TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS AND AUSTRALIAN NATIONHOOD - SOME EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

This article analyses the role of education in incorporating Australia's Melanesian minority, the Torres Strait Islanders, into the Australian nation. The analysis begins with the introduction of Queensland government schooling into Torres Strait in 1892, which fostered expectations of Queensland citizenship and employment opportunities available to other races in the economy of the Strait. From 1904 to the outbreak of world war II in the Pacific in 1942 these early directions were altered by educational policies which initially sought to train Islanders for a life in the Islands as a "race apart" from the rest of Australia. Subsequent syllabus reforms, paralleling but not equalling regular schooling offered in Queensland, did not meet Islanders' aspirations for "proper schooling" and the jobs they expected would flow from it. Following world war II, regulations confining Islanders to the Strait were relaxed and many migrated to the Queensland mainland in search of better jobs, better pay, and better education for their children. Those who remained in the Islands received an education which, by 1985, had been brought up to the mainland standard. Yet, neither group's educational aspirations were satisfied despite initiatives and financial incentives of the Commonwealth government aimed at keeping Islander children at school. The article concludes that the way ahead for Islanders in staking out their educational future in the Australian nation on a basis of equality with other Australians lies in educational developments in the Islands themselves, where Islanders are playing an active role in developing, managing, and guiding schooling in directions which recognise their identity and their citizenship aspirations.