Preventing Aboriginal Suicide Essays - Cognition, Neuropsychology

Preventing Aboriginal Suicide PREVENTING ABORIGINAL SUICIDE: DOES A SHIFT IN THE DOMINANT SCHOOLING PARADIGM HOLD SOME PROMISE? by R. Lloyd Ryan, PhD R. Lloyd Ryan, Ph.D. P. O. Box 1072 Lewisporte, NF Phone: 709 535 8464 email: [emailprotected] It is with growing alarm, concern and compassion that we witness the continuing (and growing?) high rate of suicide in Canada's Aboriginal community. This phenomenon has numerous far-reaching and negative implications and, up to the present, few satisfactory explanations and fewer proposed solutions. It is, thus, imperative that aspects of contemporary Aboriginal personal and community living that have not yet come under sufficient scrutiny be examined and analyzed, not for anthropological or abstract sociological purposes, but for intensely personal and life purposes. It must be realized that, sometimes, it is that which is most ubiquitous and familiar which may be most ignored, the assumption being that what is common is not significant. An example is parasites borne by the river that has fed us for generations, or heavy metals in our staple food, both contributing to chronic health problems, and both ignored because we expect severe dysfunction to have exotic and unfamiliar dress. It is, thus, proposed that the existing predominant model of schooling, in this case schooling of Aboriginal children, come under careful scrutiny. Aboriginals, like most other Canadians, have accepted, now almost without question, the principle that education is the key to a secure and happy future. This principle may be as fraught with problems as the one-time equally-accepted principle that the earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun was just one of earth's satellites. Just as it was heresy to question the geo-centric universe, it is now similar heresy to question the principle, the dogma, of the value of education. It is now being questioned! This may not be merely a questioning of the value of education (whatever it is we mean by that). Indeed, Aboriginal communities have recognized that some elements of the schooling system have potential for negative impact on life and living. Now, having taken over some control of their educational systems, they have made some significant curricular changes ... and, that is good - as far as it goes. The major aspect of the problem, however, does not necessarily rest simply with the content of the curriculum, although that is undoubtedly important, so much as with the very concept of schooling, and the concomitant and consistent concepts of the nature of learning and of the child as learner. It may be the fact that the product of the educational system may not be the expected and hoped for education. In fact, that which is actually delivered and received may be antithetical to that which is anticipated and hoped for. Rather than the schooling experience providing the hoped for emancipation, it may be providing an insidious enslavement and addiction to dysfunctional concepts of what constitutes learning, and dysfunctional perceptions of personal response to that learning. In other words, the hoped for education may not be that which is supportive of Aboriginal communities or of individual Aboriginal youth or adults. There is no doubt that one could engage in a rather extensive (and possibly stimulating) philosophical discourse about what constitutes education, without arriving at an answer that would be satisfactory, either generally, or particularly to the Aboriginal community. There is, no doubt, a great need to have that debate in the general population, as well as in the Aboriginal community. To some extent, that debate, however one-sided and unfinished, has been on-going, giving rise to a number of royal commission reports and to the growth of a whole new testing industry in Canada, for example. The solution for Aboriginal communities, and indeed for the general community, does not lie in that direction, primarily because the crucial questions have been neither asked nor answered. The major question has to be How do children learn, naturally? That is, how does a child's brain learn? How do children learn? What are the implications for schooling? What are the implications for children's developing self-concept and personal confidence and conceptualization of personal value and self-worth? Is the very model of contemporary schooling so out-of-step with natural brain functioning that it precipitates the destruction of children's self-esteem, so much so that their personal and social deterioration -