Slight improvement (+ bonus rant!)
Ok I can’t say I’ve changed this layout on any meaningful level, all I’ve done is change the colour of the header and do a crappy little image to replace the layout’s logo. I will do a proper layout shortly but I have other stuff to attend to. That, and where would we be without the prologue/epilogue of every post where I promise that I will eventually get around to making a layout for the blog?
I might get off my arse and modify this layout heaps in lieu of having something that’s not WP to replace this with (which will also be when I make a proper site, rather than only having a rambling blog talking about the fact that I can’t be bothered making a layout for my own site.) If you’re intending to get a website designed by me, I actually do make layouts, and I’m not generally this lazy. My lack of enthusiasm for this stems more from its lack of use, rather than anything material in terms of layout-ness.
On the honours front, not much has happened since my last blog entry. I’m waiting in Simon to get back to me on a new meeting date (I think he’s trying to coordinate a meeting with a few people to discuss the potential of having shared honours supervision between a few different people in the linguistics and possibly the anthropology departments.) The next step beyond that will be filling in the application and getting it to Anna in time (the last Friday of this month). I’m doing some reading to try and get my head around the question I want to look at, and get an idea of what’s already been done before. So far as I can see, my question isn’t as original as I thought it was, but I think most people who start properly looking into an honours question would find that there’s things which come awfully close to what they want to look at yet aren’t quite the same.
Speaking of linguistics…
Northern Territory Bilingual Language Teaching
As a preface to this, let me start by quoting the following:
Few people seem to know or care that most of Australia’s 250 languages have already vanished and few are likely to survive over the long term. (p.1)
This quote comes from (well is actually quoted in) a report prepared for the federal Dept. of Environment about the state of indigenous languages in Australia. The report summarizes that if current trends continue unabated, all indigenous languages still surviving in Australia could realistically become silent by 2050 (p.2).
Interestingly, it was prepared in 2000/2001, which is around the time when the Northern Territory got its first ALP government since the Northern Territory began having territory government elections in 1974. With the change of the government went the Liberal policy of stopping the bilingual education in NT schools which was not only objected to by indigenous leaders and communities but damned by linguists and government advisory bodies alike:
A report submitted by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights…states that the decision by the Northern Territory Government, made in 1998 with minimal consultation, to remove support for bilingual education programs, will impact adversely on Indigenous peoples. (p.31)
But this support remains uncertain and in some places (notably the Northern Territory) is faltering ominously. It is essential for schemes and programs to be continued for a generation to have effect, not supported in fits and starts – a situation which is often more demoralising than complete lack of funding. (p.96)
Skip to 2008, following a close call for the Labor party in the election, and a new leader. Not long after, and abolishing bilingual education is back on the agenda. It seems that Clare Martin must have been behind, at least to an extent, the overturning of the old Liberal policy. The new Labor government government supports the effective abolishment of bilingual education. Once again the critics come from far and wide, but given it’s effectively the Liberal party’s old policy no doubt it will pass, to the detriment of the already critically endangered languages in the Northern Territory.
Assuming this happens, which it almost certainly will, it is another great leap backwards by Australian politicians against the deepening crisis for Australia’s indigenous languages and culture.
It’s these kind of backwards policies which have driven my choice to work with indigenous languages as my honours topic, if only to join the growing crowd of people trying to gain the government’s attention long enough for them to see how their policies affect real people.
In Conclusion
Well I guess you can expect more random rants from me in future since I’ll be getting a lot closer to these issues while I work on my honours topic. I heard about the new Labor policies a few weeks ago and didn’t agree with them then, but having read the report, I found it interesting that a policy which was abolished by the Labour government is being reinstated by them.
Anyway, that’s enough from me!