Immersion Programs

[Mia@RedPony]

Earlier, there was a message sent around about a Dine language site. A wonderful person sent me the following link, and I would like to send it around to the others on this list, specifically under the topic of "immersion". The article is entitled Literacy in America: http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue24/literacy.shtml

The following is a brief clip from the section entitled How We Got There:

"In a 1999 report titled "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School," the National Research Council put it this way: "In the early part of the twentieth century, education focused on the acquisition of literacy skills: simple reading, writing, and calculating. It was not the general rule for educational systems to train people to think and read critically, to express themselves clearly and persuasively, to solve complex problems in science and mathematics. Now ... these aspects of high literacy are required of almost everyone in order to successfully negotiate the complexities of contemporary life." We can't settle for the standards of a generation ago."

These ideas  should be considered seriously by people engaged in language revitalization efforts. A living language is used for many functions, and these include newsletters, tribal business documents, learning materials for science and mathematics. If the learners do not have a place to use the language, it will not be as valuable as those languages that can be used in a broader scope. We don't want to devalue Indigenous languages by restricting them to reduced forms of use or venues of use. 

No one doubts that there are ways to teach content without reading and writing, as this second excerpt shows: 
"In the current climate of accountability and big-stakes tests, teachers have received a clear message from school boards, politicians and the press: Teach the content. And that they do. Many have become quite ingenious at using lectures, handouts, class projects and activities to convey content about history and science and government without requiring kids to read. In some classrooms, the textbook is an occasional supplement. In many, it isn't used at all. "As students come in less and less literate, we have gotten better and better at teaching around the text," says California teacher Gayle Cribb. But if kids are never asked to read complex material, how will they learn to read it?" 

Many revitalization efforts, and I know this from personal experience over and over and over, are slammed by the active idea that there is only one way to say something. Arguments break out, consuming the entire time allotted for a task, because the way one person said something was not the way someone else would have said it. Those of us who are academics, who have read thousands and thousands of books, papers, articles, transcripts, summaries, abstracts, and mailings realize that there a many, many ways to say any given thing, and that this is what we should be looking for in our revitalization efforts. 

I know I sound a bit soap-boxey, but it is hard not to when time is so short for these languages, and the people who want to learn them, and because I care so much. 

Mia Kalish
NMSU & Red Pony Heritage Language Team  :-)


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christensen, Rosemary" <christer at UWGB.EDU>
To: <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: Immersion Programs


was there a listing attached to your message. I could not find it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Akira Y. Yamamoto [mailto:akira at KU.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:19 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: Immersion Programs


I have not updated this for several months, but you may want to check
this against your list.  Akira

>I'm helping to compile a list of current Native language immersion schools
>in the U.S.  While the list we have seems pretty comprehensive, I thought I
>should ask here, too.  If you know of any immersion programs, I'd
>appreciate if you emailed me.  Thanks!


--
Akira Y. Yamamoto
The University of Kansas
Department of Anthropology
Fraser Hall 622
1415 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045-7556
Phone: 785/864-2645
FAX: 785/864-5224
Anthropology: http://www.cc.ku.edu/~kuanth/
Linguistics: http://www.linguistics.ku.edu/

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