Misunderstandings about literacy education on remote communities.

1. The children in remote and bilingual schools are not being taught English.
   

   Reality:The children on remote communities and in bilingual schools are taught English and grow up with the ability to speak English and write english.  The problems are that many have a limited vocabulary, poor written literacy and numeracy skills.

2. Bilingual schools are teaching in local languages
   

   Reality: Bilingual schools are unable to train, and thus do not have, specialist teachers who know the local Indigenous language. You would be forgiven for thinking it should be otherwise. They are provided with funding for only one linguist and the rest relys on the linguistic skill of locally employed Teacher aids who recieve little additional training.

3. Children in remote communities are not being taught in English.
   

   Reality: English is the language spoken by almost all teachers in remote Indigenous classrooms already.  If there is any education using the local language, it is provided by Teacher Aids from the local community.  Conssequently at least 50% of education has been taught in English for the last 30 years.  Teaching in english does not help indingeous kids learn english well.

4. Someone out there wants to stop English being taught.
   

   Reality: No one, including Indigenous groups, have argued against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being taught English. Aboriginal people have always asked to be taught English.

5. The forcing of teachers to use English in the classrooms is new policy that has not been tried before.
   

   Reality: This is not the first time a policy like this has been introduced.  The education department introduced a policy of English only education (100% of the time)  about 4-5 years ago. It did not apply to bilingual schools, but in a number of bilingual schools new priniciple encouraged the use of english. Schools that use english only models did not perform better than the bilingual schools in recent tests.

6. The current thinking in the NT and around Australia seems to be that the best way to teach a new language is to force people to listen to it as much as possible.
   

   Reality: Such an approach only works if the student is immersed in the language and removed from peer groups that speak their first language That is, for immersion to be successful at teaching English, the kids must be taken away from their families and friends - Australia has been there done that, No thanks.

   Reality: We do not use this approach when we teach foreign languages to English first language speakers. every done frech or Indonesian at school or university.  What do we do?  We teach the new language using the student first language, English.  Why? Because language acquisition is fastest if it is charted in the first language -  eg. djugu = contract, guyaŋa = think… you just learnt 2 new words in a new language.  Untill the student has a good grasp on the langauge we must use structured programs that teach English using the language the students already know.  Why don’t we do this in Indigenous schools?

7. Indigenous languages are not powerful or accurate enough to teach difficult in English concepts.
   

   Reality: Indigenous languages are highly effective, accurate and contain all the meanings necessary to teach mathematical, scientific and humanitarian subjects. I know this because I teach economic literacy, governance and germ theory using an Indigenous language

8. We have to do something. We have tried almost everything.
   

   Reality: The one policy no government has ever implimented to solve low literacy and numeracy rates in Australian remote Indingenous schools is the training of EFL teachers to use local Indigenous languages to teach english and other subjects. This would enable true bilingual education rather than what actually happens today.

Considering that mainstream support, rather than research and local community knowledge, tend to drive government policy it is possible that these misunderstandings or assumptions are driving the current push to once again force english only environments on children in remote Indigenous schools.  I hope this clarifies the issue for you and helps you to explain some of the issues to others.

The paper was written at short notice for a public forum on the intervention held at the request of Yolŋu members of the Northern Territory Synod of the Uniting Church.  Richard was asked to write a paper by organisers of the event as CEO of the Aborignal organisation ARDS to help Balanda attendees to better understand some of the Yolŋu peoples concerns.  While it is a highly summarised examination written from Richards experience, rather than from an formal survey of Yolŋu views, it was heartening to see that the paper reflected closely the points made by the Yolŋu presenting at the forum.

Richard Trudgen continues to work as CEO of the organisation ARDS Inc and the paper has been publish by ARDS, it is available here.

The latest issue before us is a policy presented by Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin to suspend the welfare payments of parents whose children do not attend school. Even if this policy is implemented nationally it hugely discriminates against Indigenous parents, because many Indigenous people in Australia live in situations that are wholly different to other Australians, and a large proportion of Indigenous people are dependent on welfare payments due to the historical impact of colonisation. In the remote Communities of the NT 80% or more adults receive some form of welfare payment, and most of these parents want to see their children educated. Such an approach suggests that parents are to blame for non-attendance in Indigenous communities and ignores the evidence that it is schooling on Indigenous communities that has failed the parents and the children not the other way around.  Suspending welfare payments of parents if children are not attending schools will undermine further the parents struggling to do the right thing in very difficult circumstances.

The issues for Indigenous people are just too complex to handle with broad brush approaches. Indigenous parents in North East Arnhem have adopted a wide range of strategies to try to improve their childrens’ prospects, from saving for private boarding schools to starting their own private schools, to home education in traditional knowledge. For an example of the diversity in remote areas, some of the most functional and productive families in the North East Arnhem Land area those who live in villages on their home lands or ‘outstations’ where they choose to live a more traditional life style. On these small home lands family are reliant on the little money that comes in through a few peoples’ welfare payments to maintain the whole village.  Although many may not be earning their own wages they are working towards sustainability and economic development on their own land.  Schools may be some distance away on relatively disfunctional communities.   Some of the parents on these ‘outstations’ (and sometimes parents living in communities also) have made the bold choice to try to teach their children in the ways of their own culture in order to keep them away from the negative effects of schooling in Balanda run schools, such as drug abuse, depression and violence, to name a few. Instead their focus is on attempting to train their children to be able to live sucessfully on their home lands, which includes; training in traditional knowledge and attempting to acquire other skills training to create economic enterprises in their home lands. Will this choice be removed from Indigenous parents? This is just a sample of the problems with using such a blanket and authoritarian approach to create educational outcomes.  We must be very careful we do not add to the burdens with which Indigenous parents are already struggling.  Good community development arises out of working alongside people, particularly parents, and supporting them in their efforts to be successful as parents, adults and citizens.

The stand backish approach I have just described is a very safe way to engage in a new culture such as when one starts working with Aboriginal people. But the real trick is to balance this learning and understanding of culture in your head, with a different kind of understanding. We could call it learning, by experience, but it is not the experience I want to emphasise. It is letting go of our fear to let our real person inside come out. A genuine expression is much more valuable than a cold and calculated one when it comes building relationship with others even in another culture. I have recently realised that for all my experience with Yolngu people, I have huge difficultly knowing how to simply relate to an Indigneous person. Meeting someone in the street the other day I just didn’t know how to express myself to this person. I felt like I needed to know what would be the right thing to do? However, after thinking about this I realised that my awkwardness was a disadvantage in this and that I needed to allow a greater degree of self expression. Some ‘white fellas’ get along very well with Indigenous people because they are able to remain genuine or respond naturally to people. This is a more extrovert characteristic and it is very important for enabling personal relationships with people in other cultures. Visiting, meeting and talking to others is essential to learning to relate to another culture. If we do not allow relationships to blossom we remain marginal to the culture looking at it from the outside. Instead, get involved and let yourself bubble out when ever you can. The danger here is breaking a social rule or taboo and this can be embarrassing or even harmful to yourself or others. However, we cannot allow this to keep us introverted. The trick is to balance natural self expression and being aware of the cultural environment you are in, learning both from the mistakes, and relationships that arise from letting go, and from the observations and questions that arise from awkwardness.

Every day you find yourself standing at the bottom of a cliff. And every day you find that a car or bus has fallen over the cliff filled with people causing many people to be killed or injured. How should the city respond to this? First of all the people from the city send medics to treat the injured and get them to hospital and the families, priests and labourers come to bury the dead. But every day there is another lot of deaths. The city is so busy caring for the injured and the dead that it is some time before the city does anything to stop the carnage. Finally the city decides to put up a rail on the cliff to stop cars from falling over. This works for some time but soon the rail breaks from the pounding it receives and in addition to this you notice that the day the rail broke several vehicles tumbled over the edge with it. Someone who works in the mayors office came up with a great idea. If all the cars and buses had wings then they could glide safely over the edge. No body told the Mayor however that bus drivers don’t know how to fly a bus and the wings were a real problem for space on the roads. Soon the city has had enough they say well no one shall travel on the mountain any more. So they put up road blocks all along their side of the mountain and they tried to force those on the mountain to live in the city. This slows the carnage but as more people come to live in the city the problems starts to increase again. Still cars and buses fall over the edge. The city has forgotten that people have built their lives on the mountain and they have not looked carefully to see which road is killing people. Soon the people realise that it isn’t right that the citizens can’t travel to relatives or live on the mountain that has been home to people for centuries, because of one road. What can be done, how can this be resolved?

Standing at the bottom of this cliff you realise that the solution to the problem depends on what is happening on top of the cliff. Is it a dangerous corner up there? Do people get lost and the road leads them over the cliff? Are there bandits in bulldozers up there waiting to push people off? What might it be? You head off to get to the top.

Everything that happens from the edge of the cliff till the cars hit the ground are symptoms that there is something happening on top of that cliff which is the cause. The question that needs to be asked is ‘Why?’, but one’s perspective needs to change so that one can look beyond the carnage and the cliff to the causes happening above and out of sight in order to find the real answers.

The story ends like this.

When you search for and find the road that runs near that cliff, when you watch the cars to see who falls, when you talk to the drivers who use the road, ..then you realise that people only crash at particular times of the day. When you drive that road carefully, at those time you see that drivers are blinded by the sun that reflects from the city below at those times as they reach the crest. They cannot see the road as they come to the bend near the cliff.

On top of the cliff, the cause is not the mountain or the people on the mountain, or the cliff, or drivers, these are all just part of that place, the mostly immovable realities. In this story the cause of the carnage is the blinding of the drivers by reflected sun light, which is a result of the conditions created on that road by a combination of factors, the crest in the road, the corner near the cliff, the white roofs and windows of the city, the position of the sun in the sky.

There are a lot of analogies in this story with the history of programs and policies designed to help solve the problems being faced by Indigenous Australians over the years. Consider them if you will, but consider this now. If the fall from the cliff represents the gap in life expectancy, disease rates and the failures in education in Aboriginal communities, how do we look beyond the carnage and the patch up measures needed to treat the wounded to find the cause - that which is happening out of sight beyond the top of the cliff. For the problems found in Aboriginal Communities we must look carefully at what community members experience in common that leads to these problems. Furthermore, do these common experiences have other more foundational real causes which are not part of immovable realities. If there are deeper questions then we must ask again, ” Why are they experiencing this?” We must keep asking this ‘Why?’ until we get to the ultimate causes. Metaphorically, we climb the cliff and get beyond the carnage, by following a trail of ‘Whys?’. The other way to change our perspective from symptoms, to a view from the the top of the cliff, is to enter the world of those who face and experience these problems, not so much the wounded, but in particular we must communicate with the experts among the people themselves, the bus drivers trying guide the people safely along the mountain road. And we must test our answers, not adopt answers based on assumed realities. As you can see its not simple to look for causes and it is often easier to just treat the symptoms in the short term, but if that is all we do the carnage will continue and the ‘Gap’ will remain.

In the next part to this subject I will analyse some specific solutions offered by Government and consider what perspective they are using and why

During the research, many Yolŋu people expressed the opinion that most non-Aboriginal people demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge and understanding in relation to Yolŋu people, Yolŋu law and Yolŋu ways. Consequently, the current situation was perceived by many Yolŋu as being a two-sided problem. Yolŋu conveyed distress that many Balanda did not even recognise that a Yolŋu legal system was in place, hence the title “Bäyŋu Ŋayaŋu-Dapmaranhamirr Rom ga Ŋorra” which means “no existence of deep and mutual respect”.

The report then goes on to investigate the misunderstanding Yolngu people have about the Balanda legal system. One must really read past the executive summary to get at the real value in this report as the summary fails to highlight the power of the reports content. It is an easy report to read, and is packed full of quotes from Indigenous people and short case studies. The real shock comes from page 21, where the research shows that:

Over 95% of Yolŋu surveyed were unable to correctly identify the meaning of the 30 commonly used English legal terms.

These are words that include:

Accuse/Accused, Bail, Consent, Guarantee, Obliged/Not obliged, Sentence, Alleged, Charge, Directly/Indirectly, Guilty, Offend/Breach, Summons, Appear, Commit, Fail/Failure …

What is interesting in relation to some of the things I have been arguing in relation to Indigenous eduction. For those surveyed who had access to government schools, those born after 1965, 97% of their responses indicated that they had either no understanding, or gave completely incorrect meanings to these legal terms. These Government schools did not use Balanda teachers trained in local languages. Those surveyed who were born prior to 1965 and thus had access personnel on the ‘Missions’ who spoke the local languages, still had a many misunderstandings, but where reported to have a much better understanding of the legal system and they responded with a correct or partially correct understanding of the legal terms 10-20% of the time, as against 3% of the time for those born after 1965 (see page 24).

The report includes a series of studies on how individual words were understood and how this has affected Yolngu individuals in their dealings with the legal system. Perhaps most striking was the perception by some Yolŋu that to be “bailed out” meant they were free, often resulting in them breaking their bail commitments to return to court. In 2005 there were over 5000 warrants out for the arrest of people who had breached bail in the Northern Territory, on current jailing rates 80% of these could have been for Aboriginal people. This is a striking insight to the effects of cross-cultural misunderstandings. It highlights for me the importance of minimising such confusion in my communications with Aboriginal people. I hope it also helps some of you to grasp some of the reasons why things may not work out the way we expect when working with Aboriginal people. Please have a quick read or download the report by clicking here (opens in a new window).

As an example of the difficulty of transferring the meaning of difficult English words to an ESL person. Try explaining ‘infection’ yourself in English without using other difficult words like ‘bacteria’, germs, ‘inflammation’, or ‘microscopic’. Its not easy is it? Its a little like playing the game “taboo”. Using English onlly, this is what any teacher must do to be really understood. Unfortunately, very quickly the teachers tire of this (I know I have to do it sometimes) and returns to their normal vocabulary, using English words many Indigenous people won’t understand.

So what English words can it be assumed that an ESL Aboriginal person understands? Generally speaking Indigenous Australian people understand very well words that describe objects, and actions that can be seen, heard, felt and tasted with minimal explanation to define the term, we call them tangible terms/concepts. However, ESL indigneous persons may have poor understanding of any word which might be called intangible. That is, terms which cannot be easily demonstrated, seen, heard, tasted or touched, including;

• emotions,
• descriptive words like ’serious’, or ‘conclusively’
• conceptual terms that may relate to specialised field such as;
  • law
  • politics
  • economics
  • science
• a whole range of health related words, where things are not directly observable, because they are microscopic or internal.

We must remember that English second language speakers from other countries have access to dictionaries which explain these linguistically difficult or advanced English words in their own language. Aboriginal people in Australia do not have such resources. Furthermore, these difficulties with English may also be true for speakers of ‘Aboriginal English’ or English kriols. This occurs when the intangible terms were not transferred to first languages before the local lanugages were lost within a community. As a result such communities will not find it any easier to discover new concepts and meanings.

When working with Indigenous people who are ESL speakers (including some ‘Aboriginal English speakers”), it is important to keep these difficulties in mind. Especially if you are restricted to English. Transfer of meanings for intangible terms is possible in English only, but it is very difficult, because one must avoid the many other words your student doesn’t understand. And one must have the time to have detailed discussions around words that are new or foriegn. Whether you have learnt a local language or not, always keep a eye out for words that may be difficult and take some time to check with individuals and small groups how people in the community understand certain terms. Practice with them how you might explain the meaning successfully. Generally Aborignal people don’t mind being asked about their understanding of English words, because they generally recognise that learning another language can be very difficult.

Some of the advantages of teaching in the Aboriginal students’ native language are obvious; english words and concepts can more quickly be explained using terms locals already understand well. Some argue that by speaking english only it exposes students repeatedly to new english words, which allows Indigenous people to increase their vocabulary. This can occur in highly contextualised teaching sessions. However, contextualising in english to ESL students is difficult because of the loss of information that occurs as the student tries to understand english. When a learning a second language many of the words that a person does not know are not even heard by the brain, and if they are heard they are quickly discarded as the brain tries to decipher the meaning of the sentence using the word its does know. If you have learnt a second language yourself you would recognise this process, which leaves you hoping the words you missed were not too important. You may be able to see how this kind of word deafness can go unnoticed. This process of word loss is particularly detrimental to learning when contextualising, giving instructions, or explaining a meaning or concept, because these processes depend the most on information being transferred correctly. This is when the use of local language is most important. If local languages were used for these parts of the training process, particularly in literacy education, the learning process could be accelerated beyond what is achieved now by even the most successful english based strategies.

Australia values indigenous languages as shown in our public art, but in practice it is easy to have excuses. Photo by Superciliousness, some rights reserved

My experience in North East Arnhem Land is that education continues to fail here because cultural and language differences continue to be ignored. We expect Aboriginal people everywhere to learn english but make no attempt to teach them effectively by requiring personnel entering Aboriginal communities to use local languages. … A look at the history shows that in the 60’s and 70’s there were parts of the NT where indigenous people had high literacy rates. In NE Arnhem Land by the 60’s and 70’s the missions of this region trained adults and children using local languages. This changed after the late 70’s as the long term mission staff were gradually replaced by Government personnel who were not required to learn language and rarely stayed more than 2 years. … Let’s do things differently and learn from the past for a change.

The comments received from others about this post were very insightful and they can be viewed here. For some there are a number of concerns about learning Aboriginal languages and educating using local languages that become blockages, or even excuses, that prevent personnel individually or corporately from putting time into learning to use Aboriginal languages. I wish to briefly respond to these common concerns. Common concerns and assumptions about using local Indigenous languages

1. Local Aboriginal Languages are very difficult to learn? - It is true that Indigenous languages are not simple languages and they are a challenge to learn. But they are no more difficult than most other foreign languages. Indigenous languages are in some ways easier to learn than the major European and Asian languages, for the following reasons.
   • Australian Aboriginal languages have consistent gramma and phonetic rules, primarily because they are very ancient and pure languages. Until recently they have experienced little mixing with different languages as has been the case of the major world languages English, French, Spanish and even Chinese.
   • Word order is usually not highly important. Indigenous gramma rules are based primarily on the use of suffixes and/or prefixes. English gramma is based primarily on word order, but also uses suffixes (attachments to the end of a word like; -ed or -ing). So while using only suffixes or prefixes for gramma can take some time to get use to, the student of an Aboriginal language does not need to be greatly concerned about word order which is in some ways the hardest aspect to change for an English speaker.
   • Indigenous Australian languages did not have a written language prior to European arrival, consequently the alphabets developed for Indigenous languages are entirely phonetic and aid in the process of learning new sounds and pronunciation. When learning major world languages often the written and spoken languages are like learning two separate languages.
   • There are no tonal aspects to pronunciation of these local language terms as in some Asian languages, like Thai.
   • There are few gender specific terms and common nouns and verbs are not gendered like in French or Hindi.
2. There are too many Local Aboriginal Languages? - This is the excuse used by many government departments. However, the truth is that there are common ‘linga franca’ languages that cover large regions, courtesy of Indigenous people speaking several languages, before English. This leaves just a couple of small areas such as Groote Eylandt that are linguistically unique. Under current approaches working regionally remains a difficult because departments and organisations often try to centralise services in major urban centre as theses are easier to administer. Such centralisation then requires personnel to work in several different languages areas. Secondly, most personnel do not stay long in a single area. However, if we were to focus more on local approaches this could be overcome. One of the reasons for leaving one region for another is the stress that results from poor communication and a sense of isolation. Learning the local language is a major step toward reducing these stresses on personnel.
3. It takes forever to learn enough language to be useful? - It takes 6- 9 months of intensive study to become effective in communication in your given field, but you can start to work in your field after the first 6 months. By 9 months you will not be entirely fluent, but you will be able to use a large range of key words and phrases in the topic areas of your work. You will understand at least half of what is said (which is more often better than in English only) and you will be more aware of cultural and language issues that are affecting specific situations. You will also be able to efficiently investigate new terms for difficult concepts you wish to communicate. All these aspects improve your effectiveness over English only. By introducing local languages as a medium for communication you allow locals to begin to use their own language in the work place, in your presence, giving them more control in conversations - effectively you are beginning to share the cultural space. This is greatly appreciated, it encourages friendships in the local community and also allows you to continue to learn the language on the job.
4. Most Aboriginal people already speak English? - Across the whole of Australia this true. However, in places were there are still Indigenous languages being used English is the second, third or fourth language. In these places adults often speak English well but do not clearly understand intangible English concept terms, words like ’serious’, ‘contract’, ‘lease’, ‘infection’, ‘responsibility’, guilty …etc. In places where English is the only language spoken the common language used may be an Aboriginal version of English, which uses different meanings for a whole range of intangible English words. Many intangible terms may still be misunderstood or not used at all. Sometimes it is ‘Aboriginal English’ that is the local language that must be learnt.
5. Mixing English and Aboriginal languages produces a bastardised kriol, that reduces literacy outcomes. - English itself is actually a kriol, a mixture of Olde English dialects, a well as German, French, Latin and more. For English, this ‘bastardisation’ actually improved the vocabulary and the accuracy of the language, so that today it is one of the most accurate languages in the world. So the original assumption about kriols is simply not true. However, kriols can result in a loss of linguistic and conceptual ability when the parent languages are not being properly taught. This is happening on Aboriginal communities today due to the exclusive use of English by dominant culture personnel, limiting the ability of personnel to communicate, or teach, intangible English terms to locals.

All together, local Aboriginal languages are no more difficult to learn than any other language, in some way they are easier, but using them in education does require a local/regional approach to education.