Much as I am inclined to, I sometimes find it hard to argue with Noel Pearson. I was nearly finished reading through Pearson's recent Radical Hope: education and equality in Australia (Black Inc, Quarterly Essay no. 35, 2009) when I was alerted (thanks, J) to Inga Clendinnen's response to it in a recent issue of the Australian Literary Review ("The Pearson Solution," December 2, 2009). As usual, I found Clendinnen's combination of clear-eyed personal reflection and acute critical perception convincing, and made me want to believe even more strongly in the arguments that Pearson puts forth. As someone once remarked about Pearson, one wants so badly for him to be right. And yet doubts remain; I have a sense that all is not so well, or so neat, as Pearson wants us to believe.

The education of a minority people obviously has great bearing on the cultural development of that people. What children learn during the most active hours of the most receptive years, the languages they speak and write, will shape their cultural identity and outlook. Children may receive informal cultural education in their family and community spheres, but it is hard to see how gradual cultural attenuation can be avoided if Aboriginal students' formal education in no way contributes to maintaing their culture.

At the same time, Aboriginal Australian students have a right to a mainstream education that does not handicap them on their life trajectory through the modern world. There is a tension--not a contradiction--here that needs to be resolved (p. 60, emphasis added).

[Pearson] is also alert to a subtler, larger disadvantage: indigenous children are likely to lack the "implicit learning", such as the disciplines of work and time, imparted to most Western children in the home. Even that, he believes, can be overcome by properly focused teaching, as it must be if indigenous children, wherever they are born, are to achieve a decent competence in the skills they will need if they are to choose the shape of their lives. Living as they do now, they have no choice at all.

Oral transmission is no longer viable for cultural maintenance. ... Our people's lifestyle have changed ...[and] we have to confront the reality that our people will not return to the classical traditional lifestyle. My own view is that the way forward is to achieve a complete bi-cultural capacity. That is, for young Cape York people to be completely fluent in their own culture and the wider culture -- and to move with facility and capacity between the two worlds. (pp.56-57).

[P]olitical and ideological resistance, accompanied as it is by mainstream indifference and Aboriginal disadvantage, makes it unreasonable to expect Aboriginal Australians to ensure culture and language transmission is strong without government support. The cynical suggestion that the maintenance of Aboriginal cultures and languages is the sole responsibility of the peoples themselves--in a fashion akin to the efforts of recent immigrant communities--must be rejected (p. 69).

What might this mean in practice? In disadvantaged Aboriginal populations, as much time as possible needs to be devoted to numeracy and English literacy in primary school. Over the next decade at least, students entering schools in depressed Aboriginal areas will, on average, have acquired fewer of the building blocks of English literacy and numeracy than mainstream students. Aboriginal students cannot plausibly close this achievement gap unless all high-quality time--mornings and early afternoons--is devoted to instruction that is tailored to their needs and abilities. The enormous socio-economic gap between the peoples of Australia--unparalleled in the world--necessitates a sustained and intensified effort to teach Aboriginal students Australia's majority language to mastery (p. 71).