Race: Australia’s Critical Racial and Cultural Curricula

Abstract

This chapter explores the sociology of education theme ‘race’ and presents relevant research. The global history of colonisations and invasions, including of and by Australia, creates a backdrop of tension around race relations. When former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued an apology to the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia, it signalled a shift in how colonial history was considered. ‘Both-ways learning’ samples emerged on the Australian curricula website in 2019; however, Australian education overwhelmingly lacks the widely integrated bi-cultural approaches of New Zealand schooling’s inclusion of local Maori peoples, for example. International laws, Australian curricula provisions and some critical religious perspectives have encouraged a critical anti-racism approach based on pro-actively redressing racism and cultural imperialism and supporting diversity. Over half of Australians’ schools follow this critical approach to some degree, though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students notably had different perceptions of the cultural work achieved by schools. Under a third of Australians reported that their school had a largely assimilationist liberal approach to race. In this approach, there were tokenistic considerations of difference, which could sometimes lead to student denial of the existence of white racial or cultural heritages in a problematic ‘racial blindness’ which denied the existence of both certain cultures and power imbalances. Just over a tenth of Australians reported that their school had a complexifying post-modern approach which exposed students to complex ideas about race, challenging simplistic human biology. Only a very small portion of Australians reported that they experienced a conservative segregationist approach to race – where students remained within their own racial groupings, white identity was considered ‘normal’ and other identities were considered ‘disruptive’. These approaches were associated with negative educational and wellbeing outcomes. Tutorial questions for this chapter ask readers to consider concrete elements of their own and others’ schooling which show the approach taken to race and whether particular ethnic identities were privileged and to consider the best approaches.