Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1189ebook download (eBook PDF) Linguistic Genocide in Education--or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? all chapter
1189ebook download (eBook PDF) Linguistic Genocide in Education--or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? all chapter
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-human-diversity-in-
education-9th-edition/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-language-and-linguistic-
diversity-in-the-us/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-human-diversity-in-
education-8th-edition-by-kenneth-h-cushner/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-social-environmental-
conflicts-extractivism-and-human-rights-in-latin-america/
(eBook PDF) The Economics of Human Rights
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-the-economics-of-human-
rights/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-international-human-
rights-5th-edition/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-international-human-
rights-in-context-law-politics-morals-3rd-edition/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-human-sexuality-
diversity-in-contemporary-america-9th/
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-international-human-
rights-law-9th-edition/
Page ix
PREFACE
Acknowledgments xvi
Languages are today being killed and linguistic diversity is disappearing at a much faster pace than ever before in human history, and relatively much faster than
biodiversity. The book starts with a short exposé of the present 'health' situation of the world's languages and the prospects for them during the next few generations.
The conclusion is that the future looks grim—if things continue, we may kill over 90 percent of the world's oral languages in the next 100 years.
It is claimed that linguistic and cultural diversity are as necessary for the existence of our planet as biodiversity. They are correlated: where one type is high, the other
one is too. There seems to be mounting evidence that the relationship between linguistic and cultural diversity on the one hand and biodiversity on the other hand is not
only correlational but might be causal. Theories of humanenvironment coevolution have been proposed, including the assumption that cultural diversity might enhance
biodiversity or vice
Page x
1
versa. Therefore it is argued that the preservation of the world's linguistic diversity must be an essential goal in any bioculturally oriented diversity conservation
programme.
Indigenous peoples and minorities are the main bearers of linguistic and cultural diversity in the world—over 80% of the world's languages exist in one country only,
and the median language has no more than 5,000 speakers. Some of the direct main agents of linguistic (and cultural) genocide today are parts of what we call the
consciousness industry: formal educational systems and the mass media (including television, 'cultural nerve gas' as Michael Krauss, 1992: 6, has called it). The
book shows that the education of most minorities and indigenous peoples in the world is organised in ways which both counteract sound scientific principles and lead
to the disappearance of linguistic and cultural diversity.
Schools are every day committing linguistic genocide. They do it according to the United Nations definition of this phenomenon, in the final draft of what in 1948
became the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. They also do it by forcibly moving children from one group (indigenous or
minority) to another group (the dominant group) through linguistic and cultural forced assimilation in schools. Theories in several fields for understanding how and why
this is happening are developed and discussed in some detail, including clarification of concepts like mother tongue, ethnicity, integration. Practices (including
educational models) leading to linguistic genocide are described and analysed, with numerous examples from all over the world.
This inevitably includes a consideration of power relations. The book shows how the formal educational systems participate in maintaining and reproducing unequal
power relations, here especially between linguistic minorities and others, but also more generally, and how the ways of doing this have changed and are constantly
changing, and how control and domination are resisted and alternatives are constantly created and negotiated, managed and controlled, and recreated. The deficiency
based models that are used in most minority education invalidate the linguistic and cultural capital of minority children and their parents and communities. They make
the resources of dominated groups seem handicaps or deficiencies, instead of valued and validated nonmaterial resources, or they render them invisible and therefore
not possible to convert into material resources and positions of structural power. This happens just as much in global international relations
1
Here is the first transdisciplinary challenge. For biologists, 'conservation' is a positive word: that is what you do to prevent nature from deteriorating; you try to grant it better
conditions. For sociolinguists and researchers on culture, 'conserving' a language or culture is preventing it from developing, from dynamic 'natural' change. How do we develop
transdisciplinary concepts, combining insights from our disciplines?
Page xi
and the McDonaldization of the world as it happens in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms.
Through glorification, the nonmaterial resources of the dominant groups, including the dominant languages and cultures, and maybe specifically English, are presented
as better adapted to meet the needs of 'modern', technologically developed, democratic postindustrial informationdriven societies—and this is what a substantial part
of ESL ideology is about. English and other dominant languages tend to be projected as the languages of modernity, science and technology, success, national 'unity',
democracy, and other such positive features.
The nonmaterial resources of the dominated groups, for instance minorities and indigenous peoples, including their languages and cultures, are stigmatised as being
traditional, backward, narrow, and inferior; they are marginalised, deprived of resources for their development and use. In this way they are made invisible, or socially
constructed as handicaps rather than resources.
The relationship between the dominant and the dominated, the Ateam and the Bteam, is rationalised so that what the dominant group and its representatives do is
always presented as beneficial for the dominated. This can then serve to legitimate and reproduce the unequal access to power and resources and present those with
more access as 'helping' those with less.
Processes of globalisation, the increasing insecurity and the growing gaps between haves on the one hand and havenots and nevertohaves on the other (a 20%–
80% world) are analysed in order to understand some of the macrolevel factors in power relationships and contemporary changes. The 'free market' ideology, more
a political dogma than an economic system, erodes democracy by shifting power from states and democratically elected bodies to transnational corporations and
banks, while 'demanding' homogenisation and killing diversity. Globalisation is a killing agent.
When the present situation in the educational system and some reasons for it have been assessed, alternatives will be looked into. One necessary tool in the remedies
could be linguistic human rights (LHRs). It is claimed (following Katarina Tomasevski *) that the duty of human rights is to overrule the law of supply and demand and
to remove price tags from people and from basic necessities for their survival and for a dignified life, including education, and that linguistic human rights are central to
this. Human rights should act as a corrective to the 'free market'. But they are powerless unless two unlikely changes happen. Firstly, major redistribution of the
world's material resources and structural power is a prerequisite for implementation of human rights. Secondly, for this redistribution to happen, civil society needs to
take back the control of economy which has been given away to the transnational corporations and the financial giants in the globalisation process.
Page xii
Linguistic human rights are a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite for the maintenance of linguistic diversity. Violations of linguistic human rights, especially in
education, lead to a reduction of linguistic and cultural diversity on our planet. The human rights system is analysed so as to see which linguistic human rights in
education are protected today, regionally in Europe, and globally. After a critical look at the formulations in most of the central instruments, the assessment is that
language in education systematically gets a poorer treatment than other basic human characteristics. Very few international or regional human rights instruments grant
binding educational linguistic human rights, despite pious phrases. The present binding linguistic human rights in education clauses are completely insufficient for
protecting and maintaining linguistic diversity on our globe, even if there are a few recent positive developments.
The language (and cultural) rights of linguistic majorities are not being met either: formal education does not make the bulk of dominantgroup children highlevel
multilinguals, or truly multicultural, or even appreciative of linguistic and cultural diversity. Education systems reflect monolingual reductionism or monolingual
stupidity/naivety where monolingualism (possibly with some foreign language learning) is seen as normal, inevitable, desirable, and sufficient.
Finally, some very recent more positive human rights instruments are presented. Alternative educational models are described which lead to high levels of bilingualism
or multilingualism for both minorities and majorities and which respect linguistic human rights.
The structure of this book is as follows. After an introduction describing some of the philosophical and methodological underpinnings and problems in the book, Part I
sets the scene. Chapter 1 describes the present situation of the world's languages, problematising their fate and our lack of knowledge about them. Chapter 2 outlines
parallels and links between linguistic and cultural diversity and biodiversity and the threats that all three types of diversity face. Chapter 3 defines and analyses a
number of central concepts, such as mother tongue(s), culture, ethnicity, assimilation and integration, right to naming one's linguistic and ethnic identities, and the role of
language for control and domination and for resistance and selfdetermination. Chapter 4 asks what the benefits and drawbacks of linguistic diversity are and analyses
the ideology of monolingual reductionism.
Part II sets out to investigate linguistic genocide at a more societal level, analysing state policies and globalisation. Chapter 5 looks at language policies of states, more
generally and specifically in education, and describes how linguistic genocide in education happens in practice. It also compares two views on how languages
disappear—do they die or are they killed? Chapter 6 discusses power and control, and changes in forms of control in the present phase of globalisation, with special
attention to the role of language in
Page xiii
domination and control. It outlines how 'free markets' respond to the world's problems and to change.
Part III is about the struggle against linguistic genocide and for linguistic human rights in education. Chapter 7 discusses an alternative: response to the problems
outlined, namely what human rights have to offer. It scrutinizes human rights instruments to see whether we have sufficient linguistic human right, especially in education,
to prevent linguistic genocide and to maintain linguistic diversity. The answer is a negative one—the human rights system is at present completely insufficient. Chapter 8
looks at educational models, asking how formal education should be organised in order to lead to high levels of multilingualism and to respect linguistic human rights.
The concluding chapter 9 claims that present indigenous and minority education continues to 'forcibly transfer children of the group to another group', something that
qualifies as genocide under the UN Genocide Convention. Several prerequisites for the macrolevel political changes which are needed to prevent this are outlined,
and it is claimed that they are necessary for the planet to have a future.
The losers, if the changes outlined do not happen, are not only the 80 percent of the world's population, who at present consume only 20 percent of the resources.
The losers are humanity and the planet. Quoting Edward Goldsmith, I want to remind you that 'environment' means biological, linguistic, and cultural environment. In
his words (1996: 91): 'there is no evidence that trade or economic development are of any great value to humanity. . . . The environment, on the other hand, is our
greatest wealth, and to kill it, as the TNCs [transnational companies] are methodically doing, is an act of unparalleled criminality.' The only hope today seems to be
that the TNC leaders might realise that it is not in the interest of their grandchildren either because 'there can be no trade and no economic development on a dead
planet'.
I have tried to make reading and referencing easier by using several kinds of Boxes for Addresses, Definitions, Reader Tasks, and exemplification of various kinds
(Inserts and Info Boxes). The Boxes are numbered consecutively within each chapter and listed separately. A short description follows:
Definition Boxes give short or long definitions of central concepts. Some have been defined in lengthy minientries, especially in chapter 3, partly to give some of
the basic tools for working with the main issues in this book, partly for conceptual clarity, and be
Page xiv
cause language both signals and helps to construct social reality. Some of the definitions are more 'technical' in the sense that the (precise meaning of the) concepts
may not be known outside a narrow professional circle. This is true for some legal definitions, e.g., 'indigenous peoples' and 'minorities', bilingual education models,
like 'submersion' or 'immersion', or concepts in Deaf education, like 'oralism'. Some are used in everyday language: All of us 'know' what they mean—but we need
more precise definitions here, and it does not help the reader if I simply refer to other sources which they may not have available. 'Mother tongue', 'bilingual',
'integration' and 'assimilation', and even 'sign language' belong to this group. Some can be defined in several different ways, and I want to clarify what I mean. The
choice of definition enables or limits possible interpretations.
Address Boxes support the reader by giving snailmail, email, and Webpage addresses and sometimes phone and fax numbers for getting more uptodate
information about various topics. All of them are accurate when the book goes to print, but changes happen constantly. I also apologise to those who have no access
to electronic communications.
Reader Task Boxes try to engage the readers to reflect on their own experience, to get more information, to think together about complex questions with no
definite answers, to apply what they have learned or experienced or thought. Sometimes possible answers are suggested in the text.
Info Boxes contain more quantitative data or 'hard' data—figures, 'facts', law texts, etc.
Inserts have more qualitative or 'soft' data, often individual experience and exemplification. A few disclaimers might also be needed. The cases and examples in the
Inserts do not 'add up' to a representative description of current approaches or of general trends in public education policies. They are used selectively to illustrate
various types of policy' as Rainer Bauböck (1998: 1–2) formulates his disclaimer in an article with a similar approach. Often the dividing line between 'hard' and 'soft'
is blurred. The status of both types of data as scientific evidence can be equally valid. The Inserts are part of my (and sometimes Robert's) 'butterfly collection', as
Peter Mühlhäusler calls quotes he has collected over a long time.
There is only a short list of contents at the beginning of the book. Each chapter starts with a detailed list of contents, including a list of all the Boxes, Inserts, Tables,
and Figures.
Page xv
I have borrowed freely from many of my earlier books and articles where appropriate and acknowledge here collectively my debt to 'my' (and other) publishers.
All translations from Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, Sámi, or Swedish from sources which are in the bibliography in languages other than English are mine
unless indicated otherwise. My nativespeaker husband, Robert, has spent years of his life trying to make my language more like his English, but without much success
(not for citation . . . ).
Who might benefit from this book? The prerequisites have more to do with interest and engagement (but some tertiary education might help with the more formal
parts). The audience that I have had in mind includes:
Students at all levels, from undergraduate through doctoral level, in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, ESL/EFL, bilingual and multiand intercultural education,
critical pedagogy, ethnolinguistics, any language departments, human rights, ethnography, social psychology, all over the world; likewise, their teachers
Preschool and school teachers and teacher trainees, especially in bilingual education and minority education
Educational administrators, policy planners and implementers and other staff in minority and bilingual education
Politicians
This has been a difficult but necessary book to write. So much (unnecessary) pain and sorrow is included in the experience of many of the people and groups I
describe. And still, too much has been excluded: for every story, every quote, every argument, there are tens more; for every reference, I have had to leave out tens
and even hundreds of others. But there has been a lot of joy and encouragement too—people are marvels of energy, insight, action, love. Much is happening.
I sincerely hope that you, dear reader, will enjoy the book: become angry, desperate, frustrated, as well as reflective, optimistic, and eager to join me and others in
demanding, suggesting, creating, and implementing change. Even
Page xvi
if/when you do not agree with me, I hope the book will change the way you see at least a few things.
Acknowledgments
Since this book is a kind of destillation of a lifetime of experience, I should thank thousands of people but can name only a few here. My collective thanks go to all the
thousands of parents and teachers, children and youngsters, who have taught me. My first real university teacher, Einar Haugen, with whom I had the privilege of
working closely in 1967–1968 and to some extent ever after, taught me, in addition to the importance of an ecological macroperspective on multilingualism and
fascination with language diversity, that it is a duty of older scholars to trust, encourage, and support younger ones, try to see the potential in them, even when they
may be absolutely ignorant even about the basics, like I was. I still blush when I think of my bottomless lack of knowledge, awareness, and wisdom when I came to
Einar with my newly acquired MA and having collected the materials for my first PhD about bilingualism and school achievement—not even knowing what a phoneme
was . . .
I have been incredibly lucky, having met hundreds of people who have patiently and lovingly taught me, and who continue to do so. One difference as compared to
1967 is that I at least now know how little I know and understand.
Most areas and issues discussed in the book I would know nothing about without good friends. Many friends have enlightened me about Kurdish, Roma, indigenous
issues, about Sign Languages, Esperanto, about human rights, economics, literature. About the necessity and joy of combining scholarship, action, life, having
colleagues who are dear friends. Some have persisted in forcing me to find counterarguments, most have in addition been thinking and acting together with me, in many
cases for decades. I could write several pages about each person, specifying what I would like to thank them for—but you know yourselves. I will here just mention
some of the names and say a big collective THANK YOU, with hugs, to Alma Flor Ada, Robert Adam, Hugh Africa, Marjut Aikio, Pekka Aikio, Antti and Matti
Aikio, Samuli Aikio, Ulla AikioPuoskari, Neville Alexander, Rob Amery, Ulrich Ammon, OleStig Andersen, Annamalai, Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, Martin Baik,
Asta Balto, Marie Battiste, Jennifer Bayer, Richard and Nena Benton, Dina Berenstein, Asger Bergman, Brian Bernal, Ismail Besikci, Anne Marie Beukes, Constance
Beutel, Grete Bille, Detlev Blanke, Colin Bourke, Gulda Bozarslan and family, Mehmet Emin Bozarslan and family, Jan Branson and Don Miller, Birgit BrockUtne,
Sertaç Bucak, Ranko Bugarski, Pirkko Carpenter, Stacy Churchill, Michael Clyne, David Corson, Florian Coulmas, Jim Crawford, Jim Cummins, Probal Dasgupta,
Bessie Dendrinos, Zubeida Desai, Rosario
Page xvii
DiazGreenberg, Teun van Dijk, David Dolson, Ina Druviete, Hans Dua, John Edwards, Asbjørn Eide, Hans Erasmus, Mahmut Erdem, Philomena Essed, Mark
Fettes, Joshua Fishman and Gella Schweid Fishman, Ofelia García, Harald Gaski, Ailo Gaup, Maret Gavppi and Johan Mattis Mikkelsen Gavppi, Mikkel Gaup and
family, John Gibbons and Pauline Gibbons, Francisco Gomes de Matos, Hartmut, Marilena and Thomas Patrick Haberland and Margaret Malone, Rainer Enrique
Hamel, Cees Hamelink, Nils Erik Hansegård, David Harmon, Betty Harnum, Amir Hassanpour, Elina Helander, Eduardo HernándezChávez, Kathleen Heugh, Ejnar
Hjorth, Veikko Holmberg, Nancy Hornberger, Christian Horst, Leena Huss, Mustafa Hussain and Ida Høgsbro, Kenneth Hyltenstam, Edel Haetta Eriksen, Odd
Mathis Haetta, Solveig Haetta, Cristina Igoa, Magdalena Jaakkola, Björn Jernudd, Markku Jokinen, Deirdre Jordan, Braj and Yamuna Kachru, Tero Kangas, Timoti
Karetu *, Liisa Kauppinen, JanHenry Keskitalo, Lachman Khubchandani, Sevki Kizilocak, Georgy Krushlov, Natalie Kuhlman, Normand Labrie, Jarmo Lainio,
Istvan Lanstyák, Aleksei Leontiev, Pirkko LeporantaMorley, C. Eric Lincoln, AnnaRiitta Lindgren, Lilja Liukka, Jo Lo Bianco, Ravna Magga Lukkari, Luisa Maffi,
OleHenrik Magga, Kahombo Mateene, Xola Mati, Jacques Maurais, AntjeKatrin Menk, Ulrike Menk, Melanie Mikes, Don Miller, Ajit Mohanty, Shahrzad
Mojab, Rosa Molinas, Matti Morottaja, Chris and Mike Mullard, Ingegerd Municio, Peter Mühlhäusler, Albina NecakLük, Ngugiwa* Thiong'o, M. A. Numminen,
Masaki Oda, Agnethe Olesen, Lucy Other Medicine, Uldis Ozolins, John Packer, Anne Pakir, Kirsti Paltto, Christina Bratt Paulston, Debi and Shulakhyana
Pattanayak, Anne Pauwels, Alastair Pennycook, Markku Peura, Theo du Plessis, Peter Plüddemann, Lada Radomerská*, Birgitte Rahbek, Britt Rajala, Ljubica
Rajic, Mart Rannut, PoulErik Rasmussen and Birte Hald, Naz Rassool, Timothy Reagan, Tom Ricento, Francisca Sanchez and Nicholas Handy Sanchez, Marét
Sara, Svenka Savic, David Shea, Rosa Shim, Naomi Silverman, Sarah Slabbert, Jurek Smolicz, Laila Somby Sandvik, S. N. and Meena (Kamal) Sridhar, Max van
der Stoel, Vigdis Stordahl, Wilfried StöltingRichter, Merrill Swain, Andrea Szalai, György Szépe, Sandor Szilagyi, Shelley Taylor, Patrick Thornberry, Makhan
Tickoo, Jim Tollefson, Katarina Tomasevski*, Jennifer Toms, Humphrey Tonkin, Pertti Toukomaa, Georgios and Sigrid Tsiakalos, Yukio Tsuda, Joseph Turi, Nils
AslakValkeapää, Fernand de Varennes, Taina Varpa, Kerttu Vuolab, Miranda Vuolasranta, Erling Wande, Joan Wink, Dawn Wink Moran, Birger Winsa, Ruth
Wodak, Sakej Youngblood Henderson, Rosalma Zubizarreta, Tuula Åkerlund, JanOla Östman, Liv Østmo.
Naomi Silverman has been a wonderful, supportive editor to work with. Kathleen Heugh, Timothy Reagan, and Terrence Wiley, gave much more of their time and
care than one can ask. Hartmut Haberland came out to help me install a new computer when the old one broke down three weeks before the manuscript was due.
Our dear neighbours, Arly and Lene Christiansen,
Page xviii
always there to solve problems, practical and mental, trying to gently remind us to be human and take care of other parts of ourselves too and not just the heads, Arly
with loads of grains to chickens, game to be enjoyed (or fox to be skinned and cured, shot next to our chickenhouse—my first task when the manuscript leaves
tomorrow is to wash off the alum and salt); Per and Trille Hagemann, with parties and dinners and a tractorload of new raspberries to be planted out immediately, to
prevent me from ruining my computer arm. Thanks for care and tolerance! Grandnephew Sami, allowing me to see the longterm development of the fantastic
awareness of a participant in one of Finland's first immersion programmes. Grandchildren, Anna (also in an immersion programme) and Silas, for moments of laughter
and relaxation. Jane, my wise and supportive motherinlaw. Thomas and Caspar, both practicing bilingualism in the family. Sister Bjarma, for many years of unfailing
support, brother Erik for many years of constructive questioning. Ilka and Kea, my most honest critics and greatest joy and pride. And Robert who shares all my
enthusiasms and worries and work and joys of nature and care for our planet, Robert . . . without whom I would not live or love or write or think or continue the
struggle.
Page xix
INTRODUCTION
Acknowledging Feelings, Value Judgements, and the Need for Action as xxiii
Legitimate Parts of Research
Asking WhyQuestions
Having already described some of the content in the Preface, I want to give you, the reader, another type of declaration of content. It has to do with the scientific
paradigm which is the basis for questions asked in this book, including the role of the author.
Despite dedicated work for decades by committed teachers and school authorities and despite massive research efforts, too many indigenous and minority children still
'fail' in the formal educational systems, all over the world. The same is true with many of those children of ordinary, 'nonelite' parents in Africa and Asia who actually
attend school—many still don't. Too many children are pushed out early, many are still overrepresented in classes for children with 'special difficulties', and the school
achievement of many is at a group level below that of dominantgroup children, or elite children as a group. Later on, they do not get higher education to the same
extent as dominantgroup children. They are often overrepresented in unemployment
Page xx
and youth criminality statistics and other statistics showing results of an unequal society. One of the common denominators for these children is that their own languages
are not used as the main languages of teaching and learning in school.
This is the general picture, even if there are both individuals and groups who are an exception and are managing well, sometimes even better than majority children.
Mostly, though, they do so despite the way their formal education is organised, not because of it.
There is a grave mismatch between what the official education goals and the claims of intention for minority education by authorities are and what is in fact happening.
Many teachers who teach indigenous or ethnic minority children, including ESL teachers, show a lot of compassion. In addition, in their teaching many draw on
scientific descriptions of second language learning, group dynamics, child psychology, intercultural and antiracist inclusive pedagogy, and other tools that their training
gives them. Nice people are working with good intentions—and still the results are often a disaster. Why?
I share with many researchers worldwide the belief that the education of indigenous peoples and minorities in most countries is organised in ways which counteract
sound scientific evidence from education and several other disciplines. In many cases we know in general terms how education could be organised better. We can
show that it works, and often it is not even more costly in the shortterm and certainly not in the medium or longterm perspective. But it is not done. Why?
Many of the teachers are just like Dom Helder Camara, the former Archbishop in Brazil, giving food to the poor. This is the famous quote: 'When I give food to the
poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they have no food they call me a communist.' As soon as you start asking uncomfortable whyquestions, warning labels
and many other exclusionary strategies to silence you are taken into use. But unless all of us start asking whyquestions, the situation is not going to improve. Here are
some more of the whyquestions that have provoked me into writing this book.
Many linguists and educationists are working hard, with devotion, to make people literate. The United Nations and UNESCO, the Organisation of African Unity, and
many other organisations publish scores of resolutions and declarations about their commitment to literacy and Education for All. Still, the world's literacy rates are
either not improving or are improving at a much much slower rate than any of the firm and realistic plans have suggested. Even if the percentages of the world's
population who cannot read and write are slowly going down, the absolute numbers of 'illiterates' are certainly not; rather the opposite. Why? I claim that the wrong
choice of medium of education is the main pegagogical reason for 'illiteracy' in the world. Still, the
Page xxi
right medium is not chosen. And most 'development aid' supports the wrong languages. Why?
Many linguists are busy describing the languages of the world. Again, UNESCO, the UN, the European Union, and other organisations publish resolutions celebrating
diversity, telling us how important and necessary linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity are, and promising to support all these forms of diversity. Still, biological
species are dying and being killed off at an alarming rate while the physical environment, including access to any food, not to speak of healthy food, deteriorates to the
extent that children and also adults in many parts of the world are being multihandicapped—with the agents fully conscious of what they are doing when poisoning the
world. Languages and, with them, cultures, are dying today at a faster pace than ever before in human history, and prognoses say that 90% of today's oral languages
may no longer be around in one hundred years' time. Why?
I suggest that starting to ask basic 'whyquestions' is at this point of time more necessary than still more sophisticated 'what' or 'how' descriptions of the state of the
world.
But when I and others ask why indigenous and minority children are not doing as well as they should in school, or when we ask why people learn English and other
dominant languages at the cost of their own languages (many of which then disappear), instead of learning them in addition to their own languages (which would lead
to high levels of multilingualism and maintenance of diversity), and when we ask what these issues have to do with power relations and widening gaps between haves
and havenots (or nevertohaves, as seems more likely), we are not only being called communists, as was Dom Helder. This labelling has other consequences too.
In trying to silence us, the power elites (also, regrettably, including many academic colleagues), whose ideologies and actions I and others are criticizing, also try to
depoliticize the issues we are raising. They not only claim that we who ask whyquestions are political. They also claim that they themselves are neutral and objective
and disinterested. That means that the terms of the discussion are narrowed down—only some questions are allowed as legitimate.
Paul Laverty, from Glasgow, wrote in a letter to the editor (Guardian Weekly September 14, 1997, p. 2), referring to Dom Helder Camara, the following:
Both Mother Teresa and Princess Diana did indeed have much in common. That dangerous word 'why' was never on their lips. Perhaps this explains in part their iconic stature.
Both are sweet, sincere, but most of all, safe, and in the long run utterly irrelevant to the 35,000 innocents who die every day because we live in a world which violently rejects any
notion of sharing wealth in a more equitable manner. I don't doubt that the world needs compassion. But
Page xxii
it needs justice more than charity, and perhaps for every embrace it needs the question 'why'.
In several ways, not asking whyquestions is part of ESL tradition. Most ESL traditions have done and are still very strongly doing what Freire and others have
criticized: attempting to depoliticize the language of schooling (Giroux 1985, xiv). This is a dangerous narrowing of the field, staying within technical microlevel
questions of the best methodologies and materials, in the best positivist tradition. One part of it is excluding the broader power issues from discussions about the
'language of schooling' in terms of the medium of teaching and learning1 in formal education. This depoliticization is easy to see in the use of the instrumental allegedly
marketdriven legitimation of the importance of English that is often used. ESL and EFL are too often discussed as completely freefloating halfhumanitarian,
technologically perfectable professions, separated or separable from not only other languagerelated issues but also from economic and political concerns. This is, of
course, nonsense. English language teaching is a multibillion business. When Britain no longer rules the waves, the English language does—it is in economic terms 'more
precious than North Sea oil'. And English is not getting bigger only because 'it happened to be in the right place at the right time' as David Crystal would have it in his
analysis (1997: 8). We have to ask why English is getting bigger at the cost of other languages, rather than in addition to them (as Robert Phillipson, 1992, and
others are doing). There are too many debates about methodological microproblems while the house is on fire.
There is also an almost complete refusal to see ESL as just one part of a necessary wholistic language learning goal, namely bilingualism or multilingualism, where
obviously both parts should be discussed and planned together. There is a practical exclusion of mother tongue or primary languagerelated concerns in almost all
evaluations of allegedly bilingual education programmes in 'core English countries' (countries where native speakers of English are a majority). In most evaluations of
minority education results in English and maths dominate and results in the mother tongues of minorities are footnoted, if they exist at all. Concentrating on one of the
languages is obviously legitimate, but only if it happens with the understanding that the other languages in the students' repertoire are equally important and the
development of all of them have to be taken properly into consideration for sound pedagogical methods to be found.
1
Many South African researchers have started using the concept 'the language of teaching and learning' instead of' the medium of instruction', to emphasize the active, mutual
nature of education. I fully agree with the ideology behind the change. As Kwesi Kwaa Prah formulates it (1995b: 13), 'Knowledge cannot be effectively handed down, it must be
achieved. It is more taken than given.'
Page xxiii
Not doing this also protects two anomalies: that teachers monolingual in the target language, or with no knowledge in their students' mother tongues, can continue to be
seen as competent teachers of ESL or EFL; and that many of the great experts on how to make whole populations, e.g. in China or Eastern and Central Europe
Englishcompetent, i.e. minimally highlevel bilinguals, usually come from countries which are well known for not having succeeded in this or not even having tried,
such as Britain and the United States. None of this makes pedagogical sense (see chap. 8).
In fact, one of Freire's general claims could be a fairly precise analysis of today's ESL. He says, 'domination is . . . expressed by the way in which power, technology,
and ideology come together to produce forms of knowledge, social relations, and other concrete cultural forms that function to actively silence people.' (Giroux 1985:
xix).
Among the people being actively silenced are the ones who want to broaden the terms of discussion and repoliticize the questions about the language of learning. In
addition to parents and teachers, these also include intellectuals. In a hegemonically controlled world they seem to be an important group to silence.
Acknowledging Feelings, Value Judgements, and the Need for Action as Legitimate Parts of Research
We need a more comprehensive understanding of the role of researchers and other intellectuals in order to locate the discussion (and this book) in an increasingly
unequal and unjust world.2 My type of whyquestions are part of specific research paradigms but not of others. They are not part of a positivistic tradition.
If positivism is a 'discourse in which value judgements are eschewed, and in which theoretical propositions are regarded as empirically verifiable or falsifiable' (Bocock
1986: 55), it follows that no 'rational judgements can be made between political and moral systems according to any consistent version of positivism, because no
meaning can be given to the judgements. Moral and political judgements may be seen by positivists as reports upon a speaker's feelings about an action' (ibid., 61;
emphases added). And a researcher's feelings and moral and political value judgements have nothing to do with research, according to positivism. Bocock quotes
(ibid., 61) the
2
This includes distribution of books. Starting with basics, the material: more than 70% of the world's paper is used by the 20% of people living in North America, Western Europe,
and Japan. Global per capita use of paper is around 46 kilograms a year; the USA average is 320 kilograms, Japan's 232, Germany's 200. In Brazil it is 31, in China 24, and in India 3
kilograms (Abramovitz 1998: 24). What does this book weigh?
Page xxiv
Positivistically oriented researchers on the topics of this book, even when sympathetic towards minorities, would then ask 'what' and 'how' questions to describe how
'everything in the world is' (for instance, describe threatened languages, or state that minority students are not doing as well as a group as dominant languagespeaking
students), but would ask few if any whyquestions in their research (and often 'wrong' whyquestions at that). They would then present the results for the reader (or
politician) to judge, without (thinking that they have) moral or political value judgements about how things should (or should not) be.
Some of them might also go as far as describing (or, more probably, testing) the feelings that the minorities themselves, whom they study, have about their own
situation, but would not (think that they) have any feelings of their own involved. Those positivists would then be like Gramsci's (1971: 418) 'abstract pedants',
''studying" popular feelings; he does not feel with them . . . ', instead of being real organic intellectuals:
The popular element 'feels' but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element 'knows' but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel. The
two extremes are therefore pedantry and philistinism on the one hand and blind passion and sectarianism on the other. Not that the pedant cannot be impassioned; far from it.
Impassioned pedantry is every bit as ridiculous and dangerous as as the wildest sectarianism and demagogy. The intellectual's error consists in believing that one can know
without understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned (not only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge): in other words that the
intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a pure pedant) if distinct and separate from the peoplenation, that is, without feeling the elementary passions of the people,
understanding them and therefore explaining and
3
An example from the Swedish researcher Ekstrand, with whom I had many battles decades ago. In the 1970s Ekstrand questioned everything Pertti Toukomaa and I wrote about
immigrant minority education, claiming that we did not have test results measuring how 'everything is in the world' (even if we had many). In a discussion he claimed that
everything in the world could be measured. I questioned this. He asked me to give an example of something that could not be measured. I suggested love, or the feeling of
powerlessness a minority child felt in a classroom where she did not understand the language. After a while, Ekstrand gracefully admitted that there might be a few things we
could not yet measure. But then they were, according to him, outside what a researcher could legitimately be interested in . . .
Page xxv
justifying them in the particular historical situation and connecting them dialectically to the laws of history and to a superior conception of the world, scientifically and coherently
elaborated, i.e. knowledge. One cannot make politicshistory without this passion, without this sentimental connection between intellectuals and peoplenation. In the absence of
such a nexus the relations between intellectuals and the peoplenation are, or are reduced to, relationships of a purely bureaucratic and formal order; the intellectuals become a
caste, or a priesthood (so called organic centralism) . . .
But adding 'feeling' and 'understanding' (or 'interpreting') to 'knowing' is still not enough for the research paradigm that this book represents. Often 'action' and 'change'
need to be added (and Gramsci wanted to do this too). Many researchers may be guilty of what both old and new philosophies, east and west, the Bhagavadgita *
and Marx, criticize. In Marx' terms, in his famous comment on the Theses on Feuerbach (1845) (eleventh Thesis): 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world
in different ways; the point is to change it.' Or, in Radhakrishnan's (1977: 96) interpretation of and comment on classical Indian philosophy in the Bhagavadgita: 'our
world is not a spectacle to contemplate; it is a field of battle'. In the endangered languages field, it is not enough to preserve the languages for the future by recording
them, the 'archivist' approach (see Insert 4.7)—the position 'of the scholarly student of folklore who is permanently afraid that modernity is going to destroy the object
of his study', as Gramsci puts it (1971: 419). In the field of education, it is not enough to discuss methods of dominant (or even dominated) language learning, or
existing language rights. More is needed.
This means that every researcher has to clarify for herself the relationship of intellectual knowledge to morality, duties, and struggle, and to come to terms with what for
Wittgenstein is transcendental. And to transcend contemplation and enter the battlefield we need more than intellectual knowledge and academic analysis. In the
Bhagavadgita (see especially X.10 and X.11), devotion and love are necessary for the destruction of ignorance and to gain intellectual knowledge. This intellectual
knowledge in turn is rendered luminous by intuitive knowledge, which then leads to understanding and wisdom. Radhakrishnan tells us to focus all our energies,
intellectual, emotional and volitional (1977, 254). He sees the fusion of knowledge, love, and power in a supreme unification as a prerequisite for unity and universality
of spirit (ibid., 254–255). Many researchers still believe that only the head has a place in research.
Or, we can use the ideas of the Finnish neurophysiologist, Matti Bergstrom (1986: 4, 6, 8, quoted in SkutnabbKangas & Cummins 1988: 392). He claims that in the
information society we think that knowledge is all that is needed to manage, or, more precisely, if you have enough of the combination of knowledge and energy,
meaning 'technology, you will manage everywhere in the world'. The third resource is neglected, namely the 'system which
Page xxvi
chooses, samples, evaluates. It is this apparatus which reflects, which sees the larger contexts, and gives us the opportunity to compare'. Our prospects are in his view
bleak if educational philosophy does not change:
In the schools which usually are thought of as knowledge centred, the students are being stuffed with information constantly. There is no time for evaluation. We neglect the
development of the very capacity which criticizes, evaluates, turns things upside down. The result is that we are perhaps creating whole generations who have knowledge and
energy but who lack the capacity to know how to use the knowledge and what to do with the energy. And so we educate whole generations to become value invalids.4 Science
has tidied away the concept of values. Research is now geared towards knowing, towards getting knowledge. Research is not supposed to contain value judgements, they say,
and this is where the danger lies. . . . If we choose value invalids to have power . . . which I fear we have, then we are threatened by a general catastrophe.
To me the heart, the stomach and the spirit have to accompany researchers—and there is no doubt in my mind as to which one should lead this integrated whole.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (1995b: 50) notes that most African languages make a distinction between knowledge and wisdom (in Venda, 'Ndivho' and 'Vhuthali', respectively,
in Tswana 'Tsebo' or 'Kitso' and 'Bodhale', in Xhosa 'Lwazi' and 'Ubulumko', etc.) 'Knowledge is based on learning, information, data, facts, and news, while wisdom
derives from prudence, judgement, sense and shrewdness. Knowledge is understood to have a specific focus, and solves definite problems, whilst wisdom or sagacity
provides discretion and prudence, encompassing the general approach to life.'
Peter Mühlhäusler has a similar message and has specified it for people working in the languages field. He has given it some of the scepticalsounding secular
packaging that may be necessary in order not to embarrass segmented rationalistic Western researchers too much:
Linguists hide behind the shield of scholarly objectivity whilst the linguistic diversity that has been in existence for tens of thousands of years is being eroded at an alarming
rate. . . . So long as we cannot be certain that the progress we are experiencing is progress in the right direction, to discard diversity for seemingly progressive uniformity seems a
very dangerous gamble . . . In the case of much of linguistics, the range of questions that have been addressed have been unduly narrow, ethnocentric and insensitive to the
plight of the languages and their speakers. Moral questions and questions of the consequences of linguistic activity have been notoriously avoided in the mistaken belief that it is
possible to engage in an ideologically free linguistics . . . What is needed now is a new reformed linguistics that addresses some of the fundamental issues of the place of language
in human life, of the uses of intellectual and linguistic diversity and of the responsibility linguistics has in helping to maintain and rescue a very fragile linguistic ecology. These
issues have barely
4
'Ethically challenged' they might be called in the newspeak of some North Americans.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
u
s
t
a
n
s
i
n
i
s
i
ä
v
a
a
t
t
e
i
t
a
2
1
r
a
n
t
u
n
e
n
l
i
i
v
i
1
1
v
i
l
l
a
n
e
n
r
ö
i
y
1
0
1
v
a
n
h
a
s
i
l
k
k
i
h
u
i
v
i
5
0
P
ä
ä
s
u
m
m
a
5
2
6
0
N:o 4.
Sotkamon pitäjän entinen kirkkoherra, Tohtori Frosterus vainaja,
kirjottaa Kajanin läänistä ja sanoo niittyin olevan pieniä palasia,
sopimattomasti hajalla ja kaukana. Se kylläki on tosi, niinkun
seuraavastaki Sutelan talon niittyin luettelosta Lentualta Sotkamosta
näemmä. Sama luettelo on nimi nimeltä otettu Talon
arviolaskukirjasta toimitettu s. 5 Syyskuusa 1833.
Niityn Ala.
Kuormaa. Rukoja.
A. Joka toinen vuosi lyötäviä
niittyjä.
1 Pitkäniitty 4. 8.
2 Pitkäniitynsuo 6.
3 Pykälänala 3.
4 Heinälipukka 6.
5 Hemälipukan suo 5.
6 Wasarasuo 1.
7 Petäikkösuo 3.
8 Lipukkasuo 4.
9 Ikosenpuro 1. 6.
10 Nuolisuo 6.
11 Haukkalampi 1. 2.
12 Puhakkapuronsuo 2.
13 Housusaari 2.
14 Levälahti 3.
15 Soposenniemen kaarre 3.
16 Wenginsuo 4.
17 Rytijoensuu sahiin asti 2.
18 Petäjajoki 4.
19 Palosuo 4.
20 Kaihlalahti 3.
21 Lehtovaaran kuohu 3.
22 Iso Kuivaperä 2.
23 Housusaari 2.
24 Matalalahen saari 2.
25 Hoikkajoen tausta 1. 8.
26 Teirifuo 3.
27 Honkavaaran kuohu 2. 4.
28 Särkisuo 6.
29 Kettusärkännärö 6.
30 Likolahti 3.
31 Lehonlahti 4.
32 Särkipuronsuu 5.
33 Liukkaniemi 2.
34 Särkilammin luhta 1. 2.
35 Soienvaaransuo 1. 8.
36 Hiiren- eli Kotijoki 1. 8.
Wälisumma 72. 4. 36 2
(Lisää toiste).
(Lisää toiste).
MEHILÄINEN W. 1836.
Lokakuulta.
Wiisaampansa vieressä yötä maannut.
"A mitä vielä pakisi neito?" — "A kun kysyin mie häneltä taattoa,
niin vastasi:
Niin mie siitä katsoin, taattoseni, jotta vaan huima onki tyttö." —
"Huima sie oot itse, sano taasenki taatto, kun et älynnyt tytön
lauseita. Sano olevan taattonsa eestakasin astumassa, a sillon
taatto kyntämässä; maammonsa sano kesällisiä kisoja paimentavan,
a sillon maammo lapsisaunassa ja vellensä äiää vähällä ottamassa,
a velli ongella. Niin mene sie toiste sihen taloon, siitä saat viisaan
naisen, jo tuon pakinoistaanki ymmärrän."
Meni toiste poika, teki kaupan, sai tytön, toi kotiinsa. Niin siitä
lähettiin metsälle isä poikanensa. Päivän raattua, yöksi kotiin
astuessa sano isä:
Eikö ainaki hullujaan houraile isä arveli poika. Niin vielä vähän
käytyä, vanha lausu:
Ja viimmesekseen pakasi:
Perävaaria pelotti,
Hirvitti se hiienlailla,
Ehkä äänellä isolla
Toru toisessa nenässä, 20
Ite noitu nostimilla,
Ajalla saman apajan.