Call to save bilingual education (fwd link)

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Call to save bilingual education

Stuart Rintoul | July 02, 2009
Article from:  The Australian

AUSTRALIAN governments suffer from a "deep monolingualism" that has
discriminated against teaching in Aboriginal languages, according to a new
report criticising the dismantling of bilingual education in the Northern
Territory.

In an assault on the territory's decision last year to teach the first four
hours of the school day in English, the report's authors say the decision
"could spell the death of the remaining endangered indigenous languages in
Australia" and marked a return to the "English-only" approach of the
assimilationist era of the1950s.

The authors, Jane Simpson, Jo Caffery and Patrick McConvell, all of whom have
long experience in Aboriginal linguistics, say bilingualism in remote NT
schools was ditched "without apparent regard for the evidence from research on
how monolingual children learn a second language, or on the positive value of
bilingual education, or the language rights of indigenous peoples, or the
evidence from schools which had abandoned bilingual education".

Access full article below:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25720797-5006790,00.html