Language issues for Marginalized people

Dennis Malone & Steve Simpson, SIL InternationalMicah Network Asia-Pacific, Regional Consultation, Malaysia1-5 October 2007

SIL International

“Partners in Language Development”Wycliffe Bible Translators, InternationalWycliffe Organizations around the world

What Language Issues? e.g. Critical Health InformationRelevant & essential information is

available to ethnic minority people only in languages they do not understand …HIV/AIDS, Avian flu, malaria…www.sil.org/literacy/materials/health/avian_flu/index.html

What language issues? Gender inequities

Disproportionate disadvantage to girls and women of formal and non-formal education in dominant languageUNESCO, UNICEF, BRAC, others…

“[T]he three groups most affected by unjust language policies are (1) women and girls, (2) the poor, and (3) speakers of languages not represented in formal structures.

“The injustice is clearly greatest for those who experience all three conditions simultaneously…” (Benson, 2006, p. 2)

What Language Issues? Advocacy

Land rightsPolitical rightsEconomic marginalizationHealth needsEducational rights

What Language Issues? Stigma

Language & culture is stigmatizedMinority language prohibited in classroom; minority children perceived as ‘slow’ by dominant language educatorsCultural dress, language, customs ridiculed by dominant society

What is Multilingual Education (MLE)?

Use of more than two languages as media of instruction and/or subjects in the classroom.In multilingual settings, the use of two languages—mother tongue and national language of education—in multiple language communities throughout the nation.

Rationale for MLE

Begin with the known, move to the unknown…Minority children begin with the unknown and must use it to move to more unknowns!

“The choice of language…is a recurrent challenge in the development of quality education … Speakers of mother tongues, which are not the same as the national language, are often at a considerable disadvantage in the educational system.” UNESCO, 2003)

Why ethnic minority language children drop out of majority language-only primary schools…

Ethnic minority Grade 1 children carry a double learning burden: (a) learn a new/second language, and (b) learn to read and write using the L2.

Language & Education issues: Ethnic minority children…Lose confidence in themselves as

learnersAre unable to learn the official school language well enough to succeedExperience high grade-retention and drop-out ratesExperience alienation from their home language and culture

Language & education issues beyond the classroom…Disempowerment of girlsDisempowerment of girls

“In most traditional societies, it is the girls and women who tend to be monolingual, being less exposed either through schooling, salaried labour, or migration to the national language, than their sons, brothers or husbands.” (UNESCO, 2003)

Lack of access to social, political, Lack of access to social, political, economic and physical economic and physical development processesdevelopment processes“Linguistic minority groups are driven to further poverty—culturally and economically—because their languages, as a resource for educational achievement and…for equal access to economic and other benefits in a competitive society, are rendered powerless.” (Mohanty, 1990, p. 54)

Under-utilization of human Under-utilization of human resourcesresources

“Children whose first language is not used in school…experience lower levels of learning and are much less likely to be able to contribute to a country’s economic and intellectual development.” (World Bank, 2006, p. 4)

Loss of languages, cultures and of Loss of languages, cultures and of knowledge systems…knowledge systems…“More broadly, the loss of language is part of the loss of whole cultures and knowledge systems, including philosophical systems, oral literary and music traditions, environmental knowledge systems, medical knowledge, and important cultural practices and artistic skills. The world stands to lose an important part of the sum of human knowledge whenever a language stops being used.”

(Hinton, 2001, p. 5)

Mother Tongue-based MLE

Designed to enable ethnic minority language learners build a strong educational foundation--speaking, listening, reading, writing, thinking—in the language they know best.Provide a good bridge to the official/school language(s) for life-long learning

Rationale for strong foundation in L1 …

“The most powerful factor in predicting educational success for minority learners [in English] is the amount of formal schooling they received in their L1… Only those language minority students who had 5-6 years of strong cognitive and academic development in their L1—as well as through [L2]—did well in Grade 11 assessments [in English].” (Thomas & Collier, 2002)

PNG parent’s lament…“When children go to school they go

to an alien place. They leave their parents, they leave their gardens, they leave everything that is their way of life. They sit in classrooms and learn about things that have nothing to do with their place. Later, because they have learned only other things, they reject their own…

PNG parent’s lament (cont’d)

They don’t want to dig kaukau; they say it’s dirty. They don’t want to help their mother fetch water. They look down on those things. There are big changes in the children now. They don’t obey their parents; they become raskols. And this is because they have gone to school and have left the things that are ours…

Same PNG parent’s praise…

Now my child is in [mother tongue] school. He is not leaving his place. He is learning in school about his customs, his way of life. Now he can write anything he wants to in our mother tongue. Not just things he can see, but the things he thinks about, too. And he writes about his place. He writes about helping his mother carry water, about digging sweetpotatoes, about going to the garden…

PNG parent’s praise (cont’d.)

When he writes these things they become important to him. He is not only reading and writing about things outside, but learning through reading and writing to be proud of our way of life. When he is big, he will not reject us. It is important to teach our children to read and write, but it is more important to teach them to be proud of themselves, and of us.

(Parent, Laitrao Village Local Language School, Buin, North Solomons Province, in Delpit and Kemelfield, 1985, p. 29-30)