Democratie et education en Australie: un enjeu pour la Melanesie? (Democracy and education in Australia: a challenge for Melanesia?)

The article reveals certain recurrent themes in the history of Australian education that remain of relevance today: church-state relations; the important role played by independent and denominational schools in a country that thinks of itself as being lay; state-Federal (Commonwealth) relations; funding; the situation of Aborigines in the education system; the role of education in a democracy. It explores how attitudes to education played a role in Australias situation in the Pacific, and notably in Melanesia, from colonial days through the era of independence to today's postcolonial neo-liberal context and globalisation that involve a different approach to diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific.