Learning ‘White Way’: Curriculum, Context, and Custom in Schooling Torres Strait Islanders before World War II

Abstract

This article sheds light on the manner in which Torres Strait Islanders responded to western school curricula and actively coped with European contact in the colonial era, by reporting research into the role of the curriculum in the schooling of Islanders prior to World War II. They responded to both London Missionary Society and Queensland government schooling in terms of instrumental concerns emanating out of their island custom and the contexts in which schooling was set. The appetite for education grew out of their perceptions of its power to bring benefits to them in the new order and the type of curriculum taught in the schools was judged accordingly. This appetite was fed not only by schooling's perceived outcomes but also by Islanders' quest for knowledge and equality of status with newcomers. In a context controlled by western institutions, Islanders valued schooling primarily for its functional consequences expressed in terms of their island custom.