions. This has the effect on counter- ideologies of ignoring them. The use of such rhetorical mechanisms by ideologists and counter-ideologists mean that their central concepts are not fully examined but are accepted as the truth. Ideas and modes of thinking are constrained and supported by the social setting which includes uneven power distribution among groups along class lines as well as interest and pressure groups. Each group can and does influence the way the ideologists select, organize and implement the curriculum. They may also try to influence the definition of what knowledge is or 'what are relevant, desirable or necessary objects of knowledge' (Bullivant,1981:10). When such tactics are used by highly placed and powerful 'accredited reality definers' the parameters of any particular body of knowledge are thus embedded within larger constructs. This automatically negates or neutralizes alternative definitions of what legitimately belongs to that body of knowledge (Bullivant,1981:10). Thus the curriculum of the dominant culture can be seen as ideological.

The need for literacy in a modern culture as in Australia is ideological in a descriptive sense. The ideologies of traditional societies are built on their life's experiences. Their mode of transmission is an 'oral converse which is probably much more realistic and conservative' (Goody & Watt,1968:59) for them than the dominant ideology. The literate mode of communication does not impose itself uniformily across all sections of the scientific culture. This is a problem because differentiations in status and access to economic wealth in society is related to the differentiation in the shades of literacy possessed by individuals. The very nature of literate methods makes them ill- suited to bridge the gap between cultures. The need for literacy is based around the Western cultural epistemology which underlies the production of the material goods. Traditional Aboriginal culture is not built around the capitalist mode of production and thus the need for literacy is ideological in the normative sense. Given the low levels of success in mainstream schooling for Aboriginals to date, the stated need for literacy is ideological in the rhetorical sense. There are consequences for the continuance of ideological dominance in a society with rapid change where literacy allows for documentation and reflection.

The occurrence of ideology in the members of a society necessarily depends on their place in economic life; only when relationships have so far developed and conflicts of interest have reached such an intensity that even the average eye can penetrate beyond appearance to what is really going on, does a conscious ideological apparatus in the full sense usually make its appearance. As an existing society is increasingly endangered by its internal tensions, the energies spent in maintaining an ideology grow greater and finally the weapons for supporting it with violence. (Horkeimer,1989:8).

School Message Systems First, how can schools contribute to the reduction of social inequality by improving the life chances of oppressed groups, while not merely changing the nature of oppression? Second, how can schools set about minimizing the dissonance between the world view which they assume, and those which children bring to school with them? What happens inside schools is problematic because if the consequences of school success are to be distributed more equitably and at the same time certain differences at the cultural level are maintained, then changes will have to be made to the school message systems. If schools cannot, or will not, change their mechanisms to even up life's chances for Aboriginal students, there is a serious question about why the latter would want to continue attending. According to Bell (1990:35), the Sykes model which incorporates the traditional Aboriginal community interest and ways of teaching skills, depicts Aboriginal needs and social reality accurately. She claims that if Aboriginal people were given autonomy over their education 'there would be no period of experimentation; their model is unique in that it has undergone the longest evaluation of any existing in the world today' (Bell,1990:35).

Formal educational knowledge can be considered to be realized through three message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. Curriculum defines what counts as valid knowledge, pedagogy defines what counts as a valid transmission of knowledge, and evaluation defines what counts as a valid realization of this knowledge on the part of the taught.(Bernstein,1975:85).

To these three message systems Harker et.al., (1985:145) add a further one: that of the context in which education takes place. The contextual factor is important in the educational progress within the Aboriginal outstation movement discussed later in this paper. The notion of 'culture as production', shows that schools produce failure as well as success. The functioning of schools is matter of concern because in Australian society, which includes Aboriginal culture, only the dominant culture and social structure are reproduced. Based on outcomes to date, 'it would appear that the two goals of education, namely changes in values to an achievement orientation, and retention of a pride in Aboriginal identity, were incompatible' (Sommerlad,1976:80). There is also doubt whether Aboriginal culture can be taught in any meaningful way in schools as they currently

function (Lippman, 1981:141). The contents of the curriculum are a selection of 'worthwhile' knowledge of the dominant culture (Lawton,1975) and generally do not contain any knowledge of a worthwhile nature of Aboriginal culture. when it can be shown that Aborigines do not succeed while certain other groups predictibly do. Functioning as they do, schools reinforce the dominant social and economic order. To the degree that schools function to dispossess their constituents, their political legitimacy becomes questionable.

Cultural CapitalBourdieu (1974:42), examines the mechanisms of schooling in terms of cultural reproduction. He extends the economic analogy of capital to other forms of capital e.g., social, cultural, and symbolic. Cultural capital is deemed to be the possession of habitus: the internalization of culture within individuals. Culture as reproduction for Bourdieu is overly deterministic, and the notion of habitus can explain better how the school culture is accessed almost exclusively by certain groups in society. His point is that,

... middle class pupils succeed simply by being better resourced. These resources (or capitals as Bourdieu calls them) are of three kinds; (1) financial; (2) symbolic; and (3) social. Families are to a very considerable extent differentially endowered with these resources as a result of their location in the class structure.(...) The concepts of resource theory are not 'cultural deprivation' and 'linguistic restriction' but ones which recognize a class structured continuum of resources. These resources, coupled with long term strategic planning, prove to be extremely potent.(Nash.1990:170).

Resources can be converted into real capital within the economic system. Cultural capital is gained by access to the cultural message systems of the school which can happen through the possession of the 'correct' habitus. Aboriginal socialization processes do not create the type of cultural capital necessary for access to schooling. Possession of economic capital determines the degree of choice available to the individual in that economy. As with education, the economy is a product of human agency and can therefore be seen as a cultural artifact. Since life's chances are related to both the economy and schooling, then the mutually determining mechanisms of both need to be acknowledged. Students whose life-styles are not reinforced by schooling have difficulty in accessing the economy. Students who are not reinforced by the economy have difficulty accessing school credentials. That makes the process by which students become disadvantaged a circular one. Thus what it means to educate is problematic in a cross-cultural context. Culture seen only as transmission from one generation to the next, masks the function of social reproduction. It treats the cultural heritage as being the undivided property of the whole society rather than as belonging only to those endowed with the means of appropriating it for themselves (NZCSWG Newsletter.1984:39). Thus 'educational capital is not enough. In order to convert it into social and

economic capital, the individual must also be the possessor of an appropriate amount of symbolic capital, derivable only from the habitus of the dominant elite' (NZCSWG Newsletter.1982:43). Such reproduction is facilitated by an appropriate socialization in the family. Bourdieu calls this socialization 'habitus'. It is different from culture. Habitus is, 'a system of durably acquired schemes of perception, thought and action, engendered by objective conditions but tending to persist even after an alteration of these conditions (Bourdieu,et.al.,1979.In, NZCSWG Newsletter). 'That is, culture exists within the individual and is constructed anew as each individual grows up in that culture'(Harker et.al.,1985:31). Bourdieu argues that school culture is close to that of the dominant group or elite. Such a situation places at a disadvantage all those children from groups other than those whose habitus is embodied in the school. This effectively excludes Aborigines because of their socialization. Through school certification and styles of operating, habitus can be observed and measured, but culture cannot: it must be extrapolated by inferring from many habitus. (NZCSWG Newsletter, 1982:37).

Culture is a system of meanings that are symbolic and it incorporates rules about how an individual defines reality. The rules cannot be observed directly: they must be inferred from observation and from the identification of regularities. It is habitus that is the individual's personal internalisation of culture and includes, in the case of Aborigines, a measure of European culture. It is this personalized version of culture which confronts the school curriculum. As a result, any success or failure at school is experienced at a personal level. This fits well with the school ideology (which reflects the economy it supports) of individual competition and private ownership of knowledge. Individual habitus become changed to accept failure as inevitable for them, whereas the biased cultural rules do not enter into the dialogue. 'Culture fills and largely determines the course of individual lives yet rarely intrudes into conscious thought' (Harker, et.al.,1985:25). The functioning of schools in disadvantaging some cultures is masked.

If we use the metaphor of culture as production, it allows us to see that message systems operate in schools to disadvantage those who are informed by tradition and who do not have the 'correct' style. Bourdieu (1979) calls this disadvantaging 'symbolic violence'. Aboriginal knowledge codes are integrated. They are holistic and dependent on stable relationships with kin. The concrete realities of everyday life are seen to be the physical manifestations of the spiritual life. The traditional knowledge was the preserve of the adults and elders. We need to contrast this with schools in the Western economy where there is a relationship between strong classification of knowledge, the concept of property and the creation of specific identities (Berstein,1975:97). The learning styles of Aboriginal children have been researched and provide a challenge to the usual Western form of school pedagogy. Their learning is characterised by mastery of context-specific skills rather than context-free principles. They are used to learning in a real-life setting, rather than the contrived one of the classroom (Lippman,1981:141).

School message systems embody the same kind of knowledge, values, attitudes, motivations, delivery, and evaluations, as are found in class-located patriarchal families (Nash, 1986). 'Families are in the business of social and cultural reproduction and most are fairly good at it. Jones and Davies' (1986) retrospective study of social mobility in New Zealand provides evidence in support of the belief that the patterns of inter -generational mobility in that country are very similar to those in Australia and the USA' (Nash,1990:169). The family leader is usually the father who has status according to his position within the economy. Class located patriarchial families have capital resources, specific knowledge of how to operate the system which includes social contacts and educational qualifications. They are engaged in long term strategic action to conserve and reproduce their class location. Specific examples are; transfer of resources through trusts, setting up dowries for daughters to maintain gender differences, promotion of an ideology about the sanctity of marriage and the nuclear family, pressure for children to associate with and marry the 'right' partner, provision of higher education for all the family and from where daughters are introduced to contacts that will ensure they move in the 'correct' circles until marriage. The strategies work for them. Economically these people are well off and large numbers gain qualifications; ie., academic capital which in turn reinforces their position in the economy. There are also certain skills, attitudes and values which distinguish the successful child from his or her unsuccessful peers in the eyes of the selection agencies (Harker et.al.,1985:178). The first is cultural awareness. The successful child is likely to be aware of how the dominant culture operates. This includes a variety of levels of awareness - political, economic, aesthetic, social and so on. The second area is language. The successful child is likely to possess a variety of linguistic styles, which can be utilized appropriately in different situations. In particular, this involves the ability to use formal, standard English in appropriate situations. The third area is in inter-personal relations. The grammar of inter-personal relationships varies across and within cultures. The successful child is likely to be familiar with the rules of these grammars for a variety of situations, and to be able to adopt the appropriate rules for different situations.

Thus many of the determinants of occupational status, success and privilege in society lie outside the child and are only marginally accessible to the school. For Aboriginals with traditional values, some elements of the reproductive processes in society are still more or less under the control of the local community (particularly the family structure and early socialization) and these tend to be oriented towards maintaining aspects of that group's life- styles. But other elements of the reproductive process are effectively beyond their control: a significant one being the state controlled education system. Education is overt, systematic, and determines life's chances in the economy. It is, 'the predominant mode of shaping the mind in social systems in which nonkinship and universalistic considerations are of primary significance in the organization of economic, political, and other social relations (Cohen,1971:36). One of the goals of

a such a system of universals is the subversion of the local authority of Aboriginal structures and the building up of loyalty to the State. In this state of affairs, community cultural background counts for nothing, as education has as one of it's values adaptation to change. Education is a key form of cultural reproduction which can be linked with the more general reproduction of existing social relations because as Williams (1981:185) says, 'What is true of a culture, at it's most general level is true also at different levels, of many of the elements of cultural process. Thus a (cultural) form is inherently reproducible'. However, to argue for the importance of the recognition of the operation of cultural capital accumulation is not to argue for compensatory education. The accumulation of cultural capital is not equivalent to the replacement of one culture with another. Failure to recognize this point has led to the conceptual impoverishment and failure of many compensatory education programmes. The accumulation of cultural capital by members of minority groups can be achieved without its being at the cost of the replacement of their culture with that of the ruling class: there is no reason why the nature of cultural capital cannot itself be changed.

Self Determination A policy of assimilation of Aboriginals children into schools as they currently function would not work because, 'there are some groups for whom 'success' in school would imply an individual's rejection of his or her social origins. These are influences which have the effect of discouraging excessive ambition' (NZCSWG, Newsletter,1984:40). Most European controlled attempts at Aboriginal education have failed (Fargher,et.al.In, Bell,1990) and thus attempts at a hegemonic alliance through education have not worked. One notable attempt to interrupt Aboriginal socialisation was the detaining of Aboriginal children in educational institutions outside their families (Bell,1990:35). The intention was that the children would be socialised into Western ways and teach their families when they returned home. This flow of knowledge is the reverse of the traditional Aboriginal model. The result was a failure with high costs to their personal and cultural well being. Yet in order to deal with the western technological cultural invasion Aborigines will have to ally with other social forces that have intellectual and moral leadership and are identified with their interests. Schools are the dominant culture's mechanisms for the transmission of such ideology, but as schools are, Aboriginals do not have their interests represented equitably. In the longer term, consent from Aboriginal society for educational adaptation will only come about through a cultural approach that is adaptive to a fair representation of their interests or is significantly under their control. Support for this has been documented in the case of Aboriginal success at the Strelley pastoral station. Previously the tribal elders had seen too many young Aborigines going away to school and returning 'broken people', fitting into neither the white world nor the black (Lippman,1981:142). Such results had caused Strelley community since 1974 to resist all forms of white control including the offer of a government funded school. Strelley is directed by Aborigines and is considered to fulfil its aims. White culture is accepted but restricted with the result that the young people have a more positive

attitude to schooling than do most other young Aborigines (Lippman,1981:144). Thus Aboriginal control of their own cultural message systems is necessary because, 'while we have a curriculum organized around the knowledge code of one of the groups constituting a plural society, we will always have educational inequalities attributable to social and ethnic origin' (Harker,et.al.,1985:144). An optimistic outlook would have Aboriginal control over a fourth message system, the context within which education takes place, added to the other three message systems of schools.

However, the more pessimistic, while supporting the need for schools to reflect the cultural arbitrary of its pupils, continue to doubt the power of the school to massively interupt differences produced by initial literacy socialisation. The impetus of such socialisation does not cease on entry to school but, on the contrary, continues to gain force providing a stimulus which should be understood as continual and cumulative. Were there convincing research conducted anywhere in the world to support the thesis that schools possess some hidden potential to negate the continual power of family resources, it would be easier to drink from the optimists' cup. Unfortunately, the entire history of theoretical and practical pedagogy lends itself to no such interpretation.(Nash,1990:173)

For Aborigines then, the processes involved in becoming enculturated as adult members of society include, but are not limited to, changes in education. The rhetoric of multiculturism does not address issues of power adequately because lifes chances are affected by access that is not currently available to Aborigines in the context of schools as we know them. Their socialization is not conducive to mainstream school message systems and vice versa. This effectively leaves the Aborigines outside the hegemony. What the future holds is not known. There are difficulties as individuals in society confront realities that are foreordained, over which they have little if any control, and that are products of their societies history. Any changes in the enculturation process must be congruent with the cultural realities for which the individuals are being prepared (Cohen,1971:21). But this will be unlikely in the Australian mainstream education system in the near future because, 'no educational system in history has been consciously and deliberately transformed without first heaving over the entire social system to which it is an adaptation' (Cohen,1971:37).

Commenting on the failure of assimilationist policies being worked out in setlement schools in Northern Territory since the 1960's, McConnochie (1982:79) stresses the need for education to become part of the community, sensitive to the major changes in goals in school organization and in teaching styles which communities are beginning to demand. At Strelley, Hermannsberg and Yiprinya (Harker,et.al.,1985:169) Aborigines are finding confidence in their control over the community context of schooling to educate their children in a manner that is supportive of their social structures. All three communities place literacy as a central demand in the schools while controlling the cultural input. However the implications of this demand have not been fully worked through by these communities.

While the effects of literacy will depend heavily on the nature and functions of literacy in the communities, the possible effects on knowledge and authority systems are profound (Harker, et.al.,1985:168). A major challenge is to develop political alliances to sustain these initiatives. Since they are not yet perceived as a major political threat, a new social system is not likely to develop from them or from other educational reformers. Nash suggests that a,

dual thrust is necessary: the development of a literacy- focused culture throughout the community, and the greatest degree of effective local control of the school. (...) This provokes the thought that the school may not be the most fruitful site to interrupt the process which translates school credentials to occupations and further educational places. (Nash,1990:173)

New cultural forms may arise from their communities that are relatively autonomous from mainstream control. But the use of the term community is ideological when applied to the wider society. 'Most communities in the urban - industrial milieu are imagined' (Pearson,1990:37). Since there is no community with deep social bonds in a class divided social formation (Nash,1990:174)), it may be difficult for Aborigines to access the dominant culture from their self- determining community- based educational efforts. To maintain a sense of community it will be necessary for them to socialize their children in Aboriginal ways. If that socialisation develops traditional Aboriginal 'habitus', then their children will repeat the failure associated with their previous efforts to access the mainstream society through schooling which values its own reproductive process based on a different form of cultural capital. Aboriginals may develop new cultural forms outside formal education. Tradition need not necessarily be totally reproductive. Cultural maintenance should be thought of as dynamic rather than static; controlling the pace of change and producing new forms rather than opposing it. Although education is an effective carrier and organiser of tradition there are other social processes of a less overtly systematic kind by which tradition is shaped and reshaped. 'It is observably easier to present the elements of an alternative or even an oppositional tradition in the looser and more general relations of a whole cultural process, than it is, for example, to organize an alternative and especially an oppositional educational system (Williams,1981:188). This has implications for Aborigines who are faced with the need to cope with a dominant culture that separates education from socialization because 'even quite radical amendments of the terms of relations are compatible with the still effective reproduction of the deep form of privileged ownership. This virtual identity between the conditions of most practices and a deeply organized form of social relations is then the process of reproduction at it's most deterministic level (Williams,1981:189). But participation in new forms of education is needed because rejection by Aborigines of the knowledge from the dominant culture will not do as 'some aspects of school culture (fluency of speech and writing and the very multiplicity of abilities) are characteristics of all societies based on school learning' (NZCSWG Newsletter.1982:43). Australia is one such society.

ConclusionMost Aborigines live a version of the traditional life-style that has been influenced to in varying degrees by the dominant culture. The competitive nature of the dominant society is such that it will continue to use schools to reproduce its place in the hegemony. Any changes made within schools will be likely to be based on an outcome of a renewed and polarised political and cultural struggle. This is likely to be between 'New Right' free market principles (whose competitive nature may further alienate Aborigines from the mainstream society), and genuine collective democratic practices and action based on an accurate analysis of the cultural roots of the pluralist dilemma. Currently there are cracks in the rhetoric: the ideology contestation is increasing and the hegemony is threatened. Aborigines need to be successful in their attempts to come to a successful adaptation to the dominant culture while retaining a measure of self determination. Otherwise one outcome could be that some younger members of Aboriginal culture may become allied to the more militant groups as an alternative way of becoming a recognised member of society because presently the discrepancy between their socialization and western education ensures their enculturation is an alienating experience.

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