{"id":3837,"date":"2009-09-16T18:26:41","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T18:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2009\/09\/indigenous-australian-languages-in-the-news\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:46:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:46:50","slug":"indigenous-australian-languages-in-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2009\/09\/indigenous-australian-languages-in-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous Australian languages in the news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indigenous Australian languages have been in the news recently. On the positive side, Liza Power has a long piece in The Age<\/em>, The new songlines<\/a> which looks at Indigenous languages and music [thanks Myf!<\/em>], and brings in Nick Evans’ new book Dying Words<\/a>. It’s in my bag waiting to be read when I get through oh the Mound of marking and stuff…..
\nFour Corners<\/em> did a program on the decision to abolish bilingual education in the NT<\/a>, focussing on Lajamanu, but with some footage at Yirrkala. They’ve also come up with a good set of links and resources, and extended interviews<\/a> with Djuwalpi Marika (Chairman Yirrkala School Council), Wendy Baarda (former teacher-linguist, Yuendumu) and Gary Barnes, CEO NT Education Department. Barnes’ most quotable quote: <\/p>\n

GARY BARNES: We absolutely want our young indigenous people to become proficient in the use of English language… It’s the language of learning, it’s the language of living, and it’s the language of the main culture in Australia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a quotable one-worder from the Chief Minister and Minister for Education: <\/p>\n

DEBBIE WHITMONT (to Paul Henderson): Is it fair to expect that children who are trying to learn in a second language should meet the same benchmarks at the same time as children in other parts of the country who are learning in their first language?
\nPAUL HENDERSON: Absolutely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nThe comments on the ABC opinion section are very interesting \u2013 thoughtful comments both pro and anti. The general opinion among my (biased) acquaintances is that the program is ‘very good but very depressing’. One heartfelt comment from a friend:<\/p>\n

If the Intervention were serious the commonwealth might think about taking over education again. The NT government is clearly unable to provide adequate schooling irrespective of the language question. The high turnover of teachers, poor quality of many principals, pitiful curriculum with all sorts of deficits (no music or decent sport programs, rarely any science, teachers who don’t know how to make language lessons work, one could go on).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indigenous Australian languages have been in the news recently. On the positive side, Liza Power has a long piece in The Age, The new songlines which looks at Indigenous languages and music [thanks Myf!], and brings in Nick Evans’ new book Dying Words. It’s in my bag waiting to be read when I get through … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indigenous-language-education"],"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\/3837","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4209,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions\/4209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}