Geoffrey Pullum over at Language Log has weighed in on the debate over the role of English in Aboriginal communitues in Australia, and the return to the days of the White Australia policy and assimilation, perpetrated by the most conservative government in our history, under the subterfuge of ‘allowing aborigines to integrate into the mainstream economy’.
For some more background, I wrote about this here, Carmel O’Shannessy and Jane Simpson did so here and Kim Christen also wrote on it here.
I need not point out that Pullum is not an Australian and is therefore somewhat more insulated from calls of political bias (I assume he has no stake in whether or not the current government wins the next election). It is particularly encouraging to read such scathing denouncement of this policy from Pullum, which includes several points that I had somewhat euphemised, specifically, that we in Australia have an awful lot to be ashamed of, and need to stop procrastinating and start making up for it, beginning with an apology for the settlers’ treatment of the indigenous population up until just over 40 years ago (and even right up until today).
Brough continues that English-by-force tradition, urging that aborigines to be required to learn English so that they can be absorbed into the mainstream of Australian culture — in other words, so that aboriginal languages and cultures can die and aborigines can become just a dark-skinned under-privileged substratum of English-speaking Australian society.
Zing! I wish I’d said that!
I might point out though, since contrary ideas appear to pervade throughout all the discussion of this issue, that learning English is already compulsory for all children in every Australian school (see here). So Brough’s motivation, in my opinion, is designed to draw attention away from, and perhaps even rationalise, the government’s appalling record when it comes to adequate education funding in remote areas.
I am confident this issue won’t die anytime soon.
~
<update>
This from Claire:
…one of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the right to education in, and the right to use one’s own language. Australia is a signatory of this Declaration.
Bob Brown has also demonstrated he is considerably more versed in the issue than Brough.
</update>
June 4, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Zing! I wish I’d said that!
Be glad you didn’t because it is just utter bollocks!!!
No matter how valuable indigenous culture and language maybe the fact remains that for all of the possibilities that the wider Australian culture has to offer the price of admittance for anyone is a good command of the primary language, which is English.
When it comes to funding, what really matters is ensuring that children in the distant communities actually attend the classes that are made available and a recognition that until education is truly valued in such communities that no amount of money is going to make one scrap of difference.
June 4, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Iain, for a further time (I can almost guarantee it won’t be the last), no one is saying that aboriginal children shouldn’t learn English, on the contrary, learning English is very important. Which is why it is already compulsory, and has been for a very long time.
Up until recently, there were plenty of bilingual programs operating in schools all over the country. These programs were very effective and the results suggested that bilingual students outperformed their English-only counterparts in literacy levels in any language (when all other factors were accounted for). Clearly then, bilingual programs are the way to go.
With this in mind, it becomes clear that the government’s actions (rather than their relatively empty words) imply that they’d like to move towards complete monolingualism among aborigines.
Moreover, aboriginal languages are treated in education policy as barriers between the child and English to be contended with, rather than languages in their own right to be nurtured. English should really be taught in some areas as a second language, yet, as O’Shannessy points out:
What I and my cohorts are saying is that given that English is compulsory, there must be some other reason behind Brough’s superfluous calls, since he, as the minister, should know basic aspects of public policy like this. When we step back and view the entire issue in simplistic terms (a flawed means of analysis I’ll concede, but effective in stripping away the nonsense) it emerges that the rhetoric of the minister and also by the PM is reminiscent of assimilation.
Now, more specifically:
That’s a value-judgement that I’m afraid you don’t have the right to assert. On the contrary, when given a (false) choice between retaining one’s culture through language (among other things) and some abstract notion of ‘joining the mainstream culture’, I think most aborigines beyond the age of about 25 would go for the former. The younger ones unfortunately care more for Tupac Shakur than traditional knowledge, but they quickly get over that, because they know that if they don’t overcome adversity and do what they can to retain their ancestral knowledge, then it’ll be lost forever. I wouldn’t want to have that blood on my hands just because we think our economy holds monetary benefits for them.
June 4, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Brough’s policy is not a ‘return to the white Australia policy’ is it? Because I don’t think that had anything to do with aborigines.
Pullum certainly doesn’t mention it anywhere in his article anyway.
I still think Carmel O’Shannessy said it best, as she seems to know the situation far better (than both Brough and Pullum), and as a result she has addressed the specific issues. No question that the bi-lingual program is the best option, and presumably the main thing holding it back is funding, is that correct?
I haven’t heard from Noel Pearson yet on this issue, has he spoken about it?
June 5, 2007 at 6:21 am
Iain said:
“No matter how valuable indigenous culture and language maybe the fact remains that for all of the possibilities that the wider Australian culture has to offer the price of admittance for anyone is a good command of the primary language, which is English.”
Iain, I may be entirely ignorant of the political process and what’s happening in Austrailia, but your comment begs the question of exactly how much “admittance” into (I’m assuming “white” and “mainstream”) Austrailian culture aboriginal peoples are looking for.
June 5, 2007 at 6:36 am
I don’t think that this is the case at all. It seems that you are projecting your own political agenda here and attributing malice into government when it simply cannot be demonstrated at all.
My statement is one of fact and was intended to be values neutral. Any person who does not have command of English, no matter what their background may be will struggle in our society if the want to get a job, pursue further education, become financially independent, to get a life off the welfare treadmill. I would make the same comment if we were discussing migrants who come here and they speak no English. So please explain why I do not have a right to state this fact. And why you assume that I see a dichotomy between the need to make a good command of English and the loss or suppression of indigenous culture because I have not done so at all.
I think that we can agree that the way that indigenous disadvantage will ultimately be addressed is through education but the difference between us is that I think that the problem is that the current leadership does not value the education that is offered enough to ensure that their children actually attend the classes with enough regularity for them to learn well. But you seem to think that it is just a matter of throwing more money at the situation.
The thing that keeps coming into my mind is the children up here in Queensland who get their education via the “School of the air” these are kids who live in even more isolated circumstances than we have in many indigenous communities and yet they mange to learn the same curriculum as kids in the cities; so what is the difference between these kids and their indigenous equivalents? As far as I can see the difference is parental commitment to the education of their children and that is what is missing in too many indigenous communities and that is where the example of Noel Pearson needs to be stressed time and time again.
June 5, 2007 at 8:14 am
Regarding your value judgement, having re-read it, I take that back, it wasn’t a value-judgement per se but it did imply that you think joining the mainstream economy is more valuable than retaining and revitalising indigenous culture. It may well be that one must be pretty fluent in English to get a job in an urban area, but the issue is a lot more complex and I’m not sure that the best thing for aboriginal people right now is to merely integrate.
Firstly, English should be considered a second language for many aborigines living in remote areas. The status quo is that children are thrown into classes where they are expected to be able to communicate in a language that is quite foreign to them.
And no, I’m not suggesting simply throwing more money into schools willy-nilly, I’m suggesting, on the contrary, that instead of merely throwing money, the federal government and the territory government should actually start thinking about better ways to spend money, such as training and hiring ESL/EFL specialist teachers to work in remote communities, because currently, remote schools usually get a young, inexperienced teacher, first year out of university who is willing to work in potentially more stressful conditions in exchange for HECS rebates and other incentives. Same goes for health; doctors and nurses in the territory are often young, inexperienced people from the cities with little or no understanding of the Lingua Franca, the culture or the people of the region.
Yes, the government throws money at the problem, which isn’t working, and the solution lies not in extracting funds to see how that goes, but to actually pay attention to what sort of programs are helpful. The government is not just a banker, it is an administrator, I’m sure we’re in agreement about this – I just feel the need to point out that it misrepresents my position to say that I think simply that more money will fix the problem.
Bilingual programs work(ed), and we need more of them, yet – and this addresses another point you argued, that there is no demonstrable ‘malice’ from the government – funding was pulled from them! Why would a government stop a program that was clearly working in both raising literacy levels in English and stemming the rapid loss of indigenous languages?! It beggars belief! Or rather, it would beggar belief, if this government was not opposed to there being languages other than English being spoken in aboriginal communities.
Yes, that is political, I will concede, but it is motivated not by my politics but by the current situation.
“School of the Air”? Iain, have you ever seen an indigenous community? There is very little in the way of capacity to put kids on a two-way radio system, or whatever they use – if it’s internet, well, try learning from afar with a 32 kbps dial-up service. The reality is, most of these communities would be considered well below the poverty line by the yardstick of the rest of the country. With that in mind, it’s very little wonder that education standards and literacy levels drop, that’s simple demographics. Threatening to withdraw funding to which they have a right, will not fix this. That’s the issue.
June 5, 2007 at 8:25 am
Cooper, sure, to be completely historically accurate, the ‘White Australia’ policy didn’t have anything to do with aborigines, but it certainly corresponded very closely to to whatever official policies covertly motivated the removal of children, the amalgamation of communities into missions wherein indigenous languages were punished, and so on. There may not be a causal relationship between the two, but a cultural link surely pervades. I should really be using ‘assimilationist’ policy.
Mrs Chili, that’s my point precisely. At the end of the day it’d be equally morally impermissible to preclude the possibility of an aboriginal person accessing their own culture through their own language as to preclude the possibility of joining the mainstream culture if they so choose.
June 5, 2007 at 8:40 am
The thing that you probably don’t appreciate, as an American, is that the big problem in indigenous communities is Passive welfare, which is not time limited as it is in your country. This has lead to indolence and substance abuse.
Indigenous people in remote communities are in no substantial way expecting to return to the hunter gatherer lifestyle of their forebears so if they do not wish to remain in the position of eternal mendicants it is essential that they embrace opportunities offered by the greater community instead of just the intoxicants and consumer goods. To do this requires them to master the English language and embrace education. Read some of the work of Noel Pearson for an indigenous man who is looking to the future and not lamenting the past.
June 5, 2007 at 9:35 am
But my argument is not about forcing anyone to “integrate” but it is all about giving the children the opportunity of doing more with their lives, should they choose to do so.
This is certainly the case but in the absence of a viable alternative it is still better than NO education at all. My experience of children is that they are far more adaptable than most adults give them credit for.
I am quite willing to take what you say here on face value but this is unlikely to change any time soon no matter who has the keys to the lodge so like all people who live in remote areas people in indigenous communities have to cut their coat according to the cloth that they have. I can’t see that any kind of pursuit of ESL/EFL can be made to be the norm in any thing less than ten years, there is a shortage of teachers overall they are naturally going to want to work in the more populous places ahead of isolated communities, especially if they have a family or a partner who has their own life and commitments. The problem is what to do NOW>
Oh I do appreciate your position here but I look back on the way this issue has played out over the last twenty years and I see so much of the failures here as a case of too much carrot and not enough stick. You seem to make the typical leftist assumption that because attempts have failed it is the fault of the government. Now that we have a government that is saying “sit down money” is top be conditional on ensuring that your kids go to school ect . All of a sudden the left want to paint such things as pernicious, just as you do.
There is some clear cultural value in the retention of indigenous language but there are only so many teaching hours in a day so what should be sacrificed to make room for this? Mathematics? Science? History? English? As I have said before ENGLISH is the key that will open the door to the future for these people and in the absence of text and teaching materials in their indigenous languages it is pointless to privilege their languages over English, you condemn them to ignorance of the wider world when you do this.
And then there is your romantic attachment to the languages themselves.
My point here was not the technology but the commitment that the parents of these children have to the education and it is that sort of commitment that needs to be fostered in indigenous communities no matter what language the education is to be in.
PS thanks for fixing that missing tag in my previous comment BTW
:)
June 5, 2007 at 1:59 pm
“I am confident this issue won’t die anytime soon”
Your prediction is spot on. This has proved quite an interesting and educational post for me, cheers to all!
June 6, 2007 at 12:27 am
I want to weigh in here briefly on the topic of the School of the Air, since I was enrolled in it for the whole of primary school. It is important to remember that School of the Air is (or was) not a complete curriculum in itself, but merely a half-hour daily supplement to the correspondence courses provided by Distance Education. The technology (a two-way radio) is provided free of charge, which is fine, but the major problem, which was a challenge even for the white, generally well-off, land-owning families of my childhood experience, is that it requires more than a radio and a pen. It requires that there be parents or other adults available who are equipped to act as teacher/tutors for their children. However comitted they may be to their children’s education, in many cases the parents themselve are uneducated, and can provide no support for their children’s learning. Even educated parents may have difficulty with the practicalities of leading children through the exercises without effectively answering for them, so that the kids never really learn for themselves. This was a constant problem in the region where I lived. Furthermore, School of the Air does not in any way address the issue of children for whom English is a second language – it would in fact be worse than a physical classroom, just a half hour spent listening to gibberish, with no visual clues as to the point of the class at all. I can see no way in which this kind of distance education would be of any value whatsoever in this context.
June 6, 2007 at 12:59 am
I’ve been following along with the debate on this post, and want to bring up some points about second language acquisition for children. Jangari said:
To which Iain responded:
I wanted to bring up that while children are adaptable, they are not necessarily the rapid sponge-like learners of a second language that they are commonly believed to be. The idea that they learn a language faster than an adult is often based on their typically superior ability for phonological acquisition: they tend not to struggle with pronunciation and have a “foreign accent” the way most adults do. Young children can learn to communicate quite rapidly and competently in a second language, but this is not the same as mastering the language:
(From a webpage on L2 acquisition about McLaughlin, 1992.)
The upshot is that simply placing children in a classroom where English is spoken will not necessarily lead to them learning either English, or any other content (math, science, history) taught in that classroom. The extra cognitive load of trying to learn both the content and the language of instruction is a burden: have you ever tried reading even a kindergarten workbook in a language you are unfamiliar with, or even only a little familiar with? I can tell you that even having studied Japanese for 3 years at the university level, and being able to have some semblance of a conversation, I would be hard-pressed to read even a first grade science textbook chapter. Why would we expect it to be easier for a child?
June 6, 2007 at 9:46 am
Iain, on one hand you’re claiming that more money won’t fix anything, yet on the other you say that they should ‘cut their coat according to their cloth’. Surely if bilingual programs and teaching English as a second/foreign language are shown to be effective, then giving more ‘cloth’ (to extend your metaphor) in these areas won’t be money wasted.
You’re also leading the issue astray by bringing up the passive welfare issue. Yes it’s a problem, we all know that, but there’s already plenty of stick and there ain’t much carrot. Moreover, whatever carrot there is tends to be mismanaged, either by government budgetary allocations or by the individuals who receive it (that’s not an invitation for you to latch onto welfare ‘cheats’ and blame all their problems on this. There are bad parents in every demographic, the occasional aboriginal man who spends welfare money on a new car every 6 months instead of clothes for his kids, is a statistical liklihood).
The issue, as much as you would like to drag it to another area, is education infrastructure. There are plenty of people trained in ESL/EFL, and teachers in training can easily be taught a bit of ESL/EFL methodology at little extra cost (although plenty more extra cost would not be unwarranted, but just for the sake of argument). I dispute yor assertion that it would take 10 years plus for ESL/EFL to become the norm, the current turnover of teachers is probably such that a teacher stays with a school for about 3 years on average.
Another idea, consistent with the latest budget suggestion in which secondary school teachers would be paid a lump sum of whatever it was, $5000 i think, to undertake teacher development courses during summer and other holidays, would be to do the same with primary teachers in the bush. Give them a lump sum payment if they take courses in ESL/EFL and bilingual education training.
As much as you may denounce any extra funding allocations for rural and regional education programs as ‘throwing money at the problem’, I think it’s safe to say that ‘throwing money at the problem’ has been the dogma for decades, even before Howard’s time. With that in mind, it’s about time politicians and other policy makers, educators and bureaucrats started putting a lot more effort into useful allocation of education funds.
Alex and Alejna, Thanks both for your insightful comments. I must confess though, that first/second language acquisition is not my area of expertise, which was why I began this thread on a ‘retention of culture’ theme.
Alex, I couldn’t agree more, SOTA may be very helpful for kids whose first language is English, but for the hour or so a day of communication, if it isn’t in your first language and no intuition concentrating on ESL/EFL is otherwise given, it would be counterproductive.
Alejna, you appear to be a lot more knowledgeable in language acquisition than anyone else so far. More insights would be welcomed!
Another issue that I didn’t really want to raise is the fundamental differences in educational culture between the Australian aboriginal and the Anglo-Australian world-view. It’s terribly complex and I won’t go into great detail. Suffice to say that the western concept of a single teacher in a classroom with students, instructing them often individually and pressing them for answers and participation generally, is more or less incompatible with the traditional methods of education in Australia. It makes me think that, given that Anglo-Australian culture is dominant and strong, why shouldn’t we accommodate even slightly to the substratum culture and incorporate their own practices? Surely we, in our ‘mainstream economy’, could endure doing things someone else’s way more than that someone else can endure doing things in our way. Iain, I know you’ll disagree and say doing things our way is the point, integrating into the ‘mainstream economy’ is the idea, but why is it? It seems to be setting up an artificial cultural barrier just for the sake of having some sort of barrier, no?
June 6, 2007 at 5:19 pm
“there’s already plenty of stick and there ain’t much carrot.”
I agree. So I think that if it is assumed (and I realise this is contended, but bear with me) that parents hold some responsiblity in this equation, then wouldn’t it be better to offer an actual carrot for students who do attend school, or show evidence of English profiency, rather than to beat them with the stick by stripping welfare payments? That’s what I reckon anyway.
“There are plenty of people trained in ESL/EFL, and teachers in training can easily be taught a bit of ESL/EFL methodology at little extra cost”
I have no data to back this up, but I’d think that one reason it may be difficult to get EFL teachers into these rural areas is the enormous demand internationally, offering far better pay and lifestyle.
If that is indeed the case, then more money for salaries is certainly what is needed to attract such tecahers. Do you agree?
June 7, 2007 at 8:52 am
Err No I’m not saying that more money won’t fix anything, I support the idea of effective increases in funding. But I’m a realist and I think that unless you can do some work on the attitude to education in the communities amongst parents no amount of money will do the trick. As laudable as your desire to see indigenous languages preserved may be the risk is that the up coming generation will be Ghettoised by not making functional learning in English a focus; and that is the point that I have been trying to make here.
Can we agree that we both want the same end goal?
To see the upcoming generation of indigenous children getting an education as good as any other Australian child so that they can rise above the poverty and misery that so blights indigenous outposts.
But Passive welfare is a very big part of the problem because it changes the mindset of the parents and the children who then have no incentive to go to school or to put any effort into their studies pick this up. After all why bother if you know that you can get the dole like mum and dad?
The point that I was trying to make is that even if, with all of the good will and money in the world it still takes time to train, select and employ such specialised teachers and knowing how much inertia there is in tertiary education ten years is probably optimistic.
Could that be done as a summer school unit? I don’t think so.
Some equally remote and small non indigenous communities struggle with the problem of getting a good education for their children when they are in the bush and they seem to do a lot better than indigenous communities. The truth of the matter is that with out parental commitment to the future no amount of effort from outside is going to make much difference. This is why I denounce the “if only there was more funding” approach to a solution here. Even here where I live (not that far from Brisbane) people struggle to get a good education for their kids and I have had several friends who have reluctantly sold up and moved to the smoke for the sake of their offspring getting a good education. It is what you have to be prepared to do for your kids and that desire has been killed stone dead my passive welfare in remote indigenous communities and by the victim mentality fostered and encouraged by “activists”.
June 7, 2007 at 9:19 am
In fact there are good one-month ESL courses – the most widely used internationally is the Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. There should be tailoring to the situation in most Aboriginal communities, namely that the main language is a creole or mixed language based on English and the traditional language(s), or else non-standard English.
Another important issue is increasing the number of Indigenous people who are trained teachers. That seems to have gone backwards over the last few years; the reasons aren’t entirely understood, but one factor is higher entrance requirements.
June 7, 2007 at 9:23 am
That doesn’t surprise me at all. I can testify that learning to spell in English is much easier if you already know how to spell in a sane orthography, because then you know how an alphabet is supposed to work and how the English orthography often deviates from that. All around me on teh intarwebz, native speakers make mistakes that I’d never dream of making.
Iain, I think you keep misunderstanding. The idea is not to take English away. The idea is bilingual education. Surely there’s space for more than one language in one head?!?
I’ve had 10 years of English at school, in Austria, a country where English is the mother tongue of maybe three immigrants and nobody else. Don’t you think it can work in Ngukurr, too, then?!?
June 7, 2007 at 9:28 am
I just wrote:
Sorry — very bad example. I know, of course, that “teh intarwebz” is deliberate. What I mean is phenomena like “idealogy” (which sounds the same as the correct spelling for most Americans), “dinasaur” (I kid you not), confusions of “principal” and “principle”, “here, here” instead of “hear, hear”, all manner of variants of “necessary” with any number of c and s and even with i instead of the second e…
June 7, 2007 at 9:35 am
Bingo.
June 7, 2007 at 10:06 am
Oh I get that David but my point is that if the primary language for teaching is to be one that very few people speak there are a couple of problems that are clearly going to come up. Firstly a teacher, even one with an ESL/EFL ticket will not be a speaker of that native tongue and secondly there will not be the teaching resources for teaching in such languages will not be very extensive. Unlike your experience of learning English in Austria
So the reality is that the primary teaching language in the schools really has to be English and is it not the case that total immersion is the best way to learn a language any way?
June 7, 2007 at 11:34 am
Yes. That is to say, it is not the case that total immersion is the best way to learn a language¹. As many have said throughout this debate time and time again, bilingual programs were shown to be more effective in achieving higher literacy and fluency levels in each language than monolingual classes in a language that the child does not know natively.
Secondly, no one is saying that the ‘primary’ content language in the classroom should be Warlpiri, Murrinh-Patha or Wagiman, it would be too unfeasible in areas that contain a wider variation of languages and choosing one over the others as content language could have political ramifications among the various clans. I think conducting classes in what’s been dubbed ‘Aboriginal English’, or even a step further, Kriol, would be beneficial indeed. The idea is to start at a level that is inclusive to the students who don’t have Standard English, and then to gradually work up to English, rather than throwing them in at the deep end. This is the basic premise of ESL teaching (or such is my understanding, perhaps an ESL teacher could add their perspective?!).
Immersion, funnily enough, can work better the other way around; placing kids in situations in which only the traditional language is spoken can work well, but I think Master/Apprentice approaches are much better. In any case, for the classroom, where multi/bilingualism is undoubtedly the goal, immersion could be catastrophic, after all, it was the main technique during the (previous) assimilation days.
Thanks David. I think you’re right; it’d clearly be far more effective to teach literacy in a language with regular orthography then to translate across to the children’s second (or third) language, English, later on. This is obviously the case in Europe, where most people learn English as a second language.
And thanks too, Jane. I didn’t think adding ESL/EFL qualifications to one’s education diploma/degree required all that much, certainly not this ‘10 years minimum’ that Iain suggests.
¹In case anyone’s paying attention, I just answered the question in an inherently ‘aboriginal’ way, that is, paying attention to the syntactic polarity rather than the semantic, or intended, polarity. Michael Walsh wrote about this a number of years ago I believe. Just one example of the different communicative norms between aboriginal and anglo-Australian culture that make monolingual English programs fundamentally untenable.
The paper may have been:
Walsh, Michael. Cross Cultural Communication Problems in Aboriginal Australia. Darwin: North Australia Research Unit. Discussion Paper No.7/1997. 23pp.
June 7, 2007 at 11:39 am
Askimet just caught my own comment and spammed it!
I feel so betrayed!
June 7, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I haven’t been an ESL teacher, but I’ve been in English classes in Japan and China.
The ESL teachers there didn’t have to ‘gradually work up’ to Standard English, they spoke English the whole time. In Japan though, they had a bi-lingual Japanese teacher sort of interpreting for the times the kids didn’t understand.
And China probably isn’t a good example to follow in terms of ESL, it’s sort of the Foreign Legion for teachers in my opinion.
Still they did try and speak in more of a ‘textbook’ fashion, and they limited their vocabulary.
Anyway that’s my limited experience of an ESL nature, hopefully someone else has something more useful to contribute!
June 7, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Should clarify by the way, I wasn’t being taught English, I was present in the classes sort of as an aide…
Don’t want there to be any confusion!
June 8, 2007 at 12:53 am
Interesting discussion. Especially the split between alternative views on how to best achieve good outcomes for Indigenous children and families. Part of the problem seems to be in degree of projection involved in stating/assuming what that might be. A ‘good education’ may be exactly what people want, but what that might look like may be quite different in a remote community.
I remember a hilarious incident where a commentator was railing against the teaching of ‘culture’ at remote schools, demanding that they stick to real learning, like maths……….and Shakespeare.
June 8, 2007 at 9:18 am
How catastophic and why please
:)
June 8, 2007 at 9:59 am
I don’t know about catastrophic, but problematic, certainly.
The immersion theory does have its advocates, but applying it without thought to the classroom setting is the issue.
Having been a learner of a LOTE via immersion I can see the problems. Immersion often uses practical settings to advance learning. So you may be asking directions, reading timetables etc to learn, but those are means to an end – learning the language. The purpose isn’t to learn the Berlin underground timetable.
However, if the purpose of a classroom setting is to learn mathematics, than adding an immersion style ESL lesson simultaneously, may have the effect of failing in both tasks.
I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but that it warrants some careful thought, appropriate resource allocation and suitably qualified and experienced staff to pull it off successfully.
June 11, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Here’s a novel idea… create jobs for speakers of Aboriginal Languages that don’t require them to have strong English. It happens. I do it. I wish more white people would/could.
June 12, 2007 at 11:03 am
Wamut
What you suggest sounds awfully patronising to me, and it would have the effect of condemning them to an eternal existence outside the mainstream whether the people involved want that or not.
Surely the important thing here is to find a way that indigenous culture can be preserved but to avoid ghettoising the people as a consequence of doing so.
June 12, 2007 at 11:39 am
Iain,
You seem to be presuming an either/or approach. There is no reason why students could not access learning in their first language as well as intensive ESL studies to achieve a number of goals – promotion and protection of indigenous languages, routine educational outcomes and English proficiency. There is no basis for assuming that the first must be sacrificed for the latter two.
June 12, 2007 at 5:18 pm
If I’ve got the power to remove the barrier of English as a means of providing employment then why wouldn’t I do that… where is the negative outcome in that? I’m not forcing anyone to work with me and I’m not forcing anyone to *not* speak English.
The ‘ghetto’ you allude to is actually more like a haven, where people can learn, teach and work in a linguistic environment that is comfortable. It actually allows more learning, teaching and working to take place because we’re not always negotiating language barriers.
And a side benefit is that ppl’s English actually improves because someone who might otherwise find it hard to get a job can be employed and they then come into contact with a lot more English through interactions with other mainstream agencies.
What’s actually happening is the workplace is accommodating the workforce, which I think is healthy – it takes away the onus on the workforce to do all the accommodating and makes for a much better workplace.
I think it’s naive to think that a mainstream job must be an English-only speaking job. Here at Ngukurr, the Centrelink office and the Credit Union office are run by local ppl and they operate locally entirely in Kriol. To work at the local shop, you need numeracy skills but it’s really no big deal if you speak Kriol at work all day. The creche is run entirely by Kriol speaking locals. Sure, English will help you in your job, but a world that says poor English=unemployable is unhelpful.
I will always advocate for a two-way approach, where Aboriginal ppl can learn about white ways and white ppl equally make the effort to learn about and accommodate Aboriginal ways. Otherwise, us whitefellas just remain ignorant.
June 12, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Damn straight, Gagu.
I think you’re right on the money here.
June 13, 2007 at 5:42 am
Michael
Actually I would have thought that if anyone is deserving of such a claim it is Wamut. It was his suggestion that prompted my last comment
Certainly seems to be suggesting that teaching in English should be considered of peripheral value in indigenous communities. Which is all well and good, should the children wish to spend their entire lives in those communities. But one thing that all of us who have had children know is that a large number of them will want to not only leave the nest upon maturity but also go out into the world beyond the community that spawned them. When they only have proficiency in a rather obscure language they are immediately about ten steps behind even an illiterate school drop out from the greater Australian population. Their only option then is to stay in the isolated community that spawned them. You see as much as you may see the imposition of English, as some sort of cultural imperialism the reality is that it is the globally dominant language and to have the opportunity to learn that gives anyone a chance to achieve not only in this country but anywhere in the world.
Wamut as much as your suggestion has some merit for the people who are adults in those communities it ignores the importance of making the most of the opportunities for the upcoming generations which will not necessarily be with in those communities and is, I suspect coloured by the same romantic attachment to indigenous languages enjoyed by our esteemed blog host Jangari
June 13, 2007 at 8:53 am
I knew it was there somewhere, the ‘jab’ that linguists are romantics for languages. Well, yes. I am a romantic for language, but not without good reason. I’ve listed time and time again in this thread and others what those reasons are and I won’t go into it here, I’ll merely retort with that claim that you, sir, are a romantic for the economy¹!
Wamut’s suggestion is a great one, as it is consistent with both the ‘mainstream economy/assimilation’ idea and the retention of languages idea. If there is a barrier between indigenous people and joining the mainstream economy, then if they choose to submit to the mainstream economy, then by all means, that barrier should be removed. There are a number of ways to do this. One of which is to further encourage the teaching of English, which, in conjunction with the government’s demonstrated inability to give a shit about indigenous culture, means that indigenous languages would die. Ergo, we ‘language romantics’ consider that a grave loss.
Another option is to reduce the monopoly that English has over the mainstream economy in this country, by creating jobs that are compatible with Kriol and indigenous languages, such as Wamut points out. This is by no means uncommon, there are plenty of jobs available in urban areas that you can only get (in practicality) if you speak such and such a language. To say that the economy should be ‘English-only’ is, contrary to your assertion, to disadvantage all those potential sub-economies out there that may operate in other languages and therefore, to disadvantage the speakers of those languages who might otherwise benefit.
If you reject this second idea, I suggest you explain yourself more thoroughly, because from here it appears as though what’s driving your ‘more English’ line is a negative opinion to indigenous languages.
¹My point being that it is an equally stupid argument.
June 14, 2007 at 6:29 am
[...] The practical over the romantic every time June 14, 2007 at 6:29 am | In blogging life, Indigenous Issues, Men and Women, work/ life, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Education | Another option is to reduce the monopoly that English has over the mainstream economy in this country, by creating jobs that are compatible with Kriol and indigenous languages, such as Wamut points out. This is by no means uncommon, there are plenty of jobs available in urban areas that you can only get (in practicality) if you speak such and such a language. To say that the economy should be ‘English-only’ is, contrary to your assertion, to disadvantage all those potential sub-economies out there that may operate in other languages and therefore, to disadvantage the speakers of those languages who might otherwise benefit. (source) [...]
June 16, 2007 at 5:21 pm
[...] about such a trivial topic, but after the polemics of last week, which, by the way, continued at another blog, I needed a break from [...]