Building Bridges across a Cultural Chasm *

Abstract

At the Jervis Bay Primary School there is in progress a project which is designed to involve the Aboriginal children at the school (about 25 per cent of the total enrolment) in some educational decision-making. The program is being funded by the Australian Government’s Schools Commission Innovations Program.

It was judged that in the total school environment the Aboriginal children were followers and not initiators and that this was in part attributable to the skills-oriented competitive structure of the classroom system that exists at the school, and in which leadership and success fall largely to the non-Aboriginal pupils.