{"id":3685,"date":"2008-04-28T10:08:11","date_gmt":"2008-04-28T10:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/indigenous-languages-staying-in-the-background\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:46:51","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:46:51","slug":"indigenous-languages-staying-in-the-background","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/indigenous-languages-staying-in-the-background\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous languages – staying in the background"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mirabile dictu… The 2020 summit <\/a>background material on Indigenous Australia, “>Slide 10 of the 11 slides<\/a>, notes the terrible state of Australia’s languages, and the need to do something about them. Considerable urgency is required if we are to preserve Australia’s Indigenous languages and traditions<\/em>.
\nBUT, the urgency and importance have disappeared from the interim report<\/a> arising from the summit. The Indigenous section doesn’t mention Indigenous languages once. Education ranks highly, but it’s the kind of education that focuses on the problems caused by the differences between children’s home languages and school languages (send the kids to boarding schools, make parents send kids to school), rather than on helping children negotiate between the two languages, and learn to value them both.
\nSome of the ideas from Yuendumu that didn’t make it into the summit appear in Wendy Baarda’s piece<\/a> in the Education News of the Age<\/em> . I quote a bit, but go read the whole!<\/p>\n

After 30 years living and teaching at Yuendumu – a remote community about 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs that speaks Warlpiri as its first language – I have watched literacy attainment levels slowly declining over the past decade. I believe there are two main reasons for this. One is the reduction and neglect of our bilingual or Two-Way program, a key to community involvement and pride in schools at Yuendumu and other bush schools.
\nThe other factor has been the difficulty in attracting school principals of sufficient calibre and experience to be able to navigate complex relationships between two vastly different cultures and to develop innovative, community-based solutions.
\nThere has been a steady loss of positions for Warlpiri staff since the early ’90s. Fifteen years ago our Two-Way program was thriving. We had 10 Warlpiri and 10 mainstream staff members, including a mentor and a teacher linguist to support Warlpiri staff.
\nNow we have only one trained Warlpiri teacher and four Warlpiri assistant teachers with seven mainstream teachers. With fewer Warlpiri staff in the school there are fewer families represented and therefore a declining interest in the school and fewer children made to attend. Attendance has declined over the past decade, a symptom of a malaise within the community itself.
\nThe Aboriginal schools whose Two-Way programs were discontinued have not since lifted literacy standards. Across all remote indigenous schools, whether English-only or Two-Way, the standard of spoken and written English is very low.
\n…..
\nBoarding schools may be the answer for some, but why should Aboriginal children need to be sent far away to boarding schools to become literate, when much more could be done to improve education and build strong communities at home?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nIn the 2020 interim report the only place that Indigenous languages do get mentioned is in the arts section:<\/p>\n

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