Time to cross the frontiers: Teachers must lead the way

I would like to preface this paper with a few minutes of personal reflection. A strategy that will enable me, as an Aborigjnal educator to observe Australian Aboriginal protocols of introducing myself so that you, the listener, can place me within your personal frame of reference. I was born and bred in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, an area that is still often referred to as one of the last frontiers in tbis country. And during the years of my childhood, the Kimberley, including Broome, the town in which I was raised, was still very much in frontier mode. I am using the term 'frontier' here within the context of the edge of something, a designated boundary. And certainly, in those days the five tiny towns that were dotted across the vast spaces of the Kimberley region, were considered by many to mark the edge of civilisation. I would have to say that nowhere was this reality more evident than in the provision of educational services. By the time I left home to make the long journey to secondary education, children in the Kimberley were still only able to access basic primary education. To proceed to a higher level of education, students had the choice of correspondence studies for the early years of secondary education or of leaving home and travelling over two thousand kilometres to the nearest secondary school. As I had a mother who was totally committed to the notion that education would enable her children to 'escape' the narrow-minded confines of what was virtually frontier-life, I was sent away to school when I was 12 years of age. I hated it at the time but, in retrospect, it was that decision that provided the catalyst for me to embark on what was to become the longest single journey of my life, my personal journey in education.