AustLit

' I'll start right back in the beginning. When I was young I lived in the traditional situation with my parents and my family at Willowra until I was about the age of six. Then I went to live with a white foster parent, still at Willowra. And she was my teacher, but very, very severe in the way she taught. I started doing correspondence and that of course was when I first came into contact with formal-type, European-type schooling. And I always remember that I could not really associate what I was being taught with my home life. It was really quite foreign to be taught about tulips and daffodils and stuff like that when I had never seen any. She wasn't a trained teacher. It was very much learning by rote. Maths and a lot of emphasis on words and spelling them right, and doing the maths and making sure it was right. Not so much on the way you went about getting the answer. There was really only the one way of getting the answer. It wasn't comfortable, you know, very uncomfortable learning that way compared to the Aboriginal way of learning where a number of people were concerned with your future in an informal situation.' (Abstract)