More Haste Less Speed: Time and Timing for Language Programs in Northern Territory Aboriginal Bilingual Education
Abstract
For an innovative educational enterprise to prosper a number of contributing and mutually dependent factors have to operate simultaneously. In the case of the Northern Territory Bilingual Education Program these major factors or inputs are: sufficient appropriately trained staff to fill the specialist tasks both in the schools and head office, sufficient financial resources to provide consumables (software) and wages for Aboriginal writers, and a sound philosophy about such matters as the interrelationships between cognitive development, first language development, second language development and academic growth, and the importance of timing to achieve the optimum results from these interrelationships.
In the Northern Territory the Commonwealth Government, and more recently the N.T. Government, has provided adequate specialist staffing and financial resources for the fifteen schools in which the program currently operates. One of the ironies of the history of bilingual education both here and overseas is that the provisions of more resources for its implementation has not necessarily been paralleled by an increasingly wise philosophy or educational model under which the program could be implemented. This paper will focus on a discussion of various research findings and educational principles which should influence the development of our understanding about the relationship between first and second language development and cognitive and academic growth, and more particularly the effect of timing in these matters.
Before getting into the body of this paper the provision of a brief history of the theoretical background to its major theme might be helpful. In one sense bilingual education has passed through two phases of understanding and is now entering a third phase. The first phase is represented by the UNESCO (1953) statement – “It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his mother tongue”. We could call this phase the language explanation for the academic success or failure of minority language children. The Indians and Australian Aborigines performed poorly at school because they were not taught first in their mother language.
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