Outrage over private school's ‘emotional abuse’

A lesson on the Stolen Generations by a Sydney Catholic school has been slammed for being “emotionally abusive” by parents.

Teachers at St Justin’s Catholic Primary School told three Year 4 classes that the Prime Minister had written a letter informing their parents would no longer be looking after them.

However, it wasn’t until the end of the day that they were told it was part of an Indigenous history lesson, with the focus being on the Stolen Generation.

The distraught children were then asked to write down how the experience made them feel.

Natalie Wykes, a mother at the school, said her son came home and told her he got “really scared” at school.

“This is emotional abuse and should never happen to another child,” she told Fairfax.

However, the diocese that oversees the school has defended the lesson plan, saying it was only intended to give students “experience of a scenario that was part of our nation’s history”.

“This was intended to give students experience of a scenario that was part of our nation's history,” Tim Gilmour, assistant to the director of schools in the Catholic diocese of Wollongong, told Seven News.

“We wanted to ask them how they would feel if we did that now. I understand that it was not done as well as it should have been in one class.”

Meanwhile, Stolen Generation survivor and NT Stolen Generation Aboriginal Corporation spokeswoman, Eileen Cummings, told news.com.au the way children were being taught about the sensitive topic was “inappropriate”.

 

“We weren’t taken away because of neglect, we were taken because of the colour of our skin,” she said.

 

“We were taken away because they believed that our people couldn’t teach us anything, they wanted to educate us because we were half-caste children.”

 

Cummings said students should not be made to feel scared or upset when learning about this dark chapter of Australia’s history.

 

“A lot of children are quite disturbed in what they hear, and we say it was something that the government had done in those years,” she said.

 

“It is inappropriate to scare them.”