by PAIGE TAYLOR
The Australian
March 21, 2015 12:00AM
FIVE hundred Martu children at five schools in the Pilbara desert have become the biggest cluster of Australian students to begin learning under the Direct Instruction teaching method championed by Cape York leader Noel Pearson, and there are early signs of big change.
In northeast Western Australia this week to see the highly scripted method in classrooms outside Cape York for the first time, Mr. Pearson declared there was a moral imperative in the program’s continued rollout to remote schools, where so many students have failed to achieve.
“We have got a great moral purpose here, a moral purpose for the survival of these communities and these people,” he said.
As remote communities across Western Australia brace for selective closures threatened by Premier Colin Barnett, Mr. Pearson linked the communities’ future to education. “The Martu have the same vision as I have for my people, which is for them to live long on their land,” he says.
“The whole question of the viability of these remote communities rests on making schools work."
