LL-L "Language education" 2008.01.10 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  10 January 2008 - Volume 06
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From: foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu
Subject: LL-L "Language education"

*Elsie** wrote*

Thanks, Gael, for your interesting comments. I am well informed about the US
educational system through my extended family…

Yes, I was hoping to extract comments/information from Lowlanders about the
educational role of public broadcasters in poor, yet super diverse
multi-lingual countries, where television, for example, as popular public
broadcasting tool, has been used successfully to teach correct language
usage, amongst other things.

*Marcel* *wrote to Elsie*

Can you tell me if Kid's Newsroom also broadcasts in Afrikaans?

*Heather* *wrote to Gael*

…teaching standard language in whatever country allows those who do have
mutually unintelligible dialects of the same language to communicate. And
that surely is a good thing? It allows access to all walks of life to
everyone. If there was no attempt at a standard language, young people would
be restricted to working in the (small) area where they were intelligible…

*Jonny** wrote to Heather*

…I fully agree with all you wrote in your mail. Let me add just one thought
more: isn't it dangerous for a language to lose its preciseness, the
possibilities of dealing with small but important differences in e.g.
sciences e.a.? We have seen this kind of development in Low Saxon, and it
led (and still leads) to the fact that it became a very unimportant minority
language with only a certain neat social background. Maybe American
(English) will escape this fate, but NOT by being simplified- quite the
opposite: for my opinion it should continue to gather the best of the
immigrant's languages as it has done in the past.

To all [I hope this is not too long],

    My original intent in opening the topic of education was to help us
focus on local contexts and to seek ways to share these with outsiders, so
that we can shape a better future for our children—one locality at a time.
However, it is easy to interpret another's "difference" within our home
context and to universalize this prematurely. Being embedded in a local
culture is normal and precious—I don't wish to interfere with such loyalties
to place.  Home is a great place to "be"…but it's dangerous to generalize
too quickly across borders.  It might seem logical to say, Jonny, that Low
Saxon speakers desire a tighter, more uniform usage (to be a single nation
of people)—but I'm wondering if this relates more to your own situation (is
the UK your home)?  I need more information to contextualize your comments.
Certainly, as large numbers of non-native speaking immigrants migrate to the
first world, local populations of "White folks" struggle with the challenge
of integrating them. To be expected. It is a time of massive changes for
everyone.

    In the midst of this, it feels like local languages (English especially)
are exploding with unwanted levels of diversity.   But language-tightening
prescriptions have never worked—the Royal Academy of French Language and
Literature being the test case.  Language is too tightly linked with
identity issues; and native-speakers of privileged languages have never been
able to separate controlling (colonial) motives from well-meaning visions of
a clean-cut, neutrally-functional, unifying "national" language. This is
well documented.  We are willing to see it in the German case vis-à-vis Low
Saxon [or with Tibet under the thumb of the Chinese], but it's harder for
native E-speakers to see how language politics operate when English is the
'ruling tongue'.  A common language is only going to be mutually beneficial
when it's speakers are able to share a common concern for each other's
welfare.  Racial discrimination is a very real barrier still which must be
addressed before the sharing of a common (colonial) language can have a
positive effect for all.  Only non-coercive social unity can bring about
linguistic unity. It doesn't work in reverse.

    That's way I'm so curious to hear from Elsie, Marcel, and others about
public broadcasting in Europe, and the notion that *multilingual* social
welfare networks might provide us a place to start building a common
(non-exploitative) way of life. Our efforts to educate everyone depend on
our abilities to move gracefully and candidly *in between* languages. It is
impractical and dangerous to think that just one (national) language is
enough.  I fear that the US is quickly losing its place in the world due to
this need to control and contain language diversity. This tends to go
hand-in-hand with the shift from public education serving all to private-pay
systems tied to commercial market interests.  I'm very impressed with the TV
programming that Marcel speaks of (and with her commitment to improving it).
Likewise, Elsie's engagement in the issues gives me hope. In the US, Elsie
is right, the radio has the best public programming (NPR-
http://www.npr.org/audiohelp/progstream.html ). I don't even own a TV.  Of
course, the internet is another source that offers hope to those who can
gain access (such as you all demonstrate so nicely).

    I believe people everywhere still have healthy options, but it's true
that the youngest suffer the most from the materialist ethos broadcasted by
commercial markets. Elsie, I think the future will belong to those who have
been lucky enough to have grandparents to guide them. We do the best we can.
[I'm sending 2 document-links from India on TV below].  For sure, I share
Heather's desire to experience an overarching, comprehensible way of
communicating across differences. It seems Jonny wants this too, but I just
don't think that *English alone* is adequate for achieving this goal.  We
need input from everyone.  I pray for the day that I too can speak my mother
tongue as well as English and hopefully others too (even German).  Our lives
will be comprehendible only when the diversity within us is greater than the
diversity beyond us.

Wishing you all peace,

*For Elsie *[India is moving beyond the problem you're describing… perhaps]

1. Transnational Television, Cultural Identity and Change: When Star Came to
India<http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=neTLI2lvdBYC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA45&dq=STAR+%22Transnational+television,+cultural+identity%22&ots=W6RbFNKMys&sig=xRZ0lyuXcgrdryy2piaaclZkZdk>(2003)
-by Melissa Butcher—google-book

2. [DOC] Cultural Change: Reflections on the Identity Strategies of
Indian<http://www-edit.usyd.edu.au/riap/documents/publications/upocc_jisjuly04_final.doc>and
Australian youth (2006)…-
by Melissa Butcher- View as
HTML<http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:cDeIXMryTPYJ:www-edit.usyd.edu.au/riap/documents/research/tcc/upocc_jisjuly04_final.doc+>-
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language education

Hi, Gael!

Thanks for another great one!

You wrote:

Our lives will be comprehensible only when the diversity within us is
greater than the diversity beyond us.

Wow! That's one for the books, or for cross-stitching and hanging above the
mantle-piece!

Since you are new on board, let me just clarify that this discussion is not
limited to Europe and North America. Elsie is in South Africa, Heather in
England, Jonny in Northern Germany, and Marcel in the Netherlands with much
South African experience.

And this is just a small selection. Besides the mentioned countries, in
Europe we have members in the Nordic Countries, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria,
the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia,
Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Russia, Estonia and
Turkey, and there may be others. In Asia we have members in Jordan, Lebanon,
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, China, Japan, Korea, Kazakhstan,
Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and possibly others, in Africa members
in Egypt, Lybia, Morocco, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and
possibly others. Most Latin American members are in Brazil, followed by
Mexico, and there are members in Peru, Argentina and maybe others. We also
have a good number of Canadians and Australians, and a couple of New
Zealanders as well. And the pot has been stirred quite a bit in that many
members live in countries other than those in which they were raised, and
others belong to minorities within their native countries.

It looks as though you've hired on to the most suitable ship.

As for the actual discussion, let me just interject that we mustn't ignore
that quite a few of the languages we are talking about here have a history
of oppression and suppression, from which some of them (e.g., Low Saxon and
Scots) are reemerging only now. Not too long ago children were physically
and mentally punished for using their languages in schools. So there are the
factors of low prestige and vestiges of the forbidden. Many of the speakers
themselves have come to internalize this, and some of them even came to
believe that their ancestral languages *should* go extinct. This makes
(re-)assertion efforts doubly difficult, and not only because it provides
"the enemy" with ammunition when native speakers complain about the efforts
of "rebel-rousing whippersnappers."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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