Noel's Seven Point Manifesto

In The Australian (via ILAT) today is Noel Pearson's Seven Point Manifesto for addressing the endangerment of Aboriginal languages.

I recommend reading the whole article, in which he asserts the value of linguistic documentation and research (and the imperative to do it now), and argues that efforts to turn that research into language maintenance and revitalisation have not kept pace with that documentation. I've pasted his seven points on how to address this:

[...]

Let me make some points about language policy. A first step is that Australia must recognise its languages. It is ridiculous that Australia is behind Europe in this respect. The European states have signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The status of minority languages varies greatly, but a large number of European minority languages are now official in the provinces where they are spoken. But Australia has not even adopted an official listing of its languages.

Second, the purpose of preserving and maintaining Australia's indigenous languages is not just that these languages serve a communication purpose within indigenous societies (for many communities they often do not), but because they are inherently valuable as part of the country's rich heritage. And these languages comprise the identity of their custodians and are the primary words by which the Australian land and seascape is named and described. These languages are intimately related to the nature and spirit of the country that all Australians now call home.

Third, indigenous people must understand that indigenous language transmission must move decisively from orality to literacy if there is to be long-term maintenance. This means that indigenous children must be fully literate in the language of learning - English - in order to be literate in their own languages. Reliance upon oral transmission alone will not work in the long term.

Fourth, there must be a separate domain within indigenous communities for cultural and linguistic education from the Western education domain. Schools are not the places for cultural and linguistic transmission, and we must stop looking to schools to save our languages. This is because the primary purpose of schools is for our children to obtain a mainstream, Western education, including full fluency in English. Schools will never be adequately equipped to solve the transmission imperative, and all we end up doing is compromising our children's mainstream education achievement. Indeed, without full English literacy our children are then illiterate in their traditional language.

Fifth, language learning must start in earliest childhood, and this means both English and traditional languages. Children must have access to both domains from the start if they are going to become properly bilingual. Communities that delay the learning of English to late in primary school in favour of traditional languages in the early years, end up disabling their children because they remain far behind in the language required for them to obtain a mainstream education.

Sixth, a new generation BIITL must integrate the newest technology. It is the information technologies that provide the bridge between the scientific record and its application to the transmission imperative between generations. There are many breakthrough demonstrations around the countryside of how information technology provides solutions to cultural transmission, and these need to be brought together as part of a concerted program.

Finally, the basic infrastructure for this national project needs to be developed and supplied as a national responsibility. There should be room for a lot of regional and local adaptation, but there must be a range of off-the-shelf technical solutions developed by people with necessary expertise at a national government agency such as AIATSIS.
There needs to be a generous government funded campaign for the maintenance of each indigenous language employing full-time linguists and other expert staff. Private, not-for-profit and public organisations should work together, but language policy and adequate funding must be provided by the national Government.
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Most of it seems reasonable to me. I particularly like his bold 'from oracy to literacy' statement - it seems to me the lack of acknowledgement of the fact we're dealing with second not first language acquisition* in the language revitalisation scenario is a big hurdle to making progress. And an even bigger hurdle to getting to that acknowledgement is moving past blame and shame.

(I should add a caveat that I'm not a trained applied linguist, nor a social worker with community development training - but hey, what's the point of having a blog if you don't get to air opinions based at least on personal experience and reflection?!)

But there are few points I beg to differ on.

Hmm, a separate domain for language transmission, which is not the school. I dunno. I'd consider every-other-part-of-life-other-than-school to be the best domain for language transmission, only that ain't happening (if you'll excuse the crude generalisation). I know of at least one attempt (warning: more crude anecdotally-based generalisations) to create an outside-of-school forum for language and culture transmission. It didn't work, largely because the teachers found it to be inauthentic. Transmission of language and culture hadn't required such a separate effort in the past. First language acquisition generally doesn't. Back to language-revitalisation-as-second-language-learning, be it in a classroom and/or on bush trips, me thinks.

Point five seems to be a bit of an attack on bilingual programs. I haven't been keeping up, but I have heard of some research which apparently suggests (maybe even proves?!) that some of the two-way (~bilingual) schools in the NT are achieving better results than their English monolingual counterpart schools. Has anyone read this research? Can they provide details? How we wish it were true!

And 'off-the-shelf technical solutions'? Like responses to climate change, isn't this just a techno-fix solution? Which I personally believe in both instances, is unsustainable. Behavioural change is the only sustainable answer to achieving both goals. And while many still struggle to find the magic that generates behavioural change, surely education is the biggest ingredient. And culturally, linguistically and pedagogically well-founded education at that.

That's my two-cents worth. I'm sure many of you have your own to contribute! Please do.

*I should probably explain why I think there's a relationship between language revitalisation and literacy, but that will fill a whole 'nother post.