Indigenous knowledge and Language Revival in Post-colonial Education in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Although Papua New Guinea (PNG) has more languages than any other country in the world, the education system in PNG inherited at Independence from Australia in 1975 is modelled on the Australian system and is therefore monolingual and centralised. Children in PNG are currently educated in English, a language they rarely encounter outside of school, with curriculum and textbooks produced by persons not from the students’ own cultural background, often overseas or by resident foreigners. An ineffectively organised attempt by the national government to introduce limited early education in local languages and the perception that educational standards have dropped since Independence in 1975 limit public support for education in Papua New Guinean languages (Volker 2015a). This paper describes a two-month inter-disciplinary workshop in the Nalik-speaking community in the New Ireland Province (NIP) of PNG. Nalik, one of 23 languages in New Ireland Province, is spoken by approximately 4000 people in 15 villages on the east and west coasts of the northern part of New Ireland, 70-90 kilometres from the provincial capital, Kavieng (Volker 2015b, 210). The purpose of the project was to test ways of introducing customary knowledge and language into grade six and seven classwork (Silva 2017). The workshop focused on the representations that birds have in Nalik culture, as birds are present in many stories and represent clan totems in Nalik culture. Thus, they play a central role in Nalik culture, helping people to understand philosophical principles at the core of Nalik society and to identify particularly significant words and expressions in the Nalik culture. The children in the workshop were given the research task of interviewing elders about local bird names, traditional laws about birds, and stories or narratives related to birds. The students researched significant Nalik biological or philosophical terms, described these in English, and linked these to their knowledge in the social and natural sciences. Because they were aware that their findings would be collectively published as a book, students exercised caution and precision in their use of both Nalik and English terminology. Following the production of the book, and by using an action-research method, Nalik community members assisted in the content of the book, and in this way limited errors outside researchers might have introduced when writing about their culture. The project received strong support from parents and community leaders, with one chief attending almost all sessions in order to eventually lead similar workshops. Rather than as an attempt at a complete language revival (e.g., as in much more comprehensive projects set out by Fishman 2001), this project must be seen as a first, but important, attempt to assist students to increase their awareness of Nalik language, and to improve their desire to be competent in both the language of education (English) and their ancestral language (Nalik). The classes with the students therefore go beyond formulaic language learning, but do not comprise a complete immersion or neighbourhood language program. Parents reported an increase in students’ care in writing in English (as seen in the high number of students doing well in the competitive high school entrance examinations), and clan elders reported a greater understanding of the “classical” Nalik terminology used in traditional contexts. In this way children can be better educated for participation in their own society. This project has shown that traditional knowledge can be introduced into schools, and in English, without disrupting the use of a national curriculum, and therefore has significant ramifications in methods of revitalising a language through redesigned pedagogies, which we believe can be extended to other cultural and linguistic contexts.