Resources

1. Talking about the workshop

Maratja started the first day by talking about Yolŋu maths at school. Shepherdson College invites him to the school to help the teachers and teacher linguistics talking about Yolŋu maths. It is very important for Yolŋu matha (language) to be part of children’s learning, working with ideas, concepts and world views.

He talked about the workshop as offering the possibility for him to go back to Elcho and contribute more to the school for the betterment of the children’s education. Rose was unsure about what the fundamental question (dhudi-dhawu) was. What do the balanda really want to know – about how we count in Yolŋu matha, or something else?

2. Schooling in general

Maratja connects the lack of Yolŋu ‘value’ (miŋurr) in school to the fact that there are so many Yolŋu ‘drop outs’. The dropouts can’t see the value in maths properly, so they are not good achievers. Where does the value lie? In whose hands?

Frank was interested in the question of how education has changed since he was at school. He felt he had learnt well enough at school, but his education had not gone far enough. Dhaŋgal replied that these days schooling is different for Yolŋu kids. They don’t get the same encouragement from the community, from the mothers and fathers, there are too many distractions, all different things coming along.

Frank said he could see how that was the case and added the examples of the distractions of computers and television.

Dhaŋgal said that in the days when bilingual education was working very well, it was actually quite hard for both the balanda and the Yolŋu teachers working together and they eventually decided just to take the easy way out. Some people were just not doing their job.

Rose later added an example from her work with the interpreter service. The interpreters often find themselves suggesting to the ‘clever balanda’ that the balanda could benefit from some cross-cultural training. They reply, that’ okay, but I’m busy right now. We want the opportunity to teach the balanda but it doesn’t happen. In school we also find that things are not happening ‘both ways’. These days we only hear balanda ideas. Old people are not being invited into the school to help and to support. She added that some Yolŋu parents are involved in ceremonial activity but they are not properly preparing their children to participate in them. Balanda and Yolŋu need to sit together and learn from each other. Our success comes from giving each other understanding, that’s how we will succeed.

When Gapany was talking about kids learning maths , she pointed out that kids actually feel more comfortable and have more confidence to ask question at home than at school.

Gotha added (61) the example of her grandchild who runs around at Gawa and is a bit naughty but already can recognise words. He is doing well because there is a smooth transition, connection or nexus (gakal) from school to home.

At the end of the first day Maratja suggested that we need to open up the question of becoming analytical problem solvers, (97) talking over the issues of maths and science, what is the system for the children? why isn’t it any good? why isn’t there any value inside our current system? We’re not making an impact, we are not the cutting edge, the two systems don’t recognise each other. Is it possible for that to happen? We’ll start thinking about that instead of putting it into the too hard basket, it’s up to us to contribute a way to make an impact, at the end of the day the Yolŋu education system is failing big time, the wishes and aspirations for Yolŋu autonomy, self management, where’s the meaning for them, what are we doing about it, where are the Yolŋu speaking out for what we want, what we feel is right and proper for us, we Yolŋu need to challenge the system, speak out for what we strongly believe.

Gapany made the point that there is a high turnover of staff these days (116-9), teachers don’t know who’s learning and who isn’t and what they are learning and where they should be patching up and where they should be building on. That’s how it used to be done, now it’s just changing and changing.

3. Yolŋu maths

Dhaŋgal’s first comment was that we need to forget about Balanda maths for a while and think about Yolŋu maths. “Whatever way Yolŋu do things, there’s maths in it”. Ancestral song (manikay) is a good example, the song’s yutuŋgurr is talking about distance, that’s how you would describe it in English. Underneath there has to be something similar to the underlying patterns of balanda maths understood through English, our ancestral designs, the related types of water, the gurrutu kinship system. We see it through our djalkiri, that’s where it comes from.

When Frank was talking about percentages he talked about shapes and sizes, and introduced the word yony-barrtjun, which maybe could be understood as a Yolŋu percentage. Waymamba pointed out that yony-barrtjun was a dividing process used by the old people.

Wulumdhuna stood up and took hold of Gapany’s young four year old grandson Djunuŋgu. We know who this boy is and he is my gaminyarr (waku’s gathu or gathu’s waku). We can see the connection through his name which comes from a song and refers to a particular cloud. Dhaŋgal added that it is up to the balanda to find out about the maths in Yolŋu life and Rose the interpreter commented that it would be very difficult job for an interpreter to explain the connections. Waymamba went on to ask how Yolŋu can keep hold of their connections through names which give Yolŋu maths its basis while at the same time learn from balanda trying to teach their idea of how they do maths. They’ve been teaching maths for a long time but we still don’t quite recognise it. The kids find it so hard in school. There are different things going on inside the Balanda and Yolŋu heads, we can’t really recognise each other.
Gotha uses children’s knowledge of the environment as an example of Yolŋu maths. The Gawa children live on the beach. She describes the maths in the tide and the moon cycles, they learn them when they are living on their land and caring for it. In the towns there are many distractions (baduwaduyunamirri), they don’t have the focus, they don’t have the settled mind which comes from living on one’s own land, like the homeland centres of Gawa, |aniŋburra, Ban’thula, Djurranalpi, knowing when the wind and the mosquitos will start and stop, that’s the Yolŋu maths side, and the kids are still learning it.

Gapany continued with the example of the current season of midawarr, good for hunting so the kids know the tides, which moon and which tides for which sort of sea food.

Wulumdhuna talked about her surprise overhearing kids at Djurranalpi playing games acting out Yolŋu buŋgul. They are very clever at picking up the more active parts of ritual activities and acting them out as part of their games.

4. Balanda maths in the school curriculum

Gurraŋgurraŋ was happy with the way the young children were learning their balanda maths at Gawa Christian school. She takes them off their mothers (pointing to her connections with her students’ families), and has taught them to add up, there’s ‘no worries’ for them. They learnt about kilometres by measuring the distance between Gawa and Galiwin’ku mission. She emphasised working both inside and outside the classroom, and getting a good foundation for learning higher up.

Maratja was recollecting about his experience at school learning maths, they learnt numbers, times tables, additions, subtraction, it took a while to learn, a lot of repetition, going from simple to quite hard and then on to high school maths, by which time there wasn’t any connection to our environment, it was a different world, no contextualising with everyday life experience. There has to be a reason, a rationale, a purpose so kids can have a goal beyond school. The parents heard the story and tried to encourage the kids to learn maths, to work at the bank or somewhere, but there was no grounding, it needed a good foundation. Maratja told of how when he left school he was training as a fitter, a motor mechanic, and during his second year he failed electricity. They wanted him to go back and do it again, he failed the electrical part of the course, it went ‘over his head’.

John and Maratja talked about the use of formulas in calculating current, voltage etc. Maratja felt that he could now explain to Yolŋu what a formula meant. He could use examples – maŋutji lakarama – to show that the formula is telling something, what its meaning is. He went on to say that if he had had some better foundation, some Yolŋu there working with him explaining concepts, what they mean, how they work, context and concepts and comparing them with the Yolŋu ideas, their relevance, going back to where he had missed some of the foundational things, it would have made a big difference. He said that he’s not really interested in that stuff any longer but if someone else were interested he could have a bash at understanding some of the concepts, teasing out some of the areas which need to be grounded.

Waymamba brought up what Anthea had been saying: “When Yolŋu kids go into school, they learn to do something new, they learn to divide up the world into numbers”. It’s true our world has its own numbers, different numbers, different ideas, different knowledge, and when the kid jumps over on to the school side, s/he will learn differently something different, the world is dividing into numbers, and the ones over here don’t recognise it, so that’s a point that we need to look at.

5. Balancing Yolŋu and Balanda maths

Maratja spoke of the way in which the issues of maths education presented him with a a ‘quest’ or a ‘challenge’. How do Yolŋu view maths, and how do balanda view maths and how do the two come together and help each other?
When talking about yony-barrtjun Waymamba points out that there are balanda maths words quite strange to Yolŋu and this is an example of a Yolŋu maths word very difficult for a balanda to understand.
Wulumdhuna said that she had been thinking about the students at her small homeland centre school at Djurranalpi. The six year olds find it easy, by the time they get to seven it’s starting to get difficult (gumurr-dalthina) – what we are starting to call ‘middle school’. So she goes back and teaches through luku. For example the young child she had pointed out whose name comes from a particular cloud, that cloud talks about the particular connections through which we recognise each other. Many of the kids are struggling in the big school (Shepherdson College) but if they are learning in their own places, where their feet find identity, they can move on out to whatever place, just like the cloud.

6 Balanda maths in Yolŋu life

People gave examples of the ways in which Balanda maths comes into Yolŋu community life. Frank talked about percentages. When we hear someone talking about 45 per cent of something, what does that mean, does it mean a few? But the Yolŋu word for a few is also the word for ‘three’. It’s confusing. When we say the Yolŋu word lurrkun’, do we see that as a percentage? What about when they talk about share prices and ‘commodities’ on the tv? We have no idea what they’re talking about.

Gapany talked about how balanda maths is learnt in the Yolŋu home – go and wash five cups – waŋgany rulu, waŋgany goŋ, getting into the habit of learning – a pair of shoes, two plates…

On Sunday afternoon a discussion arose about money. Frank suggested that Yolŋu still don’t understand the value of money, that’s why the money goes into your account and then out the next moment like a bucket with holes in it, but we have to understand that. John suggested that the name of those holes is kinfolk, gurrutu, and Frank agreed. The balanda might see it and say ‘ah there’s a hole in the bucket’, but our buckets, the hole is gurrutu, you see, instead of wasting it’s going back to the family. I don’t know, we Yolŋu look at it from a different angle, “Oh money wasted, oh, ten dollars,” balanda think in a different way, (Liya-different-thirr ŋapaki) Yolŋu think I must give this money to my Yolŋu kinspeople, money for my maralkur, my gurruŋ, mari, waku, or miyalk.

Maratja added: We have our own ways, have to do the right thing, we’re trying fulfil our responsibilities, the ancestral laws tell us in ceremonies not to ignore our relatives, we will be embarrassed to look at them, we are restoring our kinship, value in kinship, laws, respect, all these cultural issues are more important than the money issue, more important than adding up the world, so there’s a question mark there, what shall become of Yolŋu, later, further down the track, all those value studies, really good. Could money go down the drain, or start to accumulate, or start to have another value, for balanda.

7. Balanda maths in Balanda life

On Sunday afternoon someone raised the question of where did balanda maths start?, Was is it something about the French when it became abstract? John started talking about making fences and yards, (referring back to Maratja’s picture of paddocks on the whiteboard), and measuring using feet. Maratja said so we could identify with the foot and things like that, that’s something that can hit home with the Yol ŋu understanding, because that’s pretty much down to earth, if its that grounding would be there, and we could start to, feel of it, the abstract of abstract, how can we change the abstract into something practical, where’s the reversal in it you know, get around it so we can get the whole meaning. Kathy pointed out that early childhood teachers do try to start with the concrete and move to the abstract.
Gotha told a story about going to Canberra and seeing the Australian flag and thinking “What is the foundation of this flag? On what is it standing?” This is what they are teaching our children, teachings without foundations, just wandering. Curriculum directives are coming from Canberra and there is no djalkiri there for us, it came from somewhere but got put at crossed purposes (guwal-budapthuna ŋur). The Yol ŋu will put their feet down, establish foundations (back on country) by themselves, knowledge can sprout from the ground, they are causing us to wander through a dry land. Thinking about that Canberra flag, where is its foundation? That’s why we’re wandering around without foundations (djalkiri), Yolŋu and balanda.

Maratja added that he was flying from Canberra to Sydney and he looked out of the window and saw very straight edged paddocks running alongside a winding river. He drew a picture on the whiteboard and called them ‘conformity and nonconformity’. This is free and flowing, while these are… (and Waymamba interjected;) “traps!”. And the education system, is it flowing?

8. Maths pedagogy

Maratja thought the balanda might expect that the Yolŋu teachers have a good understanding of maths but it’s not the case. Some of us Yolŋu have survived through the mission era coming from a mission school. The mission school used many repetitions, the missionaries even repeated themselves when they talked to the families, they would give the reason why you need to learn, do the background, the homework. Then we started to comprehend and started to hold on to the little bit we knew. But still the groundwork was not prepared, the connections, the contextualising, it hasn’t been done sufficiently. The Yolŋu leaders now come from that mission time and know a little bit of maths. We’re talking about what is maths they just think about sums, that mindset is there from the mission time. We need to start to tease out a bit more, flesh it out, and work out how the Yolŋu understandings can start to come in, this is where some of the bilingual teaching should start to operate. We need more clarity, like with that metaphor of the ganguri.

Later Maratja said we need to find to continue connecting the abstract and the concrete in maths education all along right up to high school. We need to do that, coupled with other things like Yolŋu contextualisation, using metaphors, parallelisms, similes, things like that, so that people can be absolute in what they are on about.

Frank compared going to school to learn maths with finding a pathway in and out of the jungle. How do people find a pathway? If you go into the jungle or the mangroves, you know how to get back. If you get disorientated, you’re lost. The orientation was fine when it started, and somewhere it stopped. That’s what possibly happens, (trying to tell a story to encircle the problem to find a way or a solution about what we’re talking about). What is the best path for what we are talking about? Who is wrong? The Balanda teachers? Or the Yolŋu teachers? or the students for not going to school? Where is it that it goes wrong? It worked once upon a time I went to school, and I learnt YM and then I learnt English. And as I said yesterday, when I left school I learnt more than when I was at school. And I’m still learning because the school opened up a new world. And I was looking at a different world, as if through binoculars, looking off into the distance.