Revitalisation of Indigenous Languages in Education: Contextualising the Papua New Guinea Experience

Abstract

This short article situates the following two papers (by David Klaus and by Yasuko Nagai and Ronah Lister) on Papua New Guinea in the context of discussions about maintenance and revitalisation of endangered languages, and about education through the medium of indigenous and minority languages. Two of the three authors represent organisations (the World Bank and the Summer Institute of Linguistics) which, despite their very different ways of working (one at a macro-level, with more structural issues, the other at a micro-level, in continuation of the old missionary tradition) have an ambivalent reputation among many who support endangered languages. The two papers present one of the globally more impressive large-scale experiments of mother tongue medium teaching today. They show from several perspectives both what the factors enabling this experiment were, and how complex the issues are on the ground. Despite solid research evidence, most indigenous peoples and minorities are still educated subtractively: the dominant languages are learned at the cost of the mother tongues. Papua New Guinea, the country with the largest number of languages in the world, shows that it is possible to turn the tide if the political will exists.