The only subject Gary Foley failed in the 1964 High School Certificate exam was history – which is of interest, he says, only because he is now a professor of history. It’s of interest too because Foley was the first Aboriginal student to sit the exam at his secondary school in rural New South Wales (NSW). ‘The only reason I got as far as I did before they threw me out was because I got a scholarship from the Gosford Apex Club,’ he explains, ‘which enabled my poor old grandmother to at least get me a school uniform so I didn’t stand out from all the rich white kids.’
It was also his first direct experience of racism. When the headmaster expelled him the following year, it was with the words ‘we don’t want your kind here’. It wasn’t a lack of love for history that spurred Foley’s rebellion, but rather a growing awareness of the irrelevance of what was being taught to him. ‘We had to learn the names of the kings and queens of England going back centuries and all that sort of nonsense,’ he says. It served as a useful lesson for him though. Years later, when he himself became a history professor, he resolved that what he taught his own students would be relevant, whether or not they liked it.
