'The literacy question in remote Indigenous Australia'. The literacy debate rarely addresses the critical social and historical factors that also account for why literacy levels among remote Indigenous youth are lower than their mainstream counterparts. The focus on schooling obscures the less obvious fact that we must also be cognisant of the broader sociocultural factors associated with literacy acquisition, maintenance and transmission. This paper explores several factors that can contribute to the lower rates of literacy, many of which actually have little to do with the quality of teaching or resources, school attendance or lower expectations of competence. A version of this article was published in the National Indigenous Times, 30 April 2009.

[8 May 2009]