Joys and Fears

Outside schools, on buses, at church, in parks, in the homes of friends and neighbours, in shopping centres, in the street, and in a day-care centre we asked young children about their joys and fears. Back in our Diploma of Teaching (2nd Year) class we recorded and quantified and graphed and analysed the replies. Our main conclusion is that urbanised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have not lost their culture, despite outward appearances, and every teacher with culturally different pupils in her class must assume that they live very different lives, with very different views of what life is all about, very different hopes, fears, joys, expectations, and needs in school. The item is about how we found this out, and how we realised that our own discoveries are more important than second-hand knowledge.