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A forked tongue on bilingual education in the NT
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Words are easy, words are cheap Yothu Yindi, Treaty
As Crikey reported late last year here and here, bilingual education in the Northern Territory has been in a state of shock since then Education Minister Marion Scrymgour announced that, for the first four hours of teaching of every school day in every NT school, classes would be taught in English. Scrymgour, to her credit, stood her ground in difficult circumstances and responded at length to Crikey. In recent times she has, despite stepping down from the Education and other Ministries due to ill-health (and from the NT Government itself for a time), maintained her engagement with this issue. In June this year, while an independent, Scrymgour released this Media Statement setting out her views. And late last night Scrymgour told Crikey that, notwithstanding that she does not currently have a Ministry in Paul Henderson’s fragile NT Labor government, she was:
Scrymgour’s decision that the first four hours of each school day would be taught in English would have no impact on the majority of the NT’s “mainstream” schools where no local Aboriginal languages were being taught. The only impacts would be upon the eight remote schools that are the remnants of what was a once proud bilingual education system that operated across the broad areas of cultural and linguistic diversity that is the Aboriginal reality in the NT. Last night’s Four Corners did, in Crikey’s view and in the opinion of just about everyone we’ve talked to that watched it, a pretty good job on the current state of bilingual education in the NT, focussing largely on the school in one township, Lajamanu, that Four Corners had visited in the mid-eighties. At Lajamanu reporter Debbie Whitmont and her crew spoke to current and past kardia (white) staff and to local yapa (Warlpiri) parents and past and present students. Two circumstances beyond the control of the Four Corners crew appear to have limited their report. Firstly, a recent death meant that many people were away on funeral sorry business, and secondly, either by coincidence or conspiracy — take your pick — the Four Corners crew landed in Lajamanu at the same time that recently appointed CEO of the NT Education Department, Gary Barnes and his minders chose to visit for the first time. The overall impression that viewers were left with of the state of bilingual education at Lajamanu was one of quiet resignation and defeat. As G. R Napaljarri told Whitmont: “The assistant teachers are just like interpreters in the classroom. I don’t think they are happy about that.” Four Corners also went to Yirrkala in the tropical north-east of the NT and devoted a few short minutes to events there. If viewers were left with an impression of quiet resignation by Whitmont’s account of Lajamanu, then it couldn’t be more different at Yirrkala, where the politics of language, tradition and culture are played in an all together different manner than in the desert. By the same circumstances of possible coincidence or conspiracy, NT Education CEO Gary Barnes visited the Yirrkala school on the same day as Four Corners. Barnes and his minders were at the school when Whitmont and her crew came up from the local Council Office where they had been meeting with Djuwalpi Marika, the Chair of the Yambirrpa School Council and a highly respected traditional owner of Yirrkala. Barnes wouldn’t allow Whitmont to film at Yirrkala School, overriding Djuwalpi Marika’s invitation to do so. Barnes then had lengthy meetings with the Yirrkala School Action Group and several Yambirrpa School Council members. Crikey understands that Barnes read the riot act to both groups, telling them that they had to abandon their continued support and use of the bilingual program and that the continued support by the Yambirra School Council for bilingual education at their school was “unacceptable” to the Department. Crikey also understands that many of those who had attended the meetings were upset and angry with Barnes and the NT Education staffers accompanying him, with the two issues of real concern being the absolute disregard Barnes showed for Yolngu leadership and ownership of their school program and his apparent total ignorance of and disinterest in bilingual education and Indigenous Education in general. As Djuwalpi Marika told Four Corners:
I went to Barnes’ office for comment and this was their response:
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13 Comments
I thought it was an excellent programme. With something as involved and emotional as the politics of minority languages, there is bound to be disagreement about aspects of the programme but overall I consider Four Corners to have been “on the money”.
The NT authorities have spread a fair bit of misinformation to justify their policy (the 4 hours English only policy) and it was unfortunate that 4 courners repeated one of their more blatant lies:
“that bilingual schools had performed worse than English only schools” The lie is based on NAPLAN testing results for all of Australia, and yes bilingual NT schools have performed worse than mainstream schools in ENGLISH. If mainstream schools had been tested in Warlpiri they would have performed much worse than the Lajamanu, Wirliyajarrayi, Nyirrpi and Yuendumu schools!
The fact is that on the basis of research (2007?) bilingual schools have performed slightly better than other remote Aboriginal schools with English only programmes, despite their bilingual programmes having been underfunded and subjected to bureaucratic sabotage since their inception.
Very sad when the head of the NT Education Department can come out with “English is the language of instruction”. This is not only offensive to Aboriginals but to the many other Australians that received their initial education in languages other than English, the implication being that somehow we missed out on getting a “decent” education (don’t get me wrong I think English is a wonderful language, but so is Warlpiri).
Article 14 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Australia recently endorsed is unequivocal … Indigenous Peoples have the right to own their own schools and to teach their children in their own languages.
When a bureaucrat can prevent 4 corners to take up the invitation to film from a local school council member, clearly “ownership” of the school does not rest with the local people, but I guess this applies to most schools in Australia. Another question that could be put is what are they afraid of or what do they have to hide? Maybe, just maybe they’re embarrassed by their ignorance.
Napaljarri’s comment that she doesn’t even have a desk to do her programing at spoke volumes. Barnes made no effort to discuss the new policy with refernce to teaching and learning models or education theory. His effort of sitting down with the cameras rolling and quizing a boy about his reading was at best a mistake. As a teacher he should know better and behave better.
Forked tongues?
“The daily tension for these students at school is the maintenance of their aboriginality in the face of school policy that disregards many of their cultural and behavioural practices, or regimes of truth, that are socially acceptable at home and in their community but threaten the good order of the institution when brought to school.”
Extract from Kevin Gillan’s PhD thesis. Yep the same Kevin Gillan responsible (along with Barnes and Sharron Noske) for implementing the new policy.
Oh, and I forgot to advise of the excellent resources that Four Corners has provided that support the program - you can see extended interviews, past news items of relevance & a host of Government reports at: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20090914/language/.
There is also an excellent chronology of the history of bilingual education here: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20090914/language/chronology.htm.
And a stack of other material 9some doubled-up elsewhere on the site) here: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2685541.htm.
A great example of expanded and value-added journalism.
Aboriginals will have to be able to communicate fluently in English if they are going to be able to reach their full potential in the world. The Aboriginal language can survive if it continues to be spoken in the home and in the community.
The Welsh language has survived because it is spoken in the home, the community, in their religious services and in the workplace although there was a long and concerted attempt by the English to stamp it out. Most children speak only Welsh before starting school, they learn English at school and by the time they are nine/ten they are fluent in both languages.
Because Latin is was used by the church in Ireland, the Irish Gaelic language was not so resilient though attempt is being made to bring it back by teaching it in the schools
Just a note to advise that the source of much of the chronological material referred to above is from a paper prepared by Professor Brian Devlin of Charles Darwin University in Darwin and Stephen Harris in 1999 and entitled: “The Northern Territory Bilingual Education Program: Some historical reflections”.
You can see a copy of that paper in the “Files” section of the Friends of Bilingual Learning group website at: http://groups.google.com/group/foblmail/files?hl=en&upload=1
Gratton, Gratton….. there was bound to be someone to come out with the: “Aboriginals will have to be able to communicate fluently in English if they are going to be able to reach their full potential in the world.” truism.
Not one of us that are involved in the political fight to bring back bilingual education has ever denied that, in fact many of us are English only speakers or English is our main language of communication (as this very reply is testimony to).
Here’s another truism : “The most effective way of teaching is to use language (any language) that the students understand”.
In Yuendumu it so happens that those people that were fortunate enough to go through school at the height of the bilingual programme are not only fully bilingual and literate, but also happen to be our best English speakers.
As for the Welsh and Irish examples: “attempts by the English to stamp it out…” The NT’s “4 hour English only” policy is nothing less than such an attempt.
The Irish language has survived and is alive and well (mainly on the west coast of Ireland), Welsh was hard fought for. I hope someday the Warlpiri will be able to claim that they succeeded in keeping their language too.
Re: Gratton Wilson’s comments: -
1) as made abundantly clear in the 4 corners program (and by almost every Indigenous person I’ve talked to about this here in the NT) Indigenous people DO WANT TO LEARN TO SPEAK AND READ GOOD ENGLISH. They also want to learn lots of the other things that western culture has to offer, but this is done more effectively in a language they can understand. Despite the perceptions of the many mono-lingual Australians, knowing more than one language isn’t a barrier to learning, living or working, it actually is an asset. There is no contradiction between knowing a non-English language and using it at school, and learning to speak English.
2) a big part of the revival of Welsh was that it was used in schools openly, both as a medium of instruction for first language speakers and as a second language for people whose first language is English (a large proportion of people in many parts of Wales - note that it wasn’t used in the misnamed ‘immersion’ method here in the NT). This institutional promotion was an important part of the success of the revitalisation process.
Many people say, ‘they’ can speak it at home if they wish, it’s their responsibility to look after language and ‘culture’; if we applied the same logic to non-Indigenous people we wouldn’t have English classes in school, nor history, science, etc., in fact no school at all. It’ss a measure of the unconscious contempt for Indigenous knowledge and language, that it’s seen as necessary to spend all day every day learning non-Indigenous language and knowledge, but the pantheon of Indigenous knowledge is sufficiently taught as an afterthought in the evenings in the midst of the rest of life going on.
Unfortunately this debate is less pedagogic than ideological, with a band of determined old-timers in the Education Department more interested in turning kids white than passing on knowledge.
Re: Jungarrayi.
I can say the same of the people who went through bilingual in the 1980s in Lajamanu - their English (and Warlpiri) literacy is far better than school kids of today.
The extent of the NT Education Department’s failure (I dont’ think this is widely known in urban Australia) can be seen by the fact that many people in their teens and twenties CAN BARELY WRITE THEIR NAME! This happens across all schools, not just the very few, poorly supported, (former) bilingual schools. Even those kids who regularly attend these terrible schools for years and years emerge with the most rudimentary of skills and certainly not much more than very limited English.
On the other hand, whenever western knowledge and language is passed on respectfully and intelligently there is an absolute hunger to know and learn (and share Indigenous knowledge),
Bob the Bulider/Jupurrurla
Thanks for remiding me Jungarrayi that Banks described English as the “language of instruction” as opposed to the language of learning. Mark Twain is brought to mind.
Grattan in Wales and Eire the road signs are bilingual which you rarely find in Australia and sub-dialects of both languages are disappearing. I understand your point but remember that there are 4 billion people who don’t and may never, speak english and they get by.
The key point is that by teaching english as the primary language we make it clear that we will make only limited allowances for a person’s aboriginality. This attitude is the root cause of the dominant culture’s failure to reconcile with Aboriginal Australia and to address the causes of Aboriginal disadvantage.
Sorry Barnes not Banks Margaret Banks was of course the previous CEO who was knifed by the dead wood that make up so much of the NT education department’s upper echelon.
Sorry SBH, I got it a bit wrong: What Barnes actually said is even worse… (I just checked…): “It’s the language of learning, its the language of living and its the language of the…of the main culture of Australia…” So I guess SBH’s 4 billion people don’t have a life. ¡Qué gran tristeza!
And he’s been entrusted with heading the department responsible for the education of NT children!
Australia’s Education Revolution in action…. Federal Minister Julia Guillard has shown herself to be as ignorant on bilingual education matters as Chief Minister Paul Henderson, we have no one to turn to.
Hooray for the Yirrkala mob…. What are you going to do?…. We’ll just ignore them!!!!
It’s a nice sunshiny day isn’t it?
P’raps it will be a Bran Nue Dae, Jungarrayi.