What did assimilation mean for children?

In the first half of the twentieth century, right up until the 1960s, the Australian government sought to create a single, uniform white Australian culture. This was pursued through assimilation policies, which had devastating effects on Indigenous communities.

The 'Aboriginal Problem'

In the first half of the 20th century it was commonly thought that Indigenous people in Australia would inevitably die out. However, the growing population of “half-casts” (a term now considered derogatory for those people of Indigenous and white parentage) soon made it clear that the “Aboriginal problem” was not going to disappear.

The government’s solution was to discontinue its policy of protection, which separated Indigenous people from white society by placing them on reserves and missions, and to instead adopt an assimilationist approach. Assimilation policies proposed that "full blood" Indigenous people should be allowed to “die out” through a process of natural elimination, while "half-castes" were encouraged to assimilate into the white community.

White superiority

This approach was founded on the assumption of black inferiority and white superiority. The assimilation approach was outlined at the Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities in 1937: 

"This Conference believes that the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin (sic), but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end...The policy of the Commonwealth is to do everything possible to convert the half-caste into a white citizen.” [1]

Assimilation policies presumed that Indigenous Australians could enjoy the same standard of living as white Australians if they adopted European customs and beliefs and were absorbed into white society:

“The policy of assimilation means in the view of all Australian governments that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines are expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, hopes and loyalties as other Australians.” [2]

However, in practice, assimilation further undermined Indigenous identity and culture and justified the dispossession of Indigenous people and the removal of Indigenous children from their parents. According to leading Indigenous academic, Professor Michael Dodson,

“Assimilation relied on the well-established and widely-accepted view that we were inferior to white Australians, that our way of life, our culture and our languages were substandard... Embedded within the policy of assimilation was a clear expectation of the cultural extinction of Indigenous peoples.” [3]

Forced to live on the fringes

During the assimilation era, many Indigenous people were forced to leave reserves, which were often reclaimed by governments for housing and mining. Although life on the reserves was oppressive, it was difficult for Indigenous people to find work in the towns and cities due to the prevalent racism in wider society. Indigenous people were often refused access to community venues and services, including hospitals and swimming pools. As a result, rather than being assimilated, Indigenous people were often forced to live in poverty on the fringes of town. [4]

Stolen children

Assimilation policies focused primarily on children, who were considered more adaptable to white society than Indigenous adults. Consequently, one of the main features of the assimilation era was the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families.

Between 1910-1970, generations of Indigenous children were removed under these policies, and have become known as the Stolen Generations. “Half-caste” children were particularly vulnerable to removal, as it was thought that they could be more easily assimilated into the white community because of their lighter skin colour. The policies of child removal left a legacy of trauma and loss that continues to affect Indigenous communities, families and individuals. [5]

Contradictory logic

Assimilation, including child removal policies, failed its aim of improving the life of Indigenous Australians. One of the main reasons for this was the contradictory logic behind assimilation - it expected Indigenous people to take responsibility for becoming the same as white people, but never gave them the same rights or opportunities to do so.

Regardless of their efforts, Indigenous people were not accepted as equals in a society that still considered them to be an inferior race. This essential belief in the inferiority of Indigenous people and their culture undermined the objectives of assimilation policy and led to its failure. The devastating impact of assimilation policies on families and culture continues to affect Indigenous communities today.

Some people may find content on this website distressing. Read more

South Australia - Glossary Term

FacebookTwitterSubscribe

by Terry Heick

Learning is a natural response to encountering something new.

Within Jean Piaget’s theories on cognitive development are related ideas on how children process knowledge. Piaget was interested in how children organize ‘data’ and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and accommodation of knowledge.

Assimilation of knowledge occurs when a learner encounters a new idea, and must ‘fit’ that idea into what they already know. Think of this as filling existing containers.

Accommodation of knowledge is more substantial, requiring the learner to reshape those containers.

You can think of these containers as ‘schema.’ Schema are fluid and constantly evolving vessels students use to process what they see, read, and feel. The following from the University of Puget Sound is a simple example clarifying the difference between assimilation and accommodation of knowledge.

“When a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. This is assimilation. People around them will say, no, that’s not a dog, it’s a cat. The schema for dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals. That is accommodation.

“Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and bigger. For example, a two year old’s schema of a tree is “green and big with bark” — over time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we use a tree at Christmas, etc.) – Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly with what you know and adds onto it.

Accommodation is when you have to turn your round balloon into the shape of a poodle. This new balloon ‘animal’ is a radical shift in your schema (or balloon shape)….Now that they are in college in the redwood forest, we have conceptualization (schema) of trees as a source of political warfare, a commodity, a source of income for some people, we know that people sit and live in trees to save them; in other words, trees are economic, political, and social vehicles. This complete change in the schema involves a lot of cognitive energy, or accommodation, a shift in our schema.”

Background Knowledge

Students come to the classroom with an incredibly diverse set of experiences. This isn’t just a matter of content knowledge or reading levels either. Students adapt their own thinking—both in process and in form—in response to the kinds of input they’ve been exposed to.

A childhood of ranging, divergent thinking that varies in depth, form, and tone can provide a ‘schema’ that more readily accepts new ideas, or has provided the student with an increased sense of self-efficacy in making the effort to do so. This sort of divergence doesn’t have to be academic, either. Experience is experience.

Piaget thought of these as processes–assimilating and accommodating knowledge–as both interactive (one affecting the other) and capable of overlapping. When a child encounters stimuli without assimilating or accommodating it–or without being capable of assimilation or accommodation –they will fail to “understand.” Whatever new idea they encountered will either have to be further parsed and analyzed, or discarded.

So for you as a teacher, what does this imply? 

6 Tips For Schema-Friendly Teaching

1. Know the basics

Know that schema can be thought of as templates or vessels students use to organize knowledge.

Know the difference between assimilating knowledge and accommodating knowledge.

Know that the latter is more difficult than the former. 

And know that what’s happening at the cognitive level will be different for every student because their schema is nuanced and unique.

2. It’s cultural

It’s also a matter of culture. Students with access to WiFi at home will have a much greater opportunity for ‘broadband schema’–that is, the kind of schema that is diverse, digital, and at times random and nonsensical. The same with students raised on farms, in the city, in single-parent homes, and so on.

Schema is cultural because we’re human.

3. Diversify your teaching strategies

This all suggests diversity. One size fits all doesn’t fit anyone even at the brain level.

4. Encourage self-direction

Students will naturally seek out ideas that either align with their own (which isn’t necessarily good), or may be less alarmed to encounter competing thoughts on their own terms when learning on their own.

5. Don’t project what–and how–you understand on students

It’s tempting to project your own understanding and preferences onto students as well. What ‘makes sense’ to you is powerful, and it can be hard to get around that no matter how much you recognize it intellectually. But it’s based on your own schema, scale, and timeline.

Learning is different for everyone.

6. Practice, practice, practice

Allow students to encounter ideas over and over again from a variety of perspectives, using different ‘vessels.’ This also suggests spiraling big ideas in your curriculum. Being exposed to academic standards only a few times in limited number or forms limits a student’s ability to effectively reform said data into useful schema.