{"id":3746,"date":"2008-10-17T17:43:06","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T17:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/10\/black-day-for-indigenous-languages-in-nt-felicity-meakins\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:38:20","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:38:20","slug":"black-day-for-indigenous-languages-in-nt-felicity-meakins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/10\/black-day-for-indigenous-languages-in-nt-felicity-meakins\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Day for Indigenous Languages in NT &#8211; Felicity Meakins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[from Felicity Meakins, <a href=\"\/blog\/2008\/10\/new-languages-two-old-languages-love\/\">2009 ARC recipient<\/a>]<br \/>\nThe bad news about Australian languages continues with the <a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom.nt.gov.au\/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewRelease&#038;id=4599&#038;d=5\">announcement<\/a> by the NT Minister for Education and Training, Marion Scrymgour of a NT schools restructure which will place the emphasis on English and will essentially wind back two-way education.<br \/>\n&#8220;&#8230; I&#8217;m &#8230; announcing today that the first four hours of education in all Northern Territory schools will be conducted in English,&#8221; Ms Scrymgour said.<br \/>\n&#8230;..<br \/>\n&#8220;Ms Scrymgour said she recognised the requirement for all schools to teach all classes in English for the first four hours of each day would be contentious. I support preserving our Indigenous languages and culture \u2013 but our Indigenous children need to be given the best possible chance to learn English.&#8221;<br \/>\nThis announcement follows the results from her Department&#8217;s 2004-2005 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.det.nt.gov.au\/education\/indigenous_education\/previous_publications\/indigenous_languages_culture_report\/indigenous_languages_culture_report.pdf\">Indigenous Languages and Culture in Northern Territory Schools<\/a> [.pdf] report which showed positive outcomes for children taught in the two-way model.<br \/>\nHow does it help children who don&#8217;t understand English,  to spend the first 4 hours of every day listening to English?  Most NT schools are already English-only schools, and there&#8217;s no sign that it improves children&#8217;s written English more than in bilingual schools &#8211; indeed the evidence from Scrymgour&#8217;s own department report is that the outcomes are marginally better in bilingual schools.<br \/>\nConsultation this year for the Regional Learning Partnerships between communities and schools also showed that most communities wanted language taught in the school either through two-way learning or an ILC (Indigenous Languages and Culture) program.<br \/>\nBut it&#8217;s not about research, results or education even, it is all about ideology as usual.<br \/>\nHow about having a look at the 2004-2005  report, and the press release by the Minister for Education, and if you feel moved to send her informed agreement or disagreement, e-mail her at  Marion.Scrymgour  AT   nt.gov.au.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[from Felicity Meakins, 2009 ARC recipient] The bad news about Australian languages continues with the announcement by the NT Minister for Education and Training, Marion Scrymgour of a NT schools restructure which will place the emphasis on English and will essentially wind back two-way education. &#8220;&#8230; I&#8217;m &#8230; announcing today that the first four hours &#8230; <a title=\"Black Day for Indigenous Languages in NT &#8211; Felicity Meakins\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/10\/black-day-for-indigenous-languages-in-nt-felicity-meakins\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Black Day for Indigenous Languages in NT &#8211; Felicity Meakins\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indigenous-australia-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4067,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/4067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}