Radical hope: Education and equality in Australia.

Beresford, Quentin ; Gray, Jan

Radical hope: Education and equality in Australia

Noel Pearson

Quarterly Essay, Issue 35. Melbourne: Black Inc. 2009. 125pp. ISBN: 978-1-86395-444-0

Reversing the chronic underachievement of Aboriginal young people in school has challenged policy-makers at both state and federal levels for more than two decades. Despite numerous inquiries and reports, the signs of substantial progress are few and far between. In short, lifting the achievement levels of Aboriginal children is one of the toughest tasks in education policy. It is therefore highly noteworthy that Noel Pearson, high-profile Aboriginal leader and public intellectual, has weighed into the debate.

In this recent edition of Quarterly Essay, Pearson proposed a radical change to the direction of Aboriginal education. Although he confined his discussion to Cape York, such is his conviction in the changes he proposed that it is clearly intended to have wider application. The Essay reveals Pearson's unique combination of skills: his capacity to get to the heart of a problem, his erudite use of language, his capacity for philosophical reasoning, his political astuteness and his willingness to reflect on his own background. Few others could make Aboriginal education such a compelling read. Not surprisingly, Pearson already had the active backing of the federal government and several state governments and his ideas are already in operation.

In championing radical hope for Aboriginal people through education, Pearson took on the most complex and controversial issues that have vexed educational philosophers and policy-makers for decades: 'The onus falls on those of us who believe in the classical ideal to show that educational reform can produce broad-based social transformation among disadvantaged students and not just the raising up of the few'. He invokes this ideal to achieve the broader aim of equipping Indigenous students to be able to 'walk in two worlds and enjoy the best of both'.

While few would disagree with these aims, and while many existing teachers and policy-makers are committed to these outcomes, what distinguishes Pearson in the current debate is the ways in which he has proposed to change current practice. Although Pearson did not describe his ideas for change as a model, they clearly have been assembled as an integrated structure.

Eschewing what he considers to be decades of wasted ideological battles on literacy and 'leftist' concerns with soft options in education, Pearson has embraced the 'tough love' of the 'No Excuses' approach to education. Originating in the USA among conservative educators concerned about closing the racial gap in education, the approach bypasses the debates about the relationship between inequality and educational outcome to focus on the performance of individual schools and students. But Pearson has built on this approach by combining it with ideas on teaching and learning methods and the need to preserve culture.

Of these components, Pearson's ideas on the need to embrace Direct Instruction are likely to be the most polarising. Pearson has positioned himself in the very debate whose corrosive impacts he laments. He believes a large part of the redirection in Aboriginal education involves a concentration on basic skills based around pedagogy devised in the 1960s. He envisages an uncomplicated model of instruction with a very pragmatic view of the role of the teacher. His ideas about teachers are also likely to be contentious. His view is that quality teaching for remote communities involves teachers committed to the No Excuses approach and to agenda of effective instruction rather than trying to attract high achievers who are unlikely to stay for the long term.

Policy-makers are undoubtedly attracted by the assemblage of thinking that has gone into articulating this model, its high-structured approach and its convergence with current evidence based approaches in education. In addition, Pearson created the space to consider the importance of culture as a key to social progress for Aboriginal people without the complication of a commitment to bilingual education. While these are all worthwhile issues to consider, they risk oversimplifying a complex social and educational problem.

While Pearson's Essay is a testimony to his refusal to be paralysed by the very complexity of the issues, his determined attitude should also be carefully examined for its potential shortcomings, and especially because of Pearson's political influence.

One of the dangers is that, while Pearson acknowledged the critiques of the No Excuses agenda, he did not build these into his own model. That is, No Excuses potentially creams both students and teachers, leaving unresponsive students even further behind. In addition, in drawing so largely on his own experience for his commitment to Direct Instruction, Pearson gave an incomplete picture of its effectiveness with his own peers. While the sections dealing with reflections on his own education are informative, he took a dangerous leap in drawing too much from their implications in justifying his model. This is particularly the case in failing to consider the findings of copious number of reports indicating the impact of the socio-economic environment in producing alienation from education among many Indigenous young people. No Excuses may be a powerful and inspiring message for Indigenous students trying to remain engaged in education but it risks silencing many of the real issues they confront daily and for which governments should have an ongoing responsibility.

Despite these shortcomings, Pearson's impassioned and thought-provoking call for action has made an important contribution to elevating the issue of Aboriginal education.

Quentin Beresford

Jan Gray

Edith Cowan University