Torres Strait Islanders' Governments and Histories: Controllers or Victims?

This provides a discussion about
language and education in the Torres strait. People of the western Torres Strait area have sought to valorize and protect the ancestral language and to validate its role in the society.

1. Controllers or victims: Language and education in Torres Strait Prepared by NAOMIE S. BAGUINAT Assistant Professor

2. Introduction This chapter seeks to contribute to the continuing discussion concerning language and education in the Torres strait. For many decades the people of the western Torres Strait area, for example have sought to valorize and protect their ancestral language and to validate its role in their society.

3. Introduction This chapter elaborates the proposal of the bilingual education with Torres Strait Creole (TSC) as medium of instruction, the argument for the first language as medium of instruction is equally valid for other community languages.

4. Language in the Torres Strait There is an evidence that schools may support and help sustain such move but are not sufficient of themselves to bring about the revival of language which is not already spoken as first language and supported by community adult speakers.

5. Language in the Torres Strait It is first argued that pidgins and creoles are, linguistically speaking, languages with equal status to other languages and not merely broken forms or second-rate varieties of some other language. Next, information is presented about the specialized nature of classroom language required by the academic processes mainstreaming schooling.

6. Language in the Torres Strait Further, it is proposed that there are valid reasons why English and only English as the language of instruction in Torres Straits schools may not be an appropriate response to the intellectual and educational needs of Torres Straits children.

7. Language in the Torres Strait The Torres Strait region is characterized by many small islands, only fifteen of which permanent populations. Further to this, TSC is spoken in some communities as a first language and in others as second language and varieties in functional importance.

8. Torres Strait Creole: the Lingua Franca of the Strait TSC , also referred the literature as English-based creole which has acquired features of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics from the Strait indigenous language. It is now spoken either as a first and second language by almost Torres Islanders.

9. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction There would appear to be no well-founded reason why a pidgin/creole could not be part of a school program. Until linguists deemed these varieties to be ‘languages’ as such worthy of study, and creoles were ‘dismissed as marginal, inadequate and improper’.

10. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction The circumstances in which pidgins and creoles arose and the manner in which they developed could have lead to the belief, however erroneous, that they were deserving of the pejoratives. A knowledge of the processes of functional elaboration which distinguish creoles from the trade jargons has only developed over the past 30 years.

11. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction However, creole is recognized as a ruled-governed as systematic language, and viewed as a powerful linguistic resource in the community then the argument for the limited intellectual capacity of its speakers maybe in the fundamental error.

12. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction Although there are around 80 known creole language areas in the world, there is very little nature on their use as languages of instruction. Following the government approval for the establishment of bilingual education in the state. Transfer to English literacy and with it to the language demands of higher levels of mainstream education, occurs gradually from Grade 4 onwards.

13. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Bamyili program on the children’s oral language development indicated: very definite trends towards the superiority of bilingual schooling over monolingual schooling for Creole-speaking students.

14. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction In the light of these positive results in oral language development it was anticipated that Bamyili children’s literacy development would follow similar trend.

15. The First Language as the Medium of Instruction in Torres Strait classroom To set perspective for first language education in Strait schools it is necessary to discuss the manner in which children learn their first language, and to compare that learning with the nature of the language required for formal schooling in mainstream context.

16. The Case for TSC as a Language of Instruction However, the body of research into the nature of the language of classroom learning contributes most to present concerns about quality education for all children. In order to set perspective for first language education in straits schools it is necessary briefly to digress to a discussion of the manner in which children learn their first language.

17. Children learning their first language to do so in social situations. The interaction which occurs, early in the child’s development is firmly located in the present. With increasing maturation and widening experience of children are able to free themselves from dependence on the present, to develop the language to refer to the past, and to protect as well to future experiences.

18. It is not possible to speak with certainty about the relationship between the language in which language functions to promote learning. But, there is a consensus among linguists and psychologists that language is crucial to the learning process. Classroom language becomes progressively more abstract and devoid of context as the child progresses through the system: ‘ disembedded ’, ‘decontextualized’, or ‘context-reduced’.

19. Controllers or Victims? English in the Torres Strait The relationship between language learning in home, community and school environments would appear to be fundamental significance to matters of language and education in Strait schools.

20. First-language English-speaking children – learn to be thinkers in ways of valued by their culture, to be ‘controllers’ rather than ‘victims’. The reason why English-only policy as a medium of instruction in Torres Strait schools may not facilitate the development of the specialized literate behaviours and cognitive competencies of the Islander students to proceed to the higher levels of academic processess .

21. Also, more importantly, they might not gain the opportunity to continue to be well-informed and productive decision makers. First as with mainstream children, Islander children come school with levels of language sufficient for interaction with their environment, with the intellectual competencies for coping participants coping as participants within a particular sociocultural milieu.

22. Second, the language the children are now learning may be functionally relevant only within the classroom or school, for Islander communities it is probable the there will be few English role models. Finally, of no little importance is the question of how the child is to develop the intellectual capability sufficient to manipulate the systems of logic and reasoning integral to mainstream education when his/her knowledge of the language is initially limited.

23. When Less Equals More In the view of difficulties experiences by the children faced with the formidable task of education in and through a second language, the discussion turns to a justification of the first language as their medium of instruction for Torres Strait children speaking Creole as first language.

24. When Less Equals More There appears little doubt that in the past, up to the present day, Islander parents have asked for education in English – although one researcher has suggested that what Islanders thought was English was in fact Pidgin English.

25. When Less Equals More Many educationalists argue that children need English to survive in mainstream schools and society. It furthermore seems obvious to advocates of this kind of linguistic mainstreaming that deficiencies in English should be reminded by more, not less, instruction in English.

26. If the child has already begun to develop in the first language for conceptual/cognitive growth shows that there is likelihood that, given adequate exposure to the second language and sufficient motivation to use it to develop competence in that language. This hypothesis suggests that there are sound reasons for developing and maintaining the child’s mother tongue within the school program based on cognitive and motivational considerations as sociocultural justifications.

27. An Agenda for a Bilingual Education Program for the Torres Strait On the basis on the foregoing, there are arguments that a well-planned program of bilingual education utilizing Torres Strait Creole, where it is the first language of the child, and English as languages of instruction.

28. An Agenda for a Bilingual Education Program for the Torres Strait First, consultation with Islander leaders and parents is needed to determine what Islanders expect from education; how much expectations are achievable; what approaches would best serve their needs and aspirations; and what alternatives are possible.

29. An Agenda for a Bilingual Education Program for the Torres Strait Second, before such program is established, forward planning is essential. Third, a sociolinguistic survey of the whole area to determine the community’s language-use patterns is a necessary prerequisite. Fourth, a thorough linguistic analysis of the language(s) to be incorporated in the program needs to be carried out. Essentials includes grammar and dictionary and an orthography acceptable to the speakers of the language.

30. Fifth, it would be necessary to understand and identify any possible changes which might occur in the socioeconomic status of community members; and manner in which social mobility and access to mainstream culture is influenced as a result of the introduction of bilingual education. Sixth, strategies need to be developed to provide the appropriate specialist staffing for such a program which would include linguists, teacher-linguists, principals and classroom teachers with advanced knowledge of matters relating to language.

31. Next, decisions need to be made by the teachers. One of the strengths of the Northern Territory program has been the personal empowering of the Aboriginal teachers, who at the commencement of the program were ideas without the responsibility other than helping to keep in order the classroom.

32. Further, the preparation of the literature in the first language of the students is necessary. The aim is to familiarized children with a range of literacy experiences that will introduce them to registers of language and academic processes which are prerequisite for more complex classroom learning. The mechanisms for the development of literary-related materials are already in place. The far Northern Schools Development Unit has been engaged in producing excellent materials of English as a foreign/second language.

33. It is difficult to predict very far into the future the possible effects of various models, but in-depth survey of the experience of the other bilingual communities and programs may provide the parameters within which particular models will support the aspirations of islander communities.

34. Finally, as several other contributors to this volume have suggested, language planning and maintenance and the provision of education are intricately interwoven with larger questions of social identity and organization, and economic and political power.

35. https://dehanz.net.au/entries/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-schooling-1/ https://www.aitsl.edu.au/research/spotlights/the-impact-of-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-educators https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-histories-and-cultures/