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Title: (Linguistic and Cultural) Genocide in Education Signals Lack of Linguistic Human Rights


1
(Linguistic and Cultural) Genocide in Education
Signals Lack of Linguistic Human Rights But
Why No Discussion?The Fourth Annual Lectures on
Language and Human RightsUniversity of Essex,
16-17 Nov. 2006 http//privatewww.essex.ac.uk/pa
trickp/lhr/lhrlectures.htm
2
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
  • University of Roskilde, Denmark, and
  • Åbo Akademi University, Vasa, Finland
  • http//akira.ruc.dk/tovesk/
  • SkutnabbKangas_at_gmail.com

3
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

4
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

5
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

6
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7
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8
Numbers of monolingual Gaelic speakers and
Gaelic/English bilinguals, Scotland, 1806 to 2001
9
Numbers and percentages of Swedish-speakers in
Finland from 1610 to 1995
  • The absolute numbers today are the same as in
    1880 the decrease is due to immigration and
    mixed marriages

10
How have they succeeded in getting the legal
protection?
  • They have (had) the power it takes to grant their
    languages
  • the legal protection that
  • ALL LANGUAGES
  • SHOULD HAVE

11
How have they succeeded in getting the legal
protection?
  • Do any indigenous/ First Nation language speakers
    have a similar protection for their languages
    anywhere in the world?
  • NO!
  • They do not have the power it takes
  • or do they???

12
Linguistic Human Rights (LHRs) are a necessary
but not sufficient prerequisite for maintenance
of languages in modern societies.
13
Exceptions? Extremely isolated small
groups/peoples, in areas difficult to approach
(island societies, mountains as barriers?) with
few resources of interest to multinational
companies.
14
Some indigenous peoples languages have official
status, with some rights
  • Linguistic numerical majority Quechua
  • Linguistic (large) numerical minority Maori
  • Linguistic (very small) numerical minority
    Saami, in Norway (best rights, numerically
    largest Saami people), Finland (fairly good
    rights, numerically very small), Sweden (fewer
    rights, numerically twice as many as in Finland).
    Russia (almost no rights, very few people).

15
The three groups of languages mentioned as having
linguistic rights in the Finnish Constitution
(1999), in a descending order
  • 1. Finnish and Swedish (national languages)
  • 2. a. Saami (all three North Saami, Skolt Saami
    and Anar Saami)
  • 2. b. Romany
  • 2. c. Finnish Sign language
  • 3. ALL OTHER LANGUAGES
  • All Canadian First Nations languages could be in
    group 2, with Saami (regional official status)

16
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

17
Most of the worlds languages are very small
1There are 6-7,000 spoken languages, and maybe
equally many Sign languages.(the Ethnologue,
15. Edition, lists 6,912 languages)www.sil.org/
ethnologue/
18
Most of the worlds languages are very small 2
The median number of speakers of a language in
the world is 5.000-6.000.83-84 of the worlds
spoken languages are endemic, they exist in one
country only
19
Most of the worlds languages are very small 3
Over 5.000 of the worlds almost 7.000 spoken
languages and 99 of the Sign languages have
fewer than 100.000 users. Over half of the
worlds oral languages are spoken by fewer than
10,000 speakers
20
Languages and numbers 2 most (spoken) languages
have few speakers
N U M B E R O F L A N G U A G E S
21
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22
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23
Languages and numbers 3 The speakers of very few
languages dominate
N U M B E R O F S P E A K E R S
24
Distribution of languages, Ethnologue 15 ed
Where? N of lang- uages of all lang-uages Number of speakers in thousands of all speakers
Europa 239 3,5 1,504,393 26,3
Americas SCN 1,002 14,5 47,559 0,8
Africa 2,092 30,3 675,887 11,8
Asia 2,269 32,8 3,489,897 61,0
The Pacific 1,310 19 6,124 0,1
Total 6,912 100 5,723,861 100
25
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

26
What is happening today to the worlds languages?
Are they being maintained?NO
27
Languages are today being killed faster than ever
before in human history
28
3-600 languages left in 2100?
  • Optimistic estimates
  • 50
  • of todays spoken languages may be extinct or
    seriously endangered in 2100
  • Pessimistic but realistic estimates
  • 90-95
  • may be extinct or seriously endangered in 2100

29
Still more pessimistic estimates (Mart Rannut
2003)
  • Only those 40-50 languages will survive in which
    you can talk to your fridge and stove and coffee
    pot.
  • These are the languages into which Microsoft
    programmes, Nokia mobile menus, etc, are being
    translated.

30
Most of the languages to disappear would be/ are
indigenous languages.Most of the worlds
indigenous languages would disappear.
31
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

32
In studying causes for the disappearance of
languages we find two explanatory paradigms
language death and language murder.
33
When languages, the vast libraries of human
intangible heritage, disappear, is it (natural)
death or is it murder?
  • DEATH
  • Languages just disappear naturally
  • Languages commit suicide speakers are leaving
    them voluntarily for instrumental reasons and for
    their own good
  • MURDER
  • Arson the libraries are set on fire!
  • Educational systems, mass media, etc participate
    in committing linguistic and cultural genocide

Which paradigm corresponds to your situation? Is
it death or is it murder?
34
The difference between seeing the disappear-ance
of languages as death or as murder?
  • DEATH
  • If languages just disappear naturally, there is
    no agent. The only ones to blame are the speakers
    themselves. It is THEIR individual and collective
    responsibility and they have profited by
    language shift.
  • MURDER
  • If languages have been murdered/ killed, we can
    analyse the structural and ideological agents
    responsible the worlds economic,
    techno-military and political systems. Even when
    language shift has happened with speakers
    consent, ideological factors behind this
    consent can be analysed.

35
When speakers shift to another language, and
their own language disappears, the incoming new
language can function as a killer language.Has
English functioned as a killer language in
relation to your languages?
36
Definition of KILLER LANGUAGES 1
  • When big languages are learned subtractively
  • (at the cost of the mother tongues)
  • rather than
  • additively
  • (in addition to mother tongues),
  • they become
  • KILLER LANGUAGES.

37
Definition of KILLER LANGUAGES 2
  • Being a killer language is NOT a CHARACTERISTIC
    of any language.
  • Languages may BECOME killer languages on the
    basis of how they FUNCTION in relation to other
    languages.

38
Definition of KILLER LANGUAGES 3
  • It is not languages that kill each other. The
    agency is with speakers, meaning power
    relations between speakers that reflect
    ideologies, structures, processes and networks.
    These are working and being performed in ways
    that produce and result in unequal relations.

39
KILLER LANGUAGES 3
  • Killer languages
  • pose serious threats towards
  • the linguistic diversity of the world.

40
English is today the worlds most important
killer language
  • but most dominant languages function as killer
    languages vis-à-vis smaller languages. There is
    a nested hierarchy of languages, and glottophagy
    (language cannibalism).

41
Sign languages and killer languages 1
  • ALL oral languages can, through enforced oralism,
    function as killer languages, in relation to Sign
    languages
  • Official/national oral languages may be
    especially important killer languages vis-a-vis
    Sign languages

42
Agents of linguistic genocide
  • Educational systems and mass media are (the most)
    important direct agents in linguistic and
    cultural genocide. Behind them are the worlds
    economic, techno-military and political systems.

43
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

44
Genocide?Is the term not too strong?Many
people use the term loosely.We must define it
properlyevery time we use it!
45
UN International Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (E793,
1948), final Draft, Article III, had definitions
of linguistic and cultural genocide and saw them
also as crimes against humanity. Article III was
voted down by 16 states in the UN General
Assembly, and is NOT part of the final
Convention. But all states then members of the UN
agreed about the definition.
  • Therefore, we can still use this definition too

46
UN International Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (E793,
1948). Final draft, 1948. Article III(1) defined
linguistic genocide
  • 'Prohibiting the use of the language of the
    group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the
    printing and circulation of publications in the
    language of the group'.
  • Article III was voted down in the UN General
    Assembly by 16 states in 1948 and is NOT part of
    the final Genocide Convention

47
United Nations International Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide (E793, 1948) has five definitions of
genocide.
48
Article 2In the present Convention, genocide
means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such emphasis added
49
Article 2 (a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group (c) Deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part (d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the
group (e) Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group. emphases added
50
Genocide is
  • Article II(e) 'forcibly transferring children of
    the group to another group' and
  • Article II(b) 'causing serious bodily or mental
    harm to members of the group' (emphasis added).

51
List of contents
  • 1. Which groups/peoples maintain their languages?
  • 2. Most of the worlds languages are small.
  • 3. What is happening today with the worlds
    languages? Are they being maintained?
  • 4. Death or murder? Two paradigms. Killer
    languages.
  • 5. Definitions of genocide in the UN Genocide
    Convention.
  • 6. Examples of linguistic (and cultural) genocide.

52
Examples of linguistic genocide in
educationaccording to Articles 2(b) and 2(e)For
more, readSkutnabb-Kangas, Tove (2000).
Linguistic Genocide in Education or Worldwide
Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, New Jersey
Lawrence Erlbaum. See my home page for list of
contents and details http//akira.ruc.dk/tovesk/
53
EUROPE, Pirjo Janulf 1998
  • Janulf shows in a longitudinal study that of
    those Finnish immigrant minority members in
    Sweden who had had Swedish-medium education, not
    one spoke any Finnish to their own children. Even
    if they themselves might not have forgotten their
    Finnish completely, their children were certainly
    forcibly transferred to the majority group, at
    least linguistically.

54
AFRICA 1, Edward Williams 1995 Zambia and
Malawi, 1,500 students, grades 1-7
  • Large numbers of Zambian pupils (all education in
    English) have very weak or zero reading
    competence in two languages.
  • The Malawi children (taught in local languages
    during the first 4 years, English as a subject)
  • had slightly better test results in the English
    language than the Zambian students. In addition,
    they could read and write their own languages.

55
AFRICA 1, Edward Williams 1995 Zambia and
Malawi, 1,500 students, grades 1-7
  • Conclusion there is a clear risk that the
    policy of using English as a vehicular language
    may contribute to stunting, rather than
    promoting, academic and cognitive growth. This
    fits the UN genocide definition of
  • causing serious mental harm

56
AFRICA 2, Zubeida Desai 2001
  • Xhosa-speaking grade 4 and grade 7 learners in
    South Africa were given a set of pictures which
    they had to put in the right order and then
    describe, in both Xhosa and English.
  • In Desai's words, it showed the rich vocabulary
    children have when they express themselves in
    Xhosa and the poor vocabulary they have when they
    express themselves in English. Mental harm?

57
AFRICA 3, Kathleen Heugh 2000
  • Countrywide longitudinal statistical study of
    final exam results for Black students in South
    Africa
  • The percentage of Black students who passed
    their exams went down every time the number of
    years spent through the medium of the mother
    tongues decreased. Mental harm?

58
AUSTRALIA, Anne Lowell Brian Devlin 1999
  • Article describing the 'Miscommunication between
    Aboriginal Students and their Non-Aboriginal
    Teachers in a Bilingual School, clearly
    demonstrated that 'even by late primary school,
    children often did not comprehend classroom
    instructions in English' . Communication
    breakdowns occurred frequently between children
    and their non-Aboriginal teachers', with the
    result that 'the extent of miscommunication
    severely inhibited the children's education when
    English was the language of instruction and
    interaction' .
  • Conclusions and recommendations the use of a
    language of instruction in which the children do
    not have sufficient competence is the greatest
    barrier to successful classroom learning for
    Aboriginal Children. Serious mental harm?

59
CANADA 1, Katherine Zozula Simon Ford 1985
  • Report Keewatin Perspective on Bilingual
    Education
  • tells about Canadian Inuit students who are
    neither fluent nor literate in either language
    and
  • presents statistics showing that the students
    end up at only Grade 4 level of achievement
    after 9 years of schooling.
  • Serious mental harm?

60
CANADA 2, The Canadian Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples 1996 Report
  • The Report notes that submersion strategies
    which neither respect the child's first language
    nor help them gain fluency in the second language
    may result in impaired fluency in both
    languages. Serious mental harm?

61
CANADA 3, The Nunavut Language Policy Conference
in March 1998
  • in some individuals, neither language is firmly
    anchored.
  • Serious mental harm?

62
CANADA 4, Mick Mallon and Alexina Kublu, 1998
  • a significant number of young people are not
    fully fluent in their languages, and
  • many students remain apathetic, often with
    minimal skills in both languages.
  • Serious mental harm?

63
CANADA 5, 1998 report, Kitikmeot struggles to
prevent death of Inuktitut
  • teenagers cannot converse fluently with their
    grandparents.
  • Serious mental harm?

64
Deaf students Branson Miller, Jokinen, Lane,
etc
  • Assimilationist submersion education where Deaf
    students are taught orally only and sign
    languages have no place in the curriculum, often
    causes mental harm, including serious prevention
    or delay of cognitive growth potential.

65
Deaf students Ladd 2003
  • Example Deaf boys of normal intelligence are put
    in oral submersion education, with no Sign
    language. At the age of 12, they are sent to a
    Deaf school because the teachers cannot cope.
    They are at this stage described as intellectual
    cabbages.
  • Serious mental harm?

66
Ad List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Issues NOT discussed here
  • The history of linguistic genocide in drafting
    the Genocide Convention
  • How are most of the concepts in the Article 2 to
    be interpreted? Destroy? Serious physical harm?
    Mental Harm? Transfer of children? Forcible
    transfer? Degree and kind of force required?
  • Issues of permanency of outcomes, issues of
    education as the causal factor. For these, see
    Dunbar et al., forthcoming

67
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

68
To qualify as genocide, an act has to be
intentional. Have states had an intention to
  • 'forcibly transfer children of the group to
    another group' and
  • 'cause serious bodily or mental harm to members
    of the group' ?
  • YES, unfortunately THEY HAVE
  • to members of the group'

69
How is the intention manifested? 1
  • There are countless examples from many parts of
    the world from the early and mid-1800s onwards
    and up to the mid-1900s and even longer where the
    intention to destroy an indigenous group as a
    group (a nation, a people) has been overtly
    expressed earlier. Some examples follow
  • (for more, see Magga et al., 2005 and Dunbar et
    al., forthcoming).

70
How is the intention manifested? 2
  • Tribal dissolution, to be pursued mainly through
    the corridors of residential schools, was the
    Departments new goal, John Milloy (1999 18)
    states about the Canadian 1857 Act to Encourage
    the Gradual Civilization of the Indian tribes in
    the Province.

71
How is the intention manifested? 3
  • Norwegianisation was also the official goal for
    boarding schools in Norway "The building of the
    boarding schools and the Norwegianisation of
    Finnmark are closely bound together.
    Norwegianisation was the goal. And the building
    of the boarding shools was the means. Both were
    part of Norwegian educational policy in Finnmark
    (Lind Meløy 1980 14 Lind Meløy was himself
    headmaster of one of the boarding schools).
  • In the process of Norwegianisation it was the
    goal of many school administrators that the Saami
    languages should become extinct (e.g. Bernt
    Thomassen, Superintendent for schools 1902-1920
    quoted in Lind Meløy 1980 98-99).

72
How is the intention manifested? 4
  • Hans Vogt, later Vice-Chancellor of the
    University of Oslo, wrote in 1902
    Norwegianisation through schools has been
    victorious, a policy which means purely and
    simply an intentional extinction of the Saami and
    Finnish languages (emphasis added quoted in
    Lind Meløy 1980 106).
  • Similar policy statements abound from all over
    the world.

73
How is the intention manifested? 5
  • For obvious reasons, no state or educational
    authority can today be expected to express openly
    an intention to destroy a group or even to
    "seriously harm" it or to "transfer its members
    to another group".
  • However, the intention can be inferred in other
    ways, by analysing those structural and
    ideological factors and those practices which
    cause the destruction, harm or transfer. We have
    done this in several ways, comparing with the
    older more overt ways.

74
Not force itself, but the capacity to present
force as being in the service of right and peace
  • Sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a
    series of national and supranational organisms
    united under a single logic of rule. This new
    global form of sovereignty is what we call
    Empire. (p. xii)
  • Empire is formed not on the basis of force
    itself but on the basis of the capacity to
    present force as being in the service of right
    and peace. (p. 15). Hardt, Michael Negri,
    Antonio (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA Harvard
    University Press
  • Empire is NOT anchored in a place (e.g. USA) but
    in organisms and networks. No conspiracy
    theories. But the US just happens to control many
    of the networks.

75
How is the intention manifested? 6
  • We claim that if state school authorities
    continue an educational policy which uses a
    dominant language as the main medium of education
    for indigenous and minority children, when the
    negative results of this policy have been known
    both through earlier concrete empirical feedback
    (as in Canada and the United States) and through
    solid theoretical and empirical research evidence
    (as they have, at least since the early 1950s
    see, e.g. UNESCO 1953 see also our first Expert
    paper, Magga et al. 2004), this refusal to change
    the policies constitutes strong evidence for an
    intention.

76
How is the intention manifested? 7
  • In Canada, for most of school systems life,
    though the truth was known to it, the Department
    of Indian Affairs, after nearly a century of
    contrary evidence in its own files, still
    maintained the fiction of care and contended
    that the schools were operated for the welfare
    and education of Indian children(Milloy 1999
    xiii-xiv). These schools represented a system
    of persistent neglect and debilitating abuse,
    violent in its intention to kill the Indian in
    the child for the sake of Christian civilization
    (ibid. xiv xv). They were finally closed down
    in 1986.

77
How is the intention manifested? 8
  • The Department and the churches were fully aware
    of the fact" that the schools unfitted many
    children, abused or not, for life in either
    Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal communities. The
    schools produced thousands of individuals
    incapable of leading healthy lives or
    contributing positively to their communities
    (ibid. xvii).

78
Being able freely to choose the language of
instruction among existing alternatives which are
qualitatively approximately at the same level is
for schools one of the most important necessary
factors for successful study through the medium
of a foreign language and for becoming high-level
bilingual through this type of education.
79
This necessary factor for successful study
through the medium of a foreign language does NOT
exist for most indigenous, minority or dominated
group students in the world, neither at school
nor at university level. It is often the most
decisive factor in the educational failure of
students, quantitatively especially in Africa and
Asia.
80
Assimilation is not freely chosen if the choice
is between ones mother tongue and ones future
  • The United Nations 2004 Human Development Report
    links cultural liberty to language rights and
    human development (http//hdr.undp.org/reports/glo
    bal/2004/)
  • and argues that there is
  • no more powerful means of encouraging
    individuals to assimilate to a dominant culture
    than having the economic, social and political
    returns stacked against their mother tongue.
  • Such assimilation is not freely chosen if the
    choice is between ones mother tongue and ones
    future. (p. 33).

81
Assimilation not freely chosen if the choice is
between ones mother tongue and ones future
  • The press release about the UN report exemplifies
    the role of language as an exclusionary tool
  • Limitations on peoples ability to use their
    native languageand limited facility in speaking
    the dominant or official national languagecan
    exclude people from education, political life and
    access to justice.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 2,500
    languages, but the ability of many people to use
    their language in education and in dealing with
    the state is particularly limited. In more than
    30 countries in the region, the official language
    is different from the one most commonly used.
    Only 13 percent of the children who receive
    primary education do so in their native
    language.

82
Assimilation is not a free and rational choice
  • Abandonment of local community languages is
    always a result of powerful and destructive
    external pressures rather than a free and
    rational choice, argues the Irish linguist James
    McCloskey (2001 26, 38 quoted in Glaser, in
    press).

83
Assimilation not freely chosen if there are no
alternatives, and if the consequences are not
known
  • We can only speak about choice, if
  • - there are (qualitatively equal) alternatives,
    and
  • - the students have enough research-based
    knowledge about the likely long-term consequences
    of the choices.
  • This includes consequences such as possible
    dispossession of linguistic (and intellectual?)
    capital through subtractive learning,
    hierarchisation, and endangerment for other
    languages.

84
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

85
Have the states known? 1
  • The negative results of subtractive teaching have
    been known by indigenous peoples and documented
    at least since the mid-1700s
  • (e.g. Handsome Lake).
  • States and educational authorities (including
    churches) have had the knowledge at the latest
    since the end of the 1800s (e.g. Board of Indian
    Commissioners).

86
Board of Indian Commissioners 1880 77
  • first teaching the children to read and write in
    their own language enables them to master English
    with more ease when they take up that study
  • a child beginning a four years course with the
    study of Dakota would be further advanced in
    English at the end of the term than one who had
    not been instructed in Dakota.

87
Board of Indian Commissioners 1880 98
  • it is true that by beginning in the Indian
    tongue and then putting the students into English
    studies our missionaries say that after three or
    four years their English is better than it would
    have been if they had begun entirely with English.

88
Have the states known? 2
  • Modern research results about how indigenous
    and minority education should be organised have
    been available for at least 50 years, since the
    UNESCO expert group book The use of vernacular
    languages in education (1953).

89
Have the states known? 3
  • If states, despite this, and despite very
    positive results from properly conducted additive
    teaching, have continued and continue to offer
    subtractive education, with no alternatives,
    knowing that the results are likely to be
    negative and thus to 'forcibly transfer children
    of the group to another group' and 'cause
    serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
    group'
  • this must be seen as intentional.

90
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

91
(Teacher) question Are research results
being implemented in the education of indigenous
and minority children? Do states act in a
rational way?
92
Ramirez et al. study, 1991, 2,352 students
Group Medium of education Results
English only English Low levels of English and school achievement likely not to catch up
Early-exit transi-tional Spanish 1-2 years then all English Fairly low levels of English and school achievement not likely to catch up
Late-exit transi-tional Spanish 4-6 years then all English Best results likely to catch up with native speakers of English
93
Thomas Collier, 210,000 students 1
  • the largest longitudinal study in the world on
    the education of minority students,
  • with altogether over 210,000 students,
  • including in-depth studies in both urban and
    rural settings in the USA,
  • included full MTM programmes in a minority
    language,
  • dual-medium or two-way bilingual programmes,
    where both a minority and majority language
    (mainly Spanish and English) were used as medium
    of instruction,
  • transitional bilingual education programmes,
  • ESL (English as a second language) programmes,
    and
  • so-called mainstream (i.e. English-only
    submersion) programmes.

94
Thomas Collier, 210,000 students 2
  • Across all the models, those students who reached
    the highest levels of both bilingualism and
    school achievement were the ones where the
    children's mother tongue was the main medium of
    education for the most extended period of time.
  • This length of education in the L1 (language 1,
    first language), was the strongest predictor of
    both the children's competence and gains in L2,
    English, and of their school achievement.

95
Thomas Collier, 210,000 students 3
  • Thomas Collier state (2002 7)
  •  
  • the strongest predictor of L2 student
    achievement is the amount of formal L1 schooling.
    The more L1 grade-level schooling, the higher L2
    achievement.

96
But might it not, in all these cases, be because
of the students socio-economic and cultural
conditions not because of the subtractive
teaching???
97
Ramirez and Thomas Collier 1
  • The length of mother tongue medium education was
    in both Ramirez' and Thomas Collier's studies
    more important than any other factor in
    predicting the educational success of bilingual
    students.
  • It was also much more important than
    socio-economic status, something extremely vital
    in relation to poor and/or oppressed indigenous
    and minority students.
  • (Remember that the education of most African
    students can also be analysed as minority
    education from a power relations point of view)

98
Ramirez and Thomas Collier 2
  • The worst results, were with students in regular
    submersion programmes where the students' mother
    tongues (L1s) were either not supported at all or
    where they only had some mother-tongue-as-a-subjec
    t instruction. They were in a subtractive
    learning situation.

99
There are hundreds of smaller studies showing
similar conclusions, with many different types
of groups and many languages, and from many
countries.And the knowledge is not new
100
CANADA, Arlene Stairs 1994
  • in schools which support initial learning of
    Inuttitut, and whose Grade 3 and Grade 4 pupils
    are strong writers in Inuttitut, the results in
    written English are also the highest.

101
USA, Alaska, Nancy Sharp, 1994
  • The Alaska Yu'piq teacher Nancy Sharp compares
  • when Yu'piq children are taught through the
    medium of English, they are treated by White
    teachers as handicapped, and they do not achieve
  • when they are taught through the medium of
    Yu'piq, they are excellent writers, smart happy
    students.

102
Results in dominant language ,after 9 years of
Finnish mother-tongue medium teaching in a
maintenance programme for an immigrant minority.
Competence in Swedish own evaluation and test
results (working class Finns, middle class
Swedes, 2 Stockholm suburbs from
Skutnabb-Kangas 1987).
103
The Finnish students Finnish
  • The Finnish students Finnish was, after 9 years
    of Finnish-medium education in Sweden, at almost
    the same level as that of Finnish control groups
    in Finland
  • whereas Finnish children in Swedish-medium
    education show extremely poor results in Finnish,
    and often in Swedish too.

104
All these studies show both the positive results
of additive mother tongue medium maintenance
education, and the mostly negative results of
subtractive dominant-language medium education.
105
Dominant-language-only submersion programmes are
widely attested as the least effective
educationally for minority language students
(May Hill 2003 14, study commisioned by the
Maori Section of the Aotearoa/New Zealand
Ministry of Education).
106
Dominant-language-only submersion programmes
are widely attested as the least effective
educationally for minority language students
This is the model mostly used with children
representing endangered language communities all
over the world (provided that the children attend
formal education in the first place)
107
Today research results are NOT being
implemented. States do NOT act in a rational
way.
108
There are very large gaps between
  • theory and practice,
  • research and implementation, and
  • rhetoric and realities.

109
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

110
Poverty is capability deprivation (Sen)
  • Economics Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen
    conceptualises poverty as "capability
    deprivation" "Capability" refers to
  •  the alternative combinations of functionings
    from which a person can choose freedom - the
    range of options a person has in deciding what
    kind of life to lead. Poverty lies not merely
    in the impoverished state in which the person
    actually lives, but also in the lack of real
    opportunity - given by social constraints as well
    as personal circumstances - to choose other types
    of living. Even the relevance of low incomes,
    meagre possessions, and other aspects of what are
    standardly seen as economic poverty relates
    ultimately to their role in curtailing
    capabilities (that is, their role in severely
    restricting the choices people have). Poverty
    is, thus, ultimately a matter of 'capability
    deprivation'.
  • (Dreze Sen 1996 10-11, quoted from Misra
    Mohanty 2000a 262-263)

111
Poverty is not mainly economic
  • Poverty is no longer to be viewed simply in
    terms of generating economic growth expansion of
    human capabilities can be viewed as a more basic
    objective of development" (Misra Mohanty 2000a
    263). The loci of poverty, and of intervention,
    are in Amartya Sen's view, economic, social and
    psychological this implies that measures have to
    be taken in each of these areas. "Psychological
    processes, such as cognition, motivation, values
    and other characteristics of the poor and the
    disadvantaged are to be viewed both as
    consequences as well as antecedent conditions
    which are ultimately related to human
    capabilities" (Misra Mohanty 2000a 264).

112
Education is the most crucial input
  • The question, if we are interested in more equity
    in the world, in reducing the gaps, is, in Misra
    Mohanty's view "What is the most critical (and
    cost effective) input to change the conditions of
    poverty, or rather, to expand human
    capabilities?" There is "a general consensus
    among the economists, psychologists and other
    social scientists that education is perhaps the
    most crucial input" (ibid., 265).
  • This is what leads me to the roles of the mother
    tongues/first languages, and of English (or other
    dominant languages), respectively, in education.

113
Subtractive teaching curtails childrens
capabilities and perpetuates poverty
  • If poverty is understood as "both a set of
    contextual conditions as well as certain
    processes which together give rise to typical
    performance of the poor and the disadvantaged" in
    school, and if of "all different aspects of such
    performance, cognitive and intellectual functions
    have been held in high priority as these happen
    to be closely associated with upward
    socio-economic mobility of the poor" (Misra
    Mohanty 2000b 135-136), we have to look for the
    type of division of labour between languages in
    education that guarantees the best possible
    development of these "cognitive and intellectual
    functions" which enhance children's "human
    capabilities", rather than curtailing them and
    depriving children of the choices and freedom
    that are, according to Sen and others, associated
    with the necessary capabilities.

114
Political science conclusion on the economic
argument on poverty eradication Do states try to
achieve common aggregate welfare with sensible
means, also economically? Do they try to
eradicate poverty through theireducational
language policies? NO!
115
States follow emotional common sense and harm
the children - and themselves
  • To under-educate or mis-educate children, to
    prevent them from reaching the potential that
    they have, is economically enormously costly both
    for the individuals concerned and for the states
  • Quite apart from moral and ethical human rights
    arguments (which are compelling), this wastage is
    what states should be concerned about if they
    want to follow any kind of economic rationality.

116
Linguicism
  • LINGUICISM 'ideologies, structures and practices
    which are used to legitimate, effectuate,
    regulate and reproduce an unequal division of
    power and resources (both material and
    immaterial) between groups which are defined on
    the basis of language' (Skutnabb-Kangas 1988
    13).
  • Most education systems worldwide reflect
    linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000).

117
List of contents
  • 7. Discussion of criteria and evidence for
    genocide
  • Intention? Has the intention to destroy the group
    as a group through enforced assimilation been
    expressed openly? Free choice?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Has the knowledge about negative
    results existed?
  • Intention to transfer members of the group and
    harm them? Have research results been adhered to?
  • Intention to inflict negative conditions of life
    on the group - poverty? Economic rationality of
    enforced assimilation?
  • 8. Why no discussion?

118
Indigenous and minority children and children
from dominated groups are taught SUBTRACTIVELY.
119
Subtractive versus additive
  • SUBTRACTIVE teaching minority children are
    taught through the medium of a dominant language
    which replaces their mother tongue.
  • They learn the dominant language at the cost of
    the mother tongue.
  • ADDITIVE teaching minority children are taught
    mainly through the medium of the mother tongue,
    with good teaching of the dominant language as a
    second language.
  • It can make them HIGH LEVEL BILINGUAL OR
    MULTILINGUAL. They learn other languages in
    addition to their own language and learn them all
    well.

120
The subtractive dominant-language-only-medium
submersion education has clearly caused serious
mental harm to the indigenous, minority and/or
dominated group students, and has attempted to
forcibly transfer them to another group
linguistically. This is linguistic genocide.
121
Most indigenous and minority education in the
world participates in committing linguistic and
cultural genocide, according to the genocide
definitions in the UN Genocide Convention
122
Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen
  • Too often, policies of national integration, of
    national cultural development, actually imply a
    policy of ethnocide, that is, the wilful
    destruction of cultural groups.

123
Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen
  • The cultural development of peoples, whether
    minorities or majorities, must be considered
    within the framework of the right of peoples to
    self-determination, which by accepted
    international standards is the fundamental human
    right, in the absence of which all other human
    rights cannot really be enjoyed.

124
Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen
  • Governments fear that if minority peoples hold
    the right to self-determination in the sense of a
    right to full political independence, then
    existing States might break up.

125
Guidelines for USA foreign policy from 1948
Bret-ton Woods, to World Bank IMF to WTO.
George Kennan, main USA BW negotiator in 1948
  • We have 50 of the worlds wealth, but only
    6,3 of its population. In this situation, our
    real job in the coming period is to devise a
    pattern of relationships which permit us to
    maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we
    have to dispense with all sentimentality ... we
    should cease thinking about human rights, the
    raising of living standards, and democratisation

126
Neo-imperialist ideas spreading again
  • The rest of the world is best served by the
    USA pursuing its own interests because
  • American values are universal.
  • Condoleezza Rice, 2000
  • EU also follows a US agenda
  • (Robert Phillipson, 2005).

127
Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen
  • State interests thus are still more powerful at
    the present time than the human rights of
    peoples.

128
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
  • University of Roskilde, Denmark, and
  • Åbo Akademi University, Vasa, Finland
  • http//akira.ruc.dk/tovesk/
  • SkutnabbKangas_at_gmail.com
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