Mid Term Break - October 7

We had a School discipline Issue this week and now the Tiwi parents are hammering the kids that they come to Downlands to be educated with Non-Aboriginal Australians, therefore they have to follow the local rules!

The Tiwi kids realize they have to pull one another into line, for they need each other to get the right tuning - the cultural gulf is so great there is plenty of room for misunderstanding. We think the Tiwi kids and the other kids at Downlands are doing a great job, and we know it is hard.

Just to put a meter on how hard it must be, we took time out to read of the problems Joshua Wedgewood encountered in 1777 as he attempted to train English Workers for his new Pottery Factory.

He gave up on the older workers so by 1790 three quarters of his workers were apprentices. He created a rule book to inforce New Values: punctuality, regular attendance, fixed hours, scrupulous care, cleanliness, avoidance of waste. He punished sexual immorality and drinking because he wanted his workers be efficient producers.

It took a while for the New Values to surplant the Old Values: Faith and Hope and the primacy of Charity, but over the last 200 years the Factory efficiency New Values have become embeded in our culture: a prudence to buy low and sell high, to trade rather than invade, and to claculate the consequence before pursuing a good.

The English worker of 1770 was more ready than any other, and probably a millennium ahead of nomadic tribes such as our aborigines. And is'nt it funny how these New Values exasperatedly taught to our young: to wash your hands, turn up on time, don't waste, do your hair ... become the front line criteria for judging the new comer to our world.

Greater Brisbane Junior Tennis (GBJT) at University of Queensland treat the Tiwi kids as Honary members!

If you are able to help fund this project, go to Vinnie's website: https://www.vinnies.org.au/show_appeal.cfm?table=appeals&parentid=0&id=43