ve 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 "Ho...