The move by the Northern Territory to phase out multi-lingual education in its schools is to be utterly deplored. The Northern Territory Government reasons that education in English is more important for Aboriginal people than education in their own languages. Presumably it thinks it will gain by axing between and 60 and 100 jobs in 21 communities. In fact, the Northern Territory and Australia as a whole will be the poorer culturally and Aboriginal people will be deprived of their heritage.
Doesn’t anyone in the Northern Territory have any knowledge of history. Linguistic, religious and cultural repressions of this kind do not improve people’s economic conditions. People are not made better off (either economically or culturally) because they are forced to use the dominant culture’s language. Indeed, it makes them poorer human beings through feelings of deprivation and repression. Aborigines wanting to deal with others in Australia on a commercial level will obviously use English. English is the language of commerce in Australia and the base language and reference point for most human transactions. Learning English is vital for any Australian. But that should never be to the exclusion of other languages. And certainly not to the exclusion of indigenous languages. These languages should be encouraged, not driven to extinction. Knowledge and use of more than one language helps human development. It does not hinder it. Proficiency in one language helps proficiency in another. Most people in the world speak more than one language.
The Northern Territory Minister for Education, Peter Adamson, said children could still learn their own languages at home. Or if a community felt strongly they could invite elders to come to the school to teach voluntarily.
These are poor arguments. Language proficiency comes from teaching at school. Learning at home is limited.
The Northern Territory Government is being quite hypocritical in this. It often argues strongly that it has special needs and that the Commonwealth should fund it at a much higher level. And the Commonwealth does. The theory behind Commonwealth general revenue grants to the states and territories is not to make state and territory governments look good, but to ensure that the people of each state and territory have access to similar services across the nation as far as practicable. The Northern Territory has by far the largest proportion of Aboriginal people in its population. They have special needs, including educational and cultural needs, a significant one of which is education in their own languages.
The Northern Territory is failing in that responsibility. There is a clear case for the Commonwealth to take up the language programs and to reduce the Northern Territory’s grants by the cost of doing so.
In any event, this is a national issue. It will be to Australia’s shame to repress these languages. It is arrogant, but typical, of speakers of English (and other languages of domination now and in the past like Russian, Chinese and Japanese) to repress minority languages and assume that people cannot cope economically or socially in a society using two languages. Of all countries Australia is living proof to the contrary.
If ever there is a case for Commonwealth “”interference” in territory affairs, this is it.