[lg policy] Australia: Hopes and dreams

[Harold Schiffman]

Hopes and dreams
February 11, 2012, 1:57 pm by Jane Simpson

On Thursday I had an interesting time in a sleek-looking conference
room at Parliament House with the House of Representatives Inquiry
into language learning in Indigenous communities. The terms of inquiry
cover learning English and learning Indigenous languages. Lots of
people have put lots of time and thought into their submissions and
appearances (available online). They are a fascinating snapshot of
current concerns, hopes and dreams. (A couple contain not-so-subtle
touting – gimme a gazillion and I’ll solve
literacy/attendance/savethelanguage, but they’re the exception).

So I was answering questions about my submission [.pdf] on language
learning in Indigenous communities. Here goes with points that I
wanted to make, and then what I remember of questions asked by the
Committee:

Ideas

    If we say we value Indigenous languages, then an enduring sign of
that would be if, in 50 years time, lots of Indigenous children are
fully bilingual in both an Indigenous language and the language of the
majority of Australians (today English, but who knows what in 50
years?).
    Doing this is difficult because there are at least three different
types of language situation in Australia: communities where children
come to school speaking a traditional Indigenous language, those where
children come to school speaking one of the new Indigenous languages,
Kriol or a mixed language, and those where they come to school
speaking standard English.
    These different situations have different needs and satisfying
those needs requires different skills. Indigenous people and
government are central to all. The skills of language teachers, ESL
specialists, linguists, hearing specialists, reading psychologists
will also be needed.
    As a result, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Reading
schemes have their place, but they are only one small part of the
picture, because language learning is a lot more than literacy, and
because all literacy schemes on the market have serious weaknesses
along with strengths.
    To ensure that the money spent on Indigenous languages is spent
wisely, we need evidence in a range of areas.
        a. we need to know what languages the children are coming to
school with, i.e. what level of English and what level of Indigenous
language they have mastered. For many communities we don’t know this.
        b. we need to have sensible assessment of the progress that
children are making at school in both English and Indigenous
languages. That is, for communities where children come to school not
knowing English, we need tests that give us information about what
they have learned, and whether they have learned as much as could be
expected of a learner of English in that type of setting (remote/rural
etc) And if we are serious about maintaining Indigenous languages we
need to have measures of how well the children speak the Indigenous
language. Are they increasing their knowledge, or are they falling
behind? Are the kinds of additional language programs offered at
schools helping or not?
    Two areas that need much more investment are:
        the place of Indigenous languages at high school. Here, it is
important to distinguish between programs designed to teach the
language to students who don’t know it, and programs designed to
enrich the language for students who are native speakers of the
language. This is recognised for non-Indigenous languages – we expect
that native speakers of Mandarin will have different language courses
at school from learners of Mandarin, and will have different
assessments in final year matriculation examinations.
        the place of Indigenous languages at universities. This point
I didn’t get to make properly. By utter coincidence two people dropped
by my office separately that same day, people not enrolled at ANU.
They wanted to know how they could learn an Indigenous language at
University. Not information that’s easy to find. As far as I know
currently only two universities offer university-accredited courses in
Indigenous languages still spoken by children: Yolngu Matha at Charles
Darwin University (which can be done online), and Pitjantjatjara at
the University of South Australia (which is a two week intensive
introductory course, way down from the heyday of five levels of
Pitjantjatjara course offered in the 1980s). Two other universities
offer courses in languages which are being revived: Kaurna at the
University of Adelaide, and Gamilaraay at the University of Sydney.
Not many, eh?

Questions from the Committee:

    What’s the point of reviving Indigenous languages? How can we
justify spending money on this instead of on health, job creation etc,
or on languages that are still spoken?
    How do we improve the competitive grant application process so as
to get people in remote communities to have access to Federal funds?
[My estimates suggest that most applications come from language
revival and restoration situations]
    If there is to be expert review of funding applications for work
on Indigenous languages, where do we get the experts from?
    Do we have tests already to measure how well students have
mastered a traditional language?
    Is it easier to transfer from speaking a Kriol to speaking English
than from speaking an Indigenous language to speaking English?
    Is there anything in Kriol for people to read?
    Is it culturally inappropriate to write down an unwritten language?
    How come Mission schools like Mount Margaret which taught only in
English got such good results?
    Why can’t we just have bilingual teaching assistants interpreting
non-Aboriginal teachers?
    How do we get university education faculties to make ESL training
a compulsory part of teacher training?
    Is there any point to establishing a National Indigenous Language
Commission?

Some I could answer, some I couldn’t, some I wish I’d answered better.
The transcript will appear on the website some time. What did strike
me however is that committee members had clearly taken on board a lot
of stuff from the large number of submissions, some had passionate
views, had a lot of relevant experience (former teachers, degree in
anthropology, growing up in Southern Cross WA and Alice Springs), and
were well-informed. E.g. a nice side-point was a proud mention by
Sharon Grierson, Member for Newcastle, of the work being done at
Newcastle University on endangered languages and Indigenous languages.

The question on Mount Margaret Mission allowed me to pay my respects
on transcript to the late Kathleen Trimmer – because it was where she
grew up, and the mission was the reason why she wrote a dictionary of
Wanggatha (which is listed on GoogleBooks), and not her father’s
language, Ngatju. Thanks to committee members, I took away references
to two sides of the Mount Margaret question – Barry Haase referred me
to: Morgan, Margaret. 1986. A drop in a bucket: the Mount Margaret
story. United Aborigines Mission. And Sharon Grierson raised in
discussion an article with a different point of view which she was
going to distribute – I think it was probably this keynote address
[.pdf] to the Australian Council of TESOL Associations by May [Lorna]
O’Brien, who grew up on the mission. It is a moving address, which
shows also the inescapable problem of language maintenance – the
languages are the speakers’, and they are torn between conservatism
and modernism, between one spelling system and another, between
orthography and anarchy. She ends with the words:

    In conclusion I make two recommendations. Firstly we must seek
always to understand what occurs when a second language confronts the
first. I say confronts because of what occurs in the process of
learning that second language and I have provided some examples.
Additional to this, however, is the fact that the child’s first or
home language is part of his/her world, his/her relationships, his/her
beliefs and values and is the means whereby his/her world is explained
and can be manipulated. It is in every respect appropriate, needed and
never to be devalued.

    All languages are precious and important. My plea is, be careful
and respectful of those Aboriginal languages that have survived. Our
children must pronounce Aboriginal language words correctly or we will
end up with an Anglicised version of the original Aboriginal language
that is not true to its tradition. In my opinion, language inaccuracy
can be an additional tool used to destroy another one of the few
Aboriginal languages we have left. We, the speakers of our languages,
who are the teachers and the custodians of the languages, must never
let our languages be corrupted or silenced again.

    In closing I pay tribute to those linguists of by-gone times who
went out on a limb, spending their valuable time in recording the many
languages and dialects we have left today. We honour and thank them
because they believed in our languages and valued them. To linguists
and supporters of today, working with Aboriginal language speakers and
elders, I also extend my sincere thanks. And a special thank you to
the Aboriginal language groups who so willingly have shared their
languages so that Aboriginal children today, and those who will
follow, will have languages that are correct and which they will be
proud to own and speak.

    But may we always remember, and in my Wongatha language…

    Ngalibagu wanga gamu ganmarrthingala
    OUR LANGUAGE MUST NEVER, EVER, BE SILENCED AGAIN.

http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2012/02/hopes-and-dreams/#more-6249

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