The above photograph of an Aboriginal school in Australia , circa 1897, appeared in QUEEN VICTORIA’S EMPIRE series, by Cassell & Company. Captioned THE LOWEST STEP ON THE LADDER OF KNOWLEDGE , it read : The remarkable picture shows us the interior of a Queensland School. The pupils are Australian aborigines ; the members of that race which inhabited the great island of Australia before the white man set foot on it. [ What, no terra nullius ?] Small in numbers , of low intellectual capacity, the race with difficulty survives the pressure of civilisation. But the British schoolmaster has come to the rescue with his A B C, the key which unlocks the treasury of knowledge and may yet perhaps be in time to save the remnant from absolute destruction.
( The present backward, slow-learning and reactionary L-NP Queensland Government is complaining about the Federal Government proposing to give it more money than anticipated for Queensland schools - Queen Victoria would not be amused ... see meaning of drongos below.)
