Creoles in Education: An appraisal of current programs and projects

Creoles in Education

Creole Language Library (CLL) A book series presenting descriptive and theoretical studies designed to add significantly to the data available on pidgin and creole languages.

Editors Miriam Meyerhoff

University of Edinburgh

Umberto Ansaldo

The University of Hong Kong

Editorial Advisory Board Mervyn C. Alleyne

Pieter Muysken

Marlyse Baptista

Peter Mühlhäusler

George L. Huttar

Shobha Satyanath

John Holm

John Victor Singler

Silvia Kouwenberg

Norval Smith

Susanne Michaelis

Sarah G. Thomason

Salikoko S. Mufwene

Tonjes Veenstra

Kingston, Jamaica Ann Arbor, USA Dallas, USA

Coimbra, Portugal Kingston, Jamaica Leipzig, Germany Chicago, USA

Nijmegen, The Netherlands Adelaide, Australia Delhi, India

New York, USA

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ann Arbor, USA Berlin, Germany

Volume 36 Creoles in Education. An appraisal of current programs and projects Edited by Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise and Angela Bartens

Creoles in Education An appraisal of current programs and projects Edited by

Bettina Migge University College Dublin

Isabelle Léglise CNRS CELIA

Angela Bartens University of Turku

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdamâ•›/â•›Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Creoles in education : an appraisal of current programs and projects / edited by Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise and Angela Bartens. p. cm. (Creole Language Library, issn 0920-9026 ; v. 36) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Creoles--Education--Evaluation. 2. Native language and education. 3. Creole dialects. I. Migge, Bettina. II. Léglise, Isabelle. III. Bartens, Angela, 1970LC3609.C74â•…â•… 2010 371.829’96073--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 5258 6 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 8820 2 (Eb)

2010006948

© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents Acknowledgements Creoles in education: A discussion of pertinent issues Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup Christina Higgins Chabacano for everyone? Chabacano language projects in Cavite City in comparison with other Chabacano communities Eeva Sippola The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe Mirna Bolus Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana: A discussion of current programs and initiatives Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

vii 1 31

55 81

107

Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools Arja Koskinen

133

Swimming against the tide: Jamaican Creole in education Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

167

Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia Hazel Simmons-McDonald

183

Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono: Prospects and possibilities for language preservation Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

211

Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

237

Cape Verdean in education: A linguistic and human right Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

273

 Creoles in Education

Trilingual education: On the Islands of San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina Ronald C. Morren

297

Bibliography

323

Biographical sketches of contributors

351

Index

355

Acknowledgements This book project has been long in the making. For two of the authors (Léglise, Migge), this project represents a natural development of our involvement in educational issues in French Guiana that arose due to our sociolinguistic research in this French overseas region. We felt that the most efficient way to address the problems that have arisen within the local projects was to compare them to other projects that deal with similar problems. However, when we looked around, we found that few descriptions of current approaches existed. We therefore decided to begin to fill this gap by encouraging people to write about existing projets. As far as the third author (Bartens) is concerned, the driving force was her participant observation and involvement in educational issues on San Andrés, Colombia, over the past ten years and, on the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast, for approximately five years. Without the generous help of many people, we would not have been able to complete this project. We particularly wish to thank the authors of the papers that appear in this volume for their collaboration. We also want to gratefully acknowledge the various kinds of support that we received from the following people: Sophie Alby, Nick Faraclas, Antonella Tassinari, Michael Forman, Ronald Kephart, Michel Launey, Odile Lescure, Silvia Macedo, Xoán Paulo Rodríguez Yáñez, Laurent Puren, Anand Rumajogee, Jeff Siegel, and many others. We are particularly endepted to Duna Troiani who took on the honorous task of formating the book, Linda Gardiner for her translation of one of the articles and Owen McCarney for checking language-related issues in several of the articles. Last, but not least, we also wish to gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support that we received from ÉRTé (Recherche Appliquée en Formation Education en Contexte Guyanais (2006–2009)) and the project 1111544 entitled Right to language and mother tongue education in Nicaragua and Guatemala: Linguistic research as a means of strenghtening intercultural bilingual education in Nicaragua and Guatemala funded by the Finnish Academy of Sciences (2006–2009).

Creoles in education A discussion of pertinent issues Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

University College Dublin/CNRS-CELIA/University Turku This paper reviews and critically assesses issues that pertain to the implementation of Creole languages in education. We review historical, social and political issues that have hindered the introduction of most of these contact languages in the educational domain as well as the factors that have spurred the integration of some of them into education. Based on the available literature, the paper also provides an overview of current projects around the world. We critically assess the main characteristics of past and current programs and projects that seek to implement Creoles in education and propose a tentative roadmap for setting up viable educational projects. Keywords:╇ Creoles and education; educational projects

1.  Introduction The last three decades have seen a steady increase in the use of Pidgin and Creole (P/C) languages in public life.1 In many P/C-speaking communities, P/C are now widely used in health education, vocational training, political campaigning and in the media (Migge€& Léglise 2007:€314). These developments demonstrate –€if it has

.  We use the terms Pidgin and Creole (P/C) here without prejudice. Linguists refer to some of the languages that arose due to colonial expansion and/or contact with European languages as Pidgins and to others as Creoles depending on their usage patterns. Pidgins are generally second languages while Creoles are defined as mother tongues. These distinctions have come to be blurred over time due to social changes and more often than not, it is difficult to distinguish between them on linguistic grounds. The speakers of these languages often use these technical terms in different ways, referring to their mother tongue as Pidgin, for instance, or not using these terms at all.

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to be demonstrated at all2 – that P/Cs are viable means of communication and are well able to express as wide a range of issues as the European languages with which they coexist.3 Despite on-going social change in most Creole communities, formal school instruction in Creole-speaking communities has seen comparatively little change. While students are mostly no longer actively discouraged or punished for using their native P/C, their use is generally also not officially encouraged. Few P/Cs are officially recognized as viable means of instruction. They are mostly informally tolerated to varying degrees as a transitional measure to facilitate acquisition of the official language(s) and (European) language(s) of education. In addition to their use as auxiliary media, P/Cs also tend to be restricted to the oral domain. This creates a vicious circle where no orthography development and other language engineering takes place as a result of the presumed unsuitability of the P/Cs to serve as a means of writing. This in turn, bolsters teachers’ and politicians’ claims with regard to the very claim of inadequacy. The virtual exclusion of P/Cs from formal instruction is at odds with the findings of most educational research that suggest that the use of mother tongues as languages of instruction and for initial literacy contributes significantly towards reducing school dropout rates and educational underachievement (Cummings 2009). The situation is not entirely bleak, though. In a number, if not all, Creole communities, activists have not ceased to bring up the issue in local or national debates. In some communities, such efforts have led to the launching of mostly experimental projects (Jamaica, French Guiana, San Andrés). In a few communities (Nicaragua, the Dutch Antilles), more far-reaching educational changes are under way. In yet other situations, social changes are being implemented through public awareness campaigns (Hawai‘i), awareness programs for teachers (French Guiana) and the integration of subjects that focus on local (Creole) language and culture (cf. France’s overseas departments). All of these activities help to pave the way towards the publicly accepted and officially sanctioned use of Creole languages in education.

.  After all, on linguistic terms, no language is more appropriate than another to serve as a means of communication or instruction. The debates concerning the possibility for a language to be used in school, for example, are always based on political and ideological arguments: “A creole is inferior to its corresponding standard language only in social status.” (Decamp 1971:€16). .  We would like to observe, however, that there are authors who consider the essential criterion for distinguishing Creoles from Pidgins not to be nativization but the ability to serve all the communicative functions of a community (cf., e.g. Bartens 1996:€9, 137). As a result of adopting this point of view, varieties previously called “extended Pidgins” have to be considered Creole languages.



Creoles in education

The goal of this volume is twofold. First, it aims to provide more detailed information than is currently available about several educational activities that seek to anchor Creoles in educational systems from a range of settings. Second, it aims to critically assess and compare such activities in an effort to foster a better understanding of the issues involved. We also wish to discuss a set of procedures that are necessary for successfully developing, evaluating and reforming educational activities that aim to integrate Creole languages in a viable and sustainable manner into formal education. In the remainder of the introduction we first discuss pertinent sociohistorical issues that have led to the current situation. We then move on to provide a brief overview of educational projects involving P/Cs around the world based on the available literature. Section Four critically assesses pertinent issues of educational projects and Section Five proposes a road map for the implementation of successful education projects.

2.  An overview of historical and social issues The view that Creoles are not adequate means for communicating about socially important, abstract and/or technical issues in general and for use as media of instruction in formal education in particular has proven to be very resilient throughout the history of their existence. In this section, we discuss some of the reasons for this negative image and the factors that have hampered the integration of P/Cs into the educational domain. Indeed, P/Cs continue to be stigmatized both by others and by their very speakers in educational systems and beyond.

2.1  Status and function of creoles The stigmatization in the eyes of speakers and non-speakers alike of P/Cs are a direct result of the prototypical circumstances of P/C formation, namely the colonial expansion of several European nation-states from the 15th century onwards. These prototypical circumstances were constituted by the establishment of plantation societies followed by large-scale slave trading in the Atlantic and movement of indentured labourers in the Pacific area. The populations that came into contact usually did not share a common Means of Interethnic Communication (MIC pace Baker 1997:€ 96) and therefore had to develop one. In order to achieve this, people relied on their existing linguistic repertoires, such as their first languages and other languages they had learned in the course of their lives, and tried to learn the communicative practices of the new setting. Early observers focused on the differences of P/Cs vis-à-vis their European input languages and argued that they were reflective of the inherent incapacity of their

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speakers to master a European language. In those cases where the contact language came to co-exist with the European standard language this situation was exacerbated: due to lexical similarities with the European Standard language which at times were superficial at best, P/Cs came to be conceptualized as non-legitimate and deviant versions of the former. For example, Father Sandoval who between 1617 and 1619 authored several texts about the slave population of Cartagena de las Indias which later circulated under the Latin title De instauranda Aethiopum salute, considers that they spoke a corrupt version of Spanish calqued on the broken Portuguese of São Tomé: […] y los llamamos criollos y naturales de San Thomé, con la comunicación que con tan bárbaras naciones han tenido el tiempo que han residido en San Thomé, las entienden casi todas con un género de lenguaje muy corrupto y revesado de la portuguesa que llaman lengua de San Thomé, al modo que ahora nosotros entendemos y hablamos con todo género de negros y naciones con nuestra lengua española corrupta, como comúnmente la hablan todos los negros. (‘[…] and we call them Creoles and natives of São Tomé, as a result of their interaction with so barbarous nations during their stay on São Tomé, almost all of them understand it with a kind of very corrupted language which is distorted Portuguese and they call it “language of São Tomé”, just as we now understand and communicate with all kinds of negroes and other nations with a corruption of our Spanish language, just as it is commonly spoken by all negroes.’ quoted in Granda 1970:€6; translation ours).

It was and in a good number of settings continues to be argued that the P/C lacks grammar and that “the way it is spoken is […] the result of performance errors rather than language differences.” (Siegel 2005b: 145). A related issue concerns the social connotations that came to be attached to P/Cs. Although these languages were also widely spoken by the socially dominant groups and used in a great number of situations beyond the prototypical master/overseer€– slave interaction (cf. Maurer 1998:€201–202 for the situation in the Netherlands’ Antilles), they became squarely associated with the latter type of situation. Since slaves had been assigned low social status in the colonial social hierarchy, the same connotations were also projected onto P/Cs. They were widely perceived as languages that were at best suitable for basic everyday communication in low status social domains, such as the market, the street, the village, the homes and neighborhoods of poor and socially disenfranchised populations. These views were reinforced by the fact that P/Cs, unlike the mostly co-existing European Standard language, did not “have long historical traditions and bodies of literature” and in many cases have not been standardized until the present day (Siegel 2005b: 145). Finally, it is generally the European Standard language rather than the Creole that functions as a means for social upward mobility and economic success (Siegel 2005b: 145) making most people assign low overt prestige to P/Cs and focusing all of their efforts on the mastery of the European language.



Creoles in education

Although both speakers of P/Cs and others still perpetuate negative views about them, the status of P/Cs has been improving gradually in most communities over the past decades. These changes in overt attitudes towards P/Cs are due to a variety of reasons, most of them probably related to specific changes in the socio-political makeup and development of individual communities. However, it seems licit to say that processes of democratization and an overall increase in the emphasis on issues of social diversity and the social emancipation of the corresponding speaker communities as well as continued grass-roots advocacy have had a fair role to play in this process. In recent years, several P/Cs such as, for instance, Tok Pisin (Romaine 1991) and other varieties of Melanesian Pidgin English (Mühlhäusler 1991) as well as Caribbean Creoles (Hellinger 1991) have undergone changes in socio-political standing and macro-social functions. Most P/Cs have in recent decades also become an important means of expression in “their” community’s public domain. In some situations, P/Cs have in part or fully replaced the official European language in local health education (e.g. Suriname) and are used side-by-side or even compete with the official language in other domains such as political campaigning and vocational training (again e.g. Suriname). In some countries and regions such as Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Netherlands’ Antilles, local P/Cs are also used in parliament debates. P/Cs are also nowadays widely used in the media. Newspapers publish entire columns in a P/C or use at least direct quotations even on the front page (Carrington 2001). In the radio broadcasting sector, recent years have seen a sharp increase in the overall usage€of P/Cs on the air. P/Cs are widely used on call-in shows by both callers and hosts (Shields-Brodber 1992). In other settings such as St. Lucia (Garrett 2000; 2007) and Suriname as well as French Guiana (Migge to appear), entire programs treating a wide range of topics ranging from discussion programs to formal-type information programs and news are broadcast using P/Cs. Besides an increase in their use in literary productions otherwise written in European languages (Mühleisen 2002), there is also a growing body of literary works (poetry, short stories and novels) entirely written in a Creole (cf. Baptista this volume on Cape Verdean). Literature written in Papiamentu goes back to the turn of the 20th century (cf. Maurer 1988:€360) and writers from Haiti and the French Antilles have published both original literature and adaptations of French (and other) works for decades now (cf. Fleischmann 1986:€135). This tendency continued to be strong until the 1980s. In the 1990s, some of the same authors as well as others had to face the realities of the market and switched to writing in French in order to reach a greater audience. P/Cs have also achieved greater official recognition in several countries. For instance, Haitian Creole is a co-official language with French. On Curaçao and Bonaire, Papiamentu is co-official with Dutch and English. On Aruba, it is co-official with Dutch only. Although geographically quite distant from each other, historical parallels have led to a state of affairs where both Vanuatu and the Seychelles at present

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have three official languages: English, French, and Creole, the only difference being that Bislama in Vanuatu is English-lexified while Seselwa is French-lexified. In Nicaragua, two regions are now entitled to administer their own affairs in a range of domains such as health, education and natural resources. The Language Law (Law 162 of 1993) bestows official status upon all the regional languages and the Law of Land Demarcation of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Autonomous Regions (Law 445, 2003) recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities to use, administer and manage their traditional lands and resources as communal property, and furthermore guarantees land demarcation and titling (Koskinen this volume). In a few cases (Papiamentu, Seselwa, Haitian, Tok Pisin), these new socio-political statuses have spurred other developments such as the standardization and/or integration into formal (primary and pre-primary level) education of these languages. However, overall it is fair to say that in the domain of formal education, the struggle for the recognition of P/Cs has been extremely heated and is far from being concluded.

2.2  Codification of P/Cs Opponents of the use of P/Cs in education frequently cite the fact that P/Cs usually do not have an officially sanctioned and rigorously codified orthography as an important reason for excluding them from educational curricula. The absence or, in some cases, the lack of the (widespread) use of a rigorously codified orthography for P/Cs is closely linked to the social status of these languages. Initially, P/Cs were not felt to be worthy of a written script and its speakers were mostly barred from learning to read and write. The first representations of these languages occurred in travelogues (e.g. Meister 1692 on Portuguese Creole in present-day Indonesia; Handler 1971 on Creole in Barbados),4 letters (Handler 1971, 1991 analyzed in Rickford & Handler 1994; a 1775 letter written in Papiamentu by a curaçolese Jew to his mistress analyzed by Wood 1972), learners’ guides (Van Dyk 1765), and in diverse literary and folkloric texts such as poems, lyrics of songs, and folktales (cf. D’Costa & Lalla 1989; Lalla & D’Costa 1990; Roberts P.A. 1997:€34–68). The authors generally resorted to the orthographical conventions of the lexically related Standard (European) or any other European language in which they had learned to read and write. Where necessary, they adapted these conventions in order to mark the difference to the European language as a way of more authentically representing P/C speech. However, as can be expected, most early (European) observers did not have sufficient competence in the P/Cs nor were they usually sufficiently

.  Albeit not a travelogue since written by a local, the Monograph of Macao (Chinese Aumen Chi-lüeh, Cantonese Oumun Keiloek) written in 1745–1746 and published in 1751 shares its motive with travelogues: presenting curiosities (Caudmont 1993).



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trained to accurately represent these languages in writing. They thus distorted and misrepresented these languages to varying degrees (Schuchardt 1890: 11–14 on Meister 1692; Arends 1995a, b). For example, the enigma constituted by the fact that the Portuguese Creole of Sri Lanka described by Dalgado (1900) is so distinct from the Creole of the second half of the 20th century usually explained by linguistic convergence may simply be due to the fact that Dalgado was a native speaker of Portuguese, not Creole (Ian Smith, pers. comm., June 2006). In some cases writers may even have purposefully misrepresented P/Cs to ridicule them. The few native speakers who were able to write often did not fare much better because they were also taught reading and writing in a European language. A case in point is Brito (1887), an early description of Cape Verdean. In most situations, orthographical codification of P/Cs started with missionary activities. In their zeal to impart the Christian faith to speakers of P/Cs, missionaries set out to learn and document P/Cs and other languages around the world with a view to translating important Christian documents such as the New Testament, song books and prayer books into these languages. Some of these missionaries had received training in language documentation and worked with local informants while others lacked such training and may not have been highly literate (cf. Migge & Mühleisen to appear for a discussion). It appears that missionaries from the same mission followed specific conventions when transcribing unwritten languages, but to date little research has been done on their overall nature and transmission (pc M. Van den Berg, July 2009). However, despite the existence of these works, many writers, even today, have continued to use the orthographical conventions of European languages when writing in P/Cs, reinforcing the impression that P/Cs lack codification. As long as P/Cs are not integrated into the formal education system and writing is rigorously taught in schools as in the case of European languages, this situation is unlikely to change (Romaine 2007). In recent decades, orthographies for P/Cs have mostly been devised by linguists working on these languages (Bollée & d’Offay de Saint-Jorre 1978; Bernabé 1976 & 1983; Hazael-Massieux 1993) often in conjunction with native speaker assistants of these languages or local writers. In a few cases (for instance Curaçao, Aruba, Seychelles), codification was part of national language planning efforts and orthographies were devised by formally convened committees made up of local stakeholders and native speaker linguists. According to Siegel (2005b: 146f), two issues related to the sociohistorical context of the emergence and use of P/Cs have attracted much debate: first, the choice of a suitable variety that is accessible to all community members and second, a representation of the relationship to the lexically related Standard European language; this being the case above all should scripts emphasize similarity or difference to the European language? The former issue poses problems because we lack knowledge about what constitutes a high prestige variety or formal practices for

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most P/C communities. The gap is due to a bias in research on P/Cs that tends to priviledge purely structural linguistic issues over socio-pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues (Migge & Mühleisen 2005). Very often, there is the tacit assumption that P/Cs lack formal practices altogether because the official domain tends to be dominated by the European Standard language. In other settings, often referred to as continuum settings (e.g. Guyana, Jamaica), in which several varieties coexist that show different degrees of similarity to the European language, the variety with the highest prestige and thus the most natural for codification, is a bad candidate for codification because it is also the variety that is most similar to the Standard European language and is not the most widely accessible variety; selection of such a variety would re-inscribe rather than resolve language-based social inequalities. Nevertheless, in certain cases language planners have had to go with the demands of the community and choose an urban and acrolectal variety as a basis for standardization (Samarin 1980:€217 on Sango; Romaine 1994:€34 on Tok Pisin). In relation to the latter issue, the sometimes fierce debates have centered around whether or not P/C writing systems should be based on etymological or on phonemic considerations (e.g. Bebel-Gisler 1976; Bernabé 1976; Romaine 2007:€692). An etymological system basically relies on the orthographic conventions of the related European Standard language. Two arguments are usually advanced against adopting an etymological system. First, it constructs close similarity with the European language reinforcing the commonly held lay view that P/Cs are merely (incorrect) dialects of that Standard language. Second, it is more difficult to learn because it “preserves the inconsistencies and historical forms unrelated to pronunciation that are found in the lexifier language.” (Siegel 2005b: 147). The resulting at times poor sound-grapheme match requires much knowledge of the European language and graphic representations of many words have to be learned by heart. By contrast, a phonemic system takes the phonological system of the language as a starting point for developing a maximally transparent and regular orthographical system. In such a system, each sound (phoneme) is represented by one grapheme. Language professionals favor phonemic systems because they allow for easy decoding of written material and are therefore well suited for reducing language-based access problems (Romaine 2007:€692). Crucially, they also emphasize the independence of the P/C from the related European language, making it easier for speakers to differentiate the two. Phonemic orthographies exist for instance for several of the Creoles of Suriname (Sranan Tongo, Nengee [Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka], Saamaka), Jamaican, Papiamentu (Curaçao and Bonaire), Hawai‘i Creole, and Bislama. Phonemic spelling systems were also developed for other Creoles, such as Mauritian Creole, Haitian as well as several Antillian French Creoles, Seselwa, Kriol, but due to lack of acceptance were later amended so that they are now partially phonemic and partially etymological in nature (Siegel 2005b: 148 and references therein). A highly etymological system was adopted



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in the case of Aruban Papiamento in order to set it apart from the varieties used in Curaçao and Bonaire. Local issues tend to hamper the acceptance and use of orthographies, but it seems that the lack of public awareness constitutes an important contributing factor. As a rule of thumb, however, it appears that phonemic orthographies are more easily accepted in settings in which the P/C does not coexist with its related European language. If they do co-exist, people often argue that it is easier to use etymological conventions because people would already be familiar with them and would therefore not be burdened by the acquisition of a new system and/or be less likely to wrongly apply the new conventions to the Standard European language (Bartens 2001:€30). Interestingly, this never poses an insurmountable problem when learning related European languages. Apart from devising spelling conventions for P/Cs, codification also involves the creation of standard reference materials, most notably dictionaries and grammar books. There is a long tradition of such materials being strongly prescriptive in nature, mandating the “correct” use of a language. In the case of P/Cs, due to the scarcity of formal language planning institutions –€ Siegel (2005b: 148) mentions the existence of such institutions for Papiamentu/o (Aruba and Curaçao), Seselwa (Seychelles), Belize Creole (Belize), Bislama (Vanuatu), Kweyol (St. Lucia and Dominica), Jamaican (Jamaica)€– and perhaps the greater involvement of trained linguists, grammars and dictionaries usually follow a descriptive approach. However, a serious problem with most of these materials, particularly grammars written in recent years, is that they are not easily comprehensible to non-linguists. They are for the most part constructed within specific linguistic research paradigms following an inherent academic logic that is not easily accessible to non-linguists (Crowley 2007). Changes in academic career requirements and availability of funding also make it very difficult for most linguists to rewrite grammatical descriptions for a lay population –€this often requires translating them into another European language or into the P/C itself since most academic grammars and dictionaries are published in English€– and to devote additional time and energy to compiling comprehensive dictionaries (Crowley 2007). Nevertheless, there are a few such publications such as the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Allsopp 1996), (on-line) dictionaries of some of the Creoles of Suriname (SIL), grammars aimed at teachers for Nengee (Goury & Migge 2003) and Saintandrewan (Bartens 2003).

2.3  Creoles in education: A brief historical overview Colonial education systems “subserved in their various ways the political, economic and cultural aims of the colonial governments.” (Spencer 1971:€538). Educational institutions were initially implanted in the main cities to fill the educational needs of the colonizers’ children. Colonial authorities usually rejected education for the colonized

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until the abolition of slavery because the wider availability of education was seen as posing a threat to colonial order (Abou 1988). In many territories, just before the end of slavery, Catholic or Protestant missionaries were, however, given the right to spread the Christian faith among the slaves as a way of appeasing them and to ‘improve’ their social position. Although instruction initially centred on Christian issues, children also learned basic reading and writing from these missionaries. In some P/C-speaking communities, usually in those in which the P/C was not related to the European language (e.g. Suriname, Papiamentu/o), missionaries used the local P/C as a medium of instruction in lower levels of education, as in most African and Asian British colonies (Awoniyi 1976:€39; Spencer 1971). However, when local governments took charge of education –€ sometimes this meant that they only passed legislation while teaching remained in the hands of missionaries€– P/Cs were banned from education in favour of the colonizers’ language. Religious instruction sometimes (e.g. Suriname) continued to be carried out in the P/C, but instruction in reading and writing in the P/Cs was discontinued in formal education. When most of the countries where P/Cs are spoken became independent after WWII, the educational sector expanded rapidly because all children regardless of social background were now supposed to access at least primary school education. However, this expansion often did not go hand in hand with major educational reform. As in Africa (Bamgbose 2000:€49), most countries continued to follow colonial educational practices. Although many countries recognized that education through a socially restricted European ex-colonial language was not ideal, they did not adopt a local more widely used language as a medium of instruction.5 Essentially, children did not receive much instruction in the European language, but were mostly treated as mother tongue speakers of the European language whereas in most cases they had not at all been exposed to the language prior to entering education. A variety of reasons have been responsible for post-colonial countries’ reluctance to change educational practices with regard to the medium of instruction (see also the articles in this volume). First, in many countries, decision makers felt that P/Cs –€just as many other local languages for instance in Africa€– could not be implemented in education because they were not sufficiently standardized. For many of them formally accepted scripts or books documenting their grammar and vocabulary, let alone suitable educational materials and a sizable body of literature, did not exist (Siegel 2006a: 42). Suggestions for devising such materials were usually rejected with the argument that this

.  In Africa, five countries –€Guinea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Togo and Ethopia€– attempted or actually changed their medium of education at least temporarily, but did not abandon the European colonial language entirely (Migge & Léglise 2007:€307–308).



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was very time consuming and represented an unjustifiable financial burden for emerging countries. While realistic cost calculations have never been presented, it seems that economic incentives from the USA, Great Britain or France coupled with euro-centric language learning models disseminated by new language-centred academic disciplines such as Applied Linguistics and English as a Foreign or Second Language did much to undermine any attempts at changing the language of instruction (Pennycook 2001). Other “practicality” arguments that have been invoked are the hitherto unproven and under-researched belief that the most optimal way of acquiring a new language is through full immersion rather than a guided bilingual approach that equally values both languages (McWhorter 1998). However, Siegel (2006a: 52) points out that most of the so-called immersion projects are in fact submersion projects. Cummins (1988, 2009) and many of the articles in this volume show that they have negative effects on children’s learning trajectories. Finally, due to the lack of proper descriptions of most P/Cs, there is also the widespread belief that most P/Cs are not sufficiently different from the related European language to merit a full bilingual approach. However, other scholars have shown time and again that learning difficulties do not decrease with a small number of structural differences. In fact, they may increase because students are not aware of the differences and therefore have the impression that they know the second language when in fact they do not (Siegel 2006a: 54–55). Language attitudes, however, probably represent the most crucial factor hampering change. Many decision makers, as well as the population at large, do not see P/Cs as legitimate tools of education, but perceived them as corrupt derivatives of the standard language (Siegel 2002:€ 13) that lack a clearly defined grammar (Siegel 2006a:€40–41). This perception was particularly strong in situations in which the P/C exists in a sociolinguistic continuum with its related European language. Due to widespread code-switching and code-mixing between the P/C and the related European language, speakers (and at times linguists) have felt that it was not possible to isolate a sufficiently distinct prestige variety suitable for educational purposes (Valdman 1989). However, as pointed out by Siegel (2006a: 56) this argument has been proven to be wrong by the successful standardization of some P/Cs around the world. Given the low esteem in which P/Cs are held, parents and teachers feel that any time spent on learning reading and writing in these languages is time lost for the acquisition of the European language, full knowledge of which represents a primary factor for social advancement. This so-called “time-on-task” argument is based on the persistent false belief that there is a direct relationship between “instruction time and achievement in the standard educational language” (Siegel 2002:€13; Cummins 2009) and that skills learned in the L1 cannot be transferred to another language (Cummins 2001).



 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

Educators often also bring up the “ghettoization” argument. According to Snow (1990 referred to in Siegel 2002), they maintain that using the home language in formal education “deprives children of the instruction they need to get the economic benefits that speakers of standard varieties have, and condemns them to permanent underclass status.” (Siegel 2002:€13). They argue that the main purpose of education is to “free” people from what they see as a deprived social environment. The only way to do this, they feel, is by imbuing them with European cultural values through the use of what they see as a sophisticated European language; the P/C is usually felt to be unable to convey socially important knowledge. Crucially, at least some parents in all P/Ccommunities share this view and are vehemently opposed to their children being taught in the P/C because they are convinced that this would constitute an obstacle to their social advancement. Interestingly, the euro-centric, home-language-based curricula of western countries are seldom considered an obstacle to European children’s social and linguistic development. Interference or “negative transfer”, as it is called in second language studies, is another commonly invoked argument against the teaching of and through a P/C (Siegel 2006a: 48).6 Teachers and parents are concerned that their children will apply rules and principles of the often more familiar P/C to the European Standard language, i.e. make grammar mistakes, and will not be able to acquire full competence of the European language. Such transfer or interference does indeed take place to varying degrees in contact settings but maybe overestimated (Siegel 2006a: 49). One thing is clear, however: disregard of the home language is hardly the best strategy for reducing transfer. An approach that addresses both languages and highlights the differences between them may be most suitable for “combating” negative transfer (Cummins 2009). Several P/C-speaking communities (see below and the articles in this volume) have implemented some measure(s) towards alleviating language-based discrimination, but overall it seems that elites in P/C speaking countries have to date been quite successful in preserving their competitive advantage and privileged access to higher education, socially-prestigious and well-paid jobs and socio-political power through mandating the European ex-colonial language as the only means of instruction in€schools.7

.  “Negative transfer” is contrasted with the term “positive transfer” in the literature on second language acquisition. It refers to the use of principles and rules of the first language (P/C) when using the second language (European language) that happen to be similar in the two languages. Positive transfer is supposed to promote language learning. .  In the literature this strategy, best documented for post-independence Haiti, is called “elite closure” (Myers-Scotton 1993).



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2.4  C  urrent situation: Why is there renewed interest in integrating P/Cs into education Many of the articles in this volume and others (Siegel 2002:€12; Skutnabb-Kangas 2009) attest to the fact that speakers of P/Cs generally do not do well in formal education. Children from predominantly P/C-speaking backgrounds achieve lower grades, have greater difficulties with reading and writing, are much less likely to finish school or to proceed and finish third level education, and to obtain highly skilled, socially important, stable and well-paid jobs (Forbes 2005a: 90–91). The traditional, all too common reaction is to blame the children’s language, the P/C, for the low educational achievements. It is traditionally argued that the P/C acts as a major barrier for full acquisition of the Standard European language and consequently for educational success (Siegel 2005a: 295). In many situations, educators and parents therefore believe that banning the P/C from educational practices and educational institutions is the best approach to improve children’s educational achievements. However, at the same time, there currently appears to be greater negative awareness about what some people refer to as the continuing drop in educational achievement rates or, at least, no significant improvement over recent decades (Craig 2001:€70). In recent years, maybe due to greater emancipation of the masses, the continued invocation of the knowledge economy and how it will drive prosperity or simply governments’ embarrassment about the lack of significant achievement, governments appear to be more willing to at least think about likely causes and ways of improving the current situation. A handful of countries such as the Seychelles (Bollée 1993), Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea (Siegel 1996, 1997b), and Haiti (Dejean 1993; Howe 1992; Valdman 1991) are trying to break with the conservative status quo inherited from the colonial period. As part of their usually leftist political agenda, they have undertaken far-reaching educational changes involving the introduction of the local P/C as a medium of early formal instruction in order to lay a solid foundation for subsequent education to be possibly undertaken in the traditional medium of instruction. In other contexts (e.g. Jamaica, Curaçao, French Guiana), continued activism by scholars has led to the implementation of projects and programs that attempt to address the negative effects of the colonial and early post-colonial status quo. We provide an overview and critical appraisal of such projects in Sections€3 and 4 of this introduction. Another factor that appears to have a positive though slow effect on the greater acceptability of P/Cs in education are the results of sociolinguistic, ethnographic and second language acquisition research that systematically explores the reasons for educational failure in P/C-speaking contexts and in contexts in which children speak a minority language (Gumperz 1982; Collins 1988; Corson 1993) or a stigmatized minority dialect of the Standard European language (Craig 2001; Siegel 2005a), such as African American English (AAE) in the USA (Labov 1970; 1972). Such research

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

clearly shows that P/Cs and minority languages and dialects are definitely not the root cause of children’s educational underachievement. Research has identified professional, institutional and environmental factors as the main causes of educational failure. The discussion has been most heated in relation to AAE, particularly since the highly controversial decision of the Oakland School Board in late 1997 to recognize AAE as the home language of African American children and to validate it educationally (cf. among others Baugh 1998, 2000; Lippi-Green 1997; McGroarty 1996; Rickford J.R. 1999; Rickford et al. 2004; Wolfram & Christian 1989). Research in this area has highlighted a number of issues that lead to educational failure in P/C- speaking and minority language and dialect contexts. One of the most important and most persistent issues are negative attitudes and ignorance of teachers (Siegel 2002:€14; 2006a: 59) that sometimes overlap with the prejudices of educational institutions towards children “from an oral tradition society” (see Alby & Léglise 2005 for French Guiana). Much of the research in the USA, Canada and the UK in relation to educational failure of African American and Caribbean children has shown that teachers tend to assume that these children have language difficulties and, because of their different linguistic practices, assume that they have learning disabilities; there is a long tradition of placing “minority” children in special education classes at a much higher rate and for quite different reasons than children from mainstream backgrounds. Teachers have lower educational expectations for speakers of P/Cs and minority languages and dialects and are less likely to encourage their educational advancement. In some cases, this type of discouragement is quite overtly expressed. At times teachers are not fully aware of how specific actions on their part embody such attitudes and the harm they are doing their students by expressing them. The only way to combat this problem is by raising teachers’ awareness about these issues and to provide them with materials on the languages and cultures in question. The second issues relates to the low self-esteem of children and their overt negative attitudes towards their home language, usually a direct result of the negative feedback that they have received from teachers and parents (Siegel 2002:€15; Siegel 2006a:€59). Children do not see the P/C as a valuable language and may even be ashamed about using it in public. This lack of confidence and low self-esteem inhibit learning and selfexpression in general, including the use of the medium of instruction (e.g. Winer€& Jack 1997), as they may adopt an anti-establishment posture in order to fight institutional denigration of their identity. Note that despite strongly negative overt attitudes towards P/Cs and minority languages and dialects, many of their speakers also have very positive covert attitudes towards them; they value these languages as markers of local social and personal identities and means of expressing important personal feelings such as belonging etc. Again, addressing this rather subtle issue requires educational measures that raise awareness about the nature and functions of P/Cs, and languages in general, and their positive use in educational practices. For instance, teachers should



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be encouraged to use P/Cs to set up positive interpersonal relationships with students rather than scolding them for using them. They should also abstain from excessively correcting children’s mistakes when using the European language that most likely hail from patterns in the home language. Finally, teachers should try to raise awareness about the differences between languages using a systematic contrastive approach that does not constantly identify the home language in a negative way. A third obstacle involves the repression of self-expression due to the banning of P/Cs and minority languages and dialects from schools. Children’s inability to express their thoughts and feelings or raise questions about issues addressed in school slow down their cognitive development and make it difficult for them to develop independent thinking (UNESCO 1968 cited in Siegel 2002:€15; Skutnabb-Kangas 2009). The best approach to addressing this problem short of implementing the home language as a medium of instruction is to allow students to express themselves about content issues in their home language until they have acquired enough competence to do so in the educational medium. This is already practiced in many Caribbean communities (Carrington 2001) but is rather difficult to achieve in multilingual communities where teachers and students may not share the same languages. A fourth issue concerns the teaching of literacy. It is well known that literacy is more easily learned in a familiar variety of language and that these skills can then be transferred to another language (Collier 1992; Snow 1990; Siegel 2006a: 58; Cummins 2009). Addressing this problem requires a more structured approach to learning the medium of education, if it cannot be changed. Children should first acquire oral competence in the language before they are asked to read and write in it. Reading and writing could initially be taught through the mother tongue or be delayed until sufficient spoken knowledge has been acquired (cf. also Benson 2009). A final issue also referred to in the articles on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao and Nicaragua deals with the nature of teaching methods and available materials. In many countries, traditional teacher-centered methods are all too common. Students are asked to repeat what the teacher is saying (so-called rote-learning) and get few chances to express themselves in a more equal manner with other students as well as the teacher during class time. In many cases, teaching materials such as books and workbooks are rare or not suited for children because they are based on socially different contexts. Coupled with lack of competence in the medium of instruction, this does not motivate students to engage with education. Teachers should be trained and encouraged to regularly experiment with a variety of teaching methods that put the students in charge of their learning and encourage them to develop their own ideas. Teaching materials need to address issues that are relevant to students’ lives as well as present “new” or unfamiliar issues in innovative ways that are adapted to students’ learning practices. In sum, it seems clear that views that target P/Cs as the cause for educational failure are entirely off the mark. In fact, educational research has made it very clear that P/Cs

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

can and must be used as an integral tool for improving educational achievement. They are at the center of students’ identities and are the key to their educational success.

3.  Overview of educational projects using P/Cs world-wide According to Siegel (1999a: 515; 2005a: 295ff), three broad types of educational programs using P/Cs can be distinguished: instrumental, accommodation and awarenessraising programs. All three programs seek to integrate the P/C into formal education. The main difference between them is the role that they assign to a P/C in this process. Instrumental programs make the most far-reaching use of P/Cs. They employ them as medium of instruction for teaching subjects such as mathematics and social sciences –€in the ideal case all subjects8 – and children acquire literacy in and through the P/C. The European Standard language is taught as a second language. There are only very few countries that have implemented instrumental programs or projects in formal education. Map 1 created and updated from Siegel (1999a) gives an overview of such projects and programs in formal education. Since 1999, some important changes have taken place in this area. First, countries like Nicaragua have adopted instrumental programs and others such as Jamaica and San Andrés have been running experimental projects to test the viability of bilingual or multilingual education using a local P/C. Second, several countries such as Curaçao and Bonaire have either made the P/C an optional means of instruction or, as in the case of Sierra Leone (cf. Kamanda 2002), the program has been (at least temporarily) discontinued due to external circumstances, including changes in the socio-political landscape of the country or region. It is also noticeable that most of these mother tongue projects only affect the primary school sector and, as in several African countries, only the first few years of primary school education. In only a few countries (the Seychelles, Curaçao), attempts have been made to extend instruction through a P/C to higher levels of education. Only one country, Vanuatu, makes use of Bislama at tertiary level, but the language is not used in a structured manner in primary and secondary education.9

.  For example, in the formal education system of the Philippines, Math and Sciences are currently taught in English whereas for example History is taught in Tagalog. As a result, high school graduates have a linguistic competence clearly divided by domain (cf. Gonzalez 1998a &€b). .  Siegel (1999a) also includes a table listing projects that make use of creoles in non-formal education such as in preschool and adult education.

Map 1.╇ Instrumental programs for Pidgin and Creole languages

 Daniel Dalet / d-maps.com

1000 mi (equator)

Amapa French Creole (Brasil) Primary school

Bislama (Vanuatu) University

Krio (Barunga, Australia) Primary, Grades 1–5

1000 km (équateur)

Kriol (Nicaragua) Primary school

Torres Strait Creole (Injimoo, Australia) Preschool & Primary, Grade 1

Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) Elementary

Haitian Creole (Miami, New York) Primary bilingual classes

Capeverdean (Boston USA) Primary bilingual classes

Jamaican Creole (Jamaica) Primary, Grades 1–4 Pilot Study

Kriol (Sierra Leone) 10 primary school Pilote study

Haitian Creole (Haiti) Primary school Grades 1–6

Seselwa (Seychelles) Primary & part of secondary school

Saintandrewan (Colombia) Primary, Grades 1–4 Pilot Study

Papiamento (Curaçao, Bonaire) Pre-Primary & primary school – Grades 1–6

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 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

A second set of programs Siegel (1999a: 515) refers to are awareness programs. Instead of implementing the language as a means of instruction for a wide variety of subjects, such programs aim to raise positive awareness about the children’s home language and culture and, in some cases, try to highlight the differences vis-à-vis the language of education, particularly if the two are related. The programs that fall into this category are quite heterogeneous. Map 2 summarizes some information on these different programs. A lot of awareness programs or projects are aimed at teachers or the general public and essentially stem from grass-roots activism that tried to address educational disadvantage. These projects are often voluntary and require a lot of personal investment on the part of the activists. However, many of them have led to the creation of valuable teaching materials that can be easily applied in formal education or the creation of university-level teaching courses for teachers. It seems that greater interaction between people involved in such grass-roots projects and a rigorous examination and comparison of these published materials would allow to set up a kind of matrix for devising educational materials for other settings where they are still lacking. However, to date little has been done, mostly due to difficulties in obtaining funding for such research (Siegel 2005a). In some French speaking overseas departments, courses have been implemented (both experimentally and permanently) in primary schools that teach about cultural, other local issues, and some language issues through the P/C (for example Nenge(e)) or through both French and French Creole. The main purpose of these programs appears to be the validation of previously denigrated local identities, but at least the program Intervenant en Langue Maternelle aspires to eventually develop beyond this. Finally, there are what Siegel (1999a: 515) refers to as accommodation programs. In these programs the P/C is accepted or tolerated in the classroom, but it is not a medium of instruction. If teachers and students are both competent in the P/C such as in many Caribbean countries, children may use the P/C to express themselves and for creative activities, at least until they have acquired sufficient knowledge in the European language. Outside of English classes, spelling and grammar are often also not part of assessment (Carrington 2001). In situations in which there is a significant gap between teachers’ and children’s language practices (cf. French Guiana), children are encouraged to talk about aspects of their culture in the classroom and educational activities aim as much as possible to take into account the children’s environment in early primary school. This kind of rather informal use of the home language and/or culture is reported for many communities nowadays; it appears to go hand in hand with primary school curricula reforms. Whereas the latter kind of accommodation program can indeed accurately be called a program, the tolerating of P/Cs in the classrooms in contexts where both students and teacher are native speakers, frequently constitutes more an established and even unacknowledged practice than a program. In the latter case, teachers may not

Map 2.╇ Awareness programs for Pidgin and Creole languages

 Daniel Dalet / d-maps.com

1000 mi (equator)

1000 km (équateur)

Krio (Australia) Fostering English Language

Hawai‘i Creole (Hawai‘i, USA) Da Pidgin Coup

Chabacano (Philippines)

Caribbean Creoles (Chicaco, USA) Caribbean Academic Program

Nengee, Easter Maroon Creole (French Guiana) Intervenant en Langue Maternelle

Créole (Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, La Réunion – France) Langue et Culture Régionale

Kwéyòl (Saint Lucia)

Caribbean Creoles (London, UK) Language and literacy of the Inner London Authority

Creoles in education 

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

even encourage expression in the P/C but resort to it as a means of making more complicated content matter accessible to students, especially in lower grades and likewise tolerate responses in the P/C if the students would not otherwise be able to participate at all. This occurs for instance in Suriname, most Caribbean countries and on Old Providence.

4.  Critical review of projects In this section we critically assess some of the essential features of current and prior programs and projects that seek to integrate P/Cs into formal education systems. We argue that programs and projects are often set up without full consideration of all the relevant social, identity-related, political, (socio)linguistic etc. issues that have an important bearing on the success of such educational projects. This seriously impinges on their long-term viability and feasibility. We will base our discussion mostly on the projects described in this volume.

4.1  Defining project aims, goals and activities Many programs and projects whose goal is to integrate P/Cs into formal education start out as grassroots projects that try to address or resolve issues that are seen to directly or indirectly relate to a locally spoken P/C. Depending on the background of the initiators and/or the issues to be addressed, the aims and consequently the activities developed in these projects may vary. For instance, the goal of language revival projects is to increase and broaden the use of a language menaced by extinction by bringing speakers and non-speakers together, by teaching people the language, by developing new vocabulary for new domains and/or by stimulating the use of the language among more or less competent speakers. By contrast, heritage-based projects generally focus on introducing a language that is possibly widely used in other contexts into education as a means of validating children’s home culture in order to facilitate their transition from home to school environment and/or lessen existing antagonistic feelings towards the dominant culture and language among the population group in question. Such projects do not necessarily focus on language teaching and learning related issues, but may simply involve activities, possibly by way of mainstreaming, that deal with local practices and knowledge as objects of teaching and learning. Local practices may also be positively and overtly contrasted with socially dominant ones to raise awareness about local culture. Finally, educationally-oriented projects generally seek to address specific educational problems such as lack of competence in a dominant language through targeted language-based activities. For instance, students may



Creoles in education 

be taught to read and write in the local (widely used) language first in order to be in a position to subsequently transfer such skills to the socially dominant language, rather than having to learn them through the unfamiliar dominant language. Students may also be exposed to activities that contrast the two languages in order to help students “keep them apart”. However, not all programs and projects are always designed on the basis of clearly defined primary and secondary aims or issues to be addressed and goals to achieve. As a result, the proposed activities are heterogeneous or even devised on an ad hoc basis, drawing on aspects of different types of approaches. This may make them incoherent and undermine their effectiveness as well as their ability to achieve positive outcomes. For instance, the main aim of the French national project Langue et Culture Régionale (as practiced in relation to French Creoles in the French overseas regions called Départements d’Outre-Mer (DOMs)) appears to be to validate an officially denigrated Creole identity. A secondary aim is to (indirectly) improve educational achievement rates. However, many of the activities –€at least judging from the manuals used in French Guiana€– focus on developing narrative skills and text production and interpretation skills, often through French. Traditional cultural practices are uncritically presented and modern ways of life receive little mention. Moreover, the importance of culture preservation is not addressed directly. To be fair, some of these difficulties arise as a result of clashes and changes in interests and policies. (National) government agencies and project initiators, including communities, may have very different ideas about what should and can be done, and how it should be done. As a result, the aims, goals and activities of programs and projects either change fully or partially over time and/or are the (none optimal) result of various compromises that essentially dilute more optimal approaches. Many of the articles in this collection attest to this problem.

4.2  Assessing the sociolinguistic context Another issue that does not receive sufficient attention when projects are designed is a thorough analysis of the sociolinguistic context in which a language is used prior to its implementation. It seems that most projects are designed based on the tacit assumption that P/C communities are essentially diglossic communities (Ferguson 1959) in which the P/C takes on the position of the Low variety and the European Standard language that of the High variety. The latter is reserved for formal situations and associated with high prestige. It is assumed to have a more complex grammar, a more elaborated set of norms, is rigorously codified, and is the medium of instruction in schools. By contrast, the Low variety is learned naturally in the family and community and is not codified or used in formal settings and schools. It has low overt prestige but is valued as a community language.

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

However, sociolinguistic work on a number of P/C communities has shown that this is not the case. Many children who speak P/Cs are bilingual or multilingual depending on the context prior to entering school because many communities are linguistically heterogeneous. In some communities, children already have some degree of knowledge of the Standard European language, but possibly not the varieties used for teaching. In some cases, this knowledge extends to some domains but not to others for both the European language and the P/C because the two languages are in complementary distribution. In other settings, the two languages are in overlapping distribution. In yet other communities, speakers of the P/C also speak one or more other local languages and may even be dominant in languages other than the P/C (and the socially dominant language). Moreover, the repertoires and competences of individual members in the same location/community may also vary considerably depending on social factors such as their social background, family history and practices, interaction pattern etc. This is the case, for example in French Guiana (see Migge & Léglise, this volume). Another important issue that is less often addressed in a systematic manner are societal language attitudes including people’s ideologies about the different languages used in the community. Does the language have overt or covert prestige? Do people consider the language to be suitable for education? Does the language compete with other local languages? Is it negatively viewed by other population groups or widely accepted as a lingua franca? Such issues must be determined and in the case of seriously negative attitudes must be addressed prior to or concomitant to implementation and/or feature as an integral component of educational activities (cf. also Siegel 2002:€29–33 on activities and Higgins this volume). Lack of systematic attention to students’ linguistic repertoires and attitudes seriously endangers the success of projects. For instance, a P/C can only be successfully used as a medium of education if all children have sufficient competence in it, otherwise such programs essentially introduce a new layer of language-based disadvantage. Or heritage programs focusing on one language and culture may actually promote discrimination if a good number of the children in the classroom are speakers of other, equally disadvantaged languages. Finally, if classrooms are linguistically and culturally heterogeneous, a program that focuses on language awareness issues, language attitudes and L2-based learning strategies for the dominant language may be socially and linguistically more useful than a bilingual project that only addresses a few of the languages present while disregarding others (Migge & Léglise 2007:€313–325). Despite the importance of these issues, few of the projects and programs discussed in this volume systematically investigated speakers’ repertoires prior to deciding on the design of the program/project and the educational activities or have not adapted activities once such knowledge has become available, probably because of the time gap between research and political decisions. A notable exception is the bilingual project currently under way in Jamaica where researchers of the Jamaican Language Unit first



Creoles in education 

carried out a country-wide language survey aimed at determining language attitudes towards using Jamaican Creole in education. Again, in all fairness, in some cases the lack of research in this area may be related to the lack of resources and/or the lack of knowledge about such issues; clear road maps for designing projects and programs or handy guides for carrying out systematic analysis of sociolinguistic contexts are still mostly nonexistent. It seems that this issue requires more cross-fertilization and cooperation between sociolinguists, applied linguists, educational researchers and language practitioners and, last but definitely not least, decision makers.

4.3  Setting up the educational program According to Siegel (1999a: 515), “[t]he goals of all three types [of programs, i.e. accommodation, immersion and awareness programs] are usually the same: additive bilingualism or bidialectalism –€ helping students to acquire the standard language while maintaining their own way of speaking and thus their linguistic self-respect.” However, analysis of most projects suggests that these goals are hardly attained by most, if any, of the projects. Most projects have a strongly transitional bilingualism focus. Essentially, the P/C is brought into education in order to facilitate and enhance mastery of the European Standard language that functions as the main medium of education. As in some African countries, for instance, instruction through and in the local language or P/C only takes place in the initial years of primary school education until sufficient knowledge has been acquired in the European language. Instruction in and through the P/C usually ends at the higher primary school cycle or at the end of the primary school cycle; only the Seychelles have so far implemented Seselwa as a medium of instruction at post-primary level but, as far as we know, only on an experimental basis or in vocational tracks. In some African countries, the local language may be kept on as a subject at higher levels, but to our knowledge this is not the case in P/C€communities. While some programs also promote writing and reading in the P/C, the aim is rarely to encourage full bilingualism. These skills are mostly taught through and in the P/C in order to facilitate the learning of the European language and more crucially, to facilitate their application to other European languages. Very quickly after transition to the European language, writing and reading in the P/C are discontinued. Moreover, for most projects activities that promote the development of reading materials and literature more generally are absent or are a minor feature. These kinds of arrangements enshrine the idea that writing and reading in the dominant European language is essential while reading and writing in the P/C is secondary or lacks value and importance. Another issue that receives little attention in projects is the nature of the language practices that are being taught and promoted in educational projects on P/Cs and

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

other lesser-used languages. Since projects (and most descriptive language materials) are often not devised on the basis of a thorough analysis of the sociolinguistic context, teaching activities have to proceed on the basis of existing structural linguistic descriptions of the language, and/or teachers’ (native or non-native speakers) assumptions and/or personal language practices. This is problematic because the structural linguistic analysis presented in grammars may vary considerably from actual language practices especially in bilingual and multilingual communities (Crowley 2007). Students (and their parents) may make frequent use of code-switching and code-mixing practices or language repertoires may differ considerably from (homogenizing) grammatical descriptions aimed at a linguistic audience. On the other hand, personal perceptions, assumptions and ideologies of language use can vary considerably from one person to another introducing possibly a new layer of heterogeneity, if not properly overtly addressed. However, more crucially, individuals’ views on what is proper language use are likely to undermine the usual project/program goals for promoting suppressed identities and facilitating access and motivation to education because they may vary considerably from the practices of the majority or may not take into account and/or positively value the practices of different social groups. There is a (human) tendency to value one’s own practices more highly than those of others and/or to disregard practices that do not fit into one’s social ideology. As a result, language and culture-based discrimination will not be removed, but a new layer of disadvantage may be added. Projects and programs should therefore first determine the sociolinguistic structure and the nature of language practices including surveying language attitudes and ideologies before deciding on the use of language practices and/or how to discuss and approach them in the most positive and least discriminatory fashion. Equally, it seems necessary that any project or program include language awareness components as part of their teacher training and as part of their teaching activities (and interactions with parents).

4.4  Evaluation of projects Siegel (2002:€24) also mentions that research on the use of P/Cs in education is still an underdeveloped area of investigation. According to him, most of this research focuses on instrumental projects that make use of a P/C as the only or main medium of instruction (cf. Murtagh 1982 on the use of Kriol and English in Australia; Ravel & Thomas 1985 on the use of Seselwa in the Seychelles; Kephart 1985, 1992 on the use of Creole on Carriacou; Siegel 1992, 1997a on teachers’ views on inferences from Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea; Siegel 1993 for a summary). There is even less research on accommodation and awareness programs. Siegel (2002:€28) mentions a few small-scale studies on Hawaiian Creole English discussed in Boggs (1985) and Feldman, Stone & Renderer (1990). The studies in this collection attest to this fact. Only some of the



Creoles in education 

projects reported on in this volume, namely Carpenter & Devonish, the French Guianese project Intervenant en Langue Maternelle (ILM) discussed in Migge & Léglise, and Simmons-McDonald include an explicit research component in their project. Others are either in the beginning stages or financial means and researchers who could carry out such studies are not currently available. However, it is crucial that the effectiveness of program or project is regularly assessed. Such evaluations require careful cooperation between educational researchers, psychologists, (socio)linguists and teachers because comprehensive evaluations should measure programs and projects on a number of parameters and these results have to be interpreted on the basis of a sound understanding of the social, linguistic and educational environment. Apart from measuring and comparing students’ scores in set tests, qualitative research on the development of students’ and teachers’ perceptions and assumptions about the project aims, the languages involved etc. has to be carried out and possibly subsequently managed because negative views or misconceptions can seriously hamper the performance of even the most optimally designed project. Perceptions and attitudes can rapidly change in concert with other social changes. One of the biggest challenges in relation to assessments of effectiveness is the creation of adequate test materials. Testing materials usually exist for European languages and/or are in European languages. However, such tests only have limited usefulness for assessing the effectiveness of programs and projects involving P/Cs. They can only test programs’/projects’ overall effects on students’ educational achievements or their development in specific subject areas such as the European language, Mathematics etc., but they cannot test the overall effectiveness of activities carried out in the P/C. Moreover, such standardized tests rely on the fact that children have a high enough competence in the dominant educational language (to understand them) and have sufficiently absorbed the cultural practices on which tests are based. This cannot always be taken for granted, especially in the case of psychological tests that require a good understanding of the concepts being queried. This then suggests that depending on the nature of the sociolinguistic context, testing material has to be provided in the P/C or the local variety of the dominant language and be well adapted to the local cultural environment in order to be indicative. However, to date there is very little work in this area most likely because devising and administering socially, linguistically and culturally appropriate testing material requires a fair amount of collaboration between psychologists, educators, linguists, native speakers, etc. A first attempt at this is being made within the framework of the multi-year research project Ecole Plurilingue OutreMer (ECOLPOM) which endeavors to investigate the educational benefits of mother tongue education projects carried out on the French periphery (New Caledonia (Kanak languages), French Polynesia (Tahitian) and French Guiana (Nengee and Kalin’a)). Careful scientific observation of educational projects is also vital in order to identify problems in the delivery and in the design of a project. For instance, (irregular)

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

observation of classroom activities in the ILM project in French Guiana revealed that some teachers had not fully mastered some parts of the material discussed in training courses and/or that they were adapting materials in a non-optimal way and thereby confusing students. Discussions with teachers in the project (Puren 2005) and during training sessions also revealed that working conditions were suboptimal in several cases and/or that teachers required more pedagogical training in order to be in a better position to create and fully exploit new materials. The same observation applies to the trilingual project discussed in Morren (this volume): some teachers were simply not confident enough to subsequently apply the P/C materials and strategies devised during training in real classroom situations.

4.5  Political and financial issues We agree with Taufe’ulungaki (1987 as cited in Migge & Leglise 2007:€324) who summarizes the challenges of educational reform in the following words: To revolutionize an entire educational system from its structure, to its administration, to its curricula, to its training, to its goals, requires capital and professional expertise.

However, we would like to emphasize the important role of language ideologies and of the politics of language. It is common sense to say that a state’s language policy and its language education policy have to do with politics and with political issues. As such, they reflect prevalent language attitudes and language ideology rather than the results of academic research on the benefits of mother tongue education as outlined in Section€2.4. This creates a gap in visions and convictions between researchers and decision makers which often proves devastating to attempts aimed at the introduction of P/Cs into the educational system.10 Political agendas are often camouflaged as financial issues which especially in emerging countries indeed constitute a reality language activists have to grapple with. However, the huge improvements in information technology that have occurred in the past decades have drastically reduced the cost of producing for instance teaching materials and theoretically enables people all around the world to share certain resources. At the same time, investment in human resources has become a key issue. Be it as it may, the new technologies at least partly falsify the cost argument which nevertheless is extremely persevering in the discourses of politicians of minority language and P/C communities (Bartens 2001). Financial issues are also cited when the duration of a program or project is defined. Research results (cf., e.g. Cummins 2009) demonstrate that six to ten years is the

.  The same applies, of course, to status vs. corpus planning.



Creoles in education 

recommended duration for bilingual programs but usually duration is sacrificed on the altar of finance to the detriment of students; programs are pruned down to the very first years of the primary school cycle. However, the success of a program is also conditioned by the size and manageability of the task not absolute financial resources.11 This is how Ravel & Thomas (1985) explain the success of the endeavor in the Seychelles compared to the failure in Haiti. Note, however, that the educational reform was part of a large-scale socialist revolution in the Seychelles which also favorably contributed to its success. The case of Martinique and Guadeloupe also demonstrates quite clearly that language attitudes and real linguistic needs rather than lack of human and financial resources appear to be major factors that determine whether or not new policies will be implemented and whether or not such policies will be effective (cf. Migge & Léglise 2007).

5.  Roadmap for setting up and maintaining education projects/programs The discussion so far suggests that any attempt at devising educational projects and programs that aim to integrate P/Cs or any non-dominant language into formal education have to be based on a complex set of considerations. This requires fruitful interaction and collaboration between researchers from a range of disciplines. In this section we try to outline these in a concrete way by proposing a set of steps that have to be€followed Step I:â•… Carrying out a representative sociolinguistic survey of the community in which the project is to be implemented in order to minimally identify the following issues: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

the languages spoken in the community and their broad social distribution, people’s linguistic repertoires and usage patterns, linguistic practices in a range of social settings, people’s attitudes towards the different languages and practices, linkages between social and linguistic practices, ideologies’ of language use in the community, current social issues within the community and perceptions of their causes.

These issues may be investigated using both qualitative (participant observa� tion and semi-guided interviews) and quantitative (questionnaire-based surveys) research methods.

.  Admittedly it is virtually impossible to separate these factors.

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

Step II:â•… Selecting an educational approach (instrumental vs. accommodative; bilingual vs. monolingual etc.) based on the finding of the sociolinguistic investigation. This should be done in conjunction with both educational researchers and community members. Step III:â•… Formulating the aims and goals of the project/programs. Again this has to be done in conjunction with educational researchers, community members and others who will be involved in the project. The aims and goals have to be based on the sociolinguistic findings (e.g. a bilingual approach is not useful in highly multilingual areas) and take account of the resources that the project is likely to attract. Step IV:â•… Convening of committees and groups involving both the people concerned and professionals that are in charge of defining the different tasks to be carried out and possibly carrying them out as well. Tasks involve awareness campaigns, obtaining official and other types of support including initial funding for the project, devising of a preliminary schedule of educational activities to be implemented, planning of the activities and construction of educational and training and reference materials such as dictionaries, grammars, orthographies, etc. Step V:â•… Raising awareness of the issues in the community and among those most strongly affected by the project such as politicians, children, parents and teachers. People have to understand why the project is being implemented, how implementation will affect them and what they stand to gain (or lose) as a result of implementation. Such activities should also be channeled towards obtaining support from these interested parties and getting them involved in different parts of the project. Step VI:â•… Fundraising. This initially involves devising both a financial and a full project content outline for the project and applying for funding from national and international bodies. Step VII:â•… Devising a schedule of activities or a curriculum. Again, the input of educational researchers and practitioners is required. This involves determining the target group (e.g. suitable educational stages), the amount of time to be spent on specific activities, the intervals in which they will take place (e.g. 5 hours a week), the location where the activities can take place, the people who will implement the activities etc. Step VIII:â•… Construction of activities and materials. This implies formulating a detailed curriculum and schedule as well as devising educational materials and teachers’ guides for all subject areas to be covered. Commonsense logic suggests that compiling these materials start at the pre-school and first grade levels so that the entire materials for one grade are completed before starting the elaboration of the materials for the next level instead of writing all L1 instruction materials, then continuing with the Math books, etc. Indeed, this is the usual order of proceeding (cf. Koskinen, this volume on Nicaragua).



Creoles in education 

Step IX:â•… Training of teachers and other practitioners. For this step, considerably more time and resources have to be devoted than is usually the case. Especially in P/C contexts where the coexisting High language is the lexifier language, entrenched language attitudes have lead to a degree of linguistic insecurity which cannot be amended by a few workshops (see comments on the San Andrés trilingual pilot project in Section€4.4. above). Step X:â•… Piloting the educational program among a reduced but representative student population. For example, the San Andrés trilingual pilot project was undermined by the fact that students and teachers were shifted around schools between years, resulting in highly heterogeneous classrooms especially in the case of one of the three schools initially involved.12 Step XI:â•… Evaluation of the successes and shortcomings of the pilot program and making the necessary adjustments in both curriculum design and in the teaching materials. Step XII:â•… Implementation of the actual program. This requires the continued supervision of (a) teachers, (b) classroom activities, and (c) overall running of the program or project. In order to respond to arising problems and to gather data for both future program development and research purposes, a log should be kept. There must at all times be clearly designated persons in charge of specific tasks otherwise the program fails as a result of lack of coordination. Step XIII:â•… Continued qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the project and its functioning at regular intervals and implementation of changes when and where necessary to respond to social changes as well as problems which may arise along the way. Step XIV:â•… Convening of groups of teachers and researchers that are in charge of producing additional education materials and of updating existing ones.

6.  Conclusions and outlook This volume is addressed both to practitioners, people who wish to set up educational projects and to people interested in the social history of P/Cs in education. All chapters describe the sociolinguistic and educational context in which the educational projects or programs are taking place, policy developments, the projects and programs underway,

.  This was the Central Baptist school. The school of the First Baptist Church desisted from the project and only in the Emmanuel Baptist school of San Luis teachers could work with a predominantly Creole-speaking student population (cf. Morren this volume).

 Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens

and address evaluation activities. The first chapters give insight into practical matters and deal with sociolinguistic issues or historical and political challenges (Higgins, Bolus, Koskinen, Sippola, Migge & Léglise). Some authors also present more specifically the creation and appraisal of teaching materials (Higgins, Sippola, Simmons-McDonald, Morren) while other authors describe more precisely the educational context and the project activities in which many of the authors are also taking part (Baptista et al., Djikhoff et al., Ferreira, Morren among others). In putting together this volume, we have sought to attain a number of goals. Firstly, we have aimed at raising awareness of the roles P/Cs can and indeed do play in education in specific and sociolinguistically complex communities. The articles in this volume confirm that integrating Creoles into education is a viable option and not just a distant vision, and also leads to positive educational results. Second, we hope that the information on existing initiatives and programs will encourage academics, decision makers and the wider public to engage in a critical and scientifically accountable manner with educational initiatives in the communities in which they work and/ or live; while social activism is vital for initiating projects and programs, it is equally important that programs and projects are based on a sound scientific footing in order to be sustainable. Third, where projects already exist, we would like to stress that regular evaluation and supervision of activities is a prerequisite for successful and lasting programs. Unfortunately, current initiatives tend to often neglect evaluation. It is clear that P/C mother tongue education programs have to be set up in a principled manner. Given the heterogeneous background of all the entities involved in such programs, especially in the domain of formal education, it is obvious that the approach for designing such a program has to be interdisciplinary, drawing at least on linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and pedagogy. We firmly believe that more research and exchange of experiences will significantly enhance the design and execution of individual projects and programs. Just as there are typologies of the use of P/Cs in educational projects and programs, most importantly Siegel’s (1999a: 515; 2005a: 295ff) classification into instrumental, accommodation and awareness-raising programs,13 it might be possible to establish a similar typology for validation of programs. Although this hypothetical possibility exists, it might be more feasible and above all more economic in the sense of avoiding excessive theory-building to state that the validation methods differ by necessity according to the type of program to be evaluated.

.  See also Craig (1980; 1999).

Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup Christina Higgins

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa This chapter describes the efforts of Da Pidgin Coup, an advocacy group in Hawai‘i that strives to raise critical language awareness about Pidgin (Hawai‘i Creole). Several examples of advocacy for elevating the status of Pidgin in Hawai‘i are described, including the development of an undergraduate certificate in pidgin, creole, and dialect studies at the university level and a resolution submitted to the Hawai‘i State Legislature that requests funding for research on the use of Pidgin as a resource in education. Examples of activities that challenge negative views towards Pidgin are discussed in detail, such as a Pidgin grammar quiz that is used with educators and a task which provides Pidgin speakers with the opportunity to correct inaccurate Pidgin in popular literature. Keywords:╇ Hawai‘i Creole; language awareness; advocacy; community outreach

1.  Introduction Da Pidgin Coup is a group of scholars, students, and community members located primarily on the island of O‘ahu who meet to find ways to advocate for fuller recognition of Hawai‘i Creole (HC), a creole language known more commonly on the islands as Pidgin (and the term henceforth used in this chapter). The group strives to raise awareness about Pidgin in society, including greater recognition of Pidgin in educational contexts. To achieve this goal, the group has engaged in many efforts to increase knowledge about Pidgin at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, in public schools, and in local communities. While most language awareness work focuses explicitly on what educators working in schools and universities can do to raise students’ awareness of language (e.g., Candelier 2003; Fairclough 1992; Hawkins 1984; Hélot & Young 2005; Wallace 1999), Da Pidgin Coup aims to raise awareness in a wider set of contexts. Rather than asking educators alone to take on the burden of challenging hegemonic ideologies toward non-standardized languages, we take the view that increased knowledge about Pidgin is necessary in society at large in order to effect change. In this chapter, I discuss the details of several of Da Pidgin Coup’s recent and ongoing projects that

 Christina Higgins

have sought to raise critical language awareness in educational contexts and beyond. Rather than focusing on a single project, I describe the action plans we have implemented and the activities we carry out to meet our goals.

2.  A brief socio-historical overview of pidgin Pidgin is a creole language that emerged on sugar plantations in Hawai‘i during the middle to late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indentured laborers from China, Portugal, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and many other nations worked alongside Hawaiians on plantations that were owned and operated by Caucasian North Americans. The pidgin that developed on the first plantation in 1835 was Pidgin Hawaiian since the Hawaiian people were still in control of their islands and their language through the middle of the nineteenth century. Hawaiian was the main language of interethnic communication in schools and society until 1875, when the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States was signed. The resulting free trade conditions allowed for a great number of Americans to do business on the islands, and during this time, the number of Hawaiians also declined to fewer than 50,000 because of sicknesses and diseases contracted from the foreigners. From 1878–1888, many English-medium schools were built, and as more laborers’ children attended these schools year after year, the language of plantations became relexified as the pidgin known as Pidgin English (Sakoda & Siegel 2003:€ 7; Siegel 2000:€202). During this time, the vast majority of the population was at least bilingual, for they used Pidgin English on plantations and in interethnic interactions, and they spoke ethnic languages such as Hawaiian, Cantonese, Japanese, Okinawan, Tagalog, Ilokano, and Portuguese in their homes and in ethnically-homogeneous communities (Roberts 1995; Roberts S.J. 1997). The role of Pidgin English changed, however, in the beginning of the 20th century, when the second generation of locally born speakers emerged and became equal in number to the foreign-born population. Use of Pidgin English also increased as a result of the high numbers of locally born Japanese who began to attend public schools in the early 1900s (Sakoda & Siegel 2003:€10). It was likely easier for Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese speakers in schools to communicate in Pidgin English with Japanese than to acquire another language (Roberts S.J. 1997:€7). For this second generation, then, Pidgin English was the dominant language of the school, home and community, and as these children grew older, the language developed into the creole that linguists have labeled Hawai‘i Creole, the language that was and still is referred to commonly as “Pidgin”. Modern Pidgin carries all the traces of its past. While English forms much of the vocabulary basis of Pidgin, Hawaiian has had a significant impact on its grammatical structures. Cantonese and Portuguese also shape the grammar, while English, Hawaiian, Portuguese, and Japanese influence the vocabulary the most.



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

Even though English became an increasingly dominant language in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i from the latter half of the nineteenth century onward, English was a relatively foreign language for most Pidgin speakers until World War II, when education became less segregated. Beginning in the nineteenth century, wealthy Caucasians and aristocratic Hawaiians sent their children to expensive private schools while plantation workers’ children attended missionary schools. This segregated system continued under the auspices of the English Standard schools, established in 1924 to serve the increasing number of Caucasian Americans who moved to the islands after the Territory of Hawai‘i was established. Since most of these recently arrived Caucasians were not wealthy landowners, they could not afford the expensive private schools. Rather than sending their children to the public schools along with the children of plantation laborers, they demanded education specifically for their children (Aspinwall 1960; Benham & Heck 1998). To meet their demands, the English Standard schools were established, and admission to these schools was contingent on an oral language test. Unsurprisingly, children who spoke Pidgin or Pidgin-influenced English did not pass the test and were enrolled in regular public schools instead. As Romaine (1999:€289) writes, “By institutionalizing what was essentially racial discrimination along linguistic lines, the schools managed to keep creole speakers in their ‘place’.” These schools created a stratification system that had two clear effects. First, because the educational system isolated Pidgin-speaking children and newly arrived immigrant children from the English speaking population, Pidgin was maintained as the primary mode of communication for children who were not educated at the English Standard schools. Even though the medium of instruction at all schools was English, Pidgin-speaking children who attended public schools retained Pidgin as their dominant language since it was the most important language in their homes, among their friends, and in their communities. In effect, the segregated school system prevented intensive contact between Pidgin and English and contact-induced change of the former under the influence of the latter. Secondly, even though Pidgin was the norm in this community, negative attitudes toward Pidgin became pervasive during the 1930s since Pidgin speakers were compared to those educated at the English Standard schools. While Pidgin maintained its covert prestige as a source of solidarity and local identity among Pidgin speakers, overt prestige was attached to English due to its association with exclusion and privilege in the English Standard schools (Romaine 1999:€289). These schools were dismantled after World War II, but negative attitudes toward Pidgin had already become institutionalized along race and class boundaries. Pidgin is currently spoken by approximately 600,000 speakers in the State of Hawai‘i and about 100,000 in the mainland of the United States (Ethnologue: n.p.; Sakoda & Siegel 2003:€1). It is difficult to provide a comprehensive description of the use of contemporary Pidgin or bilingualism in Hawai‘i due to the paucity of research

 Christina Higgins

that investigates language in use. Most sociolinguistic research on Pidgin has investigated language attitudes and ideologies, drawing on interview data and surveys (e.g., Reynolds 1999; Romaine 1999; Sato 1991), and it is clear from other research contexts that reports of language use tend to differ from actual language use, particularly when stigmatized languages are involved (e.g., Bamgbose 1992; Farrell & Kun 2008; Labov 1966; Milroy & Gordon 2003). A recent small-scale study by Marlow and Giles (2008) demonstrates that Pidgin speakers on the island of Hawai‘i believe that English should be spoken in educational settings and with superiors at work, and that they reserve Pidgin for interactions with family, friends, and co-workers. However, the same study provides evidence that the participants also switch from English to Pidgin at work when it serves their communicative goals, such as establishing rapport with customers. One participant summarized her ability to code-switch in the following excerpt:

(1) Code-switching in Hawai‘i



612 C: It definitely helps now, well now with my job. The oddest thing is 613 that I can turn it off and on. I can be with a client that is very local 614 and I can flip it in a second and just start talking broken English. 615 M: So that’s what you do then? 616 C: Yes. It really helps me to connect with my clients.  (Marlow & Giles 2008:€64)

Based on observational data, Grimes (1999) reports that local men who work in whitecollar positions have a diglossic use of language, as they speak Pidgin in recreational settings and English at work. However, as the participants in Marlow & Giles (2008) indicate, it is often the case that many residents of Hawai‘i make use of English alongside Pidgin within single conversational episodes, and that they frequently codeswitch due to contextual constraints and/or for pragmatic effect. Furukawa (2007) provides examples of linguistic hybridity involving English, Pidgin, and other local languages including mock Filipino in stand-up comedy shows performed on O‘ahu. In casual conversation, people may make use of occasional Pidgin features in English conversational episodes, drawing on lexical and grammatical features from both basilectal and acrolectal forms (Siegel 2008:€266). In terms of who uses Pidgin in Hawai‘i, no comprehensive studies have been undertaken which would provide a clear description of the entire state. Romaine (1999:€288–89) surmises that it is “the first language of probably the majority of children in Hawai‘i” and Sakoda and Siegel (2003:€ 18) describe Pidgin as “the informal language of families and friends… the language of people born and bred in Hawai‘i, especially ethnic Hawaiians and the descendants of plantation laborers”. Hawai‘i is a very linguistically and culturally heterogeneous context, and variation in Pidgin and English is quite prevalent. The most recent study of variation in Hawai‘i is Inoue’s (2008) doctoral dissertation on copula variation in Pidgin, based on interviews



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

with 80 speakers across the islands of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i. Inoue found that urban O‘ahu speakers exhibit the fewest number of Pidgin features in their talk, a circumstance which is likely the result of Honolulu’s status as an international city with a high degree of interaction with populations from the mainland United States and other nations. While such findings indicate a possible shift towards English among urban O‘ahu residents, Inoue’s data shows that copula absence is increasing among younger speakers in other regions, particularly rural O‘ahu and Hawai‘i (Inoue 2008:€77–82), which indicates that multiple linguistic changes are taking place simultaneously in different regions.

3.  Pidgin in educational contexts Pidgin became the target of official educational policy in 1987, when the Hawai‘i Board of Education (BOE) attempted to implement a policy that would allow only English in schools. The policy may have been the product of several converging influences, including the make-up of the BOE at the time, the English-only movement which began to garner support in the mainland United States in the early 1980s (Crawford 2000; Dicker 2000), and the effects of changes in the State of Hawai‘i’s Constitution which made Hawaiian an official language. Greater support for Hawaiian eventually led to funding for the state’s first immersion schools in the mid 1980s,1 and it is possible that greater recognition for Hawaiian created an atmosphere of rough take, or the idea that there are not enough resources for everyone, and hence, some people (or languages, in this case) would have to be excluded (Laiana Wong, personal communication). The BOE’s actions provoked a strong negative reaction from various people, including educators, and the policy was widely seen as an unfair and discriminatory attack on Pidgin (Hargrove & Sakoda 1999; Sato 1991; Watson-Gegeo 1990). A flurry of media coverage followed the BOE policy, and many residents voiced their opinions in the newspapers. Some took anti-Pidgin stances, asserting that “Pidgin English fosters illiteracy” while others countered with arguments that “banning pidgin would violate our freedom of speech” (Verploegen 1988 cited in Sato 1991:€654). Because of public support for Pidgin, the BOE revised its policy to allow Pidgin in the classroom while giving high priority to English, but the role of Pidgin in education has remained a very sensitive issue ever since. While no studies have proven any correlations between Pidgin and educational underachievement, the perspective that Pidgin

.  Hawaiian is an officially-approved medium of instruction in Hawai‘i’s immersion schools. Hawai‘i is the only state in the USA to recognize two languages as official, Hawaiian and English.

 Christina Higgins

leads to low test scores is a pervasive belief that was made public in 1987 and which persists to the present day. In contrast to what many detractors of Pidgin believe, studies which have examined Pidgin in educational settings provide evidence of a positive effect on the acquisition of English when Pidgin is used as a learning resource in the classroom (Actouka & Lai 1989; Afaga & Lai 1994; Day 1989; Reynolds 1999; Rynkofs 1993). The BOE’s policy to ban Pidgin in schools received greater scrutiny by the public because it happened to coincide with a lawsuit that also raised awareness about language discrimination in Hawai‘i. The lawsuit (Kahakua et al. v. Hallgren 1987) was filed by two local men who worked for the National Weather Service who had sought higher positions but who were not offered the positions in spite of their high qualifications. Instead, Caucasians with mainland accents were hired for the positions. The men were asked to submit an audiotaped weather forecast as part of the application process, and they were told that Caucasians were selected for the positions because they “sounded better” (Sato 1991:€655). At the end of a three-day trial, the judge, who had been brought in from California, ruled in favor of the National Weather Service, and he advised the plaintiffs “to put more effort into improving their speech” (Sato 1993:€135). The case was eventually abandoned by the plaintiffs who had grown very frustrated with the legal process. While local support for Pidgin was apparent after the BOE attempted its mandate and after the Kahakua et al. case drew attention to linguistic discrimination, it remains stigmatized among many people who live in Hawai‘i. For example, Marlow and Giles (2008) show how some Pidgin speakers choose to speak English in order to avoid being labeled inferior, especially in educational and professional settings. At the same time, however, Pidgin remains a strong marker of social identity and belonging. As is the case with speakers of most non-standardized varieties, many speakers of Pidgin experience ‘linguistic schizophrenia’ (Kachru 1992:€ 60) because they recognize the covert prestige that Pidgin can provide while simultaneously deferring to exonormative standards that prescribe English as the only ‘good’ or ‘worthwhile’ language.

4.  The formation of Da Pidgin Coup Da Pidgin Coup formed in 1998 in order to provide a venue for scholars and community members to share interests in creole linguistics and educational policy. The following year, the group began to tackle issues directly related to the treatment of Pidgin in relation to education in the public arena. In the fall of 1999, the chairperson of Hawai‘i’s Board of Education, Mitsugi Nakashima, publicly implicated Pidgin in students’ low scores on standardized tests. Nakashima stated, “I see writing as an encoding process and coding what one thinks, and if your thinking is not in Standard English, it’s hard



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

for you to write in Standard English.” He also asserted that English should be the norm for every classroom based on the logic that “If you speak Pidgin, then you think Pidgin, and you write Pidgin” (Honolulu Advertiser, 29 September 1999). In response, Da Pidgin Coup’s members drafted a position paper on Pidgin and forwarded it to the State of Hawai‘i’s school superintendent. The main goal of the paper was to raise sociolinguistic awareness by offering an overview of the history of Pidgin, in addition to countering the claims made by Nakashima. The paper is written in nonacademic language and provides a comprehensive yet highly readable overview of the major issues surrounding Pidgin and its relevance to educational contexts. The paper establishes the sociolinguistic history of Pidgin, outlines its grammatical features, and then focuses on issues regarding attitudes towards Pidgin in education. The paper’s main points are summarized on the first page of the paper, and are quoted below (Da Pidgin Coup 1999: n.p.): –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

–â•fi –â•fi

Pidgin is a language just as English is a language. All children come to school with a language, and that language should be accepted and never denigrated. Some children come to school with Pidgin. The language of these children deserves as much respect as any other language. No one should be prevented from using Pidgin where it works in the learning process. While teachers should teach standard forms of English, in no way should learning English replace Pidgin. There is a fundamental difference between speaking and writing: most children learn to read and write when they come to school; all children learn to speak before they come to school. There are social advantages to being able to speak Pidgin, just as there are social advantages to being able to speak English. There is plenty of room for Pidgin and English to co-exist peacefully and be mutually enriching.

The paper also makes several recommendations for educational contexts, including language awareness seminars and workshops for in-service teachers, including strategies for building on home languages in the classroom; language awareness programs for students to learn about the history and linguistic aspects of Pidgin and English; and, more research on Pidgin and English in schools that would work toward understanding how both Pidgin and English could be utilized for academic achievement. The paper also discusses the differences between Pidgin and English at length in order to debunk widely held misconceptions that Pidgin is simply a ‘broken’ form of English, drawing on Lippi-Green’s (1997:€63–73) language subordination model (discussed in greater detail below). The position paper was covered by Hawai‘i’s major daily

 Christina Higgins

newspapers several times, thereby reaching a large number of readers and helping Da Pidgin Coup to disseminate our messages about sociolinguistic awareness. This paper has also been posted to the World Wide Web where it is easily and freely accessible to all (www.hawaii.edu/sls/pidgin.html). In January 2000, the state Superintendent of Education accepted an invitation to meet with Da Pidgin Coup to discuss the issue of Pidgin in education. While he emphasized that oral expression in Standard English was to remain the goal of schooling, he clearly stated that Pidgin could be used as a tool for learning as well. At that time, Da Pidgin Coup agreed to run voluntary professional development workshops on Pidgin for teachers and administrators. The details of these workshops will be discussed below in the section on “Projects in schools”. To continue to advocate for research and critical language awareness programs, Da Pidgin Coup lobbied for the establishment of the Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Studies, instituted by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2002. This center is the meeting place for Da Pidgin Coup and serves as a resource center for Pidgin and other pidgin and creole languages. The current director, Kent Sakoda, is a native speaker of Pidgin and, with Jeff Siegel, is the co-author of Pidgin Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawai‘i (2003), which remains the most comprehensive grammatical description of the language.

5.  Critical language awareness Following other critical scholars and educators who engage with the politics of language and society (e.g., Gee 1990; Fairclough 1992; Janks 1997; Wallace 1999), Da Pidgin Coup seeks to explicitly address discourses that circulate in schools and society which denigrate Pidgin and extol Standard English as an unfettered pathway to success in life. Our approach is similar to many language awareness approaches that seek to challenge linguistic prejudice, open discussion of linguistic difference and multilingualism, and encourage greater reflection on the relationship between pluralism in language and tolerance for diversity in schools and society. However, while most approaches that are labeled “Language Awareness” (e.g., Candelier 2003; Hawkins 1984) or “Dialect Awareness” (e.g., Wolfram, Adger & Christian 1999) focus on introducing students to sociolinguistic concepts and activities that are designed to demystify language structures, our approach is driven by a critical perspective that explicitly focuses on raising awareness about the connections between language and power (cf. Siegel 2006b). Following Pennycook’s (2001) post-structuralist framework for critical applied linguistics, we take the view that power does not reside in certain languages or in particular people, but rather, we see power as an effect of discourses operating among



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

people in social networks. This conceptualization of power challenges the notion of language as a commodity which treats powerful forms of language as entities that can be added to speakers’ repertoires. Taking a more critical and post-structuralist perspective, we do not view particular languages as imbued with more and less power, but rather, we see language as an aspect of social relations and identities which are changeable, negotiable, and fluid. From this view, critical language awareness can lead to empowerment through “changing the terms of relationships and the modes of operation of power between (and within) people from limiting to more productive forms” (Tew 2002:€169). This view of power allows for language awareness approaches to work towards altering social relations by opening up a space to negotiate identities based on language, and to transform limiting social and institutional relations. In more practical terms, this view of language and power enables people to deconstruct processes of stigmatization and standardization, to recognize the potential value in marginalized languages, and to examine the hidden contradictions in their own communities about the use of languages like Pidgin. We recognize that attitudes toward language are often formulated in schools, where “standard language ideology” dominates, what Lippi-Green (1997:€64) defines as “a bias toward an abstracted, idealized, homogenous spoken language which is imposed and maintained by dominant bloc institutions and which names as its model the written language, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class”. Challenging this standard language ideology is an important aspect of language awareness, but we also feel that linguists and educationists cannot focus solely on educational institutions if change is to be realized. Moreover, given the current lack of support for bilingual educational policy in the United States and the difficult working conditions of teachers due to No Child Left Behind legislation, we feel that focusing our attention on a broad range of contexts and communities, including educational contexts, is the best way forward. Drawing on research by several of Da Pidgin Coup’s members on creole and other non-standardized languages in education and society (Eades 1995, 2003; Siegel 1993, 1997b, 1999b, 2006b, 2007), Da Pidgin Coup has focused on three aspects of awareness raising in educational contexts and beyond. First, the group targets sociolinguistic awareness by striving to deepen people’s knowledge of language variation and to give them access to discourses about standardized and non-standardized language varieties. In workshops for community members and educators, we provide historical overviews of Pidgin as a means of explaining its sociolinguistic development and its linguistic structure. Similar to language awareness and dialect awareness approaches, much of the work we do that aims to achieve greater degrees of sociolinguistic awareness takes place through raising contrastive awareness by asking people to inductively discover the rule-governed grammar of Pidgin through comparing it to other languages such as

 Christina Higgins

English and Hawaiian. Finally, we strive to raise accommodative language awareness by offering people the opportunity to examine the ways that non-standardized varieties are used in speech and in writing, to identify as speakers of Pidgin, and to use their language in empowering ways. These methods have been endorsed by many other researchers who research strategies for empowering speakers of non-standardized and marginalized languages, including Aboriginal English (Eades 1995; Malcolm et al. 1999) and African American English (Delpit 1988; Rickford 2002; Wolfram 1999). In the realm of schooling, greater sociolinguistic awareness has the potential to lead to more respectful treatment of children (by teachers and students alike) who speak non-standardized languages such as Pidgin. When children’s ways of speaking and being are criticized, their sense of identity is weakened, and their motivation for performing well in school may be diminished as a result. Researchers have found many times over that high levels of pride in one’s ethnic and linguistic heritage often correlate with high levels of academic achievement (e.g., Delpit 1998, 2002; Heath 1983; Michaels 1981; Smith, Atkins, & Connell 2003). Even linguists who point out that the differences between Standard English and non-standardized varieties are slight (and hence should not cause educational difficulties) admit that the treatment of children who speak non-standardized varieties is likely to be the culprit of despondency towards classroom learning (McWhorter 1998; Mufwene 2001). As one Pidgin speaker expressed in Da Pidgin Coup’s position paper (1999: n.p.), Education is Western-based so da guys who teaching it, they come to Hawai‘i, they have hard time understanding our people, so instead of working with us, they going work against us and make us look bad.

Da Pidgin Coup agrees that when Pidgin speakers see their language denigrated at school, they do not see themselves as belonging in the school context. Conversely, if students’ knowledge of Pidgin is treated as a resource in schools and society, these children may well feel a greater sense of belonging in schools.

6.  Achievements at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa In addition to establishing the Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole, and Dialect Studies, the most recent significant achievement the group has made at the university level is the recent passing of an undergraduate certificate in Pidgin and Creole studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. This certificate was accepted by the University’s faculty senate and was finally signed into officialdom by the vice chancellor in 2007. This 15-credit certificate is one way the University can acknowledge the relevance of Pidgin in Hawai‘i. While linguists from Hawai‘i and other parts of the world have taken



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a keen interest in doing research on the language, the vast majority of the students at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa have not had any opportunity to learn about it in any comprehensive way. This certificate provides that opportunity. The passage of this certificate took several years and was stalled many times due to the bureaucratic nature of university committees, changes in the organization of Da Pidgin Coup, and the ever-changing administrative staff of the University. The aim of the certificate is to legitimate Pidgin at the university level by treating it as a subject worthy of academic scholarship across a number of interrelated disciplines. In our efforts to get the certificate passed, Da Pidgin Coup highlighted the certificate’s ability to meet many aspects of the University’s objectives for multiculturalism, including improving entry, retention, and success rates of diverse student populations, and supporting the study of diverse cultures and languages. The certificate was also presented as a way to help support a key element in the Social Justice Imperative of the University’s Strategic Plan (www.hawaii.edu/ovppp/stratplansys.html), which is to “Instill respect for human (linguistic) diversity across the campus and curriculum and to support a key element in the University’s Place Initiative, which is to “build on our unparalleled cultural diversity” while supporting a Strategic Imperative, “to encourage research that benefits and involves the local community”. While most universities have such rhetoric in their mission statements and strategic plans, Da Pidgin Coup felt that the undergraduate certificate in Pidgin and Creole studies would help the university to live up to its rhetoric and pointed this out in the proposal. Moreover, the certificate proposal emphasized connections with knowledge about pidgins and creoles with educational contexts, stating “Education students who plan to teach in the public schools could also benefit from this certificate since a high number of students in public schools are bilingual English and Pidgin speakers.” Courses included in this certificate provide a systematic and comprehensive program of study for students interested in Pidgin and other pidgin and creole languages through coursework in Second Language Studies, Linguistics, English, Hawaiian Studies, History, Sociology, and Ethnic Studies. Da Pidgin Coup chose courses from these disciplines in order to give certificate students greater understanding of the linguistic, socio-cultural, political and educational issues concerning both the historical development of Pidgin and its important role in contemporary society. There are two required three-credit courses for the certificate, including a course in the Department of Second Language Studies titled “Pidgin and Creole English in Hawai‘i”, (taught every semester, including summer sessions); it provides a general understanding of the sociohistorical background and linguistic structure of Pidgin Hawai‘i English and Pidgin (HC) in Hawai‘i. The course also addresses questions of language attitudes, language education and literary heritage by engaging with concerns about present day attitudes in the school system and community. The other required course is a choice of either

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“Pidgin and Creole Languages” offered in the Department of Linguistics2 or “English in Hawai‘i”, offered in the Department of English. The Linguistics course examines the social contexts and linguistic structures of various pidgin and creole languages, including Pidgin (HC), Tok Pisin, Fiji Hindi, and Melanesian Pidgin; the course in the Department of English explores the English-speaking cultures of Hawai‘i from the viewpoint of the state’s multilingual history and culture. The electives for the certificate capitalize on the resources already available at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa that examine the cultures, history, and economic contexts which originally produced the Hawai‘i Pidgin and Creole. Each of these threecredit courses is listed below. English courses Ethnic Literature of Hawai‘i Ethnic Studies courses Japanese in Hawai‘i Chinese in Hawai‘i Filipinos in Hawai‘i Immigration to Hawai‘i Hawaiian Labor History Hawaiian Studies courses Political Myths and Hawaiian History History courses The Hawaiian Kingdom 1819–1893 History of 20th Century Hawai‘i Sociology courses Race and Ethnicity in Hawai‘i

.  Since creole specialist Dr. Jeff Siegel left the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2005, courses on pidgin and creole languages have not been taught. There are plans to hire a sociolinguist who may be able to teach these courses beginning in 2009. Another course currently taught in Linguistics that is pertinent to pidgin and creole languages is an introductory course titled “Language in Hawai‘i and the Pacific”, but a requirement for undergraduate certificates is that all qualifying credits must come from advancedlevel classes.



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

Once students have had the opportunity to complete this certificate program, we will be able to evaluate the effect that this certificate has had on undergraduate students’ critical language awareness about Pidgin and other creole languages. Since certificates are optional qualifications for undergraduates, our present task is to disseminate information about the certificate and to encourage faculty advisors in relevant fields to recommend the certificate courses for their students. Da Pidgin Coup believes that an undergraduate certificate is one step toward additional moves to further legitimate Pidgin in the University of Hawai‘i system. Using the certificate as a stepping stone, the group plans to advocate that Pidgin should qualify as another language for students who are required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. The current challenges that the group is still trying to address are that no proficiency exams are yet available for Pidgin, and that there is no infrastructure to provide the resources for developing standards for rating speakers’ knowledge of Pidgin.

7.  Projects in schools Following the visit of the state Superintendent of Education in 2000, members of Da€Pidgin Coup have led workshops for educators across the state, both in schools supervised by the State of Hawai‘i’s Department of Education and at sites sponsored by interest groups comprised of educators and policymakers. These workshops were not part of an official curriculum on language awareness, but rather, occasional opportunities Da Pidgin Coup forged in order to reach out to educators who were willing to come together and listen. Given the time constraints on teachers’ schedules, the workshops are limited in their scope and focus largely on myths and misconceptions educators may have about Pidgin and activities that demonstrate the grammatical differences between Pidgin and English. We have not developed modules that focus on the didactics of multilingualism or the use of Pidgin in education, but we do offer teachers and other interested people handouts which list resources such as the use of local literature in language arts classes (see discussion under “Community Outreach” section, below) and we have also shown a segment from the DVD Do You Speak American? (2005) in which an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles uses a Jeopardy-style game to teach children to code-switch between African American English and Academic English. Some of these workshops have been the result of invitations, while others came to fruition as the result of professional networks that members of Da Pidgin Coup had established. The group has presented workshops and professional development sessions for organizations such as GEAR UP Hawai‘i, the Aloha State Council of the International Reading Association, the Hawai‘i Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and Hawai‘i TESOL.

 Christina Higgins

These workshops inform teachers about the nature of Pidgin and other similar language varieties and provide them with a model for awareness activities in their own classrooms. The sessions focus on the following areas: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Origins and development of pidgin and creole languages, and Pidgin in particular Pidgin phonology in comparison to English phonology Lexical and morphological aspects of Pidgin A demonstration of Pidgin’s grammar, based on inductive methods such as acceptability judgments tasks A discussion of the language subordination model which devalues Pidgin in schools and society

During these sessions, some of the most valuable activities include tasks that encourage the educators to recognize the rule-governed nature of Pidgin. Our group members have noted time and time again how most educators are unaware that Pidgin has a grammar and can have ungrammatical utterances. Moreover, experience shows us that most educators think of Pidgin as some version of English. Consequently, activities that reveal Pidgin’s grammatical structures to teachers are very important for raising sociolinguistic, contrastive, and accommodative language awareness. These tasks typically involve one or more informal acceptability judgment tasks in which local teachers must rely on their own linguistic intuitions as Pidgin speakers in order to determine the grammatical rules of Pidgin. One of the activities the group frequently uses is Kent Sakoda’s “Pidgin Grammar Quiz”, an activity that asks teachers to determine which statements are acceptable or unacceptable, and to correct any problematic Pidgin grammar. The quiz only contains five sentences due to the time constraints of most workshops (see Table€1). Purposefully ungrammatical sentences are starred with an asterisk for the sake of this chapter only. On the quiz, it is up to the teachers to decide whether a sentence is acceptable or unacceptable and to suggest revisions for any unacceptable sentences. Other activities have been developed in order to raise contrastive awareness about Pidgin as it relates to English. Examples here include asking educators to think about the popular American National Milk Processor Board’s advertising slogan “Got milk” and to translate it into Pidgin. All native speakers of Pidgin come up with Get milk, which reveals a major difference between Pidgin and English in the use of get. In Pidgin, get is used as a present tense form of possession, and it can also be understood as an existential (as in ‘there is’). In the case of the advertising slogan for milk, the Pidgin Get Milk is the equivalent of ‘I have milk’. The fact that Pidgin had (‘there was’) translates as the past tense form of Pidgin get can arise in this discussion, revealing yet another aspect of Pidgin that is not simply a variety of English. At the level of pronunciation, educators are asked to think about what Pidgin chri [t∫ri] translates to in English. Most people are able to name two forms, ‘three’ and



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

Table€1.╇ Pidgin Grammar Quiz Sentence provided

Correction (if relevant) and grammar point

1. *We wen seen dat movie already. Changes: We wen see dat movie already.

2. Da car red.

Pidgin wen acts as a past tense marker, making the past tense marking on seen ungrammatical Changes: none

3. *Joe not stay playing football.

Pidgin does not always require a copula verb. Alternatives are possible, however, such as Da car stay red (which makes use of stay as a copula that indicates a change of state or comment about the speaker’s expectations) as well as Red da car (which follows Hawaiian syntax and may be considered a more basilectal form of HC) Changes: Joe no stay playing football.

4. She stay eat da cake.

Not cannot be used before the predicate when it is preceded by stay; no is used before stay Changes: none

Like all languages, Pidgin has variation. This sentence is acceptable, though some Pidgin speakers may debate what it means. For some, it can man ‘She has eaten the cake,’ while others feel it means that ‘She is eating the cake.’ Some people may feel that She stay eating da cake is also acceptable. This would create the unambiguous meaning of ‘She is eating the cake’. She stay eating da cake is a more acrolectal variety of Pidgin and it is closer to English in form 5. *Mary wen pau cooking da rice. Changes: Mary wen pau cook da rice. Wen and -ing forms of verbs are not compatible since wen indicates a completed action and -ing marks ongoing action

‘tree’. Another example is the word pronounced as [papi], which can mean ‘puppy’ or ‘poppy’ to Pidgin speakers, thus marking contextual interpretation as potentially more significant than in English. Pidgin has seven vowels while most forms of American English have more than 15 vowels (including both monothongs & diphthongs). Examples such as these help to make the point that Pidgin has a different inventory of sounds than does English and suggests that Pidgin requires more context sensitivity for interaction as well. In addition to these examples, Siegel (2007) provides the detailed example of negation that the group has also used to great success. The group presents examples of sentences with Pidgin negatives no, nat, neva, and nomo and compares them to their English counterparts. As Siegel (2007:€ 79) explains, “The teachers are usually quite thrilled to discover these rules, especially when comparisons are made with the much

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simpler rules in English, where the only sentential negative marker is ‘not’ (or its contracted form ‘n’t’).” Beyond promoting contrastive awareness, Da Pidgin Coup members often discuss with educators the difficult issues surrounding power and language use in Hawai‘i. Ermile Hargrove, an educational consultant and founding member of the group, often asks teachers to list the pros and cons of speaking English by asking, “Do you believe speaking English gives you power?” Invariably, educators note that speaking Pidgin can also be a language of power, in certain situations of use, though not typically in educational contexts. This discussion can set the stage for a more in-depth treatment of Lippi-Green’s (1997:€68) language subordination process, which is presented to the teachers in a summarized fashion, drawing on local examples involving Pidgin and English. 1. Authority is claimed. People claim that Standard English is simply better. They make pronouncements about Pidgin speakers’ intelligence and future education and employment prospects. 2. Misinformation is generated. Pidgin is delegitimized as “lazy talk”, “slang, or worse, “broken English”. Linguistic knowledge of Pidgin and expertise from linguists is excluded from discussions. 3. Non-mainstream language is trivialized. Pidgin is presented as a language suitable for jokes, for surfing, and other “non-serious” activities, but not for work or school. Pidgin speakers are depicted as uncouth individuals in various media and Pidgin is used to market very local products in a humorous and yet denigrating manner. 4. Conformers are held as positive examples. People who were forbidden to speak Pidgin at school, such as Hawai‘i’s former governor, Ben Cayetano, claim this as a major factor in their success. No distinction is made between acquiring Standard English while maintaining Pidgin and eliminating Pidgin from one’s linguistic repertoire. 5. Explicit promises are made. People are told that Standard English (alone) is the pathway to success in school and a good job. 6. Threats are made. People are told that if you speak Pidgin, you will never do well in school, obtain a good job, or be treated with respect. 7. Non-conformers are vilified or marginalized. Pidgin speakers are regarded as less intelligent and less able to succeed in school and in life. In going through each of these stages, audience members are typically able to point out counter examples for each point by drawing on their own experience as successful bilinguals who speak Pidgin and English. The importance of power is not lost on these audiences who can often relate these points about language subordination to the need



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to advocate for increased multiculturalism and respect for students’ linguistic and ethnic cultural backgrounds in the classroom as well. Other members of our group have successfully engaged with educators on the topic of power and “common sense” choices regarding the choice of English by comparing language to other aspects of social life. Richard Nettell, a member of the group originally from the United Kingdom, sometimes uses the example of table manners very effectively to discuss notions of linguistic imperialism and linguicism. Holding a fork (pointed downwards) and knife in his hands, he delivers a variation of the following message, which effectively points out the arbitrary nature of language and the very non-arbitrary nature of language politics: As your educator, I really have to insist that all of you, for your own good, need to learn to eat properly (like I do) because of the unfortunate but inevitable discrimination you will otherwise face in places like the UK, where people not only know how to eat properly but judge others like you who don’t VERY negatively. As a progressive educator, on the other hand, I must also admit that these British rules dictating how to eat are not only arbitrary but, in the case of my upturned fork, contrary to basic good sense. In fact, I am even prepared to admit that these rules have been made by, and are primarily policed by, people who just want to have yet another way to demonstrate their presumed superiority over the rest of the population on this planet. So if there’s nothing actually better or worse about American Table Manners, as opposed to British Table Manners, then, as with Pidgin and English, we are obviously dealing with two different systems, neither of which is inherently better that the other. But simply comparing and contrasting these two systems, although helpful and potentially somewhat empowering, is, in my opinion, not really doing enough. What I want to teach is a level of critical awareness which will empower people not just to understand but to challenge the rules, willfully to stick with their American Table Manners, even in the UK (and despite the critical looks), and, hopefully, shock the Brits into reevaluating their out-dated classed-based nonsense called Standard English etiquette (Nettell 2007).

Nettell’s words highlight the hypocrisy involved in promoting multiculturalism in schools while rejecting linguistic diversity in the form of Pidgin in favor of English. His cutlery metaphor is especially effective for discussing the preference for monolingualism in schools and the rejection of Pidgin in education as acts of linguicism. Moreover, he asserts that educators need to do more than simply recognize Pidgin as a language their students speak –€they need to do more to encourage its use in the classroom. His point here about the use of Pidgin resonates well with our awareness approach in that we believe that awareness should lead to actions like the inclusion of Pidgin (and sometimes preference for it over English) in the classroom.

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8.  Community outreach Beyond participating in workshops that exclusively target educators, Da Pidgin Coup has set up an information table at various community events in order to stimulate greater sociolinguistic awareness about Pidgin in the community. The group does this because we feel that educators alone cannot be responsible for changing attitudes and challenging the stigma of Pidgin as a non-standardized language. At these events, an information table is staffed with several members of the group who offer interested parties different kinds of information on Pidgin, including a summary of the group’s position paper, easy-to-follow lessons on Pidgin orthography (following the Odo system), and pointers for educators on how to approach Pidgin in the classroom. These tips for teachers are distilled from research by Charlene Sato (1989, 1991 & 1993) on Pidgin and English in educational contexts (see Table€2). Oftentimes, parents of school-aged children are interested in this information, or college students considering a career in education, public policy, or linguistics. We have found that offering the information to a wide range of parties is the best way to disseminate the information across a range of people, rather than targeting educators only. Table€2.╇ Teaching Standard English as a second dialect 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

Recognize the integrity and value of minority varieties of English, such as HC. Recognize that differences between varieties are not trivial and occur in every linguistic domain. Reinforce and/or nurture a sense of positive cultural identity and self-worth among speakers of minority varieties. Adopt a pluralist position and teach Standard English as a second dialect. In other words, pursue additive bidialectalism, not remediation. Be clear about what is meant by Standard English in setting educational goals (for example, in relation to specific linguistic domains such as accent and in relation to subject matter and academic tasks) Recognize and accommodate mismatches between interactional patterns in and out of the classroom. a. Modify teacher talk and classroom participation patterns b. Use Pidgin in the classroom to ensure learner comprehension c. Modify literacy activities Improve teacher education by focusing on issues of language variation, cultural pluralism, and how they influence learning.

At the information tables, we also get the word out about a web site for teachers and local writers who are interested in local literature. This resource has been developed by one of the group’s members, Aiko Yamashiro. This Local Literature Resource Page (www2.hawaii.edu/~aikoy/home.html) provides links to syllabi for high school and college level courses that have been taught, including a syllabus by



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

Lee€ Tonouchi€ (a.k.a., Da Pidgin Guerilla) for an anthropology course taught at Hawai‘i Pacific University titled “Hip-Hop Hawai‘i: Hawai‘i Youth Culture”, described entirely in Pidgin. Another link takes educators to teaching materials available as downloadable handouts. On the site, Yamashiro has provided a lesson plan for the study of Pidgin in literature, which is presented in full in Figure€1. The lesson is based on Alani Apio’s Kāmau, a play that explores what it means to be Hawaiian in the 21st€ century. The play examines the experiences of a present-day Hawaiian family, and two cousins, Kawaipono and Alika, whose experiences reveal a dilemma between tradition and development. Apio’s writing style blends English, Hawaiian, and Pidgin, which provides much of the local color and richness of the play. The play has been performed several times at the Kumu Kahua Theater in Honolulu, a venue which promotes local playwrights who often produce dialogue in Pidgin. Importantly, Yamashiro points out how this lesson meets the Department of Education’s language arts standards while incorporating attention to Pidgin in the classroom. Goals: – Explore and question the stereotypes and identities connected to Pidgin – Engender critical thinking about what it means (socially, economically, politically, etc.) to use Pidgin as a language – Analyze language switching as a literary device, adding to the complexity of plot and characterization Department of Education Language Arts Standard 3: Reading “Respond to literary texts from arange of stances: personal, interpretive, critical” Materials: This session will center around scenes 5–8 from the play Kāmau by Alani Apio (1994). In this play (based in contemporary O‘ahu), characters switch between English, Pidgin, and Hawaiian to get different reactions and to display different relationships towards other characters. text: Kāmau Apio, Alani. (1994). General discussion questions (adapt and specify to text): – Based on the text, what cultures/beliefs/identities do the different languages represent? Do these ideas conflict with or complicate each other? – When do characters switch languages and for what purposes? – How do variables like audience and topic affect language choice? – How do these literary examples connect with our own language experiences? Is this literature believable? Can we relate? Figure€1.╇ Lesson plan (High School): Pidgin-English codeswitching in Alani Apio’s Kāmau

Yamashiro continues to solicit teaching materials from current and pre-service teachers so that she can post them on the web site in order to make the resource as practical as possible.

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At our information tables, we also offer interested passers-by the opportunity to “test” their Pidgin ability level by participating in a survey on Pidgin variation. Part of the survey makes use of excerpts of Pidgin from literary sources, including James Michener’s Hawai‘i (1959) and Paul Theroux’s Hotel Honolulu (2001). While some of the Pidgin in these books is accepted as accurate by Pidgin speakers, much of it has been shown to be rather contrived. Hence, excerpts of dialogue in these books provide an excellent resource for raising accommodative awareness in that speakers of Pidgin have the opportunity to correct “bad” Pidgin and to act as language experts by offering revised versions of the dialogues. The survey is not meant to develop a singular standard of Pidgin, but rather, to show to Pidgin speakers that in spite of some variation in different registers and regional varieties of Pidgin, the language is rulegoverned and does not allow for an “anything goes” representation. In (2) below, an excerpt of dialogue is presented from Hotel Honolulu, followed by one Pidgin speaker’s response in detail. In the text, two co-workers are talking about why one of them was not available to answer his phone on the previous day. The dialogue makes use of some very well known Pidgin expressions, such as the last line, Assa madda you, brah (‘What’s the matter with you, brother/pal?’), which seems to give it a highly local quality. Participants who took on the task noticed some problems with the constructed dialogue, however:

(2) Hotel Honolulu



(Theroux 2001:€13)

Eh, where were you yesterday? Eh, I was working. I call you up talfone. I never hear.” Eh, you never dere already. Assa madda you, brah?

A 33 year-old female circled the first line as problematic, and wrote the following revision next to the line.

original: Eh, where were you yesterday? revision: Eh, where you was/stay yesterday?

This Pidgin speaker focused on the use of were in Theroux’s original as problematic, and she replaced it with the choice of was, also offering the word stay as an option. Her answer highlights the difference in verbs between English and Pidgin. While subjectverb agreement for the past tense form of the copula in English is were, this participant’s response shows that Pidgin has a different system. In Pidgin, was agrees with you for past tense. Others who did the survey noted the same problem, indicating some degree of standardization for this particular item.



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

This same Pidgin speaker found the third line of the dialogue to be problematic due to its tense and aspect marking. In the dialogue, the character says I call you up talfone, meaning ‘I called you on the telephone.’ The survey participant circled the entire line as problematic and rewrote it.

original: I call you up talfone. revision: I wen telephone you.

Here, the Pidgin speaker reveals her knowledge of past tense marking on sentences, particularly those that do not contain words that explicitly mark past time (such as yesterday or already), and which therefore require the overt past tense marker wen. Finally, the same participant circled the fifth line as containing some errors and offered her correction next to the line.

original: Eh, you never dere already. revision: Eh, you no stay.

Here, the participant is showing her knowledge of tense and aspect again in relation to negation. In Pidgin, never must come along with a verb in order for an utterance to be acceptable. In this case, the sentence means something like ‘You weren’t there yesterday,’ but Theroux’s use of you never dere lacks the verb ‘to be’. The survey participant noted this in her correction, providing the word stay (‘to be’). She changed the tense of the sentence to present tense as well (you no stay translates to ‘you aren’t here’ whereas you never stay translates to ‘you weren’t there’), which seems to be an oversight on her part. Another excerpt from James Michener’s Hawai‘i provides additional examples of the kinds of Pidgin that are often misrepresented. In (3), Pupali, a ‘beach boy’ is explaining his philosophy of living to his friend Kelly.

(3) Hawai‘i

(Michener 1959:€822)

A man got energy for do four t’ings. Eat, work, surf, and make love. But at one time got stuff for only two. For me, surfin’ and makin’ love. You ever get tired? Kelly asked. Surfin’? No. I gonna die on an incomin’ wave. Wahines? Tell you da trufe, Kelly, sometime for about ten minutes after Moana Loa sail, I don’ nevah wanna see da kine wahine no mo’, but nex’ day wen anudder ship blow anudder whistle, I’m strip for action.

A 60-year old female’s response to this item serves to illustrate the differences between Michener’s version of Pidgin and a Pidgin user’s perspective. Since Michener’s book was published when this speaker was an adolescent, comparing Michener’s dialogue

 Christina Higgins

with this speaker’s intuition may provide a fairer comparison than asking a 33-year old to address this example. This speaker took issue with many aspects of the dialogue. First, she changed A man to Da man, noting the different use of articles in Pidgin compared to English. Then, she marked through “got” in the first line (A man got energy for do four t’ings) and replaced it with get, thus showing her knowledge of the use of get in Pidgin that was discussed above with the “Got Milk” example. She replaced But at one time got stuff for only two with But only get time for do two, recognizing the difference between English “got” and Pidgin get once more and also acknowledging the grammatical difference between the two languages in regard to infinitives. In addition, the Pidgin speaker changed I gonna die on an incomin’ wave in the fourth line of Michener’s text to I gon die on wan incomin’ wave, demonstrating a native command of the pronunciation of the future tense marker gon. Her revision also provides an accurate use of Pidgin’s article system by replacing the ungrammatical Pidgin an (which is English) with Pidgin wan (also spelled as one by some survey takers). The surveys that participants have completed indicate that they have high degrees of confidence and a fair amount of consistency regarding inaccurate Pidgin. They are less consistent in their recommendations for how to fix inaccurate Pidgin, which is an area of research that Da Pidgin Coup intends to explore in the future. As expressed earlier in this paper, the group is not interested in advocating a singular standard of Pidgin, as we believe this would lead to the same problems that a singular version of English has brought about; however, at the same time, we wish to promote awareness about Pidgin’s grammar and to debunk the myth that Pidgin has no structure. This is sometimes a tricky balance to achieve since people who speak Kaua‘i Pidgin, for example, may have different perspectives than speakers of O‘ahu Pidgin on what qualifies as acceptable Pidgin. Similarly, differences among regions on each island, ethnic groups, men and women, and adolescents and adults all contribute to differences of opinion. Our goal as an awareness-raising group is to promote awareness of language variation in general, which includes awareness of these varieties of Pidgin as well. To achieve this goal, several members of Da Pidgin Coup are carrying out research on topics such as variation in past tense marking (Inoue 2007), perceptions regarding the ethnicity, age, and gender of speakers in relation to certain vocabulary items (Higgins 2007), and ethnic varieties such as “mock Filipino” (Furukawa 2007). These accommodative tasks empower Pidgin speakers by giving them the chance to apply their own expertise as Pidgin language users, which we think can go a long way toward instilling a sense of legitimacy of Pidgin. We recognize that these tasks may not have an immediate effect on the continued production of faulty Pidgin by non-local authors or those who wish to exploit Pidgin for marketing purposes, however. This leads to Da Pidgin Coup’s plans for future advocacy work in the area of marketing and media campaigns, discussed next.



Raising critical language awareness in Hawai‘i at Da Pidgin Coup 

9.  Future advocacy Several members of Da Pidgin Coup have noticed that Pidgin continues to be stigmatized in part due to its representation in the media and in marketing campaigns that profit from Pidgin which apparently strive to present “local” images to local consumers. While the inclusion of Pidgin in advertising is welcome, we are concerned that the ways Pidgin and Pidgin speakers are depicted stigmatize the language as one that is only good for joking around, starting fights, and talking about surfing. In many ads, Pidgin speakers are depicted as deeply lacking in sophistication and common sense. For example, a 2008 television ad for Mobi, a wireless telecommunications company operating in Hawai‘i, presents images of “clueless” people engaged in never-ending and gossipy streams of chatter in Pidgin as a means of promoting the company’s cell phone plan with unlimited calling. Apparently, the commercials are supposed to be humorous by depicting familiar scenes to Hawai‘i’s consumers. To provide a counter-discourse, we will catalogue how Pidgin is used in the media as a first step. We will then need to consider what media we can make use of to provide counter-messages. In particular, we would like to highlight the socio-economic diversity of Pidgin users in these counter-messages in order to challenge the (very inaccurate) notion that Pidgin is only spoken among the uneducated underclass. Since our financial resources are quite limited, we will probably target avenues for media campaigns sponsored by non-profit organizations or local television stations. For future projects that focus on educational institutions, Da Pidgin Coup is in the early stages of political activism that may eventually lead to state-mandated and state-sponsored research on the use of Pidgin in public school classrooms. In March of 2008, we submitted a resolution to the State of Hawai‘i’s Legislature titled “Requesting a bidialectical teaching strategy for speakers of Hawai‘i Pidgin in Hawai‘i public schools”. This resolution was submitted to call attention to the various positive functions that Pidgin serves for its users in Hawai‘i, and to argue for further research on the possibilities for teaching strategies that would make more use of Pidgin in classrooms. Since Da Pidgin Coup has not had the resources to carry out research on bilingual education in Hawai‘i’s public schools, we requested financial support from the state to fund such research. The choice of “bidialectical” in the language for the resolution was carefully chosen in order to operate in alignment with the current federal policies that disallow forms of bilingual education, particularly programs that promote maintenance of the home language. The resolution highlighted the apparent success of several dialect awareness programs that were carried out in the 1980s and early 1990s (Project Akamai, Project Holopono) that had a positive impact on standardized achievement test scores as a means of establishing a rationale for more programs that will attend to language issues in schools. At the same time, the resolution problematized the “transitional”

 Christina Higgins

approach taken in these projects that led to subtractive bilingualism by emphasizing the acquisition and use of English over the maintenance of Pidgin. As Ruiz (1984) notes, transitional programs are characterized by the “language-as-problem” approach and often treat children’s first languages as obstacles to be overcome, and which present assimilation and acculturation to English as the only outcome. In contrast, Da Pidgin Coup supports maintenance forms of dual language programs for Pidgin-speaking children since these have been shown to be the most effective (Lindholm-Leary 2001; Ramirez€et€al. 1991; Thomas & Collier 2002) and because they continue to value children’s home languages while adding English to their linguistic repertoires. While most forms of dual language programs in the United States that take a maintenance approach expect students to develop and maintain academic literacies in both languages (Freeman 2006), the lack of materials for Pidgin pose a daunting problem. This points to additional areas that Da Pidgin Coup members can direct our energies. Rather than supporting programs that focus on transitioning Pidgin speakers slowly away from Pidgin and toward English, we believe that dual language programs would be more effective. The resolution called for the State of Hawai‘i’s Department of Education, […] in consultation with the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Second Language Studies, and the Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Studies of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa […] to identify schools where significant populations of Hawai‘i Pidgin speakers may be found […] and develop plans for conducting a controlled study on the effectiveness of bidialectical teaching strategies for Hawai‘i public schools with strong Hawai‘i Pidgin populations […] and report findings and plans to the Legislature no later than twenty days before the convening of the Regular Session of 2009”.

The resolution was passed by the State Senate in March of 2008, but it was tabled in the House of Representatives, thereby effectively ending any further discussion of it. After conferring with members of the House of Representatives so that we can better understand why it was tabled, we plan to revise and resubmit the resolution to be heard during a future legislative session.

Chabacano for everyone? Chabacano language projects in Cavite City in comparison with other Chabacano communities* Eeva Sippola

University of Helsinki This paper focuses on the projects that promote the learning of Chabacano and its use in education. It provides information about the projects and offers a critical evaluation of the educational materials and the methodology from a constructivist point of view. The point of departure is the case of Cavite, which is compared with the projects in Cotabato and Zamboanga. The main problems in Cavite are the lack of educational materials and the lack of cooperation between the different actors committed to the promotion of Chabacano. However, the case study demonstrates the importance of grassroots activism for language revitalisation and that a heritage language can be promoted and preserved outside institutional language use. Keywords:╇ Chabacano; educational materials; language learning; language revitalisation

1.  Introduction Chabacano is the common name for the different varieties of Philippine Creole Spanish.1 The varieties of this Creole are spoken in Cavite and Ternate in the Manila Bay area on Luzon in the Northern Philippines and in Zamboanga, Cotabato and

*I am grateful for the comments and help from Purificación Ballesteros, Enrique Escalante, Librada Llamado, Jocelyn de la Rosa and Soledad Sta-Ana in Cavite City. Thanks are also due to Aireen Barrios who collected a large part of the material in Zamboanga, to Tom€Creamer, Maritoni Destua and David Zorc who provided the information regarding the Zamboanga project and to the editors and Michael Forman who commented on an earlier version of this article. .  There are various ways of spelling the language name, e.g. Chabacano, Chavacano, Chabakano. This article uses ‘Chabacano’. However, when discussing the projects, the spelling used in the materials is reproduced and given in italics if different.

 Eeva Sippola

Davao on Mindanao in the Southern Philippines (see Map 1). The different available sources (NSO; Ethnologue) differ on the number of speakers for each variety. A conservative estimate puts the number at a few thousands for Cavite City, Ternate, Cotabato and Davao and more than 250,000 in Zamboanga.

LUZON

MANILA CAVITE TERNATE

MINDANAO DAVAO

ZAMBOANGA COTABATO

Map 1.╇ The Chabacano communities in the Philippines and the location of the project

This paper presents the different projects that promote the learning of Chabacano and its use in education. In the Philippines, the education projects on the different varieties of Chabacano can be grouped into two major categories: small-scale language revitalisation projects like those in Cavite City and Cotabato, and larger, corpus-based



Chabacano for everyone 

projects such as the “Chavacano Corpus and Reader Project” in Zamboanga. The aim of this contribution is to provide up-to-date information about the projects, their background, implementation and future. It also offers a critical evaluation of the educational materials planned and used, and the methodology employed in the projects. As neither a standardised orthography nor a comprehensive presentation of the grammars of the varieties exist, the paper also examines the orthographic choices in the different educational materials. Theoretically, the critical assessment is based on the constructivist approach to learning. A brief discussion of the differences between foreign language and mother tongue education is offered because the materials and educational programmes do not always keep these approaches separate. The paper focuses on the case of Cavite City, but also makes reference to the projects in Cotabato and Zamboanga that have been described elsewhere (Tardo 2006; Destua 2006; Concepcion & Jovellano 2002). The Cavite projects are of particular interest because it is a case where complete language attrition is highly likely to happen in only a few decades if structured language maintenance projects do not intervene to reverse the trend of intergenerational language shift. In recent years, there has been a growing preoccupation with the use of Chabacano in Cavite. Its use is seriously declining mainly because it is in competition with English and Filipino, which both enjoy a high social status in the current climate and are instrumental for social advancement. Revitalisation projects have come to life in order to fight language shift. However, while the city government has actively supported the teaching of Chabacano and its incorporation into the school curriculum, its teaching is currently only being carried out as a non-formal, extra-curricular activity. To support its teaching, work on educational materials is also currently under way in the city. The situation in Cavite was chosen as a starting point because it is a unique example of extra-institutional promotion of language use in a situation where a language could not be easily integrated into the official educational system as a medium of instruction or as a subject. It is also a good example of grassroots activism in heritage language promotion as part of a wider project of local history and culture promotion. The information on the Cavite projects was gathered from local activists using questionnaires and interviews during spring 2007. The paper therefore focuses on the viewpoint of the planner and material designer. I did not have the opportunity to attend classes or to gather comments and opinions from students and parents, which is clearly a shortcoming. I compare the Cavite projects with similar ones in Cotabato and Zamboanga. The comparative analysis provides useful insights for the production of language materials in local language promotion. This article is organized as follows; First, I present the theoretical basis of language learning and education on which this study is based. Second, I discuss the sociolinguistic setting of the Chabacano communities, including the language and education policies and the history of minority language education in the Philippines.

 Eeva Sippola

Third, I€ present the language maintenance projects in Cavite and compare them to those in Zamboanga and Cotabato. The final part summarises the findings and discusses their implications.

2.  Some theoretical considerations 2.1  Language learning and education The use of the first language in education has been considered an essential part of education since the UNESCO meeting in 1951 (cf. UNESCO 1951 and Orata 1953 for a Philippine experiment). Appel & Muysken (1987:€61) discuss the arguments in the UNESCO report and show that it takes into consideration the educational situation and the future of children speaking a minority language. Education in the first language is necessary for the development of the first language of a child, which in turn is necessary for the acquisition of any second language, be that the majority language, the language of education or a foreign language. A child’s first language is normally the best medium for learning, especially in the early stages, and reading and writing in the first language should precede literacy in any further language. On a more general level, Appel & Muysken state that the general cognitive development of the child is delayed if the child does not receive initial education in his or her mother tongue. Moreover, the inclusion of the first language and culture in the educational process is important for creating a positive self-image and for developing a healthy personality. Despite this, the majority of children continue to be educated in a language that they have only minimal exposure to or that is altogether foreign to them due to practical and political consideration. Thomas & Collier (1997:€ 15–17) have also shown that first language education determines a child’s overall academic success. They suggest that children raised bilingually from birth and children dominant in English who are losing their heritage language benefit significantly from the academic work through their two languages. If language minority students are expected to produce the same academic results as mainstream students, society will have to provide them with both effective second language teaching and an effective valorisation of their first language.2 Current trends in language didactics consider a foreign language or a second language not just to have an instrumental value for reaching other skills, but it is seen as a skill, knowledge and culture subject in itself. Learners have an important input in the learning process and the language empowers the learner in diverse aspects of life (Tella & Harjanne 2004:€ 44–46). Learning is the outcome of teaching and .  In this US study, the first or native language is defined as the language(s) to which the child was regularly exposed to as an infant.



Chabacano for everyone 

studying a language, and living the experience, connected to the cultural competence and environment.

2.2  The constructivist approach in the study of education and learning A society’s educational policies and approaches to learning are outcomes of complex social decisions, and changes need time and resources at all educational levels. As a result, the model of empirical behaviourism which preceded constructivist approaches is currently still widely used in teaching, although the mechanical nature and the teacher-centredness of this approach has been criticised for not furthering a deeper learning process and for not putting sufficient emphasis on the individual learner as the protagonist of learning. Research on education has shown that the constructivist approach currently gives rise to good learning results and is sensitive to the needs of students in typical every day situations. The constructivist approach is a holistic and meaning-based theory that focuses on the individual’s internal processes of learning; it emphasises the individual nature of learning. The learner constructs knowledge through his or her experiences; he or she selects, interprets and structures information based on his or her earlier understanding and views. The learner is not a tabula rasa in the learning process; prior conceptions of the world, skills and attitudes have already shaped the cognitive model of the learner and there already exists a schema for the processing and interpretation of new information. In the classroom situation, the learner plays an active role when interacting with the environment and gaining understanding. The active processing and involvement of the learner in the learning process gives better learning results on a deeper cognitive level. Despite the focus on the individual’s learning process, constructivism also emphasises the importance of the context of learning such as the social setting, the physical location and its cultural embeddedness (cf. Met 1998:€37–38; Kupari & Välijärvi 2005).

3.  The social background of the Chabacano projects Multilingualism affects the educational and learning situation in a variety of ways. The coexistence of various languages in a community creates a natural environment for the acquisition of more than one language. There are various levels where an individual can acquire more than one language; informal settings such as the home or peer groups, and institutional settings such as the school. The models for multilingual education vary according to the goals and general expectations of the policy makers. The main factors influencing the nature of language policies are the cultural and linguistic situation of a region and time- and place-related priorities such as the need for general literacy, the overall value of education or the

 Eeva Sippola

power of language as a means of fostering national identity. Furthermore, the level of standardisation of the languages involved and material and human resources are important aspects that generally should be taken into account (Tucker 1998:€13–14).

3.1  Language policies and bilingual education in the Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines (Republika ng Pilipinas), spreads over thousands of islands in the western Pacific Ocean in Southeast Asia. The country is ethnically diverse and has been subject to European-American influence since the colonial period. The Philippines attained their independence in 1946. Currently, over a hundred local languages and two official languages, English and Filipino, are spoken in the country. Filipino, which is based on the local language Tagalog, is the country’s national language and the main language in the Manila region on the northern island of Luzon. Filipino is generally used for local communication and entertainment while local languages are employed for everyday communication and in the home. The language of business and higher education is mainly English (Gonzalez 1998b: 489, 503; 2003:€3). Sections€6 and 7 of the article XIV of the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines provide the legal foundation for the country’s language policies. They mention Filipino and English as the official languages, Spanish and Arabic as optionally and voluntarily promoted languages, and regional languages, without specification as auxiliary languages of administration and education. Although research on the use of the mother tongue in education and its positive influence on literacy and learning results are known, Filipino society often insists on English from a very early age due to its global prestige (Gonzalez 2003 and my own observations). Discussions on the importance of local languages focuses mainly on the national language Filipino because it is considered to have a national task of uniting the Philippines. It is also widely believed that, except for some minor vernacular languages on the verge of extinction (especially in the Mountain Provinces of Northern Luzon), the local languages are in a good state and their survival is not under threat (Gonzalez 1998b: 520). Generally, Filipinos use their first language as the language of the home and informal communication while the school and the neighbourhood introduce Filipino to nonTagalog families. Consequently, by the second generation the children of non-Tagalog families are bilingual in their home language and Tagalog or Filipino, if not more competent in Tagalog (Gonzalez 1998b: 502). This intergenerational language shift is an important factor to keep in mind, even if the general population is not preoccupied with the state of the local languages. Generally speaking, education is valued in the Philippines and it is seen as a prerequisite for social and economic mobility and basic education, which includes six years of primary school and four years of secondary school, is provided free to all



Chabacano for everyone 

children of school age (FSP 2005). The education system reaches a relatively large part of the population, but the school attendance rates are decreasing. The net enrolment ratio has decreased from 89 percent in 2003–2004 to 74 percent in 2005–2006 at the elementary level, and from 59 percent to 45 percent at the secondary level. In 2005–2006 the school drop out rates were 9 percent at the elementary level and 18€ percent at the secondary level (Statistical Indicators on Philippine Development 2006). Literacy levels among Filipinos are generally high; the functional literacy rate was 84 percent according to the 2003 NSO survey. In the Cavite region the figures for literacy are higher than the national averages. In comparison, the numbers in Zamboanga are the national average in urban areas and slightly lower than the average in rural areas (see also NSO 1994). In the colonial period starting in the second half of the 16th century, under the Spanish missionaries public education had a multilingual character as they used local vernaculars to teach religion. However, from the 19th century onwards, the colonial languages, first Spanish and later English, were the primary media of instruction. In the Spanish colonial period, education was mainly a privilege of the elite and a large part of the population did not receive formal schooling. After World War II and independence, the national language Filipino became the official medium of education in all grades of basic education. However, English effectively remained the main medium of instruction until June 1974 when a bilingual model was introduced by the nationalists (Gonzalez 1998a: 192–194, 2003:€2). The bilingual educational model currently used in the Philippines operationally defines Filipino and English as the media of instruction. Each language is assigned to a distinct set of subject areas. The Department of Education, Culture and Sports’ Order No. 25, decrees Filipino (until 1987 called Pilipino) the medium of instruction in social studies, music, arts, physical education, home economics, practical arts and character education while English is allocated to science, mathematics and technology subjects. The same language allocation is provided in the 1987 Policy on Bilingual Education, which is disseminated through Department Order No. 52, 1987 (Espiritu 2002). The aim of this policy is to ensure that all Filipinos are competent in both Filipino and English. Since children generally learn Filipino in the neighbourhood, but are not used to its use in school and have little or no competence in English prior to starting school, Filipino and English are taught as subjects at all levels to enhance the acquisition of these languages (Espiritu 2002; Gonzalez 1998b: 520). The Department Order No. 52 of the 1987 Policy on Bilingual education also states that the regional languages can be used as auxiliary media of instruction and as initial languages for literacy where needed, especially in grades I and II. Gonzalez (1998a: 194, 196; 1998b: 497) explains that in reality, languages are frequently alternated in classroom situations and the local languages, Tagalog, Ilocano, Cebuano, Pampangan, Bicolano, Waray Visayan, Hiligaynon Visayan, Maranao and Maguindanao, are widely used informally for explanations,

 Eeva Sippola

especially during the initial months of schooling. The teacher explains in Filipino or in English and repeats the same content in the local vernacular to make sure the students understand the materials. The use of the vernacular diminishes as the children go up the educational ladder. Gonzalez admits that “there are no hard data on actual use of the vernacular, but one can surmise that the continued use of the vernacular does not go beyond the first year as afterwards a variety involving alternation between Filipino and English is used, with some code-mixing depending on the language competence of the teacher.” The Bilingual Education Policy in the Philippines has three broad goals (cf. Espiritu 2002): a. the improvement of the quality of education by the use of various languages: Filipino, English and the local vernaculars, b. the development of Filipino and its propagation as a symbol of national unity and identity, and c. the maintenance of English as an important international language. However, to date the policy has not achieved these goals. As a result, for a part of the population, especially in the rural areas, the educational results are not very encouraging (Gonzalez 1998a: 204). The main obstacles to the use of local languages in education are the lack of resources for teacher training, political differences on administrative issues, and the production of language and subject-related teaching materials (Gonzalez 1998b: 506–508, 2003; Sibayan 1971:€1046).

3.2  The sociolinguistic settings and education of Chabacano communities The sociolinguistic settings of Chabacano speaking communities vary according to place and time. Generally, in all three Chabacano speaking communities studied here, the members are bilingual to varying degrees in Chabacano and either one of the main regional languages, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Cebuano, or English for some families. At one end of the continuum there are Chabacano speakers who can be considered members of a minority language group. They have learned the dominant language for instance through formal education. At the other end, there are Chabacano speakers who are essentially monolingual in the main regional languages but maintain some knowledge of the heritage language Chabacano; they are learning it as a second language. Highly multilingual situations, in which people speak and learn two or more coexisting€local and in many cases also institutional languages, fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum (cf. Siegel 2005c: 179). The latter situation is characteristic of the Philippines in general, as the languages of schooling and national society are primarily Tagalog or Filipino and English. According to Giles & Byrne (1982), acquisition of native-like proficiency in a second language such as Tagalog in the case of the



Chabacano for everyone 

Philippines is highly favoured if there is a strong motivation for ethnic integration and a group’s first language is not an important marker of group identity or if the learners identify with or have status in other social groups, based on social categories such as occupation, religion or gender. These factors are characteristic of the situation in Cavite City.3 In recent years, Chabacano has become a minority language due to increased population movement from other parts of the Philippines to Cavite City and Ternate further to the West on the coast. In Cavite City, educational projects need to promote and possibly revitalise the language in cases where language shift is well under way. In Zamboanga and for some parts of the population of Ternate the situation is different. Here, Chabacano is still widely used at home and some of the children have experienced problems at school because they are not sufficiently proficient in the majority languages and media of instruction, Filipino and English. However, overall the pressure to acculturate in the name of national unity is stronger in the Southern parts of the Philippines than in Cavite City and Ternate, as there are no differences in local culture or regional language in these municipalities, located right next to the capital. There are two approaches to Chabacano in education: its use as a language of teaching and learning and its teaching as a subject. Philippine language policies only really permit the former approach to a limited extent in that they allow the use of any regional language as an auxiliary medium of instruction and as an initial language for literacy where needed, especially in the first grades. Chabacano was used as a medium of instruction in elementary grades in the Zamboanga region during the vernacular education policy in the 1960s (cf. Forman 1972:€4).4 The Chabacano materials used in education were mostly unpublished handbooks on grammar and glossaries, texts, and linguistic notes.5 They were organised according to the Spanish tradition because, at the time, Spanish models dominated the discussion about good language and correct grammar for Chabacano. Even after the official suspension of the vernacular programmes, the materials continued to be

.  See Fernández (2001: vii) for further information on the sociolinguistic setting and the endangerment of Chabacano, and the problems encountered with the census data. .  There are no historical accounts on education from Cotabato, except that in the 1800s the language of schooling was Spanish (Riego de Dios 1979:€277). .  Lipski (1987) makes no mention of the actual titles of these materials, but Forman (1972:€ 4) gives the titles Mi Abecedario na Chavacano and Si Tito: libro suplementario de Chavacano II and III by T.S. Salvador and El diamon Vida by F.I. De Los Reyes. In the general bibliography on Chabacano on that period appear Batausa 1969; Domingo 1967; Evangelista 1972; Llamado 1972; Macasantos 1971; Maño 1963; Ramos 1963; Riego de Dios 1979 & 1989 (originally an unpublished thesis from 1976) –€none, except maybe Ramos 1963, is actually directed at educational purposes.

 Eeva Sippola

used in the schools well into the 1980’s especially in the rural areas. In that decade, bilingual education in Chabacano and English, and Tagalog as a compulsory subject, was the normal practice in all public schools and in the majority of the private schools in the Zamboanga region despite the official prohibitions against halo halo –€the mixing of various languages in the classroom (Lipski 1987:€40, 50–51). However, even in that period, there were relatively few instructional materials in Chabacano or other local languages because publishers were mostly interested in publishing materials for the national market. At the end of the 1960’s books were drafted and printed only for the 12 major languages, namely Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicolano, Waray, Pampangan, Pangasinan, Magindanao, Tausug, Ibanag and Sama (Sibayan 1971:€1046). In Ternate the teachers who were from the community could use Chabacano as an auxiliary medium, but only in the first grades. Generally, teachers commented that the use of Chabacano was not permitted at all in school; quite the contrary, its use was prohibited and attracted punishment. Nowadays, teachers argue that it is more important for children to reach the required level in Tagalog and English. However, the teachers admit that children coming from Chabacano families sometimes have learning difficulties if the teaching is in Tagalog or English. The same could be noted for Tagalog children that learn certain subjects in English. For Cavite City there are no accounts of Chabacano being used as an auxiliary medium in education. As in Ternate, initially its use was not permitted in school. However, there have been sporadic attempts at conserving the language by means of language instruction and to revive interest in it among the younger generations. In 1964, a Chabacano association called Círculo Chabacano Caviteño was formed and after a few years it had more than a hundred active members. The aim of the association was to promote and to enhance the use of Chabacano in the city of Cavite. The association organised activities related to the local culture such as cultural evenings called veladas and parades in the town celebrations, and gave scholarships to talented students. The association officially ceased operations in 1992 because of lack of interest (Romanillos 2006:€23, 113).

4.  The Chabacano teaching projects 4.1  The Cavite City projects Starting in the 1990’s a new generation of language activists in Cavite City organised the promotion and teaching of Chabacano. Currently, there are at least two associations or movements that work to support Chabacano in Cavite City: El Movimiento para el Preservation del Lenguage Chabacano (MPLC) and Asociacion Chabacano del



Chabacano for everyone 

Ciudad de Cavite (ACCC). They are engaged in promoting Chabacano and are also involved in a language standardisation project and in the creation of educational materials such as dictionaries and textbooks. Enrique Escalante, a native speaker of Chabacano and a retired schools’ division superintendent, who is a member of MPLC, has published an introductory dictionary-textbook called Chabacano for Everyone (see below) and is editing a new textbook for Chabacano revival classes. Members of ACCC produced a dictionary of Cavite Chabacano that appeared in 2009. The editor-in-chief, Librada Llamado, is also a native Chabacano speaker and an educator and linguist who has published several textbooks on English. In addition, there was a project for compiling a Cavite Chabacano Dictionary that was initiated with the funding of the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation (SPCC) in 2002, and was headed by a researcher of De La Salle University in Manila. However, the focus of the project has changed and the current title is Un Diccionario Español-Tagalog, ‘a Spanish-Tagalog dictionary’. There are also a number of other activities dedicated to the promotion of the language in Cavite City. On the second Sunday of every month, a church service is held in Chabacano. Since the priest is not a native speaker of Chabacano, he generally reads a sermon previously prepared by Chabacano activists; it follows the Spanish Catholic sermon tradition. In the first week of September, a local culture week is organised that features an oratory contest in Chabacano prepared by the Cavite City Government and the Division of City Schools (p.c. Ballesteros). The MPLC participates in the celebration of Chabacano Day featuring speech contests in Chabacano for elementary and high school students of both public and private schools. The association has also organised the printing and posting of signs Buenas. Entra Ustedes ‘Good day, come in’ for shops in the city, and the printing and distribution of t-shirts and other supplies that carry the slogan Chabacano siempre ‘Chabacano always/forever’. In the domain of the media, a local newspaper Cavite Expose has a column in Chabacano, written by Escalante. He has also composed and written Chabacano songs and poems, as well as theatre pieces in Chabacano. Since there is no budget dedicated to Chabacano, the expenses for these activities have to be met by the activists, and therefore have to be relatively small. Nevertheless, these activities have been quite successful and have attracted the attention of many people (p.c. Ballesteros; p.c Escalante). In turn, the �������������� ACCC���������� has cooperated with the City Government to promote Chabacano and the preservation of the local culture.6 The association has also had an internet site distributing information on

.  There has also been official support for Chabacano teaching as the former mayor Tim Encarnación Jr. and his councilors prepared a petition to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports to include the teaching of Cavite Chabacano as an optional course in the Cavite City National High School curriculum (Romanillos 2006:€126).

 Eeva Sippola

Chabacano. However, due to the lack of materials and human resources, the site is no longer maintained. According to Escalante, the teaching of Chabacano has never been formally integrated into the curriculum of the public or private schools in Cavite. However, the teaching of Chabacano has sporadically taken place in some non-formal education classes. In the early 1990s, informal teaching of Chabacano was organised in the Manuel S. Rojas elementary school in the San Roque district of the city. Romanillos (2006:€24) gives credit to the education sector of the district, particularly to district supervisor Dr. Mendoza, for the revival initiatives. Norma Cástor Bersabe, a basic education teacher, who is also the author of one of the first textbooks compiled for teaching Chabacano in Cavite, El primer libro del chavacano ‘The first book of Chabacano’, was in charge of teaching the course. The classes took place for a total of five years (Romanillos 2006:€24). Not much information is available on this educational experiment. For instance, there is no information about the frequency of the classes, the group size, etc., but we do know that the courses were free of charge and it was also possible to request individual guidance from the teacher (p.c. Ballesteros). In 1995, the same teacher also taught Chabacano to a group of children in the Cavite City Library and Museum as part of an extra curricular activity, which had the moral support of the superintendent of public schools of Cavite City (Romanillos 2006:€126). This course was probably specially carried out for the children of parents who are actively involved in language promotion activities. Similar language classes were also planned for all the schools in Cavite City, and the ACCC prepared a proposal for the superintendent of the Schools’ Division to include Chabacano lessons in the elementary school curriculum. They proposed that every elementary school in Cavite should include a daily Chabacano class for the first grades. However, to date, nothing much has come out of this because of political disagreements. Exceptionally, between 2003 and 2007 grades I, II and VI received some introductory classes in Chabacano in the Manuel S. Rojas elementary school (p.c. Llamado, p.c. Sta-Ana). However, the principal of the school decided to put an end to the classes; Chabacano teaching continues outside the school in informal classes attended mostly by adults who are interested in learning the language. A dozen students were enrolled, but actual attendance was probably lower. The course fee was 50 Philippine pesos per month and classes are held once week. After completing three moths of classes, the students receive a diploma. In 2007, three students finished the course successfully. The teacher is a native speaker of Chabacano and an elementary school teacher. She used Bersabé’s book as the material and complements it with her own explanations and periodic tests for controlling the conversational skills of the students. The division office of the Department of Education was responsible for the administration of the course and the diplomas. Other activities also take place in some schools in Cavite City. In the Julian Felipe elementary school, and earlier also in Manuel S. Rojas, the students sing the city hymn



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in Chabacano in the flag raising ceremony, and practice and perform plays, prayers and poems in the language. Escalante wrote most of the materials for these activities. The students are not necessarily Chabacano speakers themselves, but the activists believe that this way the children learn about the local culture and history, and those who do not speak Chabacano at home get an introduction to the language. However, the activities are not included in the curriculum and the implementation depends on the interests of the principal and the teachers. The educators involved in the Chabacano projects are typically unpaid volunteers who generally only receive a few introductory lessons on teaching the language. There are no special requirements for Chabacano teachers other than that they have to be native speakers of the language (p.c. Llamado; p.c. Escalante). However, most of them are retired teachers who have many years of teaching experience. In the Philippines, teachers follow the teacher education programme, which requires a graduate bachelor degree in education and a special teacher training examination to obtain a teaching position in a government school (Acedo 1999). Since there is no formal teaching or learning guide or formal support from the local or national government, Chabacano teachers are generally free to teach whatever aspect of the language they are interested in and course contents are highly variable. Activists argue that a change in the implementation of the teaching of Chabacano is imminent since there is increasing interest in formal instruction in Chabacano in the community. Private schools have also expressed their willingness to integrate it in their curriculum and the vice-mayor is eager to offer Chabacano lessons in the public education sector as well (p.c. Escalante). However, the main obstacle to the implementation of revival projects and the teaching of Chabacano as a subject and its use as an auxiliary medium of instruction at school is the lack of adequate financial and material resources, and the lack of political support at the national level.

4.2  Educational materials used in Cavite City The textbook by Bersabé is still used in the courses in Manuel S. Rojas elementary school in Cavite City but it has not been up-dated any further since the death of the author. Its presentation is very basic, yet efficient for initial acquaintance with the language. The textbook has 28 chapters, which consist of short texts, sample phrases, vocabulary lists and songs in Chabacano. There are no exercises; only the last chapter has a reading comprehension text with questions. Chabacano and Tagalog are the languages used in the book, and all the texts and examples have Tagalog translations. For this reason, critics have pointed out that it does not contain sufficient exercises nor does it specify the reading skills to be developed (p.c. Escalante). To deal with the lack of appropriate teaching materials, two independent projects were initiated in Cavite City that are both headed by experienced educators. One of the materials

 Eeva Sippola

under construction is the dictionary of ACCC. The other material project started with the book Chabacano… for Everyone, a Guide to the Chabacano Language by Escalante and has continued with a textbook, including a teacher training manual, a conversation guide for Chabacano speakers, and a grammar of Cavite Chabacano, all currently being developed. The materials are aimed at second language learners of Chabacano (p.c. Escalante). Below I discuss the textbook project based on the manuscript distributed by the author in 2006. The book will contain 16 different chapters that are roughly organised by subject matter. On the one hand, the learner is confronted with everyday life and typical school situations, and on the other, grammatical rules are explained. The different parts are interconnected and the book follows a practical approach instead of being replete with heavy grammatical jargon. There are also texts specially designed for group work rather than to be simply read. The book is written in Chabacano and English. Chabacano is used in the introduction and for the guidelines, while English is used for grammatical notes and as an auxiliary language in the vocabulary sections. The exercises mostly consist of communicative oral practice exercises that also include interactional routines (e.g. responding to questions based on one’s own knowledge) and some introductory drills. The first published book of the material projects is Chabacano… for Everyone, a Guide to the Chabacano Language. In the introduction the author gives a very brief overview of the external history of the Chabacano language in Cavite City. He defines Chabacano as a mixture of Spanish and Tagalog. Moreover, he argues that the main reason for the decline in the use of Chabacano is the immigration of non-Chabacano speakers to Cavite City. The author gives “an initial presentation of the language to provide a basis for its preservation and its use in daily conversation, writing activities and educational activities” (Escalante 2005: i). The linguistic introduction to the language in chapter two aims to aid in the learning of the language. It consists of a presentation of the Chabacano alphabet, its phonemic and grammatical structures. The dictionary part lists approximately 1,200 commonly used words with sample phrases and transcriptions to facilitate pronunciation. The author follows the Spanish alphabetical order for the entries instead of the Philippine order, as ng does not appear independently, but under n. The examples are declarative and imperative sentences that, according to the author, are typical of every day language use (Escalante 2005:€i). Some entries also give additional information on derivations or combinations in idiomatic expressions. The text part contains basic conversational utterances, a list of question words, poetry, a prayer, a song and a short story that all include basic vocabulary items such as kinship terms, numbers, adjectives, colours, religious terms etc. It also features an article on the religious celebrations organised in Cavite City. The last part of the book contains lists of pronouns, days of the week, months, numbers, family terms,



Chabacano for everyone 

body parts, parts of the house and furniture, food terms and cooking items, as well as school-related vocabulary.

4.3  A critical evaluation of the Cavite City projects Even though Chabacano in Cavite City has been the focus of informal education projects at different points in time, its status remains marginal because following the regulations of the Philippine Department of Education, education in Chabacano is not official. However, its teaching is generally closely related to other local culture and heritage activities that are in principle supported by the local government. I do not have information about the classroom situation or the role of teachers and students. This critical assessment therefore deals with the social context, the contextual suitability, and the language materials. From a constructivist point of view, the projects in Cavite City can be seen as a true real life situation, where the needs and interests of the individual and the speech community meet. The individual language learner or developer, in the case of the activists, may benefit from the language learning activities in two ways: they acquire language skills and they increase their self-esteem through on active reclamation of the “lost” heritage language. In the case of some children, usually those who use the language at home, formal instruction may facilitate formal mainstream education conducted in their second languages, Tagalog and English. For the adults, the learning is motivated by an interest in local culture and language. As far as the language teaching materials are concerned, they are based on a clear framework that assures that the learner receives a solid and extensive introduction to the language. The introductory book Chabacano… for everyone is clear in its presentation and the examples are well constructed and to the point. This is also true of the sample sentences in the dictionary part, which are linguistically and culturally informative. Another valuable feature of this book is the pronunciation guide for the sentences. It is very systematic and easy to use, especially for Tagalog speakers, even though it is idiosyncratic and does not follow any general standard. Some other available dictionaries for the language also offer this kind of feature (similar dictionaries are e.g. Camins 1989 and Riego de Dios 1989). This is especially valuable as the dictionary follows Spanish orthographical norms in order to highlight the historic connection between Spanish and Cavite Chabacano. However, there are orthographic inconsistencies such as the representation of 〈gi〉 in gisa ‘sauté, fry’ and gigante ‘giant’ with the pronunciation guides [gi-SA] and [hi-GAN-ti], thus mixing the orthographic practice for the sounds /h/ and /g/. Likewise, there are two representations of the sound [k], 〈ca〉 and 〈ka〉 in casi [KA-si] ‘almost’, casi [ka-SI] ‘to blame’ or ‘because’, and kasi [ka-SI] ‘because’, showing that the Philippine spelling is used for entries of Philippine

 Eeva Sippola

origin.7 In addition, the diacritic accent marks used for Spanish are left out, which can be problematic in the text part that has no pronunciation guide. This may, however, be a minor issue because readers would generally be familiar with the pronunciation. Another part of the book that has not been clearly laid out is the selection of dictionary entries. They appear arbitrary and seem to be related to the experience of the compiler. A possible reason for this is that the book has largely been a one-man’s project and that there has been no opportunity to rely on a large language corpus. The inclusion of texts and thematic lists serves the language learner as they can be connected to real life situations. Based on these observations the textbook currently in the making, which follows a similar approach but does away with the previous book’s shortcomings, is most likely going to be a success. In its current state, the manuscript promises to be a useful teaching tool that may also be used as a self-learning guide. Due to the many interactional and communicative tasks, it is, however, better suited to a traditional classroom situation with group work. Thematically, the manuscript is suitable for elementary school level teaching. However, its focus on both everyday life situations and on socio-cultural issues such as information about the language, its current state and historical origins, local history and culture clearly enhances its educational value, particularly for adult learners. This supports the internal process of learning and positively recognises the different sections of the Chabacano community, namely native speakers and language learners. While this is clearly a promising approach, detailed knowledge about the experiences of the learners and teachers is needed in order to find out how this turns out in practice. While the sustainability of the projects is mainly threatened by the lack of financial resources, there are also other issues. For instance, at present, there are two different associations, the MPLC and the ACCC, which pursue the implementation and revival of Chabacano. This can lead to rivalry and disintegration, and possibly to a loss of achievements. It would be financially and otherwise more beneficial to the cause to join these positive forces through constructive cooperation between all activists and associations. As far as the adaptability to other contexts is concerned, this kind of grassroots activity in language revitalisation and language learning is a good start that is often needed in order to obtain more institutional support – be that local government or some actor at international level. These experiments, even on a very small scale, show the commitment of the native community to the projects, which is one of the main requirements in reaching some kind of continuity, even in the absence

.  For a critical discussion of the orthographic problems for Chabacano in Camins (1989) see Forman (2001:€101–104).



Chabacano for everyone 

of funding or strong structural and methodological support. The projects keep reemerging, even where the supporting structures might be poor. Enthusiasm and the growing preoccupation with language loss encourage activists to raise awareness in other sectors as well.

4.4  Cotabato: Learning modules in Chabacano In Cotabato, the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation (SPCC) has funded at least two projects aimed at producing materials for language learning and preservation. One was a project to publish a bilingual Cotabato Chabacano-English dictionary that received funding in 2001, and the other a textbook for Chabacano classes that was published in 2002.8 It was not possible to contact the producers of the language materials, nor the organisers of the courses at the University of Notre Dame and therefore the following review relies purely on the didactic material. The book Learning modules in Chabacano is the outcome of a project that the Asosacion Chabacano de Cotabato executed in coordination with the University Research Center and the Museum and Center for Mindanao Cultures at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City. The project formed part of “Towards a Common Future”, which is a programme for Cultural Cooperation between the Philippine Universities and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Spain. In the introduction of the book it is stated that the locals’ preoccupation with their culture and language led to the creation of a module for learning Chabacano. At the time, only older people use the language at home or in their community while the younger generations are shifting to Hiligaynon, Cebuano, and Tagalog. Most youngsters only have a very limited competence in Chabacano. Consequently, Chabacano is disappearing rapidly from every day conversations and from public life. This module offers an opportunity for young people to learn Chabacano and as a result to revive the Chabacano culture, and the traditions and customs of the Cotabato region. The textbook Learning modules in Chabacano offers a teacher’s guide and exercise materials for language learning. The book is divided into nine chapters that include an introduction, four grammatical chapters, a review, a glossary, some texts and an appendix, which is an excerpt of the introduction of Riego de Dios’ dictionary (1989). Of the four grammatical chapters, lecture I introduces greetings, the presentation of oneself and his or her family, and the University of Notre Dame. Lecture II deals with

.  (1)€Publication Project, Mangonon Dolores, Notre Dame University, Cotabato Chabacano Dictionary, actual title: Chabakano de Cotabato Diksyunaryo. (2)€ Research Grant, Daguino Mangonon Catacata, Concepcion Dolores Dolores, Vicente, Trinidad, Notre Dame University, Functional Chabacano Classes for Young Chabacanos in Cotabato, actual title: 1. Learning to Speak Chabacano 2. Familia Memorabilia (SPCC 1997–2006).

 Eeva Sippola

nouns and the classification of common and proper nouns as well as singular and plural forms. Lecture III deals with pronouns and their function, forms and use. Lecture IV gives explanations on verbs, the tenses and some sentence types such as questions. Adjectives, prepositions and conjunctions are dealt with in lecture V. All these chapters are organised as follows: first comes a short teacher’s guide for the lecture that provides the objectives, topics, learning activities and drills. This is followed by explanatory texts for students, and by exercises. The most common exercises are drills and the filling in of gaps. Particularly in the first chapters, there are also a number of communicative exercises. The review covers the concepts and themes introduced in earlier chapters such as the motivation for learning Chabacano and combines grammatical exercises of different subjects. The themes dealt with earlier are taken up in more elaborate texts, and there is also a drama exercise and a recitation. The glossary is divided into body parts, days of the week, months and time concepts, professions, family members, house, nature and animal vocabulary, as well as the numerical system. The items have explanations in Chabacano and translations in English. The texts include songs and a prayer, all translations or versions of English or Spanish originals.

4.5  A critical evaluation of learning modules in Chabacano The main merit of the book is its overall division and organisation. The same book can be used as a teacher’s guide and a learning resource for students. This helps its distribution to different groups and locations and is useful in situations with scarce material resources. From the first chapter it is nevertheless evident that the book was in the first instance aimed at a select group at Notre Dame University and used with the help of the teacher. An important shortcoming of the book is the mixing of first language and second language learning approaches. Following a typical second language learning approach, the textbook starts off with communicative exercises and an introduction to the culture. However, it continues mainly in a first language approach in the following chapters that focus on basic grammatical concepts where all the grammatical explanations and tasks are given in Chabacano, and English is only employed for the translation of dictionary entries. This suggests that the author assumes that learners already have quite a good command of the language. However, the exercises clearly require a teacher’s guidance, as gap-filling and drilling-type exercises require feedback from a teacher. Another problem is that the orthographic choices adopted in this resource book are quite complex. The spelling is a mixture of two systems. There is a tendency to spell the Philippine words as in the source language while the Spanish words are broadly presented in the Spanish orthography, yet adapted in several ways. First, accents are not marked in any words. Second, the Spanish-based system has been influenced by the Philippine system. For instance, the Philippine grapheme 〈ng〉 instead of Spanish 〈n〉



Chabacano for everyone 

is used in some words like bringca (Sp. brincar) ‘to jump’. Third, the written forms of some words are inconsistent, such as 〈j〉 in jente (Sp. gente) ‘man, person, people’ representing what probably is the sound /h/; and 〈b〉 in huebos (Sp. huevos) ‘eggs’ but 〈v〉 in ta vende (Sp. vender) ‘to sell’, for the sound /b/. The sound /s/ is often written using the Spanish orthography of the word as with 〈c〉 in necesita (Sp. necesitar) ‘need’, but for example the verb ase (Sp. hacer) ‘make, do’ is written with 〈s〉. As a consequence, this presents difficulties for language learners who do not have prior knowledge of the pronunciation and the sounds of Chabacano, and the textbook is somewhat difficult to use, especially since no pronunciation guide is included. Also this implicitly emphasises the importance of the teacher, who can guide in the correct pronunciation or preferred orthographic choices for writing.

4.6  Zamboanga: The Chavacano Language Corpus and Reader Project Zamboanga is the largest and most vital Chabacano speech community. The Division of City Schools in the Zamboanga area, Department of Education Region IX, promotes bilingual education. In practice, this means that Chabacano is used in the elementary grades to facilitate teaching and enhance content learning by Chabacano speaking students, but this measure is not understood as a form of language promotion. There is no information about the materials being used in the elementary grades or for teaching Chabacano as a subject in the region. Nonetheless, various actors in the city actively promote the language. There is legislative and institutional support from the municipal council Sangguniang Panlungsod that has different ordinances and resolutions for preserving and promoting the Chabacano dialect and the history and culture of the City of Zamboanga (Sangguniang Panlungsod 1990, 1998a & b, 2001, 2006a & b). Furthermore, The Western Mindanao State University and Ateneo de Zamboanga University and the City Government participate in different Chabacano projects such as oratory contests, Chavacano Conferences (1999, 2004, 2007), book projects (Camins 1989; Chambers & Wee 2003), and even a full-length film in Chabacano and Tagalog.9 The aim of one of the projects is to compile a representative corpus of Zamboanga Chabacano and a reader. This project is coordinated under the titles Chavacano Language Corpus Project (CLCP) and Chavacano Language Reader Project (CLRP). For the purposes of this overview, the projects are treated as one unit because they are an example of how a general orthography for education materials could be developed on the basis of a corpus analysis.

.  Center for Performing and Visual Arts of Ateneo de Zamboanga together with MONAD Studio produced a full-length film in Chabacano and Tagalog entitled El Amor de Pilar in August 2006 with director Patrick Almaden.

 Eeva Sippola

The Ateneo de Zamboanga and the Language Research Center, which is a Division of McNeil Technologies Inc., are jointly engaged in the construction of a corpus, a reader and a dictionary of spoken Chabacano in the Zamboanga area. The project is funded by McNeil Technologies Inc.10 The Language Research Center and Dunwoody Press have previously worked on the languages of Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines.11 Their interest in Chabacano arose because they wanted to work with more languages of the region and the southern Philippines seemed a natural choice. The company became interested in the least spoken languages of Western Mindanao partly due to the Chabacano glossary posted on-line by the city, which is still being expanded. The aim of the CLCP is to lay the groundwork for the extensive study of the Chabacano language and culture, the standardisation and development of the language, and to promote a sense of pride in the local language (ICSWM 2003). The materials they produce usually target second language learners since they presume some knowledge of another language such as Spanish or Tagalog. The Institute of Cultural Studies for Western Mindanao, a unit of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University, carried out the projects that were headed by the Language Research Center. The corpus project was conducted between August 2003 and May€2004 and the reader project started in August 2004 and the reader was published in 2009. The core parts of the projects were the collection of data, the processing of data, and the compilation of the reader, which in turn is divided into a selection of texts, translation, and text development (p.c. Destua; Tardo 2006). The data collection for the CLCP was carried out by native speakers of Chabacano, residents of Zamboanga City, and college graduates aged between 23 and 27 years. Each person involved in the data collection process had a personal identification code and each piece collected or processed involves this code. For more information on the training of data collectors for this project, see Destua (2006). The data collection focused on printed and recorded sources. Printed sources included advertisements, magazines, books, newspapers, the internet, reference works, and literary pieces. Recorded sources included public speeches, radio and television programmes, and recorded conversations among native speakers. The recorded material was initially transcribed and transferred into electronic format in the collector’s individual spelling. A proof-reader then compared the handwritten and the electronic data and made an individual decision about the orthography in case of differences. The Language Research Center recommended that the Zamboanga team would not alter the original,

.  The company gets support from both public and private sources, but their policy is not to divulge the actual sponsors. .  Published works by Dunwoody press include Cebuano Newspaper Reader, Hiligaynon Reader, Ilokano Newspaper Reader, Intensive Tausug, Kapampangan Reader, Tagalog Newspaper Reader, and Tagalog Slang Dictionary among others.



Chabacano for everyone 

handwritten spelling made by the collector. In fact, it was hoped that an analysis of the individual transcription systems would help in devising a commonly acceptable standardised writing system (p.c. Zorc; Destua 2006). The Chavacano Literary Contest represented the second stage of data collection. It was designed for collecting original and unpublished materials originally written in Chabacano. Submissions did not have to follow a specific writing system but the pieces could only be submitted by residents form the area (Destua 2006). The book Chavacano reader uses texts from the corpus collected in the CLCP. The Chavacano reader includes approximately 45 selections of different Chavacano texts, their English translations and glossaries with grammatical and cultural notes. The reader will also include a grammatical overview, pronunciation guide and phonemic notation and an overall glossary (Tardo 2006). Even though the main audience for all the materials produced by the Language Research Center are adult language learners and second language speakers, the company also allows the Ateneo de Zamboanga to use these materials for its own purposes, such as for the promotion of languages and cultures of the region. The intention is to enable locals to initiate their own projects, i.e. the development of textbooks and general reference books about the use of present-day Zamboanga Chavacano (p.c. Creamer; Tardo 2006).

4.7  A  critical evaluation of the Chavacano Language Corpus and Reader Project The projects were designed specifically with foreign second language learners in mind. This is questionable since the most vital group of Chabacano speakers is located in and around Zamboanga, and they would profit a great deal from the standardisation of Chabacano and its full inclusion in education system. The main reasons for this state of affairs are first the national language policy that does not make any allowance for minority languages and second the aim of the foreign producer to mainly target second language learners. Therefore the main groups of people who benefit from the Chabacano materials are foreigners in the Zamboanga region, people from other parts of the Philippines, and linguists and language developers interested in Chabacano. However, there still remains the possibility to also develop materials for first language speakers of Chabacano based on the project. Overall, the project is well designed and conducted in that it includes a clear documentation policy, quality checking at different stages, and a final evaluation. Moreover, it is sensitive to the social context and is based on materials originating from the native speaker community. Learners get a good insight into the culture and everyday life in the Zamboanga region. The comments from the editors provide some insights as to the nature of the orthographic solutions for the reader (p.c. Zorc). Initially, it was decided to use an etymology-based orthography for Chabacano so that Spanish-origin words would

 Eeva Sippola

be spelled using the Spanish orthography and Tagalog-origin words would be spelled using the Tagalog orthographic conventions. This approach was later abandoned because it gave rise to quite a lot of uncertainty and heterogeneity€– for instance, the word / hindiô/ ‘not’ was spelled as hindi, hende, jende. To rectify this, the editors developed a more homogeneous spelling system that is closely related to the one used for Tagalog and most other Philippine languages (cf.€Forman 1972). Some shortcomings of this project were acknowledged by the persons involved and addressed by project management. Tardo (2006) notes that the base for developing the reader should be expanded to meet a greater variety of learners’ needs, to accommodate different kinds of thematic interests, types of genres, and texts from different time periods. To achieve this, it was necessary to provide further training to the research assistants and to engage in a second phase of data collection (Tardo 2006). So far, this project provides a good model for the development of corpus-based language materials in other locations. However, it remains to be seen how well the project will work once the foreign professional organisations turn the project over to the locals.

5.  Conclusion The reality of the Philippine educational system contradicts UNESCO’s declaration that the first language is the best medium for learning and for the development of cognitive skills, literacy, and a positive self image. While quality education is considered vital for sustained national development and successful participation in the global economy, the Philippine government decrees the national languages Filipino and English as the media of instruction in order to create a sense of national unity and to facilitate international contacts. The fact that minority languages such as Chabacano can be used on an informal basis as auxiliary languages during the first years of education certainly facilitates children’s integration into the educational process. However, this is not sufficient and may, in extreme cases lead to further problems, particularly because teachers are not properly trained in the languages, since there is a lack of adequate teaching materials, and teachers are not obliged to make use of the auxiliary language. The overall learning results from literacy testing provide no cause for immediate concern but there is clearly room for improvement, especially in the rural areas. Although there is little financial institutional support for languages like Chabacano, the various projects are positively viewed by the local authorities. Table€1 compares and evaluates the three Chabacano language projects studied and shows some common features and differences between them. The smaller projects in Cavite and Cotabato target both first language heritage language speakers and second language learners of Chabacano. They are clearly promising in themselves and they also build a vital foundation for the development of additional materials if the



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Table 1.╇ Three Chabacano language projects from 1990–2007 compared Chabacano language promotion in Cavite City

Chabacano language promotion in Cotabato City

Chavacano Corpus and Reader Project in Zamboanga

Actors and support

local associations individual support support of the city council

local association local university international funding cooperation

local university foreign private company support of the local government

Aims and target groups

to promote the language and local traditions targets anyone interested and children in danger of loosing the language

to learn and revive Chabacano and local traditions targets students that enter the local university

to provide language materials and orthographic solutions to instil a sense of pride in the local language targets second language learners

Selection and training of educators – workers

native speakers no structures for training individuals support and provide the rationale

native speakers university structures support from international cooperation

native speakers and linguists extensive training good structures for training

Activities and origin of the approach

teaching of private courses and optional courses in public schools preparation of language materials traditional language teaching supporting activities in the city for language attitudes

teaching an introductory university course preparation of language materials traditional language teaching

aimed at foreign learners outside the Philippines corpus-based project

Future

interest in integrating Chabacano into formal education

possible model for additional educational materials

local continuity and training of local experts adaptation of the materials to first language speakers

Evaluation

language and individual needs and interests are linked within a framework of local culture and heritage funding: lack of materials and lack of cooperation are the main problems commitment of the native community is crucial

no information about the continuity or actual implementation of the project

a good model for corpus based language materials clear design with various stages that are implemented and evaluated first language approach is lacking at this point

 Eeva Sippola

possibility to include Chabacano in formal basic education should arise in the future. These two projects face problems in the implementation of training and support. Generally speaking, however, in order to be sustainable, the projects must develop a clear set of provisions and guidelines and should not rely on individual or funding from foreign organizations alone. In this light, the Zamboanga project appears to be more sustainable since its structural and methodological foundation appears to be more solid. However, it remains to be seen what will happen when the project is turned over to the community. A positive feature of the projects in Cavite and Cotabato is that they aim to integrate language issues into a broader cultural framework and link language acquisition with local heritage and identity-related issues. The educational materials are important for preserving and developing the language, and for passing it on to younger generations. Comparing different materials is a challenging task, but some general remarks can be made with regard to the materials used and produced in these projects. A general overview of the methodology, contents and the orthographic solutions of the materials is presented in Table€2. The good points are that they all followed a clearly laid out methodology and presented the learning contents in a coherent manner. Moreover, all the materials were based on real life situations and the textbooks also included interactional and communicative exercises for the learner, which support individual learning and create a link between the local culture and the original speech group of the language. Other assets were the inclusion of a teacher’s guide in the textbook, the use of appropriate sample sentences and detailed pronunciation guidelines. The Cotabato Learning modules also give useful instructions to both teachers and learners on topic-related issues, which increases its applicability to a range of different settings. The main shortcomings in all their projects are the lack of orthographic standardisation and their preference for an etymologically-based orthography. The materials are not based on a solid phonological analysis and there is a tendency to favor Spanish in the history of the language which governs decisions made for the contemporary language use. Only the Zamboanga corpus and reader project has since found a workable solution. The Cavite case demonstrates that grassroots activism is vital for carrying out and sustaining language revitalisation activities, as well as for raising awareness of the situation. The main problems that loom over the Cavite projects are the lack of educational materials and the lack of cooperation between the different associations and institutional actors committed to the maintenance and revival of Chabacano in Cavite and beyond. As we have seen above, the use of a heritage language can be promoted and preserved outside of institutional language use. However, without increased institutional support including funding, the continuity of the projects is severely endangered. There is the possibility, however, that the Cavite activists could benefit from the corpus and reader project in Zamboanga in the future. The current cooperation



Chabacano for everyone 

Table 2.╇ Three Chabacano educational materials from Cavite, Cotabato and Zamboanga compared Materials

Chabacano… for Everyone, a Guide to the Chabacano Language

Learning modules in Chabacano

Chavacano Language Reader

Style

dictionary

textbook

Reader

Place

Cavite City

Cotabato City

Zamboanga

Writing methodology

individual native speaker

team of native speakers

native speaker based corpus project

Contents

historical account grammatical outline dictionary with pronunciation guide texts and thematic wordlists

introduction grammatically organised chapters review glossary and a few texts appendix on the history of Chabacano teacher’s guide included

texts with translations and cultural notes grammatical overview pronunciation guide and phonemic notation an overall glossary

Orthographic solutions

Spanish-based, but some inconsistencies due to the etymologically-based orthography no diacritic accent marking

etymologically-based orthography no diacritic accent marking

Philippine orthography (initially etymologically-based orthography)

Methodological approach

connection to real life situations not interactional, no exercises clear structure uses mostly a second language approach

communicative and interactional exercises good division into sections for teachers and students clear structure uses mainly a first language approach

second language approach

Role of the teacher

much input needed in order to be used as educational material does not require input from a teacher

input needed, but suitable to be used as educational material

?

Special features

supporting material for education and standardisation work

includes teacher’s guide with clear objectives for each lesson

based on a large corpus may be further development for local purposes

 Eeva Sippola

between the different Chabacano communities is nearly non-existent, even though some contacts were made during the conferences organised in 1999 in Zamboanga and in 2000 and 2008 in Manila. Hopefully, the different actors working to preserve Chabacano and to work towards its incorporation into the Philippine education system can profit from lessons learned from each other’s experiences. In order to reach a vast and diverse audience, the projects need to be coordinated and to communicate with each other. In this way, the materials and teaching methodologies developed would give everyone a chance to get to know the language and to avoid a duplication of effort.

The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe Mirna Bolus

The pedagogical and cultural commission of the teachers union SPEG While the teaching of Creole and in Creole have both been practiced in France’s overseas departments since the 1950s, it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that the French government instituted two competitive qualifying examinations for teachers of Creole. This article discusses the state of the teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe. The introduction of Creole in schools appears to be a step towards official recognition of linguistic diversity by the republic. However, it serves a dual purpose: it meets the requirements of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages while, at the same time, preempting demands by local rights activists that might upset the supposedly peaceful atmosphere of the DOM. Keywords:╇ CAPES; teaching of Creole in Gouadeloupe; Langues et Cultures Régionales (LCR)

1.  Introduction Creole has been present in the Guadeloupe school system since the late 1950s. It was introduced into elementary schools as an educational tool (Lauriette 1957, 1972), then as a subject of study in secondary school during the 1970s and 1980s (Poullet & Telchid 1985). In 2001 the Ministry of National Education (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, MEN) created a field of study in “regional languages and cultures with a specialty in Creole” and a Certificate of Fitness for teachers of secondary education (Certificat d’aptitude au professorat de l’enseignement du second degré, CAPES) in Creole, which among other things implied that there would be an expansion of the teaching of Creole in France’s overseas departments (Départements d’Outre-mer, DOM). Although this expansion did not in fact take place everywhere, debates around this field of study are still ongoing, particularly among teachers. On the one hand there are those who question the usefulness of the subject for students who are supposedly immersed in French culture and do in fact have a command of French. On the other hand there are those who believe that there cannot be command of French without a command of Creole, since students in Guadeloupe grow up in an environment in which both languages and both cultures coexist.

 Mirna Bolus

This article discusses the current state of the teaching of Creole in the educational institutions of Guadeloupe. The first part presents the sociolinguistic situation of the archipelago. Second, I briefly retrace the history of Creole in education in Guadeloupe. In Part Three I discuss the various forms taken by the teaching of regional languages in France, focusing particularly on the competitive examinations for schoolteachers and for the CAPES in Creole. The last part is devoted to the current state of the teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe. Building on the data (observations, interviews, questionnaire surveys) that I collected for my doctoral thesis (Bolus 2009), I critically examine the objectives pursued through this teaching. The final part summarizes the findings and discusses the possibilities that this subject area offers for the promotion of Creole.

2.  The sociolinguistic situation of Guadeloupe Guadeloupe, like Martinique and La Réunion, is a French overseas department where two languages coexist: French, and a Creole language whose lexical origin is French, and whose speakers commonly call it Créole or patois. The two languages differ in status. According to linguists (Bernabé 1983), Guadeloupe is a case of diglossia. French, the official national language and the only language recognized by the French Constitution, is associated with political power and the public sphere. Creole, in contrast, is both acquired and used in daily life. Bernabé (1997:€14) writes: This hierarchical relation, which at least in its origins has to do with social antagonism arising from class conflict, is a distinguishing characteristic of the concept of diglossia. The phenomenon is thus symptomatic of inner tensions and distortions that operate not only at the level of the community but also at that of the individual consciousness.

In an account of the social perception of the two languages, Portier-Nivelle (2004: 18–19) writes: Creole is the language of the vyé nèg [“the negro from the woods, uncultured and uneducated”], while French is the language of the gens bien, people who are cultured, who have been to school, who have good manners. In addition, many Guadeloupeans believe that speaking Creole is an obstacle to the acquisition of “good French.” But French is also the language of social coercion. Guadeloupeans speak that language because there are occasions on which they are required to do so. Moreover, it is important to remember that French is the language of France, and thus the language of the former colonizer. Creole in contrast is the language of freedom, used when one feels free from all coercion, when one can speak with complete confidence. It is also the symbol of cultural and national identity. Guadeloupeans make a point of the fact that Creole is their language. It is also a factor in social integration. No one who lives in Guadeloupe is fully integrated



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

into the community unless they speak Creole. To sum up the situation of this social perception of the two languages, we might say that Creole is the language of reality and French is the language of appearance.

In fact, whatever the status attributed to Creole and French, to an outside observer Guadeloupeans appear to be “torn” between the two languages. They lay claim to Creole with respect to their identity, yet they reject it, for example, when it comes to making it a second language in school. For some, Creole is a real obstacle to the proper acquisition of French. A letter obtained during an interview I conducted with the educational counselor (conseiller pédagogique) responsible for Creole in a middle school (collège) is an example of this attitude: Dear Sir, I would like to inform you€that after careful consideration this will be the last time that student XXX will take your Creole class, since he has gaps in his French and I can see that doing Creole every day does not help matters, so I prefer him to avoid getting even worse at French which is an€important subject by stopping Creole which is not essential. Thank you in advance for your understanding.  

Yours very sincerely … (Alain Rutil, personal communication, October 2007)

French has been imposed on the population for a long time and now forms part of daily life. This is due especially to the widespread expansion of formal education, but also to the growth of the media (radio and television). As elsewhere, everyday French often takes a regional or non-standard form influenced by the contact between the two languages. Although it is not spoken by everyone, it is understood by all. Creole, meanwhile, continues to exist but is undergoing changes in the phonological, syntactic, lexical, and even rhetorical spheres (Bernabé 1983). According to the French research group GEREC-F (Groupe d’études et de recherches en espace créolophone et francophone), Guadeloupe and Martinique in particular appear to be in the throes of decreolization. That is, Creole speakers are stripping away€its original and distinctive characteristics and replacing them with those of French. The outcome is what might be called “formal-wear Creole”: dressing it up with features (particularly syntactical ones) of the prestigious language, French, to make it more dignified, or at least less “ordinary.” In everyday conversations in Guadeloupe, it is not uncommon for speakers to code-switch. Code-switching in Guadeloupe is determined by various factors, such as the context of the interaction, the social class of the interlocutors, their social relationship, the purpose of the interaction, attitudes vis-à-vis the two languages, and so on. Thus the expectation that each of these two languages, one high and one low (Ferguson 1959), will be used in a specific milieu or context corresponding to its status, no longer

 Mirna Bolus

seems to fit the sociolinguistic reality in the French West Indies, or at least€certainly deserves a more nuanced expression. According to Managan (2004:€259), …the extensive use of code-switching (along with bivalency) makes the diglossia model of little use in describing the distribution of linguistic codes in the French West Indies today. I suggest that Guadeloupe’s linguistic landscape is better thought of as a potentially relatively stable bilingual situation marked by widespread codeswitching. In making this argument, I also counter the claims of Meyjes (1995) that codeswitching in Guadeloupe evidences decreolization and language shift toward French monolingualism. My data indicate that most speakers code-switch and generally do not do so to compensate for lack of Kréyòl fluency. Indeed, in my data, young participants demonstrated fluency in Kréyòl, despite their code-switching. Even if language shift is taking place in favor of French monolingualism, one must ask the question of which French will take the place of Kréyòl. While some Guadeloupeans, usually those who have lived in France, speak metropolitan French, most speak a variety of French that bears the mark of contact with Kréyòl at the lexical, phonological, intonational, and grammatical levels. A shift to local French would not imply the same kind of assimilation as a shift to metropolitan French.

These observations suggest, in effect, that “switched forms” increasingly make up the “speech style” of many speakers. This is referred to as “interphrastic switching” or “extraphrastic switching” (Bellonie 2007). This code-switching, is done deliberately, as Managan has noted, and not because the speakers are “incapable” (for instance due to a lack of vocabulary) of using one of the two languages at any given time. In an interview with a group of students, when asked why they switched between French and Creole in their conversation, I was told: It’s for style, Madame, it gives a feeling to the word, right? 1 … Like when you say for instance “awa fwèw, an pa’a croire” [“my good friend, I don’t think so”], it’s like a way of emphasizing it … you know you can say “kwè” [for “think”] but you prefer to say “croire.” … It’s like playing with language! (Bolus 2009)

This handful of remarks gathered informally provides food for thought about the relationship of the two languages (and even to English, at least at the lexical level) available to young Guadeloupean speakers. One might ask whether a new language is coming into existence, a language one could call “spoken Guadeloupean”, along the lines of what Bavoux (2003:€30) has called “the spoken Reunionnais resulting from the contact between French and Creole”. This spoken language seemingly does not presuppose

.  The words in boldface were pronounced in English.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

that the two languages are in conflict, thus making the Guadeloupean a “bilingual speaker freed from the ideology of diglossia” (Bavoux 2003:€36). If this spoken language, in all its forms, actually becomes the norm, can there still be a question of evenly balanced bilingualism in the French West Indies? This concept of “evenly balanced” bilingualism seems to depend on an ideal that is difficult to achieve, given that it raises the question of how any language is recognized as a language in the first place. By comparison to French, Creole is not considered to be a language by many of its speakers. There is, strictly speaking, no value attached to Creole by local decision-makers even after its introduction into schools. But the most important point is that the absence of a language policy that gives equal recognition to both French and Creole has led to transformations in both languages. The typical Guadeloupean, though communicating daily in both languages, does not always master all their details and can sometimes end up in a state of linguistic insecurity (Brétégnier & Ledegen 1998; Gueunier 1994), even insecurity about speaking at all, in the case of the youngest children (Dorville 1994). People will say, for example, that they do not speak good French but that they get along more or less when they are required to use it. My observations indicate that the same phenomenon occurs in relation to Creole since it was introduced in the schools as a subject of study. It is not uncommon to hear people apologize for not speaking “good Creole” (Mufwene 2006), or regretting that they do not know how to read and write the language, which would explain their weakness in it.2 Although not all the speakers are critical of their own usage of French and Creole, it seems that a good many of them are able to assess their relationship to the two languages. This finding is important in that it is accompanied by the speaker’s readiness to improve their language skills, especially in Creole. But beyond that, the sense of insecurity vis-à-vis the two languages appears above all to be an obstacle to the speakers’ metalinguistic development, preventing them from picking up other languages easily, especially the major languages of the Caribbean basin, namely English and Spanish. Such a development, which a genuine policy of bilingualism (or multilingualism) would support, would put all the languages involved on an equal footing. Note that by “equal footing” I am not referring to a policy whose aim is simply to give the students’ regional language or mother tongue an improved status compared to French; I am rather concerned with equality in terms of openness to and command of languages other than French.

.  The most frequently mentioned reasons for choosing Creole as a language option are the desire to learn to read and write the language (cf. the survey conducted among the students of Creole at Camp Jacob de Saint-Claude, 2005–2006, available upon request from the author of this paper).

 Mirna Bolus

For the moment, it seems that no one can predict what the sociolinguistic situation of Guadeloupe will be a few decades from now. However, it appears that interest in Creole, not only as a badge of identity but also as a language, is growing steadily. The proliferation of public events designed to promote Creole language and culture seems to attest to this. Should it not then be the job of Guadeloupean policy-makers to create the conditions necessary for the development of Creole and to give the population the means to master it? This question in turn brings up that of the establishment of a social program requiring a specifically Guadeloupean language policy, a policy that would assign specialists in the field the responsibility for a linguistic development plan in which Creole would be, along with French, a central concern.

3.  Creole and the education system in Guadeloupe Educational institutions in Guadeloupe began being developed when it became a department in 1946. At that time, there was an explosion in the number of elementary schools and complementary classes in the French overseas departments.3 French became associated at that point as a tool for social advancement and opportunity, within a predominantly Creole-speaking society. Even by the 1980s the situation had not changed. Lubeth (1985:€5) notes for example that “the language problem plays a decisive role. Anyone who speaks French fluently has a 50 percent head start.” At that stage, the situation is best described as one of combat against Creole, which was marginalized from the outset. Knowing and mastering French became a necessity, since it was the language of the school and the nation; in fact, the first teachers attacked the Creole language and knew nothing about Creole culture. Students were forced to speak French regardless of whether they spoke it badly or even lost the use of their mother tongues in the classroom. The outcome was at once the marginalization of Creole and a high failure rate for students in the overseas departments who were expected to be fluent and competent in a language they had not mastered, even though they had heard it spoken around them (Lauriette 1957). Research has shown that those whose schooling takes place in a second language are more likely to master it if they have already developed skills in their native language (Cummins 1976; Hamers & Blanc 1983). Formerly, schools in the DOM made no attempt to take account of the Creole language and culture of their students, although a few education professionals did raise the issue, as described by Abou (1983) in his work entitled Un siècle de scolarisation à la Guadeloupe: 1848–1948 (“A Century of

.  The complementary classes correspond to the present-day middle schools (collèges). Note that there were only two high schools (lycées) in Guadeloupe until the mid-1960s.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

Schooling in Guadeloupe: 1848–1948”). During the 1960s it was possible to tack a few local ingredients onto the official curriculum in the French West Indies, but not to modify it. In this connection, Prudent (2000:€77–78) says: Beginning in the 1960s, the issue of “indigenous” languages and programs was put back on the table. In the light of Frantz Fanon’s theories of alienation, nationalist teachers contested the standard content of the school curriculum: the famous phrase “our ancestors the Gauls” became the symbol of the refusal to apply wholesale the programs developed in Europe. … The first activists began to lay the foundations of courses in Creole, and questions arose relating to the development of spelling, grammar, and vocabulary rules to codify the vernacular in the eyes of its users.

Gérard Lauriette was the first teacher in Guadeloupe to openly lay the foundations of a “combined teaching of French and Creole”, using teaching materials he himself had developed and published. In 1957 Lauriette, then teaching in an elementary school, was provisionally suspended from teaching in public schools for having published two articles arguing that the educational system should recognize Creole. Subsequently, the administration declared that he was “unbalanced” and he never returned to work in the public sector. However, he founded his own school and taught many Guadeloupeans, using Creole. In the late 1970s at Le Lamentin in Guadeloupe, Ms. Dany Bebel-Gisler, a CNRS researcher, founded a school called Bwadoubout (“The upright tree”), at the request of the students’ parents. The primary goal was to teach the parents French so that they could be in a position to help their children with their homework. Teaching was through the medium of Creole. In 1975, she published a work entitled Kèk prinsip pou ékri kréyòl (“Some principles of written Creole”). Once Creole was mastered, French was introduced gradually into the curriculum. Creole was to be admitted into the Guadeloupe Académie (educational region) only in 1983. Hector Poullet and Sylviane Telchid, teachers in the middle school at Capesterre-Belle-Eau in Guadeloupe, introduced a Creole course, with the backing of the Savary circular and the support of the school principal. The course, an expansion of a workshop in Creole begun in 1976, received the approval of the Rectorat (regional board of education) and was offered from the 6th grade (classe de 6e) onward as part of a remedial support initiative. While some parents saw no harm in their children taking Creole classes, others thought it was completely absurd. However, the enthusiasm of students for the subject and the support of some parents ensured that it was continued. But it cannot be said that cases of this kind were common. In fact, from 1983 to 1999 Creole was taught only in two middle schools, Saint-Ruff (Capesterre-Belle-Eau) and Félix Eboué (Petit Bourg). An experiment in teaching Creole was conducted in the Douville elementary school at Sainte-Anne, but its results have not been recognized

 Mirna Bolus

in any official publication (however, see Durizot Jno-Baptiste 1996). Apart from these examples, there are, to our knowledge, no other cases of effective teaching of Creole in the Guadeloupe Académie.

4.  R  egional languages and cultures in elementary and secondary education: The teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe In this section, I discuss the general characteristics of the teaching of Creole, its teachers, their training and the number of students enrolled in the subject. I also point to some recurrent problems that prevent the proper development of this subject of study.

4.1  G  eneral characteristics of the teaching of regional languages and cultures in elementary and secondary schools In 2001 the Ministry of Education opened the doors of French schools to the regional languages spoken throughout France and its territories, in the form of the Regional Languages and Cultures program (Langues et cultures régionales, LCR), at elementary and secondary level (Bulletin Officiel No. 33, September 13 2001). This measure appears to be a step toward the recognition of regional and minority languages mandated by the European Charter (1992) and signed (but not ratified) by France. The Bulletin Officiel No. 33 of September 13 2001 envisages that the teaching of LCR will begin in kindergarten within the general area of “development of modern languages”. However, unlike the teaching of foreign languages, the teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe is dependent on the initiative and commitment of individual teachers. In middle school it begins in 6th grade, so as to allow new middle school students, particularly those “who have chosen the regional language because it was compulsory in their primary school,”4 to continue their studies in this area. In addition to the three hours per week reserved for LCR, these students are offered “first choice of the study of a modern foreign language” (langue vivante étrangère, LVE) such as Spanish or English. The other students, who have chosen a modern foreign language to fulfil the elementary school language requirement, may if they wish, take optional LCR for a minimum of two hours a week.5 Subsequently, students are able to study LCR as an optional or compulsory subject until their final year in middle school (classe de 3e), and the subject

.  This and following quotes come from the Bulletin Officiel No. 33 of September 13 2001. .  It is unclear if the wording here is deliberately ambiguous: the study of a modern language is “offered” to the students but it is not clear whether they can refuse the offer, while the “optional teaching of LCR” can be taken up by those who “wish” to do so.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

is taken into account for the awarding of the national middle school diploma (brevet national des collèges). In both general and vocational high school (lycée), LCR is available in all curricula, either in mandatory Modern Languages level 2 or level 3 or as an option, and as such can be taken as part of the graduation exam (baccalauréat). “In the case of the vocational baccalauréat, the exam can only be offered in regions where a competent examiner can be found to sit on the examination board.” This LCR exam is optional. Moreover, … the inclusion of regional languages is also accomplished through creative expression workshops and guided individual study (travaux personnels encadrés, TPE) which offer an innovative treatment of the organization of the activity and the approach to the content.

Furthermore, the head (Recteur) of the regional Académie can institute equal-time bilingual education from elementary through high school, after consultation with the various administrative levels (Bulletin Officiel No. 24, June 12 2003). This would allow teaching half of the lessons in the regional language and the other half in French. “However, no subject area or specific subject, other than the regional language, can be taught exclusively in the regional language.” The official curriculum to be followed in each language is defined in the educational master plan (projet d’école at the elementary school level and projet d’établissement for middle and high schools). These are to be implemented by a group of modern language experts within a regional program committee. Note that to date an officially recognized syllabus does not exist for all regional language of France, including Creole. However, since 2002, the regional task force for language study (Mission académique maîtrise des langages, MML) in Guadeloupe, under the authority of the Director, has been developing educational proposals for middle and high school and also for elementary school.

4.2  The teachers There are two categories of elementary-school teachers of Creole: teachers who have passed the certificate examination in “regional languages and cultures with a specialty in Creole” and teachers said to be “approved” (habilités). In the following paragraphs I describe the characteristics of each of these groups.

4.2.1  Teachers with a qualification in Creole as a specialty Since 2002, about a dozen elementary-school teachers in Guadeloupe have studied for a qualification in the teaching of Creole. In addition to the traditional training provided by the graduate teacher training institutes (Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres, IUFM) which covers knowledge of subjects such as French, natural sciences

 Mirna Bolus

and humanities, physical education and sports, candidates for the elementary-school teacher certificate take courses in Creole to enable them to teach Creole where a demand for it exists. Teachers certified in Creole as a specialty are hired as roaming instructors, meaning that they are expected to carry out their job in several schools, which can cause problems if these schools belong to different school districts (Max€Dorville, Director of the IUFM of Guadeloupe, personal communication, 2007). Certification with a specialty in Creole, which qualifies the graduate to introduce and teach Creole language and culture from kindergarten through to fifth grade (cours moyen 2, CM2), requires passing four qualifying tests – written tests in French, mathematics, history and geography, experimental science and technology – as well as one in the regional language (Bulletin Officiel No. 21, May 26 2005). The test for the regional language requires writing a structured commentary on a given text in Creole and translating an excerpt from this text into French. There are also four final certification tests and one in the regional language; the LCR oral consists of an interview with the examining board “based on an authentic oral or written document in the regional language relating to the culture or language in question”. This final test is designed to assess the comprehension of a spoken or written document in Creole and also the candidates’ ability to express themselves in Creole and their familiarity with Creole culture. In Guadeloupe, little is known about these teachers although, along with the two educational counselors, they are supposed to be the primary resources for the subject in elementary schools. My own observations, for example, indicate that they do not attend the training courses for teachers with a habilitation in Creole, although€they are in principle equivalent to them in terms of academic level. In October 2005 I learned that some of them had teaching positions on the main islands of Guadeloupe, but there are no official data to confirm whether or not they taught Creole in the schools to which they were assigned. Based on my interviews and observations, few of them regularly teach LCR in elementary schools. It is not clear if, after they gain permanent positions as state employees, their special training in Creole is made known and taken into account when assigning them to their posts. In effect, it seems that the teachers with this special qualification are distributed around the French West Indies in the same way as the graduates of the traditional program.

4.2.2  “Approved” teachers School teachers who are approved (habilités) to teach Creole have chosen voluntarily to take extra courses, like their colleagues who have taken the special competitive exam, so as to acquire the knowledge necessary to teach Creole language and culture to the youngest children. Teachers in the 2004–2005 graduating class took four weeks of classes totaling 88 hours of coursework, plus two hours of introduction to



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

the spelling of Creole.6 The content and number of hours devoted to each coursework area are presented in Table€1. The topics addressed are diverse, but fall into two broad categories: general knowledge of Creole culture broadly understood, and study of the teaching methods for Creole. Table€1.╇ Program of study for the habilitation in LCR-Creole (IUFM) Preparation for the habilitation in LCR-Creole, 2004–2005 Content

Number of hours

General knowledge of€Creole culture Class work in Creole language and culture in literature The historical process of creolization The teaching of regional and minority languages: presentation of some cases inside and outside of France Accounts of the origins and cultivation of the plants of the Antilles, including myths and legends; culture clash Creole poetry (proverbs, folktales, etc.) The history of community models in the Creole-speaking world Knowledge of the school environment in Creole folktales; folktale and theatre

5h 3h30 3h30 6h 6h 5h 5h

Teaching methods for Creole The use of Creole to explain natural phenomena Teaching of a Creole story about a natural phenomenon (evaporation): Kont a van é gout (after N. Michalon) Theatre, literature, and LCR: perspectives The concept and pedagogical use of Creole heritage Teaching Creole as an LCR and teaching in general Teaching LCR in middle school Teaching LCR in high school Citizenship as expressed in different literary genres Traditional dance in school: teaching methods, educational goals, skills and assessment Confusion between Creole and French: how to prevent and handle them in student work How to incorporate LCR into class work Observing the teaching of LCR-Creole in elementary and middle school Total

2h30 2h30 10h30 3h30 3h30 2h30 1h 5h 12h 3h30 2h30 5 88h

.  Several spelling systems have been proposed for the spelling of French Creoles and numerous revisions. The spelling system usually used in Education and for examinations (CAPES, see 4.2.3) was devised by GEREC 78 (Groupe d’études et de recherches en espace créolophone) based at the University of the French Antilles, Martinique in 1978.

 Mirna Bolus

Within this division of subject-matters, concepts relating to culture seem to predominate. Indeed, apart from the topic of Creole-French confusion which is assigned a period of 3 hours and 30 minutes, linguistic issues are scarcely mentioned in the course. Moreover, the latter topic is addressed from a specifically pedagogical point of view, namely the correction of student assignments. It seems odd that linguistic issues receive no place in the training of teachers and that orthographic issues are condensed into a two hour period. According to my observations not all of the student teachers properly master the Creole spelling system and are often not able to easily carry out written work in Creole. Their reading skills in Creole tend to be higher because they are required to read texts in Creole as part of the course. From the point of view of teaching, it would seem important that students receive instruction in basic linguistic knowledge such as “what is a language and how is it structured?”, “what are the main social and linguistic characteristics of Creole languages?”, and “what is their place and role in Creole society?” etc.7 The practical component also needs strengthening. It should be more concerned with teaching methods€and be central to the second phase when students do classroom observation in elementary and secondary schools. At this stage, student teachers should primarily be focusing on how to optimally present the subject matter to students. For instance, student teachers should perform mock classes to validate the objectives, content, tools etc. of the lessons that they create and practice lesson planning skills. Currently, the preparatory course for the Creole habilitation is not very explicit about these things, but it is hoped that further research into these issues will improve this part of the training. Approval of candidates’ habilitation is done by a committee, consisting of educational counselors for Creole in elementary and secondary schools and a school Inspector (Inspecteur de l’Education nationale). It certifies candidates’ proficiency and their knowledge of Creole culture. If there is no specific Inspector for Creole, this task is performed by the Inspector responsible for coordinating all the LCR programs. The data provided by the four educational counselors from 2001 to 2005 show that no fewer than a hundred teachers applied for the habilitation. The figures provided by the two elementary-school educational counselors, based on a census conducted during the first quarter of 2008, show that 89 “approved” teachers had teaching positions (these figures do not include approved teachers without regular teaching positions,

.  The Bulletin Officiel No. 33 of September 13 2001 states: “In elementary school, teaching in and of the regional language is performed by elementary-school teachers whose linguistic competence has been certified either via the completion of a first training course or by a committee authorized to approve it (commission d’habilitation).” The first training course refers to that taken by student teachers in the PE1 or T1 sections of the IUFM.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

such as substitute teachers and coordinators). In the academic year 2007/8, there were 52 teachers with the habilitation in the secondary schools of Guadeloupe and a group of 24 student teachers applied for the habilitation in Creole with the goal of teaching the subject starting in fall of that year.

4.2.3  Certified Teachers In 2002 a second route for becoming an LCR teacher in secondary school was introduced. It involves taking the CAPES competitive exam in Creole. The CAPES in Creole is a double (bivalent) qualification, meaning that candidates for the exam must have reached at least a satisfactory level both in the regional language and in one of four other subject areas (English, Spanish, modern literature, or history and geography). According to the Bulletin Officiel No. 33, the primary responsibility of the certified teachers is to teach LCR “and possibly … their second subject, depending on the needs of the school system and of their own volition.” Their teaching activity€in these other subject areas must be carried out jointly with another teacher. The external CAPES exam in Creole includes three written qualifying exams and three oral final exams. The first written exam is an essay written in Creole on a topic in culture or literature drawn from the official exam syllabus. The second is a translation, either from Creole into French or, since 2005–2006, from French into Creole. The third, in which there is an option (chosen by the candidates when they sign up to take the exam), is equivalent to one of the CAPES exams in French, modern foreign languages, or history and geography. The external CAPES in Creole is a national exam: this means that each year there is a specific number of teaching positions for which the candidates from the overseas departments (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, La Réunion, Martinique) may apply. For the years 2002 and 2003 there were eight positions to apply for, and since 2004 only four positions yearly have been open to the candidates. Also since 2004, the number of candidates permitted to pass the qualifying round was set at ten. Since the first granting of the CAPES in 2002, Guadeloupe has had five CAPES-certified teachers and one certified trainee. The small number of certified teachers in Guadeloupe is not due to lack of interest – each year there are a dozen applicants – but to exam-inherent problems. In his work Évaluation de la mise en place du CAPES de créole, F. Barreteau (2001:€7–8) brings up, for example, the question of the written component. He sees two main problems with CAPES. First, candidates tend to be unfamiliar with writing in Creole because in the community, Creole is mostly used for oral communication. Second, candidates do not always make use of the orthographic conventions that are currently used in education because these conventions were devised by GEREC-F in Martinique and do not enjoy widespread support in Guadeloupe; people mostly continue to use one or the other of previously employed spelling systems. He also believes that the small number of written works in Creole may be another handicap for the

 Mirna Bolus

candidates, particularly as they prepare for the qualifying exams. However, the reports of the examining boards mostly comment on the “lack of preparation” of some candidates. For example, the first time that the CAPES was offered, some candidates wrote the essay test entirely in French, instead of in Creole as specified in the official syllabus. In addition, some candidates were apparently unaware of “the difference between an analytical essay that discusses the given topic in the approved style and an ordinary oral conversation.” Members of the examining board commented that Their current vocabulary is often deficient, leading candidates either to shamelessly borrow a French word and “Creolize” its spelling, or to use unusual, needlessly convoluted turns of phrase where a solid understanding of the language should have been sufficient in most cases to provide the right word or appropriate expression.8

Even when the vocabulary is not deficient, candidates lack the ability to analyze and present an argument on the given topic. This suggests that candidates are not fully aware of what is required of them both in terms of the exam and in terms of the teaching of LCR. With respect to the latter, the authors of the report stress in particular that: To teach, to transmit to others a culture and a language means certainly, for preference, a first-hand knowledge from the inside, in other words a close personal experience of these languages and cultures [….] This alone, however, does not constitute an adequate capacity to transmit a language and culture [….] The transmission of a language and culture (whether Creole or another), also requires something that may be referred to in several ways: the ability to reflect analytically on the language and culture, or an informed knowledge of the culture, or a (Rapport de Jury 2002) scholarly grasp of the languages and cultures.

For example, in the exam that involves reading and commenting on a group of documents (épreuve sur dossier), one of the difficulties is that the “raw materials” in Creole have to be transformed into materials for teaching. This is an important skill that teachers must learn in order to properly teach the subject. They also have to show that they can assess how well their students have absorbed the material in class. In this regard, Carmona-Magnaldi & de Vecchi (1996:€245–246) remind us that it is necessary …above all to respect the learners and “make them exist”, by creating learning situations that make sense for the students, by communicating as clearly as possible the goals being pursued so that they become the students’ goals too, … and as far as possible getting the learners to be agents of their own learning …

.  All translations were provided by a professional translator and checked for accuracy by the author.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

Although Creole has great emotional resonance for its speakers, once it enters the realm of education it is expected to be both a means and a subject of the transmission of theoretical and practical knowledge, in the same way as other subjects of study. The more distance one can put between the subject and oneself, the more likely it is that one will understand its characteristics objectively. The fact that Creole “is primarily an oral language” which has not yet reached maturity as a literary language or, as Confiant says, gained “full authority as a written language” (Barreteau 2001:€8), is one of the “significant problems” but not an insurmountable one. It seems that the true task of the candidates is to address this issue in the most efficient way possible in their presentations to the committee. This is related to the question of spelling, brought up by Barreteau (2001) who argues that students have to learn to distinguish the spelling or writing system of a language from writing in that language. As Bernabé (2001:€16), creator of the GEREC-F Creole spelling system, puts it, simply being recorded in some way (the domain of spelling) is not enough to make a language a “written language” (the domain of writing). It is important to draw a clear distinction between “spelling” and “writing”. Writing presupposes spelling but the reverse, as we know, is not necessarily true.

Currently, the competitive exams for elementary and secondary schools (the PE and the CAPES) are still being offered by the Ministry of Education, but their long-term survival prospects are unclear. Since the first CAPES session in 2002, the number of candidates has never reached 200 again and varies from year to year. At the same time, however, the caliber of the candidates appears to be improving each year. There has been, in fact, an increase of more than 2 points in the scores, as the qualifying candidates’ average has risen from just over 7 points in 2002 to 9.87 in 2008. The average was higher than 10 in the 2005 group. However, the idea of offering the CAPES exam every other year has already been suggested, and will certainly end up being implemented. If that does indeed happen, there is a fear that many candidates may lose motivation or even give up entirely. In that case, it is likely that in due course these two examinations will be completely abolished from the French education system.

4.3  Student numbers There has been an increase in the number of students taking Creole at all levels. In elementary school, the number of students taking Creole has nearly doubled from 1,269 in 2003–2004 to 2,046 in 2007–2008.9 In elementary school, these lessons last for at

.  The total number of 2,046 students does not include those who receive lessons in Creole as the result of a teacher exchange. Since these exchanges are initiated by the teachers affected

 Mirna Bolus

least an hour and a half per week and can go up to three hours per week, in accordance with the provisions of the Bulletin Officiel No. 33 of September 13 2001. A similar increase has taken place at secondary school level. In 2003–2004, 34 middle schools out of 44 and 6 out of 22 high schools offered the Creole option, with 1,426 and 160 students respectively taking it up. By 2007–2008 this number had risen to 2,175 and 859, respectively (see Appendix). Moreover, while only 132 students took the Creole option in the baccalauréat exam in 2004 this number had risen to 751 in 2008. In the general and technical streams, 395 and 107 students respectively were to take the optional oral exam in Creole; 82 students were to take the required oral exam and 177 the required written exam. Despite the growth in numbers, there are a number of recurring problems at both the elementary and secondary levels. There is, for example, the problem that class enrollments remain small overall. This seems to me mostly due to lack of information about the subject. In an interview I conducted in 2003 with one of the secondary school educational counselors for Creole, Alain Rutil, he explained that one of the first tasks of a teacher who wants to offer Creole is to do “cold calling”. He explained that in most institutions the teachers of Creole have to make themselves known as such, and to approach students and their parents directly in order to inform them of the existence of the Creole option and to provide them with all the relevant details. Since this option relies on the initiative of the teachers who are approved for teaching it, school principals have no obligation to educate parents and students about it. Thus, whenever the senior administration of a school is opposed or indifferent to the teaching of Creole, the option is simply not offered and teachers who wish to offer it are obliged to actively campaign for the possibility to teach it. Teachers are not the only ones who have to make an effort to introduce the teaching of Creole. In some schools, if students want to benefit from this option they must initiate it using “their own resources”. LCR also presents a fundamental problem for some school principals because it seems to be among the subjects affected by the government policy of “controlling or reducing resources”. Although the heads of the various school boards insist that teaching Creole is one of the priorities of the regional school district, school principals often get little support for the subject and essentially have to find the necessary resources on their own to implement or continue the teaching of Creole in their school. It is possible that this option becomes the victim of a policy of “passive resistance” characterized by deliberate inaction on the part of some principals.

and the subjects taught can change from one semester to the next, it is hard to get an accurate count of the number of students involved.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

4.4  Continuity of teaching Two notions of continuity are present in the organization of the teaching of LCR in the French education system. First, the Bulletin Officiel No. 33 states that “The teaching of regional languages and cultures promotes continuity between the family and social environment and the education system, thus encouraging the integration of all concerned into the social fabric of the local community.” One would expect to see the teaching of Creole expanded in order to facilitate this integration, but this is not the case for the moment. There should also be continuity in the learning of the subject from one level to another within the curriculum. The Bulletin text notes in effect that the teaching of LCR provided in elementary school “is continued” at the middle school level. For students who have chosen it “to meet the elementary school modern language requirement”, there are three hours of classes each week. Meanwhile, students wishing to take optional classes in a regional language starting in the sixth grade (classe de sixième) are able to do so with a minimum of two hours of classes per week, except in the case of special arrangements. These optional classes can be continued in the seventh grade (classe de cinquième), then in the€eighth and ninth grades (classes de quatrième et de troisième) to fulfil the compulsory or optional language requirement.

In Guadeloupe, however, there is in reality a lack€of continuity in the study of Creole between elementary and middle school. To date, there is no middle school that offers the Creole option in sixth grade. Of the 38 middle schools that offer the option, only 22 do so in seventh grade. Thus students may have to wait two years before they are able to continue with the subject in eighth grade. We are hence a long way from meeting the guidelines for the subject as outlined by the Bulletin Officiel No. 33 quoted above. It must be pointed out that this problem also arises in high school, when the new students who took this option in middle school and wish to continue in tenth grade find their request being rejected mainly because some school principals will not introduce additional optional classes. Moreover, since the principals have the final say on which languages are taught in their schools, it often happens that Creole is set aside in favor of foreign languages such as German, Italian, or Portuguese. Lastly, while the option is available within some tracks of the baccalauréat exam, not all the students in schools where it is taught are able to take it.10

.  For example, this is the case in the Les droits de l’homme high school in Petit-Bourg, where the students in the management of science and technology track cannot take Creole, while those in the social sciences, literature, and natural sciences tracks can avail of the option.

 Mirna Bolus

4.5  Problems with the curriculum and teaching tools In general, drawing up the curriculum is the responsibility of a group of modern language experts who form part of a regional curriculum committee. Similarly, the tools for learning Creole must be developed by specialists in the teaching of languages and humanities. These tools, designed in conjunction with the curriculum, are meant to enable the teachers to transmit their knowledge and give the students a solid grounding in€Creole language and culture. Both of these do not yet exist for the subject LCR and it is not clear when they will be made available. In the meantime, teachers have to make do with inadequate pedagogical tools and pedagogical guidelines dating from 2001. The latter include, among other details, the linguistic and cultural objectives, skills, and content to be developed from kindergarten through to senior year. These guidelines have not yet been made public for the elementary school level. The guidelines were developed by the four educational counselors for Creole, but even their authors argue that they need to be enriched and strengthened within the context of curricula drawn up by educational experts, linguists, and other specialists. If such curricula existed, they might perhaps make it possible to coordinate learning and teaching processes across successive classes. Currently, educational counselors are working on creating a website intended, among other things, to identify, assemble, and recommend written and other tools that have been developed by teachers of Creole since the introduction of the subject in the regional school system. A teaching manual for the secondary schools is also being developed. This issue of the establishment of official curricula is of interest because it can be linked to that of the pedagogical tools to be used. From a survey I conducted among elementary school teachers (Bolus 2009), I learned that pedagogical tools for learning Creole are in short supply. The textbooks mentioned varied from one respondent to another, and dated from periods ranging from 1985 to 2006. Moreover, there was a recurrence of some authors and, of course, of some texts. Given the lack of tools, the teachers were often called on to invent their own teaching materials, using documents in Creole acquired from a variety of sources. While it is comparatively easy to identify materials relevant to the cultural component of the class, this is quite different for the linguistic component. It therefore seems absolutely indispensable to make available to teachers texts that lend themselves to teaching language-related issues. Otherwise, I€cannot help but foresee that the culture component will take precedence over the linguistic one, and the subject will be in danger of being reduced to a kind of folklore.

When asked about this during an inspection visit to the Creole teacher’s class, the assistant principal explained that priority was given to languages with an obvious international application, such as English and Spanish.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

This is a question that returns us to the issue of continued teacher training, both at elementary and secondary level. Each year, within the overall regional teacher training plan (Plan académique de formation, PAF), teachers are encouraged to take courses of their own choice so as to ground their knowledge of some areas more firmly and apply this knowledge to making their teaching more effective. Unfortunately, in the absence of a genuine educational policy in the area of linguistics, the PAF appears to be more like a catalogue of topics than a tool designed for the improvement of teacher training. There is an urgent need to improve the nature of the offerings, their structure and their relationship to classroom activities.

4.6  The goals of teaching regional language and culture Another problem that concerns us is that of a kind of “ghettoization” of the Creole option. In effect, despite the work that has been done on the role that Creole may play in the schools,11 some people in the world of education continue to believe that the chief purpose of teaching Creole is to improve failure rates among struggling students. According to Anciaux (2003:€69), “The use of Creole in the classroom seems to be helpful for clarifying the teacher’s instructions, and also in communication, in encouraging student participation, and in the application of the knowledge acquired.” However, it cannot in isolation solve all the problems associated with failing students, as has been pointed out (Giraud et al. 1992). Yet perhaps this tendency to suppose that students’ difficulties are due purely to the language issue has become over time a firmly rooted belief in some people’s minds, ultimately turning into an excuse for claiming that Creole is ineffective as a pedagogical tool. One virtue of an option is that the students themselves make the decision to take it up. To encourage students to enroll in an optional subject, which necessarily involves doing extra work, when they are already struggling to complete the standard syllabus€– surely this indicates a certain lack of judgment? Moreover, this attitude presupposes that Creole is viewed as a subject on the side, not a subject in its own right. Just as some subjects, such as Latin or German, are largely reserved for elites, Creole may become “the subject for struggling students”. Yet, as Alain Rutil, who teaches at the Félix Eboué middle school in Petit-Bourg, notes, students who study Latin (and who are thus viewed as high achievers) but also Creole are the ones with the best grades in his institution. Students who are struggling or failing in school and who enroll in Creole classes do not improve their grades just because they take this subject. Perhaps it is time to implement an effective education policy to address the difficulties facing

.  See in particular the survey conducted in Guadeloupe and Martinique by Giraud€et€al. (1992).

 Mirna Bolus

struggling students in Guadeloupe, instead of endlessly seeking to pursue a “halfbaked” policy which the subject of Creole is supposed to contribute to.

5.  Towards the future Since the introduction of the competitive exams for elementary and secondary teachers (the Professorat and the CAPES), the regional school systems of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, and La Réunion are now able to train candidates to teach Creole language and culture and to confer upon Creole the status of a teaching language, especially by way of bilingual education. However, in actuality things do not seem to be so straightforward. As Portier-Nivelle (2004:€37) points out: Decisions about the implementation of various regional-language CAPES programs do not seem to issue from an overall policy pursued by the regional governments. Rather, they seem to result from ad hoc responses to one-off demands. Moreover, at the same time as the various measures were taken to promote the teaching of regional languages, plans were also introduced to strengthen the role of French in France, through the Toubon Law, for example.12

Teaching Creole language and culture in Creole seems a self-evident approach. However, a survey of teachers approved to teach Creole showed that the majority use both Creole and French to present the subject. The main reason cited by teachers who move between the two languages is that they coexist in the daily lives of the students (Bolus 2009). But is it equally likely that other subjects will also be taught in both languages, as recommended by the Bulletin Officiel No. 33? That would be the implication of making Creole a true “language of instruction”, alongside French. But given the fundamental objective pursued from elementary school onward, namely the mastery of the French language, it is difficult to imagine that this would happen. Certainly at the regional school system level the chief emphasis of the MML task force is the improvement of the “oral and written expression of the students in bilingual and multilingual contexts”. But we have yet to see this implemented in practice

.  Excerpt from the Toubon Law No. 94-665 of August 4 1994: This text, by expressing the constitutional principle according to which the language of the Republic is French, is aimed at providing France with genuine language legislation, as is the case in many other countries. … It establishes the principle that the French language is the language of instruction, of work, of public services and interactions, and the special link between the states which make up the Frenchspeaking world.



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

in the classroom. The questions relating to the parameters that define these bilingual and multilingual contexts call for thorough study, drawing on the speakers concerned. Establishing the actual features of the “linguistic profile” of the student body could be one of the goals of such a study. Based on this linguistic profile, plans could be drawn up€for training teachers, developing specific programs, and producing educational tools to meet the requirement of proficiency in spoken and written expression in the languages spoken in the department. Teaching in Creole and mastery of that language might then appear as more obviously essential for the cognitive development of young Creole speakers, within the broader context of language proficiency in general. Blanchet (2001:€18), for example, writes: Institutionally speaking, the Section K CAPES qualifications are ambivalent.13 They promise higher status, greater recognition, and long-term stability to the subject and its teachers, by making it somewhat comparable to other subjects. But the double character of the CAPES, although certainly guaranteeing open and comprehensive instruction, reduces the regional language to a secondary subject that instructors cannot be sure they will teach, since “for the needs of the institution” they may be called on to teach only the other one of their two subjects. School principals who are not very enthusiastic about the teaching of regional languages and cultures can downgrade or eliminate them in their middle or high school (and in any case the students’ families have to want them taught): the classes simply have to be scheduled at inconvenient times, or other more urgent uses advanced for the available time slots. Certified teachers of regional languages are thus subject to unpredictable demands, more so than their colleagues who teach a single language, whether Corsican or a foreign language (German, Italian, Russian, etc., depending on the regional Académie decision), which is often less in demand but has to be offered to comply with the regulations.

Note also that during Cycle 2 (elementary school), the basic learning stage, nine hours (minimum) are allotted to the subject area called “mastery of French language and expression”. Given the policies of the MML it would be interesting to know whether this subject area includes Creole in the case of Creole-speaking and bilingual students. Since Creole is the first language of students particularly in the Nord Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, the Côte-sous-le-Vent and Les Saintes, students from these districts could only move on to master French after they had succeeded in mastering Creole.14

.  Section K CAPES refers to the double CAPES in regional languages as specified in the BO No. 33 of September 13, 2001. .  These are empirical observations (by teachers, inspectors and educational counselors) which call for confirmation via formal sociolinguistic surveys.

 Mirna Bolus

In their case it may be more reasonable to teach French as a second language as, following Cummins (1976), their progress would depend in part on these students’ level of proficiency in their native language. However, this theory probably has limited application in the sociolinguistic situation of Guadeloupe. Although the use of Creole prevails for these young speakers over that of French, French is increasingly present in their early linguistic environment. Along with the media and school, the major purveyors of€the French language, there now exist several generations of parents who have completed high school, enabling them to use French more readily than their own parents did. This suggests that it would be appropriate to give some thought to the implementation of a language policy in the schools that would take into account the sociolinguistic situation in Guadeloupe, once it has been clearly defined. The coexistence of the two languages produces a variety of language practices that differ both from one individual to another and among different social (ethnic, sociocultural, etc.) groups. The idea of a language policy in the schools, or any sort of educational policy, that would be specific to Guadeloupe, is not a new one, but it has yet to come into being. The “relevance” of Creole as a subject of study has recently been called into question (again), prompting debate about the status and role assigned to it. Its institution as a subject in schools has also not erased preconceived notions about the language. One part of the teaching body continues to be opposed to the idea of giving Creole a place in school. While few object to the teaching of Creole culture and traditions, many of the teachers and members of the public appear to be particularly troubled by the idea of the use and study of the Creole language in schools. At times, this lack of enthusiasm about the language seems to be, if not supported, at least passed on within the institutions responsible for education in Guadeloupe. The local authorities who are supposedly competent in this area seem to be sending mixed messages: on the one hand they recognize the local linguistic and cultural realities of the students’ lives, and on the other they thwart what they see as excessive development of all the elements of those realities within the schools. As a result, the measures adopted for the teaching of Creole reflect a double standard, a policy in which the place allotted to the culture, for example, seems more important than that given to the language. Since the introduction of Creole in the schools in 2001, to my knowledge, the board of education has made no assessment of either the content or the practice of the subject. In these conditions it is impossible to determine a number of things among them the quality of teaching and whether or not the introduction of Creole into the school system has had a positive effect on the social status of Creole, including its acceptance as a subject in its own right among teachers and the population at large. These and other as yet unanswered questions indicate how essential and urgent it is to have a public debate about the inclusion of Creole in both elementary and secondary



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

schools. To this date, it is not clear whether or not the authorities are willing to treat Creole and French language and culture on the same footing. In interviewing some of those involved in the teaching of Creole, it became apparent that while improvement is needed, at the moment things are not as bad as they might be. Among the difficulties reported interviewees noted “a lack of support from experts in anthropology, sociology, and theory of education”, and in the case of elementary-school teachers the difficulty of implementing the text of regulations like the BO No. 33. An educational counselor commented that “the various options left up to the teacher turn out to be a real obstacle in practice. Also, depending on the option chosen, too much importance is attached to culture, while language is left out.” A€representative of the parents complained about the low status of the subject and the fact that “the information conveyed to the families regarding the choice of Creole is sometimes deliberately unclear and discouraging, so as to suggest and encourage other choices.” With respect to the future of the subject, opinion seems to be divided. In effect, in some respects some people are inclined to be “optimistic”. Others in contrast advise caution. For them, the positive indicators (especially the increase in students taking the subject) should not obscure the difficulties on the ground already discussed. One educational counselor points out that Given the educational status of Guadeloupe, this is inevitably a subject that has major political implications with respect to its implementation, its existence, and its survival … the preconceived ideas and/or the demands more or less clearly expressed or proclaimed by the authorities with respect to the teaching of Creole lead us to believe that we are far from being on an equal footing with mathematics, French, Latin, German, etc.

The educational counselors for Creole, who function as the liaison between the faculty and the school district administration, seem rather unclear about the future that the administration foresees for the subject. The counselors report that the legislation (national and local) relative to the teaching of the subject is not adequately applied in the Guadeloupe regional school district. While there is much discussion, for example, about the teaching of Creole, there is little if any about teaching in Creole or of the resources the administration should be using to institute it. Efforts thus need to be made at this level, certainly, but it is also urgent, first off, to improve the organization of the teaching of Creole that has been in place since 2001. To do this, one respondent suggested the creation of “a real observation system to measure its gains and advances, its mistakes and shortcomings, its strengths and weaknesses”. At the same time, the authorities with jurisdiction in this area should both “sustain teacher-training efforts” and open up opportunities for increased professionalization (certification, habilitation).

 Mirna Bolus

Lastly, they should also ensure “much more substantial support for pedagogy” than currently exists. In addition to high-quality training, this support should also provide teachers with “many high-quality pedagogical tools” for both the culture and language curricula, thus enabling them to offer the subject under the best possible conditions. Today, while Creole is indeed a taught language, it is not clear whether this status is sufficient to give it a decisive role in students’ cognitive development. On closer inspection, far from existing independently, it is more a medium of instruction than a subject in its own right. This would not be a bad option as long as it furthered specific goals within an overall plan for standardizing students’ learning processes. The language policy pursued by the MEN specifies that studying a modern language other than French is now mandatory in elementary school. When the “new syllabi for 2007” (BO special issue No. 5 of April 12 2007) appeared, the LCR were not included. The document referred only to “modern languages” and “modern foreign languages”, but never used the expression “regional languages and cultures”. Only with the publication of the BO No. 9 of September 27 2007 did syllabi for the teaching of regional languages appear, but Creole was still not included, since these included only Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, and Occitan. The regional language of Alsace and Moselle was recently added to this list, with the BO No. 3 of January 17 2008. At this stage, it is not clear whether it will still be possible in future for parents and students to choose between a foreign language and the regional language. It seem that this is a way of avoiding encouraging the development of Creole as a subject?

Appendix: Number of students attending LCR-Creole in Guadeloupe, 2007–2008 Table€2.╇ Number of middle school children in lrc-creole Schools Anse Bertrand Abymes Boisripeaux Abymes Bourg Abymes Raizet Abymes Saint John Perse Baie-Mahault Satineau

Total per school 52 37 77 20 20 111 (Continued)



The Teaching of Creole in Guadeloupe 

Table€2.╇ (Continued) Baie-Mahault Gourde Liane Baillif Basse-Terre Campenon Basse-Terre Pitat Bouillante Capesterre Belle-Eau Capesterre de Marie-Galante Deshaies Gourbeyre Goyave Grand-Bourg La Désirade Le Gosier Le Lamentin Le Moule Morne-à-l’Eau Petit-Bourg Petit-Canal Pointe-à-Pitre Carnot Pointe-à-Pitre Michelet Pointe-à-Pitre De Kermadec Pointe-à-Pitre Front de Mer Pointe-Noire Port-Louis Saint-Claude Saint-François Saint-Louis Sainte-Anne Bourg Sainte-Anne Douville Sainte-Rose Trois-Rivières Vieux Habitants

51 27 44 36 39 99 35 35 37 84 46 57 81 163 39 57 193 56 ? 70 44 58 27 58 33 79 45 50 39 85 45 46

 Mirna Bolus

Table€3.╇ Number of high school children in lcr-creole School Abymes LGT Baimbridge Abymes LGT Providence Abymes LPO Caraïbes Basse-Terre LGT Gerville Réache Basse-Terre Lycée technique Rivière des Pères Grand-Bourg LPO Morne-à-l’Eau LGT Faustin Fléret Petit-Bourg LGT droits de l’Homme Pointe-Noire LPO Saint-Claude LP Ducharmoy Sainte-Anne LGT Sainte-Rose

Total per school 176 75 54 66 54 45 103 50 86 ? 56 94

Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana A discussion of current programs and initiatives* Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

University College Dublin/CNRS-CELIA In this paper we present and critically assess three programs that are currently running in French Guiana. They aim to integrate some local languages and cultures into the local education system that is otherwise identical to that of Metropolitan France. We discuss and compare their emergence, development and the premises, assumptions and approaches on which they are based. The paper argues that while all three initiatives make an important contribution towards questioning the educational monopoly of French and towards adapting the education system to the local context, their impact currently remains limited. This is in large part due to a lack of a concerted will on the part of the education system to undertake far-reaching change and program-inherent problems. Keywords:╇ French Guiana; local languages; bilingual education; language awareness; educational programs; evaluation

1.  Introduction The French overseas’ department of French Guiana (Guyane française) boasts a remarkable ethnic and linguistic diversity. While this diversity has attracted researchers from the Humanities and Social Sciences (cf. Léglise & Migge 2007a), the impact of this research is surprisingly little reflected in the public sphere where European French and French culture continue to dominate. This dominance is particularly strong in formal education where to date only a few programs have been initiated that specifically aim to validate local languages and cultures. The main initiative is the nationwide program Langues et Cultures Régionales (LCR) which was initiated in metropolitan France in the 1980s. Enforcing the Deixonne Law (1951), it was the first French initiative that

*We would like to thank Laurence Goury, Michel Launey, Odile Renault-Lescure and Jeff Siegel for providing us with detailed comments on earlier drafts.

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

made it possible to formally integrate the teaching in local dialects and languages into local school curricula. The program treats them like other foreign languages providing for a few hours of instruction each week. Over the years, a wide range of languages and cultures such as Kanak languages, Tahitian and the French Creoles of the four overseas departments came to be taught in local schools due to this initiative.1 The French€Guianese project Intervenants en Langues Maternelles, by contrast, is a grassroots project that emerged in 1998 due to a unique collaborative effort between French linguists and members of the local branch of the ministry of education. Although it has been in existence for 10 years by now, it is still struggling to survive. Finally, in the last five years work has been underway to develop training modules and teaching materials that aim to raise awareness among teachers and students about French Guiana’s multilingual context (Candelier 2007; Alby, Bitard et al. to appear). In this paper we present and critically assess these three initiatives. The paper argues that while all three initiatives make an important contribution towards questioning the educational monopoly of French and towards adapting the education system to the local context, their impact currently remains limited. This is in large part due to a lack of a concerted will on the part of the education system to undertake farreaching change and program-inherent problems. The paper is organized as follows. Part Two briefly presents the sociolinguistic background of French Guiana. Part Three reviews the history of the integration of local languages into the education system of French Guiana. Part Four presents and evaluates the program Langues et Cultures Régionales. Part Five critically discusses the project Intervenants en Langues Maternelles and Part Six focuses on the latest initiative that deals with issues of language awareness. The final part summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for education in French Guiana.

2.  Brief description of the French Guianese sociolinguistic context French Guiana borders onto Brazil in the east and in the south, and onto the Republic of Suriname in the west. Its territory consists of 86,000 km2, but most of the population resides along the coast. There is an important concentration in the east

.  The Deixonne Law initially only applied to Breton, Basque, Catalan and Occitan. It was subsequently extended to Corsican (1974), Tahitian (1981) and to four Melanesian languages in New Caledonia (1992). The Circulaire Savary (1981) extended the Deixonne Law to other local languages in metropolitan France and to French Creoles. This was ratified by the regional education authority (Académie de la Guyane) in 1986.



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

around the capital city of Cayenne and a smaller, newer concentration in the west around the border town of St. Laurent du Maroni. Smaller settlements are situated along the Maroni and Oyapock rivers that are mostly inhabited by Amerindian and Maroon groups€(see Map 1). The 1999 census estimated a total population of about 200€000 people. Especially in the last 20 years, French Guiana has attracted considerable numbers of immigrants from throughout the Guiana region (Brazil, Suriname, Guyana), Haiti, and from China. Estimates suggest that they represent almost 30%

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Map 1.╇ Location of the Regional Languages of French Guiana.

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Infographie : J-M Henry 2002 - JvH- Pour Le CELIA (CNRS-IRD)

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 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

of the population (Léglise 2004). Demographically, French Guiana is very dynamic. Its population doubles roughly every 15 years and is relatively young, as half of the population is less than 25 years old and a third is less than 15 years old. Moreover, more than€50% of all the children born in French Guiana have a mother born outside of this région. The local and immigrant population is socially diverse and differs in their level of integration. French Guiana is linguistically quite diverse. The official language, French, is in contact with 30 typologically different languages. They include six languages belonging to three Amerindian families of languages such as Cariban (e.g. Kali’na, Wayana), Tupi-Guarani (Emerillon or Teko, Wayampi), and Arawak (Lokono, Palikur), various European languages such as Brazilian Portuguese and to a lesser extent varieties of English, (Surinamese) Dutch and Spanish, English-lexified Creoles (Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka, Saamaka, Sranan Tongo, Guyanese Creole), French-lexified Creoles (the Creoles of French Guiana, Martinique and Guadeloupe, Haitian Creole), Hmong and languages of Southern China (Hakka, Cantonese).2 While there is a certain degree of mutual intelligibility among the English-lexified Creoles and among the French-lexified Creoles respectively, the different Amerindian languages only share some lexical and structural features.3 Anthropological and sociolinguistic research suggests that some languages have quite a significant speaker base.4 Price (2002) estimates that Saamaka is spoken by around 10 000 persons, i.e. around 5% of the population, while our own studies suggest that the three related Maroon Creoles, Aluku, Ndyuka and Pamaka, are spoken natively by roughly 20% of the population. Speakers of Haitian Creole and French Guianese Creole make up about 10% and 30%, respectively, of the total population.

.  Saamaka and Pamaka are self-designations. In English people generally use Saramaka/ Paramaka or Saramaccan/Paramaccan derived from Dutch Saramaccans/Paramaccans. The speakers of Hmong, an Asian language, were settled in French Guiana in€ 1977. They mostly reside in two villages, Cacao in the east and Javouhey in the west. A third village appears to be emerging near Iracoubo (Ly 2007:€159–160). .  The varieties of Aluku, Ndyuka and Pamaka can be considered closely related varieties of the same language and are highly mutually intelligible. Saamaka descends from the same plantation varieties (Migge 2003) but has been subject to much greater influence from Portuguese (contact varieties) and is therefore only partially mutually intelligible with the former. Guyanese Creole emerged in a different sociohistorical context and is only minimally, if at all, intelligible with the Surinamese Creoles. .  By law, French censuses are not allowed to elicit language and ethnicity data. Figures and percentage here come from a sociolinguistic survey in schools and calculations based on other estimates (see Léglise 2007a).



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

Native speakers of French –€mostly migrants from metropolitan France€– and speakers of Brazilian Portuguese each constitute about 10% of the population. Speakers of the six Amerindian languages together constitute only a mere 2–5% of the entire population. Hmong and Chinese languages are spoken by about 1% each and the number of speakers of Antillian French Creoles may be as high as 5%. France gives some recognition to regional languages but prescribes French as the obligatory medium of instruction in the education system. As in other parts of France, French is thus also the uncontested official language of French Guiana. Initially, only French Guianese Creole was officially recognized in French Guiana. However, in 1999 when the new status langues de France ‘languages of France’ emerged, a total of ten languages of French Guiana were given this status.5 These languages are French Guianese Creole, the six Amerindian languages, Maroon Creoles and Hmong (Cerquiglini 1999; Launey 1999; Queixalós 2000). Language vitality and language use patterns are equally diverse. In some communities such as among Maroons and Hmongs, the ancestral language is the main medium of interaction in the great majority of families and among community members. Other languages are primarily used for out-group communication. In contrast, in other, particularly urbanized communities, intra-community exchanges often take place in more than one language and children are learning several languages from very early on. In the French Guianese Creole community, for instance, French and French Guianese Creole are both commonly used in in-group encounters (Hidair 2007). The Amerindian language Lokono (Arawak) is highly threatened because its speakers have essentially shifted to Sranan Tongo (Léglise & Puren 2005). They use Sranan Tongo for in-group and out-group communication; French is increasingly also used for in-group besides out-group communication.

.  France did not sign the 1999 European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, but set up the category langue de France and conferred it onto 75 languages nationally based on the Rapport Cerquiglini (1999): http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/lang-reg/rapport_cerquiglini/langues-france.html This status is very similar to the status of Regional Language in that it gives a language official recognition and provides for the possibility of its integration into the educational curriculum. According to the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, a regional language is a language that has a long history and a clearly definable speaker community in a country in a clearly delimited part of the national territory. Its speakers are (in the majority) citizens of that country and the language is not an official language in another country Cerquiglini (2003).

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

Especially younger people in French Guiana also regularly engage in patterns of code-switching and code-mixing to negotiate interactional and social identities (Alby€& Migge 2007; Alby 2001; Migge 2007). These practices are often negatively evaluated in the community at large and by the education system (Léglise & Alby 2006). Some languages such as Saamaka and Kali’na are also subject to complex patterns of minorization. Being acutely aware of the stigma attached to their language, younger members are often reluctant to admit being speakers of that language or pose as speakers of another languages (Léglise & Alby 2006; Léglise & Migge 2006, 2007c). According to Léglise (2007a), five main languages currently serve as lingua franca in interethnic contexts (market, school, hospital etc.): French Guianese Creole, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Sranan Tongo and Businenge Tongo.6 French Guianese Creole used to be the main lingua franca of the department but is now mainly used in the eastern part of the department where it is currently being rivalled by Brazilian Portuguese. Businenge Tongo is widely used in the western part of French Guiana. In recent years French also increasingly functions as a means for interethnic communication due to the rapid growth of the school population (Léglise 2005). Until recently, French held the monopoly in the media, but some of the local languages are starting to challenge this dominance. The regional radio station (RFO) now also broadcasts, at certain times, in French Guianese Creole and smaller radio stations in the West such as Reutemeger or Radio IDL also broadcast several hours a week in Sranan Tongo and in Businenge Tongo, respectively. Broadcasts in local languages are very popular and are contributing to the greater visibility of some languages and to the creation of an alternative public domain (Migge to appear). Other public services such as local administration, hospitals and GPs are adapting to the multicultural context to varying degrees by employing members from the local population (administration, hospitals) and by encouraging staff to learn the locally dominant languages. However, Léglise’s (2007b) analysis of communication patterns in the hospital of St. Laurent du Maroni whose patients are in the majority non-francophone suggests that these institutions mostly engage in stop-gap measures. They do not effectively resolve existing communication problems. Linguistic diversity and especially lack of knowledge of French is essentially treated as a transitional problem. The linguistic and cultural diversity of French Guiana is probably least visible in the local educational institutions. All education is carried out in French and students are in the majority faced either with teachers from metropolitan France who generally have little access and knowledge of any of the local cultures and languages or, along

.  Note that the locally used terms Businenge Tongo (and Takitaki) are cover terms that refer to all the Maroon Creoles and variably also to Sranan Tongo as well as possibly to a newly emerging inter-variety koine (cf. Léglise & Migge 2006, 2007c).



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

the coast, with teachers originating from Cayenne or from the French Antilles with a French Creole background. Most of these teachers are not willing or able to effectively integrate and adapt because they usually only spend a short time in French Guiana and their social networks prevent them from accessing local cultures and languages (Thurmes 2007). In contrast to teachers, students’ access to French and French culture is variable; in the west the majority of children do not have much contact with French outside of the school context (Léglise 2004, 2005). The discrepancy between home and school language and culture is widely perceived to be the root cause of the serious educational problems facing the region −€French Guiana has the lowest rate of educational achievement in all of France, a high school dropout rate and nearly half of all the children leave school without any school diploma.

3.  The local languages and the education system Schools were first established in French Guiana after the abolition of slavery in 1848. The first schools were established in the eastern part, such as in Cayenne, Sinnamary, Kourou, Rémire, Montsinéry and Roura. In the west, only the town of Mana had a school. Initially, the expansion of the school system was very slow. By 1852 only 1€200 students attended school (Puren 2007:€281) and schools were run by Christian religious orders. After secularisation of schools in 1888, there was a slow but constant increase in school attendance rates. At the turn of the century about 2 500 children attended school and more than 3 000 were registered between the two world wars (Puren 2007:€281–2). Amerindian and Maroon populations living in the interior of the country were not subject to school attendance until the 1960s. When French Guiana changed its status from colony to département de la Guyane in 1946, the educational policies changed to an aggressive policy of francisation.7 Its main objective was to assimilate the populations of the so-called interior, namely Amerindians and Maroons, to French/European culture “afin d’assurer leur ‘développement intellectuel, social et politique’” (Vignon 1985:€61 cited in Puren 2007:€284). Two strategies were to facilitate this process: resettlement including geographical fixation of different groups in state-run communes and obligatory school attendance (Puren 2007:€ 284–5). Initially, many children from Amerindian and Maroon communities were forcefully removed from their communities and placed in church-run boarding

.  French Guiana is one of the 100 départements of France. All the départements outside of Europe are officially referred to as Département d’Outre Mer (DOM) ‘overseas department’. Their administrative structure is exactly the same as that of Metroplitan French départements. For instance, they are also headed by a préfet (Police Commissionner).

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

schools with disastrous long-term effects, notably alienation from their home communities and cultures. Only a handful of children emerged as truly bicultural. Some currently act as leaders for their communities, actively defending their communities’ rights vis-à-vis the local, national and international administration and actively engage in the regional politics. The first schools in the interior of the country only opened during the 1970s. They continued to be squarely based on metropolitan models. Despite criticism from anthropologists and linguists working in the region (Hurault 1972; Renault-Lescure & Grenand 1985), headway towards integrating local languages and cultures into the school context was slow because French policy eschews all languages other than standard French in the public domain (cf. Alby€ & Léglise 2007). Until 1951 (loi Deixonne), the French government had never acknowledged the linguistic or cultural rights of minorities within its borders. The teaching of regional languages and cultures for a few hours a week officially became possible in 1982 due to a special educational law (Circulaire Savary). Initially, it was disregarded by educational institutions and it took some time before it was extended to French Creoles; it was never extended to the other languages of French€Guiana. In French Guiana, the regional direction of Education (inspection académique) was mostly in favor of introducing French Guianese Creole into the school system. They quickly selected regional supervisors for the program and found volunteers among the Creole-speaking teachers. Today, it is integrated into the local education system in the form of the subject langues et cultures régionales. The other languages of French Guiana did not receive the same treatment although the linguistic and cultural difference between home and school culture and language is generally much more pronounced for children speaking these languages than for French Guianese Creole-speaking children. This lack of attention is due to the fact that persons of French Creole origin have been dominating educational institutions in French Guiana (Puren 2007:€292). Even today, only a handful of teachers speak any of the other languages (natively) and only relatively little is known about these languages, particularly Amerindian languages. Local Amerindian languages, Hmong, and the Maroon Creoles (Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka) only arrived in the school due to a unique collaborative effort between certain members of the local branch of the ministry of education and the linguists of the CNRS-IRD (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) research unit CELIA (Centre d’Etude des Langues Indigènes d’Amérique). Inspired by the demands of the local Amerindian movement of cultural and linguistic self-determination, they initiated the unique educational project Médiateurs Culturels et Bilingues. Apart from agreeing to train native speakers of local languages to become teachers of their native language, the members of CELIA pledged to focus their research on obtaining and making available linguistic knowledge about the region’s



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

least documented languages and about their sociolinguistic situation. The local educational authorities, for their part, made available several short-term (5 years) posts for educational assistants. The project is currently referred to by the name Intervenants en Langues Maternelles.

4.  Langues et cultures régionales The subject langues et cultures régionales (LCR) was introduced to the French Guianese curriculum in 1986. In French Guiana, the subject only deals with French Guianese Creole language and culture (Launey 2007:€ 491) and reaches a total of 300 classes (about 10 000 school children) (Puren 2005). The initiation, development and formal integration of this subject was facilitated by the creation of the teacher association Rakaba whose aim was to promote French Guianese Creole language and culture and through the support of the regional direction of Education (Goury€et€al. 2005). The program is administered by the local branch of the education ministry and is well integrated in the educational landscape of French Guiana. It is taught in five of the seven districts and about three hundred classes are benefiting from instruction in LCR every year. In 2008, there were about 100 teachers specifically trained for this subject in French Guiana. In French Guiana, the subject LCR serves three related purposes: a. the promotion and official recognition of French Guianese Creole language and culture, b. the adaptation of teaching curricula to the local context and c. “the structuring of the child’s mind in his own language” (Puren 2007: 291). It was argued that a few hours of structured teaching of the home culture and language creates a positive link between the home and school context which, in turn, significantly enhances children’s motivation to participate in the educational process and their chances of succeeding (Puren 2007:€291; Goury€et€al. 2005). LCR may be taught at both primary and secondary school level. At primary school level, teachers attending the (primary) teacher training institute (IUFM – Institut Universitaire pour la Formation des Maîtres) complete a set of courses in addition to those prescribed for all trainees in order to gain the right to teach LCR. At secondary level, teacher trainees have to complete an independent piece of work (habilitation) or follow specialized courses in the area of LCR and pass the qualifying, competitive national exam CAPES Créole. The CAPES for LCR, especially the CAPES Créole, was set up in 2002. It is a CAPES bivalent, meaning that candidates get certified for two subjects. The subject LCR or Créole can be combined with subjects like French, English, Spanish, history and geography. Each year a small number of positions are

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

made available nationally for which people can apply. Between 2002 and 2005, eight positions were made available each year for all four overseas departments (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, La Réunion), roughly a population of two million people.8 There are currently 39 qualified teachers for LCR Créole, but none of these positions are in French Guiana –€the majority of positions are held in La Réunion with a few in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Note also that although the University of Antilles and Guyane in Cayenne offers a BA or MA in langues et cultures régionales neither of the two degrees is obligatory for candidates of CAPES Créoles and future teachers of LCR. Teachers can prepare for the exam externally pursuing a range of books specially produced for the exam (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/spip.php?rubrique80). LCR is currently only taught at primary school level in French Guiana. The development of LCR at primary primary level was realized due to the concerted effort of a working group led by Sonia Francius, a regional director of education. This working group in conjunction with volunteers among the teachers and pedagogical advisors was involved in the production and promotion of pedagogical materials for teachers and for the publication of a curriculum (Académie de la Guyane 1997). The first teaching materials were made available through academic bulletins and consisted of transcripts of a broad set of texts from the French Guianese Creole oral tradition such as nursery rhymes, poetry, folktales, and idiomatic expressions including instructions for use in the classroom. These materials gave rise to several teaching manuals: Azéma et Rattier (1994), Francius€& Thérèse (1998) and Armande-Lapierre€& Robinson (2004). The manuals are designed to be used with children who are (native) speakers of the language because they assume knowledge of the language (Launey 2007:€491). The manuals take a clearly cultural heritage preservationist approach and make little mention of modern life in French Guiana. For instance, the manual Pipiri (Francius€ & Thérèse 1998) was designed for children aged six and consists of six units that “follow the rhythm of the French Guianese school year” (p.1). The texts deal mainly with a range of traditional activities such as the washing of clothes and dishes in the river, local animals, traditional houses, furniture and clothes, walks through the forest while the school context, the multicultural nature of the department and modern life are only mentioned in passing. The texts are accompanied by various kinds of exercises. They include questions and exercises designed to check reading comprehension, cross-word type activities for developing vocabulary (e.g. terms relating to animals, local foods and social activities) and activities designed to study the semantic and syntactic relationships between lexical elements. None of the activities focus

.  Persons from metropolitan France can also present for this exam and in 2007 such a candidate did, in fact, sit both the written and oral exam.



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

on developing the metalinguistic capacities of children. Although the book narrowly focuses on traditional French Guianese culture and only makes very little mention of other cultures including metropolitan French culture, several of the texts and exercises in the manual are presented in French only or in both French Guianese Creole and French giving the impression that French Guianese Creole culture even at its most traditional is inseparable from the French language. In addition to the different manuals, teachers of LCR are supported in their work by a special pedagogical advisors for the subject LCR who advise them on both the use of existing material and on the development of new teaching materials. Moreover, as in the case of all teachers, teachers of LCR are periodically observed and evaluated by school inspectors who provide them with constructive criticism about their teaching. In the current context, primary school children attending LCR receive between 1.5 to 3 hours of instruction in the subject. A good number of the children are speakers of French Guianese Creole, but they may not all be native speakers of the language. To accommodate the linguistic heterogeneity of (some) classrooms, LCR is often taught through French rather than French Guianese Creole. The subject LCR clearly contributes towards adapting the teaching environment to the local context. However, to date it is not clear how successful it is in terms of realizing this goal. Despite having been in existence for more than 20 years, the program as a whole has, to date, never benefited from any formal evaluation.

5.  Intervenants en Langues Maternelles9 This project was initiated in 1998. It was initially called Médiateurs Culturels et Bilingues (MCB, Cultural and bilingual mediators) and was renamed Intervenants en Langues Maternelles (ILM, assistants in mother tongue education) in 2007. Despite a number of administrative problems and changes, it has by now been running for about 10€years. In this period, it has expanded from initially 21 MCBs working in 16 schools to 30 MCBs working in 25 schools (in 2006) mostly situated in the western part of the département (Crouzier 2007a: 455). In 2009, recruitment continues.

5.1  The aims and overall conception of the project The project is modelled on existing grassroots programs in other South American countries such as Columbia, Brazil, Paraguay (Landaburu 2000; Renault-Lescure 2000).

.  Since one of the authors participates in the program and this program has from its beginning been accompanied scientifically, the following discussion is more detailed than for the other projects.

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

Briefly, the idea is to train a small number of persons from marginalized communities in basic (descriptive) linguistics, anthropology and applied linguistics in order to enable them to develop socially appropriate teaching materials for the teaching of their own language and culture as well as to carry out some of the teaching through that language in local schools. Another key feature is the active involvement of researchers and educational practitioners. They train the teaching staff and lend their expertise for developing coherent teaching curricula, teaching materials and classroom activities. All activities including the construction of orthographies are carried out as part of a constructive dialogue between the communities and researchers. According to Launey (2007:€493), this kind of project is particularly well suited for smaller and relatively isolated communities. In French Guiana, the aim of the project MCB-ILM is to integrate into the school context some local languages and cultures that had until then been excluded from it to address educational problems (Goury et al. 2005). Three broad objectives were set out for the program: a. to accompany children with little or no knowledge of French in their first language during their initial years at school in order to facilitate their integration into the school context (Goury et al. 2005); b. to develop children’s meta-linguistic competences in their home language in order to facilitate their cognitive development and their acquisition of French; c. to create a positive link between the home language and culture and the school context in order to validate students’ social identities (Launey 2007:€492). Secondary objectives include more effective mediation between the school staff and parents (Migge€ & Renault-Lescure 2009) and promotion of the maintenance and development of regional languages (Alby 2009).

5.2  The trainees, their recruitment and their contractual situation The project MCB-ILM was initiated as part of the nation-wide program Emploi jeunes launched in 1997 whose aim was to create and develop new occupations that are socially useful (Goury et al. 2000). Teachers for the project (henceforth assistants in mother tongue education (AMTE)) were initially hired as educational assistants and had to fit both the national criteria for recruitment of educational assistants and the criteria devised by the linguists of CELIA in conjunction with the regional direction of Education. The former required that a person be fully bilingual in both their home language and in French (Goury et al. 2005) and have an interest in educational work with children. Fulfilment of these prerequisites was determined based on an oral interview. The national criteria for the recruitment of educational assistants demanded that a candidate have a French high school diploma (baccalauréat) and be less than



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

26€ years€ old. Given the educational context of French Guiana (see Section€ 3), particularly the national criteria made it initially impossible to establish a list of even 15 eligible candidates. The linguists therefore successfully lobbied for the waiving of one or the other of the national prerequisites for some promising candidates based on their previous experiences (Goury et al. 2005). The initial recruits were not always the most ideal candidates, but all of them were delighted about the opportunity to work on their native language and culture (on the AMTEs’ profile, see Puren 2005; Crouzier 2007a€& b). Among the first recruits, there were native speakers of Amerindian languages (Kali’na (3), Wayana (2)) and Maroon languages (Aluku (7) and Ndyuka (3)). Soon afterwards, they were joined by two speakers of Hmong. Although Lokono, Palikur and Saamaka are also susceptible to being regional languages of French Guiana according to the European Charter, AMTEs for these languages were initially not included in the project for different reasons. In the case of Palikur, the search for eligible schools had not been completed by the time the project started (Goury et al. 2005). With respect to Saamaka, integration has been slow due to the absence of a linguist working on the language. Lokono has so far not been integrated because its speakers, mainly residents of the villages of Balaté and Sainte Rose de Lima, are in the final stages of language shift; a language revival project appears to be more appropriate in this case. In early 2008, the project involved AMTEs from the following communities: Aluku (7), Ndyuka (8), Hmong (2), Kali’na (3), Wayana (2), Palikur (1), Emerillon (1), Wayampi (1). While some have already been in the project for quite a while and have received extensive training, others have so far benefited from very little or no formal training. In 1998, all AMTEs were hired on a five-year contract and were promised the development of a professionally-oriented structured training program that would lead to a recognized certification. To date, neither of these have emerged. Over the years, different kinds of temporary contracts were given to old and new recruits. Since 2007, along with changes in the administrative structure of the program –€it is now administered by the rectorat, a local Education Office directed by the equivalent of a regional superintendent of Education10€– the status and title of the AMTE was changed to a school assistant (assistant d’éducation). Currently, AMTEs work 26 hours a week and receive a monthly salary of € 1219 (Crouzier 2007a: 455).

.  Until 2007 IRD carried out all the administrative work for the project such as prolonging of contracts, organisation of training sessions including travel and lodging of trainees and trainers in addition to devising and carrying out training sessions. In 2007 an agreement was signed between IRD, IUFM and the rectorat and a working group (groupe académique de pilotage des Intervenants en Langues Maternelles) took over the responsibility for the project and its development.

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

Some of the AMTEs have since left the program for various reasons. Some of the initial AMTEs recently decided to enrol as part time university students at the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane in Cayenne to obtain a licence (BA) in order to eventually obtain their teaching certification. This decision was much supported by the rectorat and the linguists because it was hoped that this would contribute towards increasing the number of teachers from politically and socially marginalized communities whose children nevertheless make up a important proportion of the student population. Some of them recently obtained their BA, but none have yet completed the teacher-training course. However, at this point it appears that on successful completion of the teacher-training course they will most likely have to leave the program and teach French. Despite a higher salary, many of the AMTEs have expressed discontent about this prospect.

5.3  The training The aim of the training sessions is to provide the AMTEs with some linguistic and pedagogical training to enable them to effectively develop their teaching activities and teaching materials. Over the last 10 years, training sessions have taken place roughly twice a year depending on the availability of trainers and financial means. The trainers now include several linguists from CELIA and one or two educators, usually one from the CASNAV (Centre Académique pour la Scolarisation des Nouveaux Arrivants et des Enfants du Voyage, ex-CEFISEM),11 the other an experienced primary school teacher, as well as invited speakers who lead the discussions on specific pedagogical or cultural topics. Training sessions typically last one week and focus on one or two topics. They are carried out partly in small groups and partly in sessions that bring together all the trainees and trainers. The small groups typically consist of one linguist and speakers of one language (e.g. Hmong) or of closely related languages (e.g. the Maroon Creoles). Training sessions are not rigidly structured but they usually involve several elements such as work on specific linguistic and pedagogical topics that pose problems in the classroom, presentation of new themes, development of teaching materials on the theme by members of different language groups, their presentation to all the trainees and trainers etc. After the initial sessions, two issues emerged: verification of acquired knowledge and the training of new AMTEs. Although trainees do not have to pass formal exams, the trainers sometimes assign quizzes on vital pedagogical and linguistic issues and discuss the results with the trainees. They also spend some time on reviewing vital

.  Traditionally, the CASNAV, ex-CEFISEM, supports educators working with migrant children who lack competence in French during their integration into the school context. In French Guiana, it supports all teachers interested in French as a Foreign Language or French as a medium of instruction.



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

material from previous sessions. The integration of newly recruited AMTEs proved somewhat more challenging because it meant that trainers had to simultaneously explain previously treated issues and work on new topics. Recently, trainers have decided to address this matter by creating a teaching manual and by training resource persons among the AMTEs who will help or even take over the training of new recruits. To date, this is still on-going. So far, the training sessions have treated a range of topics: a. social and linguistic topics: the history of the communities, ethno-botany, local classification of animals, kinship terminology, production of local food staples, colour terms, body parts, local oral literature genres (tales, poetry, sayings), linguistic politeness (honorifics, greetings, address forms), numerical and mathematical concepts, b. basic linguistic concepts: language, dialect, variety, language acquisition, language development, language transmission, types of language contact, semantic notions (e.g. expression of tense, mood, aspect, space), c. introduction to the levels and concomitant terminology of linguistic description (units and processes): such as morphology, syntax, pragmatics, phonology and its relationship to writing and writing systems, elaboration of orthographies, and d. didactics: such as learning of reading and writing, objective-based work, elaboration and structuring of teaching activities based on cultural and linguistic knowledge, elaboration of thematic and learning progressions, elaboration of lesson scripts (cf. Lanier-Auburtin 2009:€181–182; Renault-Lescure€& Queixalós in press: 15).

5.4  The development of teaching materials and a curriculum One of the goals of every training session was to develop teaching materials and to encourage AMTEs to develop materials on their own or in collaboration with teachers at their school. A great variety of teaching materials exist, but they are not widely available. Since 2008 a concerted effort has been underway to make more widely available a selection of the teaching materials as part of a teaching manual. The aim is to develop a precise curriculum with clearly defined learning and teaching goals and outcomes in accordance with learning trajectories and the linguistic and cultural specificity of each community. It is hoped that this will contribute towards stream-lining teaching activities, facilitating the training of new recruits, and official recognition of the AMTEs’ work. Existing teaching materials include: a. sung and rhythmical games used for learning terms and concepts, b. question-answer games that teach children to deduce and describe elements and formulate questions about them,

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

c. activities around traditional objects to develop children’s vocabulary, their descriptive capacities, cultural concepts and processes, d. pictorial and textual descriptions depicting the production of local projects such as calabashes, dugout canoes, wood carvings, manioc-based food staples used to practice temporal sequences, ordering of events, development of narratives based on a sequence of pictures, development of the concept to receipt, e. traditional tales used for creating illustrated story books, to stage plays, to familiarize children with their cultural background, to develop listening and story telling skills, and temporal ordering skills, f. riddles employed for promoting analytical skills, the notion of analogy and the idea of metaphors, g. picture books (of animals and plants) used for developing vocabulary (nominal concepts and related verbal expressions), h. nursery rhyme used for memorizing language structures, common sequences (days of the week, months, numbers) and for practicing pronunciation and phonological differentiation, and i. local artwork used for studying geometric concepts and shapes. j. Some activities around mathematical concepts.  (Lanier-Auburtin 2009) Work in progress shows that while the overall curriculum may be broadly similar across the different languages, the types of exercises and sometimes the order of elements to be introduced have to differ partially to accommodate language-based differences (Lanier-Auburtin 2009). In addition to these activities, descriptive work on the languages of French Guiana (cf. Goury€ & Migge 2003; Launey 2003), its sociolinguistic situation (cf. articles in Léglise & Migge 2007a; Renault-Lescure€& Goury 2009) and specific language practices (cf. Migge 2004; Migge 2005a & b; Migge 2007; Léglise 2007b) is on-going. These and other scientific articles function as important reference materials for constructing teaching activities and materials.

5.5  Schools, students, teaching and institutional support The project was conceived for schools where all the children are non-francophone upon entering school and are members of the same or closely related linguistic communities. Initially, 14 schools located in western French Guiana were selected. They are situated in the following locations involving the following languages: Awala-Yalimapo (Kali’na), Mana (Ndyuka), Javouhey (Hmong), Maïman and Apatou (Aluku), Grand Santi (Ndyuka), Papaïchton, Loca and Maripasoula (Aluku), Cayodé, Taluhen, Elahé and Antecume Pata (Wayana), St. Laurent du Maroni – La Charbonière



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

(Eastern Maroon). Later on, a school in Saint-Georges de l’Oyapock (Palikur), one in the neighbourhood of Sable Blanc (Eastern Maroon) in St. Laurent du Maroni, one in Camopi (Emerillon and Wayampi) and one in Bellevue-Yanou (Kali’na) were added (cf. MAP€1). In 1998 the newly recruited AMTEs were each assigned to a school and charged with three main tasks: a. teaching children about and through their mother tongue (L1) during the first three years of their schooling in order to ‘structure’ and support the pupils in their L1 and further their integration into the school context; b. representing the children’s L1 and culture in the school and informing the mostly external teaching personnel about the children’s L1 and culture and helping them to develop culturally sensitive teaching materials and classroom activities; c. functioning as a mediator, a go-between, between the school and the parents.  (Crouzier 2007a: 456; Renault-Lescure & Queixalós in press). Accomplishing these tasks required collaboration between the AMTEs and the teachers and particularly the directors of the schools as well as having a certain amount of competence in teaching and mediation work. However since the AMTEs were not fully trained in either and, more importantly, were at the very bottom of the school’s staff hierarchy as well as had to operate in an environment that was at times openly hostile to local languages and cultures, their job was made nearly impossible. Most AMTEs were faced with a range of problems that seriously undermined their work: a. They were not assigned a separate classroom where they can store and display their own teaching materials; they either had to continually change rooms or work in unsuitable locations such as outside, in storage rooms, the library etc.  (cf. Puren 2005:€23). b. Their teaching activities were not fully integrated into the timetable but were carried out whenever it was convenient for the teachers. c. The teachers often did not want to make groups of students available to the AMTE since they felt that this would be “time lost for French”. d. They were mainly assigned “problem students” that teachers found difficult to deal with or were asked to help out in the special education classes  (Puren 2005:€20,€26). e. The school directors did not want to make materials (papers, pens, photos) available to them for developing their teaching materials (Puren 2005:€23–24). f. Directors and teachers obliged some AMTEs to do a range of unrelated tasks such as supervise students during breaks, managing the library, giving sports lessons, photocopying for teachers, helping teachers with the teaching of French or doing translation work for them (Puren 2005:€21–23).

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

Most of the AMTEs were able to improve their working conditions over time either as the result of changes among the teacher population or, especially in serious cases, as the result of intervention from members of the rectorat and the trainers. However, even today the AMTEs have to continually raise awareness about their role, assert their position, and the success of their mission is highly dependent on the attitudes of the teachers to local languages and cultures and the AMTEs’ ability to assert themselves in relation to the teachers and the school director. From the beginning, there has been great variation in the educational level at which the AMTEs teach, the amount of time they spend with children from each class, the frequency and length of teaching periods, the number of classes in which the mediator teaches, and the types of activities that they carry out with the children. Most AMTEs work only or primarily with the children from the first three years (junior and senior infants) (Puren 2005:€25), but some also work with older children, depending on the ‘needs’ and approach of the school. According to the rectorat, each class should be taught in their L1 for two hours each day (Crouzier 2007a: 455), but there is considerable variation. In some schools, children spend 4 to 6 full class periods of about an hour each week with the AMTE while in others, children’s total time with the AMTE amounts to around an hour divided into four 15-minute sequences. The activities clearly vary depending on the size and the level of the groups. When working with junior infants (petite section), activities centre around exploring basic language and culture concepts such as identification, recognition and naming of colours, structure of the day, numbers, locational concepts, practicing of main greeting and self presentation sequences, learning of local nursery rhymes, songs and short folktales. The children are also introduced to the school environment, listening comprehension and basic narration skills. At senior infant level (moyenne section) basic competences are elaborated. For instance, they learn the structure of the week, are introduced to more locational concepts, listen to longer stories and discuss the activities in more detail focusing on verbal concepts (e.g. movement verbs) and sequencing of actions. New activities involve traditional games, exploring of the natural environment including their village and villagers’ life, interpretation of images, identification and naming of geometric shapes, and identification of body parts. In the grande section children stage short plays, work on the temporal structure of the language (past, future), produce short oral texts and songs, learn to discriminate between sounds, and are introduced to letters and the reading of words. At higher levels (CP) the children are also introduced to orthographic conventions, practice writing, reading, the production of written texts and their oral presentation, the syllable structure of words and learn about language varieties, production of cultural objects (dugout canoes, calabashes, traditional clothes), and about important social issues (waste, kinship, politeness). Until 2005 its extension to higher levels (CP) was much hampered because the teaching of writing in languages other than French and the use of non-French written materials for teaching was formally prohibited.



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

Another issue that has not been formally tackled by trainers and the steering group is the much greater heterogeneity of the student population than initially envisaged by the program’s founders. There are two sorts of cases. In the first case, most (all?) children are already bilingual or multilingual and code-switch between languages like most of their caretakers (cf. Alby & Migge 2007; Migge 2007). Ideally, AMTEs would have to be aware of such practices including their social meanings and differences in competence levels and to design their teaching activities so as to mediate between them. Currently, only a handful of AMTEs can do that effectively and such sociolinguistic issues are also not consistently dealt with in training sessions. The second case are heterogeneous classes involving children who speak several closely related mother tongues (e.g. Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka), somewhat more distantly related languages (e.g. Ndyuka and Saamaka), or unrelated languages. The former case generally does not pose a problem at all since the linguistic differences between these varieties are minimal (cf. Goury & Migge 2003). Most of the AMTEs are now, due to training, also able to properly take into account and address the identityrelated issues linked to these varieties. In the second case, a higher level of mediation is required because despite important linguistic and cultural similarities and the fact that a good number of Saamaka children would also know the other Maroon languages, there are important differences. Either AMTEs integrate discussion of these differences into their activities or they split them up into separate groups with different AMTEs. The former option is preferable because it avoids emphasising ethnic boundaries and contributes towards much needed intercultural understanding as well as is practically and financially more feasible. However, only few of the AMTEs are able to effectively handle this kind of intercultural work. Others simply ignore this level of heterogeneity. More pedagogical reflection and training for AMTEs is required on this topic. The third case poses roughly the same issues but on a different scale. Currently, the problem is resolved by having the non-native speakers simply attend the same sessions. This does not pose a problem for activities designed to work on basic competences as most children’s competence would be sufficient for that. However, for example, story telling activities, writing and more culturally-laden activities may pose problems. So far, AMTEs have not signalled any problems, but it affects the main objective of the project (mother tongue teaching) and may require more far ranging changes to the project in the case of linguistically very diverse classes.

5.6  Supervision and evaluation of the project To date there does not exist any formal arrangement concerning supervision for AMTEs and evaluation of their teaching activities. However, AMTEs are invited to raise any issues during training sessions. Since 2005, both linguistic and pedagogical trainers have also observed AMTEs’ teaching sessions often together with local school inspectors. Such visits have revealed that AMTEs are generally enthusiastic about their

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

work and that students enjoy these classes. However, they have also revealed persistent institutional issues and issues related to teaching methods and content that need to be addressed more globally during training sessions. AMTEs generally welcome these visits and benefit from the feedback. Between 2005 and 2006 the program was evaluated by three different persons. The first evaluation was carried out by Josiane Hamers, an emeritus professor of psycholinguistics and bilingualism from the University of Québec. She visited some schools in western French Guiana, on the Maroni River, in Saint Laurent du Maroni, Javouhey and Awala-Yalimapo. Her overall assessment was very positive. She noted that the children appear to be very active and motivated when working through their L1. She concluded that the program would be even more effective if students received more of their education through their L1 and if the pedagogical training of the AMTEs was intensified (Renault-Lescure & Queixalós in press: 14). The second evaluation was carried out by Laurent Puren an assistant professor in education at the University of La Réunion. He visited a number of schools along the Maroni and Lawa River and on the Oyapock River and reached the following conclusions: a. AMTEs have become the main interlocutors for the local language and culture in the schools fostering teachers’ greater understanding of the issues affecting nonfrancophone children. b. AMTEs’ work has improved relations between parents and schools. c. AMTEs’ presence has improved the school environment for the children and created a positive link between the school and home environment. d. AMTEs’ work needs to be further streamlined and validated through the creation of an official certification (Puren 2005). The third evaluation focused on the effectiveness of the project and was carried out by Françoise Crouzier who was assistant professor at the teacher-training institute (IUFM) in Cayenne at the time. She focused on 43 students of Ndyuka (16) and Hmong (10) background, 26 of whom were participating in the project and 17 who did not. She examined their educational results, interviewed their teachers and AMTEs, observed classes and administered a non-verbal test for measuring the educational and cognitive development of children. This test, called NBBT (Ravard€ & Ravard 1990), was adapted to the French Guianese context and administered to children at senior infant level, testing their preschool knowledge.12 The investigation revealed the following positive effects of the AMTEs’ presence (Crouzier 2007a: 458–459): .  This test is administered in small groups and lasts about one hour. It consists of nine parts: graphic representation, spacial organization, rythme, visual discrimination, auditory analysis,



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

a. It leads to students’ greater valorisation of their mother tongue and home culture. b. It improves social cohesion because it contributes to children’s better understanding of their home culture and teaching environment. c. It improves children’s behaviour and their educational results. Another formal evaluation of students’ competences is currently underway ECOLPOM (http://cnep.univ-nc.nc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48& Itemid=36)

5.7  Conclusion and outlook The program was conceived and born under difficult circumstances and has so far had a bumpy history. However, it has raised awareness among those people who have willingly or unwillingly come into contact with it about the importance of taking into account and valorising students’ languages, cultures and identities in the school context. It contributes towards bridging the divide between their home and school life and motivates children to engage in the educational process and to view themselves as equal citizens. It has also transformed the lives of the AMTEs who feel that they have acquired important insights into their language and culture (Puren 2005:€15–16, 19). However, in order to fully deliver on its objectives, the program will have to be improved. First of all, the training and supervision of AMTEs must be streamlined and intensified,13 the development of teaching materials must be increased and existing and new teaching materials must be more rigorously structured in relation to learning objectives, trajectories and outcomes. The program leaders must also reflect more carefully on the linguistic and social realities of the target communities and on ways of responding to them within the framework of the program. Moreover, the current focus on transitional bilingualism is problematic. To be effective, the program should be extended to all levels of primary and secondary school education and reach more than the current 20% of the schools in the department. The latest news from the rectorat indicate that the number of AMTEs is expected to rise to 50 by the end of 2010 and that the project could be extended to migrant languages (such as Brazilian

writing, geometric figures, reproduction and drawing of pictures representing persons. The first five parts test preschool competences while the latter four relate to students’ learning capacity and the structuring of their personality. The test was administered in their L1 for children who participate in the program and in French to students who did not (Crouzier 2007a: 460). .  The appointment of pedagogical advisors for native speakers of Amerindian and Maroon languages is a first step in the right direction.

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

Portuguese or Haitian). But a new national policy may make it impossible to renew existing contracts which would have disastrous consequences for the program.

6.  Raising awareness about language and language diversity In linguistically relatively homogeneous communities in which all the inhabitants of the area/village share at least one common language, a broad bilingual approach such as the one promoted by LCR and MCB-ILM can be an effective first step towards addressing language and culture-related inequalities. However, such communities are becoming increasingly rare in French Guiana as elsewhere. Children are generally exposed to and draw on several languages in their everyday lives and there are differences in language use patterns, language practices and language competence among children and between children and adults. In addition, everyday language use patterns differ in various ways from communal and national language norms. This heterogeneity is subject to negative evaluation by community members and educators and leads to language-based discrimination and disharmony among social groups. A method that has proven very useful for systematically addressing issues of language and cultural diversity including resulting inequalities is the Language Awareness approach. It was developed in the United Kingdom in the 1980s (Hawkins 1984; Moore 1995) and was tested and further developed in the course of two projects funded by the EU, the program Evlang (1997–2000) and Janua Linguarum (2000–2004). The approach has four objectives: a. to interest and open up students to the notion of diversity and to dispel the myth that homogeneity is the norm and more desirable, b. to develop students’ aptitudes for observing and analyzing languages to reinforce and improve their existing linguistic competence, c. to positively encourage pupils to learn languages, including the languages of their fellow pupils or the official language, and d. to develop pupils’ knowledge about their immediate linguistic environment and more distant regions. In French Guiana, one activity focuses on raising awareness among teachers and another one on developing language awareness materials among students.

6.1  Raising awareness among teachers One of the most important challenges facing teacher training in French Guiana is the relatively great socio-cultural and linguistic discrepancy between teachers and students. Most of the current and future teachers come either from Cayenne having a



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

French Creole background or from metropolitan France and the French Antilles while great numbers of the students originate from Haiti, Suriname, Brazil and Guyana. Most of the non-local teachers only spend a very short period of time in the département and are monolingual in French or bilingual in French and a French Creole. By contrast, most of the students especially in the west are in the majority multilingual, non-francophone and also speak languages from neighboring countries. Until about 10 years ago, the teacher training institution (IUFM) did very little to address teachers’ relative unfamiliarity with the local context. However, in 1997 they finally agreed to include several daylong workshops that focused on the linguistic situation of the department in their yearly teaching schedule. They were optional and held at the very end of the school year. They were run by linguists of CELIA and focused on the Amerindian languages and Maroon Creoles spoken in French Guiana and on anthropological and didactic issues relevant for teaching in a multilingual context (Alby 2009). In 2001, after much lobbying by members of CELIA, the IUFM formally integrated into its curriculum an obligatory module of 20 hours on the languages of French Guiana. Its aim was to expose students to the linguistic diversity of their future students and to propose ways of integrating students’ knowledge into teaching activities. Finally, in 2007 an additional module entitled Teaching in a multilingual and multicultural context was introduced. It focuses on teaching strategies in a multilingual and cultural environment that equally take into account the language of instruction and the languages spoken by the children. This module is obligatory and has a teaching volume of at least 34 hours. It emerged from on-going discussions among the staff at the IUFM, research within the framework of the local ÉRTé (Equipe de Recherche en Technologie de l’Education) and sociolinguistic and language-related educational research in the region in general.14 The content of the course is structured around four broad issues (a) the social and linguistic nature, processes and outcomes of multilingualism and inter-culturalism, (b) the nature of linguistic competence in a multilingual context, (c) the teaching of grammar, (d) the integration of students’ linguistic and cultural background in teaching and learning activities. It is co-taught by researchers and teacher trainers (Alby 2009). As part of this module, teachers are asked to work on a number of issues and language attitudes are a central concern. Teachers are asked to critically examine the nature and origin of their attitudes towards the languages in French Guiana and to reflect on their attitudes towards processes and outcomes of contact, most notably .  The ÉRTé is a research program financed by the ministry of education which focuses on (a) producing knowledge on the educational context of the department, (b) diffusing this knowledge to teachers, and (c) support the ministry of education and teachers in the development and adaptation of teaching policies, methods and activities.

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

code-mixing and code-switching and language use patterns in French that diverge from standard or metropolitan usage. Teachers learn through guided analysis of language use corpora that mixing or code-switching are not a sign of linguistic degradation or occur randomly but are highly structured and perform important social and interactional functions (Alby 2009). Another important issue concerns teachers’ use of children’s L1s. Although most teachers express relatively positive overt attitudes towards their students’ languages, most of them also feel that their use should be restricted to furthering children’s acquisition of French or to mediating problems of comprehension. Class work therefore focuses on discussing strategies for realizing this goal. For instance, teachers are presented with spontaneous recordings of classroom interactions and are asked to critically examine language use patterns and responses to them in teacher-student interactions. These analytical exercises are designed to raise awareness about interactional patterns and to make available tools to future teachers for analyzing and dealing with such interactional patterns.

6.2  Educational activities for raising language awareness among students There is also on-going research on creating new teaching materials and adapting existing resources to the local context. This research is carried out within a GRAC (Groupe de Recherche Action) on language awareness that was initiated by the members of the special pedagogical support unit CASNAV and involves collaboration with local researchers in the area of language awareness and in sociolinguistics. The main work is carried out by interested primary school teachers and local researchers and members of CASNAV have an advisory role. The teachers meet every Wednesday to prepare teaching materials and on saturdays they record their experimentation in class. In addition, once every year the members of the GRAC get together for a few days to review their activities. Participation in the project is voluntary and is generally not compensated. For the moment, the experimentation focuses on three linguistically quite heterogeneous classes in Cayenne. While some children identify only one language such as French, a regional or an immigrant language as their sole home language, others report regularly using more than one language at home. Usually such children name a regional or immigrant language in conjunction with French. Educational activities have so far focused on the following things: a. the formal creation of a multilingual space within the classroom, b. practicing of nursery rhymes from different languages that are not necessarily part of the local context and eliciting children’s reactions to them,



Integrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana 

c. exploring the interaction between a verb and person reference in order to discuss linguistic universals and cross-linguistic variation, and d. recording and comparing of a set of sentences from students speaking different home languages. Although only a small number of exercises have been properly experimented with, the results of this experimentation are very encouraging. Teachers found that all students are very interested and motivated to participate in the activities. Especially children that usually do not partake in other class activities presumably because of their lack of knowledge of French are highly motivated to engage in them and do not hesitate to lend their language expertise. The activities contribute towards validating these children’s otherwise marginalized backgrounds. The research has so far identified the following broad areas of activities for the second year (senior infants) and the third year (first class): a. creation of a multilingual space to raise awareness about the existence of different languages, b. studying of the sounds of the languages of the world to develop listening and attention-keeping competences, and c. studying of the functioning of languages through observation and comparison of linguistic material from different languages to develop metalinguistic competences. Once experimentation has progressed, it is envisaged to publish a DVD on teaching in the multilingual context (of French Guiana) and to develop a manual on language awareness activities for the French Guianese context.

7.  Conclusion and outlook French Guiana is culturally and linguistically a very heterogeneous region which has in recent years also been subject to significant social changes. However, until quite recently the education system has been quite reluctant to embrace strategies for adequately managing this heterogeneity although it is often invoked as the root cause of the region’s significant educational problems. The main measures to date include the integration of a subject on French Guianese Creole language and culture into the curriculum, the teaching of several local / minority languages such as the Maroon Creoles, Hmong and local Amerindian languages, and the conception of a module on teaching in a multilingual context in the teacher training curriculum. While all of these measures pursue different but related goals, they all contribute towards adapting

 Bettina Migge & Isabelle Léglise

the teaching environment to the linguistic and cultural landscape of French Guiana. However, in their current state, all these measures require further elaboration. While LCR and MCB-ILM are clearly useful, their underlying conceptions and approaches need to be adapted to the local social, linguistic and cultural realities of the department. Specifically, a. teaching materials and approaches should reflect the multilingual character of the society and the modern context, b. teaching should not be restricted to only a few of the local languages; all students whether or not they are native or non-native speakers should have access to such classes, c. the transitional bilingualism character of these approaches must to be tackled. In the long run it might be useful to consolidate LCR and MCB-ILM by creating a subject that focuses on familiarizing students with all the languages and cultures of French Guiana, teaching vital metalinguistic competences and addressing language and culture-based issues in the region.

Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools* Arja Koskinen

University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast In this paper I review the role of Kriol in the education system of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. I briefly describe the place of Kriol in the classroom in the pre-2007 period and discuss the process of introducing Kriol as a medium of instruction for children of Creole, Garifuna, Rama and Miskitu origin in the new Intercultural Multilingual Education curriculum which is based on the Regional Autonomous Education System (SEAR). The paper discusses the normalization process of Kriol, teacher training, the elaboration of textbooks, language attitudes among the Kriol-speaking community and the preliminary results of the pilot phase which was initiated in the 2007 school year and included 5 schools in the Kriol-speaking areas. Keywords:╇ Nicaraguan Kriol; Intercultural Bi- and Multilingual Education; Regional Autonomous Education System SEAR; Kriol in the classroom

1.  Introduction The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua is a multilingual and pluricultural region which has had an autonomous status since 1987. It is traditionally inhabited by several indigenous€− Miskitus, Sumus (Mayangnas and Ulwas), Ramas€ − and Afro-descent peoples€− Garífunas and Creoles.1 In addition, a high number of Mestizos from the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua have come to settle in the region since the 1990s, moving the so-called agricultural frontier eastwards, deeper and deeper into the rainforest of the Caribbean. The Nicaraguan education system has traditionally faced more challenges on the Caribbean Coast than in the rest of the country. Educationally, the Caribbean region

*The author is a researcher in the Finnish Academy Project number 111544 “Right to language and mother tongue education. Linguistic research as a means of strengthening intercultural bilingual education in Nicaragua and Guatemala.” .  In this article, I will use Creole to refer to the people and Kriol to refer to the language.

 Arja Koskinen

is, for instance, characterized by a low literacy rate, a low average of years spent in school, a lack of secondary schools and a comparatively high number of untrained teachers. In order to improve the quality and pertinence of education, the Intercultural Bilingual Education model was introduced in a number of pre-primary and primary schools in 1984/1985 and gradually increased in the following years. The situation was further improved in 2006 with the ratification of the Regional Autonomous Education System (Sistema Educativo Autonómico Regional), SEAR, in the 2006 Education Law. This paper explores how SEAR has transformed the educational situation of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast and the challenges that it currently faces, focusing in particular on the role of Kriol in this context. The second part presents the sociolinguistic background of the Nicaraguan Caribbean region in general and the Southern region in particular. Part three sketches the history of education on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua and discusses SEAR, the new curriculum for Intercultural Multilingual Education (IME), their implementation, and the new Kriol orthography. Parts four and five discuss the piloting of Kriol as a medium of instruction in teacher training and in primary schools. The last chapter summarizes the findings and discusses their implications.

2.  The sociolinguistic situation on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua 2.1  A historical overview Nicaragua is a Central American country that is both historically, socially and geographically divided into two regions: the Pacific and the Atlantic regions. The Pacific region was colonized by the Spanish and most of the indigenous peoples of the region were exterminated. In contrast, the Atlantic or the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua was never conquered by the Spanish but subject to British influence first in the form of activities by British pirates, then through slavery and “indirect rule” under British protectorate (1844–1860). Following this period, the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua was turned into the so-called Mosquito Reserve with an autonomous status. This situation came to an abrupt end in 1894 when General Zelaya, president of Nicaragua, annexed the Caribbean Coast and incorporated it into Nicaragua.2 During the following 85 years, successive governments of Nicaragua did not show any interest in developing the Caribbean region and the people remained isolated from the Pacific region of the country. The best lands in the region were distributed among the ministers of the Government, the friends and relatives of the president and other high-ranking governmental officials and officers of the army. All jobs and positions of

.  The so-called Reincorporación in Spanish.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

any importance in the region were assigned to the Spanish-speaking people from the Pacific region of Nicaragua. No effort was made to develop the infrastructure of the region hindering economic development and integration with the Pacific region. Education and health services were heavily dependent on the limited capacity of the different churches established in the region. Spanish was imposed as the official language of the Atlantic Coast and all official dealings had to be carried out in this language. When schools opened their doors again 25 years after annexation, Spanish functioned as the only means of instruction. At the time, most of the people were illiterate and infant mortality was high. The abundant mineral and forestry resources of the region were given, in concession, to North American companies (Hooker 2006:€36–37). The situation remained more or less the same until the Sandinist Revolution in 1979. During the 1980s, as a result of the struggle of the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples, the Sandinist government gradually acquired a better understanding of the reality of the Caribbean Coast and came to the conclusion that a new and more ambitious approach was needed in order to improve the living conditions of the people from the Caribbean Coast and to pacify the region. This marked the beginning of the autonomy process; for the first time, a government of Nicaragua legally recognized that the peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua are entitled to political, social, economic and cultural self-determination. Politically, they were given the right to actively participate in the law-making-process, to elect their own leaders in honest, fair and free elections and to occupy positions of leadership both at regional and national level. Economically, the peoples of the Caribbean Coast were given the right to rationally manage, on a sustainable basis, the natural resources of the region and to also enjoy the benefits from these resources. Culturally, the peoples of the Caribbean Coast were encouraged to establish an environment in which people could learn to be proud of their physical and spiritual characteristics, language and culture (Hooker 2006:€39–40). The new Constitution which was ratified in 1987 defines Nicaragua as a multiethnic state and establishes the autonomous status of the Caribbean Coast. The Autonomy Law of that year (Law Nr. 28 of 1987) declares the Caribbean Coast an autonomous region, or rather two autonomous regions: Northern Autonomous Atlantic Region (Región Autónoma Atlántico Norte, RAAN) and Southern Autonomous Atlantic Region (Región Autónoma Atlántico Sur, RAAS). Both regions are governed by the Autonomous Regional Councils and Governments, entitled to administer their own affairs in a range of domains such as health, education and natural resources. The Language Law (Law 162 of 1993) bestows official status upon all the regional languages and the Law of Land Demarcation of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Autonomous Regions (Law 445, 2003) recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities to use, administer and manage their traditional lands and resources as communal property, and furthermore guarantees land demarcation and titling.

 Arja Koskinen

In no other country of Latin America are the legal rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities as well protected as they are in modern day Nicaragua. The decentralization or regionalization of the different sectors, however, constitutes a great challenge. To date, the national government has therefore been reluctant to fully transfer the corresponding resources to the regional governments because they are not ready to abdicate its power. It is thus in the full implementation of this framework that the autonomy has so far failed. The most imminent threat to the indigenous territories is the advance of Nicaragua’s so-called agricultural frontier. Mestizo colonists from the Pacific region are continuously encroaching on the Caribbean Coasts’ rainforest and are driving the original inhabitants off their lands. These colonists are destroying the rainforest to plant crops such as corn and beans and to establish cattle pastures. Throughout much of the autonomous territory, these activities have been accompanied by intimidation and violence. Finally, the uncontrolled immigration of Mestizos is threatening the traditional ways of life, cultures and languages of the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples (see Riverstone 2004).

2.2  Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean peoples and languages There are no reliable population statistics for the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The last national census was carried out in 2005 but its results differ significantly from those of other sources. Table€1 compares the available information: Table€1.╇ A comparison of population statistics for the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua Indigenous/ethnic group

National Census 2005

Miskitu Mayangna: – Panamahka – Tuahka Ulwa Rama Creole Garífuna

120,817 9,756

Total

158,617

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

698 4,185 19,890 3,271

Gordon 2005 (Ethnologue) Sukawala 2007:€27,450 Mayangnas and Ulwas Asociación Tuahka (ADISCITTBA): 35% of the Mayangna population is Tuahka. Communal Census in Karawala 2007. The Territorial Government Rama-Kriol 2007; Grinevald 2003. Censo Garífuna 2003. FOREIBCA-URACCAN.

Other sources 150,000 (1) 25,050 (2) − 16,283 − 8,767 2,400 (3) 1,600 (4) 30,000 (1) 2,109 (5) 201,339



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

As to the Mayangna, the national census is very low and makes no distinction between Panamahka and Tuahka. The number of Ramas, however, is extremely high compared to the other official sources, such as the census made by the Territorial Government Rama-Kriol in 2007, and it is assumed to have been influenced by the issue of territorial rights and land demarcation. The number of Ulwas and Creoles, again, is very low in the national census. The highest estimate for the number of Creoles comes from the FADCANIC-Humboldt Foundation (1999; cited in Freeland 2004). They propose that they number 50,000, 34,771 in RAAS and 15,299 in RAAN. It is even more difficult to gauge the number of speakers of the other languages spoken on the Caribbean Coast. An important first step would be to carry out a representative sociolinguistic survey to determine speaker numbers, usage patterns and the degree of language endangerment that different languages may suffer. However, such a survey is logistically and culturally challenging because the strongly multi-ethnic and multilingual nature of the region has created complex relationships between all of its languages. Historically, the speakers of some languages have been under pressure to not only adopt the official national language, Spanish, but also other local languages. For instance, speakers of Mayangna have had to learn Miskitu, speakers of Miskitu have had to learn Creole, and speakers of Creole have been obliged to learn English. A variety of factors have conditioned these changes such as the geographic location of the speakers, the economic situation of its speakers, their role within the national and regional economy, the social and linguistic relationship of the language to other languages as well as various other social and cultural factors. The effect of individual factors has varied between communities and between subgroups of the same community (Freeland et al. 2007). The languages spoken on the Caribbean Coast belong to four different families of languages. Miskitu, Mayangna and Ulwa are part of the Misumalpan language family: Miskitu makes up one branch of the family and Sumu-Matagalpa the other. The Sumu subfamily again branches into Septentrional Sumu or Mayangna which has three variants: Panamahka and Tuahka spoken in Nicaragua, Tawahka spoken in Honduras, and Meridional Sumu or Ulwa practiced in Nicaragua (Benedicto & Hale 2004:€7). Rama is a Chibchan language that is spoken only in Nicaragua. It is classified as highly endangered. Garífuna is an Arawak language. It is highly endangered in Nicaragua, but has a relatively high number of speakers in Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. Nicaraguan Kriol belongs to the Western Atlantic branch of the English-lexifier Atlantic Creoles together with Belizean Kriol, Jamaican Creole and Islander Creole in San Andrés, Colombia (Gordon 2005). Table€2 provides basic information about the ethnic groups living on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua such as the location of its members, their ancestral language and the first (L1) and second (L2) languages currently practiced by it members.

 Arja Koskinen

Table€2.╇ Basic information about the ethnic groups of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua Indigenous/ ethnic group

Location

Ancestral language

L1

L2(s)

Comments

Miskitu

RAAN: municipalities of Puerto Cabezas, Waspam, Prinzapolka, Rosita, Bonanza RAAS: Desembocadura del Río Grande, Pearl Lagoon

Miskitu

Miskitu

Kriol, Spanish, Miskitu, Spanish

RAAN: Las Minas

Panamahka

Kriol is the first language of several Miskitu communities in the RAAS but a part of the older population still speaks Miskitu as a first or second language. Also in some cases in the RAAN, Kriol is the second language. The Tuahka communities are experiencing language shift from Tuahka to Miskitu. There are efforts to reverse the process, for instance by introducing Tuahka as an L1 in Tuahka schools. The Ulwas are the most multilingual people on the Caribbean Coast. The ancestral language Ulwa has been widely displaced by Miskitu but is gaining new space, for instance as an L1 in the new IME curriculum.

Mayangna: – Panamahka – Tuahka

Ulwa

Jinotega-Bocay

RAAS: Karawala

Kriol

Panamahka Tuahka

Tuahka

Miskitu

Ulwa

Ulwa

Miskitu

Miskitu, Spanish Miskitu, Spanish Tuahka, Spanish

Miskitu, Kriol, Panamahka, Spanish Ulwa, Kriol, Panamahka, Spanish

(Continued)



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

Table€2.╇ (Continued) Rama

RAAS: 6 communities to the South of Bluefields

Kriol

RAAS: Kriol municipalities of Pearl Lagoon, Corn Island, Bluefields (Desembocadura del Río Grande) RAAN: municipalities of Puerto Cabezas, Prinzapolka (Las Minas) Garífuna RAAS: Pearl Lagoon – Orinoco, La Fé, San Vicente, Brown Bank, Bluefields

Garífuna

Rama

Kriol

Spanish

Kriol

Spanish English

Kriol

Spanish English

The Rama language has been displaced by Kriol. There are appr. 30–40 speakers in the mainland communities (Rama Cay: 1 speaker). It is in the process of being revitalized. The knowledge of English varies considerably.

Garífuna has been displaced by Kriol. There are about 20–30 Garífuna speakers. The language is in the process of revitalization.

Table€2 shows that the majority of the Coastal population is at least bilingual, but in most cases multilingual. This is especially the case in the multi-ethnic cities and communities or in cases where neighboring communities speak different languages. This situation is characteristic of RAAS and is on the rise in RAAN communities. Despite the fact that all the languages of the Caribbean Coast have official status by law, none of them is currently used in all public contexts. Some of them€– Rama and Garífuna€– are not even in daily use any more. Both the Autonomy Law and the Language Law provide for the possibility of revitalizing endangered languages. In the RAAN, Miskitu is widely used in practically all social domains such as daily face-to-face communication, in education, in offices (including the Regional Council and Government), in hospitals and health centres, in shops, in regional radio and

 Arja Koskinen

television programmes, in regional magazines.3 It is also widely spoken by the majority of Mayangnas. Miskitu is a language of prestige, strengthened by the autonomous status of the region. As to Mayangna, the Panamahka variant is used in education and in daily life in unofficial contexts, but Spanish is the language of the public domain such as in offices, health centres and on the radio; television programs cannot be received in the Mayangna area. By contrast, the Tuahka variant is not widely used and its speakers are shifting to Miskitu. In order to fight this development, Tuahka has finally been included as one of the L1s in the new IME curriculum. The Tuahka people are aware that their language is endangered and are actively engaging in its revitalization (cf.€Frank Gomez 2006). Kriol is spoken by the Creoles, Ramas and Garífunas and the majority of the Miskitus in the original Miskitu communities of Pearl Lagoon such as Tasbapauni, Kakabila, Raitipura, Set Net, Haulover (Jamieson 2007). The Rama and Garífuna communities have nearly undergone total language shift. The Rama language is currently spoken by only approximately 30–40 persons in Nicaragua. In this case, language shift was mostly caused by the activities of the Moravian missionaries who used English instead of Rama for their missionary and educational work because of the relatively small size of the Rama community.4 In the case of the Garífunas, language shift occurred due to linguistically based discrimination by the Creole population in the Pearl Lagoon area. To escape discrimination, Garifunas shifted to Kriol as their daily language. Today, only approximately 20–30 elderly people still speak Garífuna in Nicaragua. Both the Ramas and the Garífunas have expressed a strong desire to revitalize their ancestral language; as a result of these efforts, a new revitalization project for both Rama and Garífuna began in 2008 with the technical and financial support of the Danish NGO Ibis and IPILC-URACCAN. Kriol is an important language in the RAAS, especially in the municipalities of Pearl Lagoon, Bluefields and Corn Island. It is widely spoken in the homes, on the streets, in the market and in shops and offices that employ Kriol speakers. Until 2007, its use in education was unofficial. In that year, it was integrated as an official language in a pilot project of the new IME curriculum. Kriol is currently only used in a few radio programs; Kriol-speaking journalists usually try to approximate English in this situation. In many cases, this results in the mixing of Kriol and English at times referred to as “yanking”.

.  There are no regional newspapers. The national newspapers have never used any of the regional languages. .  The Moravian missions on the Caribbean Coast were established in 1849.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

HONDURAS Legend 14º

MAR CARIBE

OCOTAL SOMOTO

JINOTEGA

ESTELI

MATAGALPA

CHINANDEGA LEON

LA

G

O

BOACO M

A

MANAGUA

OC

N

A

G

JINOTEPE

EA

NO

PA CI

U

A

JUIGALPA

LA

GRANADA RIVAS

FI

30

0

30

BLUE FIELDS

MASAYA

CO

G

O

N

IC

A

RA

G

U

12º

A

SAN CARLOS

60Kilometers

Cabeceras departament Sumu-Mayangna Miskitu Rama Garifuna Creole Ethnic groups Creole y Mestizo Miskitu Creole Mestizo Miskitu y Mestizo Rama, Creole y Mestizo Indigeneous groups of the Pacific and North Central region Chorotega Matagalpa Nahua Nicarao

N

COS TA R I

CA

Ubicación de los pueblos indigenas y comunidades etnicas

2.3  Language development and language status The current legal context in Nicaragua is very favourable to the use and development of the regional languages. The Constitution states that “Spanish is the official language of the state [of Nicaragua]. The languages of the Communities of the Atlantic Coast shall also have official status in the cases established by law” (Art. 11) and that “the Communities of the Atlantic Coast have the right to the free expression and preservation of their languages, art and culture…” (Art. 90). Equally, the Autonomy Law (Law Nr. 28 from 1987) grants the people in the communities on the Atlantic Coast the right to preserve and develop their languages, religions and cultures (Art. 11). The Language Law (Law Nr. 162 from 1993) stipulates that “the Miskitu, Creole, Sumu, Garifuna and Rama languages are languages of official use in the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast.” (Art. 4) and that “the state will establish programs to preserve, save and promote the Miskitu, Sumu, Rama, Creole and Garífuna cultures as well as any other indigenous culture that still exists in the country, and will study the possibility of the future introduction of education in all these languages.” (Art. 6).5

.  This law is referred to in Spanish as Ley de uso oficial de las lenguas de las comunidades de la Costa Atlántica de Nicaragua.

 Arja Koskinen

It also guarantees the use of the regional languages in the media, in public administration and other official contexts. What is especially noteworthy about this legal framework is that it extends the same rights to all the peoples of the Caribbean Coast and conveys official status on all the regional languages regardless of the size of their speaker population. With regard to literacy, Miskitu and Mayangna have the longest tradition. The Moravian missionaries used them in Bible translations in the second part of the 19th Century, and both languages have by now a modest literary tradition. In addition to the text books for primary school, there are also other written materials such as stories, myths and legends, and documents on central political and cultural issues. The latter are usually translations of documents issued by the national or regional government, or by foreign NGOs. Rama and Ulwa began to develop as literary languages in the 1980s as a result of the work of a group of linguists called the “Linguists for Nicaragua” who come from several different countries. The Rama Project was directed by Dr. Colette Grinevald Craig (France) and the Ulwa revitalization work by Dr. Kenneth Hale (USA). In the case of Ulwa, a committee (CODIUL/UYUTMUBAL) was established in 1988 that consists of natural linguists –€local Ulwa-speakers with good knowledge of the structure and vocabulary of the language€– from the Ulwa Community of Karawala and of foreign linguists (see Garcia & Knight 2007). The local linguists are still continuing the linguistic work of the committee with the support of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, URACCAN. This language work has given rise to several publications. We currently dispose of a grammar and a dictionary for Rama and a dictionary for Ulwa in addition to textbooks and other materials for preschool and primary school level.6 As to Garífuna, the only material produced in Nicaragua is a little textbook for primary schools. There is an urgent need to develop additional textbooks and other materials for schools in the Nicaraguan context. The development of the Kriol language will be presented in Section€4. URACCAN, through the Institute of Linguistic Research and Cultural Revitalization (IPILC), has been promoting the regional languages by organizing workshops, setting up diploma and postgraduate courses in different regional languages in addition to offering courses of Kriol, Miskitu and Mayangna in the BA programs in IBE. All URACCAN students are required to take courses in one of the indigenous languages of the Caribbean Coast. The Mayangna postgraduate courses are being taught by Dr.€ Elena Benedicto (USA). They have resulted in the emergence of a team of “autochthonous linguists” who are specialists on Panamahka and Tuahka. Most of the

.  A new internet-based dictionary for Rama is available at www.turkulka.net



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

workshops and courses are taught by native speaker teachers from the different language groups in conjunction with members of the IPILC team. In the 1990s, Susan Norwood (1993:€57–58) posited the following sociolinguistic hierarchy of power and prestige for the languages of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua: Spanish > Creole > Standard English > Miskitu > Mayangna (Sumu) > Ulwa/Rama/Garífuna High prestige ← → Low prestige

This hierarchy, however, is changing as the result of on-going political change such as the autonomy process, the implementation of SEAR and the sociopolitical empowerment of the people. The regional languages have gained considerably in social status in recent years. All communities are much more aware of the value and importance of language related issues and most of them are making an effort to revitalize their ancestral language where it has fallen out of daily use. The only language whose prestige is still relatively low, despite its widespread use, is Kriol.7 Kriol continues to be considered a form of “broken English” or “bad English” by many Creoles and non-Creoles and its use in formal contexts is still considered vulgar. For instance, the director of the local TV-program “Bluefields Creole News” still receives angry phone calls from listeners protesting against “bad language” use when interviewees use Kriol on the program.8 However, recent language awareness work and the implementation of Kriol in schools are definitely having a positive effect on attitudes towards Kriol. People are slowly discovering that Kriol and English are two separate languages each with their own structure, vocabulary and pronunciation. This has contributed to more positive attitudes towards Kriol.

2.4  The origins of the Creole population on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast The origin of the Creole population dates back to the arrival of the Europeans and their African slaves on the Caribbean Coast. At that time, the area was settled by a number of Amerindian peoples. Initial contacts occurred in the 16th century when the buccaneers ‘European pirates’ visited the Coast. These contacts became permanent after 1630 with the founding of the English Providence Company on Providence Island. The company settlers imported a considerable number of slaves to Providence Island and when the colonists begun to settle on the mainland, they brought with them their African slaves and had them working on sugar and indigo plantations established on the Coco River and in Bluefields Lagoon (Floyd 1967:€2, in Hale & Gordon 1987:€19).

.  Note that the status of Kriol is surprisingly high in Norwood’s hierarchy. .  The use of the indigenous languages of the region, such as Miskitu and Ulwa, does not cause this type of reaction.

 Arja Koskinen

After the destruction of the Providence Island settlement by Spanish forces in 1641, a number of people of African descent moved to the mainland and some of them mixed with the native Miskitu population. During the 17th and 18th centuries, British colonists expanded their political control and economic activities in the area. As a result, more African slaves were imported through Jamaica and used as slave labor in presentday Nicaragua. Other Africans –€so called Maroons€– arrived fleeing slavery in other areas of the Caribbean and Central America. By the middle of the 18th century there were several Anglo-dominated communities on the Caribbean Coast that consisted of persons of British, African and Amerindian background. The main settlements at the time were Cabo Gracias a Dios, Bluefields, Corn Island and Pearl Lagoon (Hodgson 1766: 9 in Gordon 1998:€33). Though most Africans on the Coast were slaves, an increasing number of free men of color arrived from Jamaica and other areas of the Caribbean and settled on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. Among these were traders, mariners, craftsmen and soldiers who were trying to take advantage of the working opportunities offered by the new settlements (Long 1970:€549, cited in Gordon 1998:€35). The increase of the immigrant population led to the establishment of a new social hierarchy where the former slaves of African descent were at the bottom and the free colored population in the middle position. Also, since the European population of the Coast was small and predominantly male, miscegenation between Europeans, Amerindians and Africans was extensive, resulting in an increasingly mixed population. Some of these “mulattoes” remained slaves, others were freed by their European fathers, and a few of them acquired the elite class status of land- and slave-owner. During the 17th and 18th€centuries, this elite became increasingly dominant in the Coastal society of the time (Hale€& Gordon 1987:€19–20). When the British had to leave the area following the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, Spain was not able to assert its power in the region. This led to the emergence of a power vacuum in the colonial hierarchy that was used by the new social elite to consolidate their political and economic control over the region. This situation lasted until 1894 when the Caribbean Coast was annexed by Nicaragua. Having been free from colonial oppression during the first half of the 19th Century, the communities of the Bluefields and Pearl Lagoon area flourished. During this period an expanding segment of people of African and mixed-descent began to refer to themselves as “Creoles”. According to Gordon (1998:€39), it seems probable that initially only the lighter-skinned mixed elite was considered Creole, but by the middle of the 19th century the term had been extended to include “the entire free English Creole-speaking non-white population born in the Americas and living in the Mosquitia”. However, even to this day, the members of the Creole community tend to distinguish lighter-skinned Creoles from black Creoles. In the same vein, Anglo culture associated with education and respectability



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

and lighter-skinned Creoles coexists with a popular black culture associated with black Creoles (Freeland 2004:€110). The US government was also interested in the Mosquito Reserve, mainly with respect to establishing control over the possible inter-Oceanic canal through the Río San Juan. North American traders and entrepreneurs set up trading establishments along the Coast and by the late 1870s, North Americans had displaced the British in terms of economic and social influence on the Coast (Gordon 1998:€44). In the early 1930s, the US enclave economy was created during the Somoza dictatorship. It gave concessions for the exploitation of natural resources such as lumber and gold to foreigners and contributed to the strengthening of the Anglo identity of the Creoles, giving them an advantage in the labor market. In 1849, another important power established itself on the Southern Caribbean Coast, the Moravian mission. As the only mission on the Caribbean Coast, it came to play a decisive role in the religious life of the region and also had a strong impact on the development of the languages of the Coast. During the first 30 years, the Moravian missionaries concentrated their work in the predominantly Creole communities around Bluefields and Pearl Lagoon. It also influenced the socio-political situation in the Mosquito Reserve (Gordon 1998:€44). For instance, it is clear that the use of English in their missionary work with the Rama people was the most important factor that pushed them to abandon the use of the Rama language and replace it with English and, later on, with Kriol (often called “Rama Cay Creole”). In the case of the Ulwa people who lived in the community of Karawala, the decision of the Moravians to use Miskitu in their mission work with them eventually led to the weakening of the Ulwa language.

3.  Education in the Caribbean Coast 3.1  Towards Intercultural Bilingual Education Since the Moravians had a special interest in education –€their policy was to build a school beside every church€– the first schools on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast were established by the Moravian missionaries in the second part of the 19th century. These schools used English as the language of instruction and trained Creoles to become teachers, church pastors, middle managers in the US economic enclaves (Freeland 2004:€109). However, following the annexation by Nicaragua in 1894, a strong Hispanization process was initiated by the Central Government. When the schools were reopened after more than twenty years, Spanish became the only means of instruction. This situation only changed 80 years later in 1979 with the Sandinist Revolution.

 Arja Koskinen

One of the most important achievements of the new Sandinist Government was to carry out a nationwide literacy campaign to eradicate rampant illiteracy among Nicaraguans.9 Initially, this campaign was also carried out in Spanish on the Caribbean Coast. However, when this led to widespread protests among the Caribbean peoples, three of the regional languages, Miskitu, Sumu (the variant Panamahka) and English, were incorporated into the program. According to the campaign’s director in the southern zone of the Coast, Guillermo McLean, it had initially been intended to carry out the campaign in the mother tongue of the Creoles, namely Kriol. However, due to the absence of a written norm for Kriol and negative attitudes towards the language among the adult population, this idea was quickly abandoned.10 For most Creoles, the new language rights for regional languages did not apply to Kriol which they did not consider to be a language in its own right. They associated the new linguistic rights with the restoration of the English-medium education that they had been denied during the long Hispanization period (see Freeland 2004:€117). As a result, the campaign was carried out in English. The people from the Caribbean Coast used the literacy campaign as an inspiration for further educational demands. They protested against the continuation of traditional monolingual and monocultural education in Spanish and requested that in addition to the regional languages, other aspects of their distinctive ways of life such as their history, culture€– including cosmovision,€‘a cultures view of the world’€–, and traditional sciences be integrated into the school curriculum. The government responded positively to these demands and created the Intercultural Bilingual Education Program implemented by the Ministry of Education in 1984. Since that time the program has undergone several changes. It changed its name from Bilingual Bicultural Education Program, to Bilingual Intercultural Education Program and is currently referred to as the Intercultural Bilingual Education Program (IBE). Every new name has involved a more profound reflection of the character of this education model. Changing biculturalism to interculturalism was a significant change of focus. Biculturalism or multiculturalism depicts a situation where several cultures are living in the same area, isolated or less isolated, and mutually tolerate of each other even though they may not necessarily like each other. Interculturalism, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which the members of two or more cultures have knowledge of each, understand each other, engage in positive exchange and communication, respect each other and co-exist harmoniously. Interculturalism is more than tolerance: it is an active search for mutual enrichment in all its aspects (see Fournet-Betancourt 2001). The change

.  The campaign received a special prize from UNESCO. .  “If yu waa tiich wi, tiich wi gud!” ‘If you are going to teach us, teach us well!’ being one of the comments from the Creole adults (Oral interview with Guillermo McLean, 2007).



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

from “bilingual intercultural” to “intercultural bilingual” reflects the prioritization of interculturalism in the education context. Finally, when the new curriculum talks about Intercultural Multilingual Education (IME) it aims to reflect the multilingual character of the Caribbean Coast. IBE/IME is more than just a program for learning two or more languages; it can be defined as a socio-political project for the empowerment of marginalised peoples. It has the following aims: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Instruction in and through the mother tongue The learning of one or more additional language(s) Strengthening peoples’ self-esteem Strengthening peoples’ ethnic, cultural and linguistic loyalty Awareness of and respect for and training in interculturality Creatively and fruitfully combining endogenous and exogenous knowledge

In this approach, language is not just seen as a means of communication, but is considered to be a fundamental part of a group’s cultural identity that, in turn, plays an important role in the realization of the group’s and its member’s potential. The IBE Program has to date been officially developed for three languages: Miskitu, the Panamahka variety of Mayangna and English (though called “PEBI-Creole”).11 Thus, Creoles based their choice firmly on the Anglo Creole identity rather than the Black or Costeño identity, stressing economic arguments and underplaying arguments dealing with ethnic identity. There were some earlier proposals that considered creating reading primers in Kriol and gradually differentiating Kriol and English. However, the final program only implemented English and Spanish despite efforts by the younger generation of Creoles to promote their Black Creole identity. They argued that teaching English instead of Kriol would be to impose an alien language and culture on the students. However, since they had little political influence and violated the rules of the Anglo-dominated education circles with their protests, they were not able to assert themselves (Freeland 2004:€117). Despite the stipulation inherent in the constitution that all languages be treated on equal terms, practical concerns, namely the small size of the speaker population, led the authorities to avoid developing separate programs for the Rama, Ulwa and Garifuna communities. From the beginning, the Rama and Garifuna children participated in the Kriol program and the Ulwa children in the Miskitu program. However, both communities soon contested this move. Referring to their constitutional rights, they demanded revitalization measures for their ancestral languages. In order to meet .  PEBI = Programa Educativo Bilingue Intercultural is the Ministry of Education’s official name for the program.

 Arja Koskinen

these demands, Rama, Garifuna and Ulwa were eventually included as “unofficial” subjects in the preschool and the lower primary school curriculum in Rama Cay, Orinoco, and Karawala, respectively, although no materials were developed and the teachers, who in the majority were lay people, did not receive any training. During the 1990s, the need for a more global approach and a wider understanding of interculturality and intercultural citizenship became obvious. The peoples of the Caribbean Coast strongly demanded a pertinent education system for all levels of education based on socio-political autonomy, linguistic human rights, democracy and interculturality. At the same time, it was becoming obvious that the Ministry of Education was slowly trying to put an end to the Intercultural Bilingual Program by reducing the funds allocated to it. Likewise, technical support was cut down to a bare minimum. Only with assistance from some European NGOs was it possible to inject new life into the program and to develop a new set of textbooks –€under president Violeta Chamorro the original books were burned in 1990 under the pretext that they constituted Sandinist propaganda. In 2000, the average level of schooling in the rural areas of the Caribbean Coast was 2.1 years, several years behind the average in the Pacific area. According to a baseline study carried out by the FOREIBCA Project, in 2001 approximately 22,000 children were enrolled in the IBE programs at primary school level in the RAAN and the RAAS. In 2007, the number had increased to 30,218 children. In the same year, approximately 10,600 children were enrolled at the preschool level in the two regions. In 2007, in the RAAS 3,707 children attended primary school level and 781 were enrolled at preschool level (Department of Statistics, Ministry of Education in Managua).12

3.2  The Regional Autonomous Education System, SEAR The legal rights of the peoples of the Caribbean Coast are strong. The constitution states that: “The State shall create special programs to enhance the exercise of these rights.” (Art. 90). Moreover, “The Communities on the Atlantic Coast have in their region the right to an intercultural education in their mother tongue…” (Art. 121). These rights are further reinforced by the Autonomy Law which states that: “…education in their mother tongue and in Spanish, through programs that take into account their historical heritage, value system, traditions and the characteristics of their environment, all within the framework of the national education system” (Art. 11) are guaranteed. Finally, the Language Law stipulates that the IBE program is to be applied throughout the primary level, that the official languages of the communities of the .  The official statistics of the Ministry of Education are not totally reliable; usually, the actual numbers are higher.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

Atlantic Coast are to be introduced as subjects at secondary level, and that the students of the teacher training schools of the Autonomous Regions are to receive intercultural bilingual education (Art. 7). It also stipulates that the Autonomous Regional Councils are to direct the IBE programs in coordination with the national authorities and that the state will provide the resources for it (Art. 8). The latest achievement is the approval of the General Education Law (Law Nr.€582) in 2006. According to the law (Title II, Chapter IV), the Regional Autonomous Education System, SEAR, is one of the subsystems of education of the country, covering the education sector in the Autonomous Regions at all levels: preschool, primary, secondary and higher education. This means that it is not the Ministry of Education but the Regional Governments, through their Secretaries of Education that have the right and the responsibility to determine the curriculum and to administrate education in the Autonomous Regions. The URACCAN has played a central role in reforming the IBE and designing the SEAR. The aim of SEAR is to set up an integrated education system for the indigenous peoples and ethnic communities of the Coast that is based on the principles of regional autonomy, interculturalism, solidarity, pertinence,13 equity –€especially gender equity€– quality, ethic and civic values and regional and national culture in order to achieve sustainable economic, social, political and cultural development in the region. The objective of SEAR is to train the men and women of the Coast committed to sustainable human development in the communities and the entire region, practicing interculturalism and with solid scientific, technical and humanistic knowledge as well as sufficient training and understanding of the legal framework behind the process of autonomy; persons with high self-esteem, proud of their ethnic, cultural and linguistic background and contributing to the project of national unity in diversity. (SEAR 2002:€5)

Thus, the underlying principle is that all the inhabitants of the Autonomous Regions follow the same IBE-based curriculum that takes into account the diversity and the educational rights and needs of the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples of the Caribbean Coast. Also the Mestizos are expected to comply with the same regional curriculum in the framework of the SEAR. Implementation of the SEAR would also finalize the process of regionalization of the education system in the region to which the Autonomy Law applies. However, to date, the central government has not been willing to fully give up their established position on the Caribbean Coast and has thereby obstructed the regionalization process.

.  Pertinence in the sense of having education that is relevant to the students, taking into account their linguistic, social, cultural, economic and political reality.

 Arja Koskinen

3.3  New curriculum – new languages The most important feature of the SEAR is that it proposes a wholesale transformation of the school curriculum. A central part of this transformation is the introduction of IBE/IME as an integral feature of the education system. The design and elaboration were started in 2000 with substantial support from the FOREIBCA-Project (Fortalecimiento de la Educación Intercultural Bilingüe en la Costa Atlántica de Nicaragua, financed by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The reform, in its first phase, affected preschool, primary school and third level education, as well as teacher training. The new curricula and teaching materials were elaborated by local actors such as teachers and technical personnel of the Ministry of Education, and members of the University URACCAN who represented the different peoples of the Coast, and external experts in the area of multilingual education. An important aspect of the reform was that it was simultaneously carried out at different levels of the education system and has therefore allowed a global, harmonic articulation of the reform. The curriculum transformation was led by the Sub-Commission for the CurricuÂ� lum Transformation of IBE of the National Curriculum Commission made up of representatives of regional and national branches of the Ministry of Education, representatives of the Commissions and Secretaries of Education of the Autonomous Regional Councils and Governments in the RAAN and the RAAS, and the University URACCAN. All aspects of the curriculum process were discussed and approved by this Sub-Commission, including the integration of new languages into the program which is the most important change between the old and the new curriculum: now also the Kriol, Ulwa and Tuahka languages have their rightful space in education. The linguistic and pedagogical principle of the new curriculum is maintenance and development of bilingualism, a model that seeks to conserve and develop the vernacular languages and includes the study of languages of national and international communication (in the case of the Caribbean Coast, Spanish and English). This means that both the mother tongue (or L1) and the second language(s) are subjects of study and languages of instruction. The model aims to develop and modernize the vernacular languages in order to assign them new social roles and to strengthen those that are endangered (Plan de Estudios para la Educación Primaria Intercultural Bi- y Multilingüe, Secretaría de Educación RAAN y RAAS – Ministerio de Educación 2004).

3.4  Teacher training The two existing teacher training schools (Span. Escuelas Normales) in the Autonomous Regions, in Bilwi and Bluefields, started implementing the new curriculum in 2003.14

.  Teacher training in Nicaragua is at the secondary school level.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

This represented a big step forward because until then these two schools had been following the national curriculum that did not take into account local realities. Despite the fact that the IBE program had already been in existence for about 20 years by then, teachers continued to be trained according to the traditional monolingual and monocultural curriculum. Teachers were not given any training that would have allowed them to effectively handle the challenges associated with the implementation of the IBE until 2003. The new model combines secondary school education and teacher training: the students graduate in 6 years, simultaneously as teachers and secondary school graduates. The new curriculum does not operate with separate subjects as in traditional schools, but the subjects are organized into four integral areas: “Language and Communication”; “Person, Culture and Nature”; “IBE Pedagogy” and “Arts, Recreation and Physical Education”. These areas treat topics in a holistic manner, simultaneously dealing with aspects of history, culture, cosmovision and the scientific knowledge of all the ethnic groups of the Coast. Entering the first year, the students are placed in a language group according to the language that they declare as their mother tongue. The native language is defined as the language in which he or she learned to speak and that he or she has continued speaking since. No test is used. In the area of “Language of Communication”, the students study Miskitu, Mayangna (Panamahka variant), Kriol or Spanish as their mother tongue. In the RAAN, the Tuahka-speakers and in the RAAS, the Ulwa-speakers are unfortunately still deprived of their linguistic rights, because these two mother tongues have not yet been included in the curriculum. However, even if there are not currently sufficient human or material resources to integrate these languages in the pilot phase, the plan is to include them into the curriculum at a later stage. In the L1 classes, students learn about these languages and they also function as media of instruction. All the students are also exposed to two other languages apart from their mother tongue depending on their choice of a first language: for instance, if the L1 is Miskitu, the L2s are Spanish and English; if the L1 is Spanish, the L2s are Miskitu and English. The Kriol-speaking students have Kriol as L1 and Spanish and English as L2s. The plan is to include other regional languages to the L2 alternatives. Initially, only Miskitu as the biggest of the regional languages and English as the most important international language were chosen by the Sub-Commission for Curriculum Transformation. The area also includes L1 and L2 didactics. Due to the heterogeneity of classrooms in Bluefields, the language of instruction for all the other subject areas is Spanish. In addition, a considerable number of the teachers in the Teacher Training Schools are monolingual Spanish-speakers. The validation of the new curriculum is now in its last year and the first set of teachers who received all of their training in IME is graduating this year (2008). The results of this validation process –€the experience of the teachers and the students

 Arja Koskinen

using the new approach€– serve as a base for the final revision and adjustment of the curriculum. A major problem in relation to the implementation of the new curriculum has so far been the lack of support from the Ministry of Education. To date, no new teachers have been provided, no materials or textbooks have been elaborated, and no special space to implement all of the components of the area of “Arts, Recreation and Physical Education” has been provided. Due to lack of maintenance, the internship buildings had to be closed down, forcing the majority of the community students to return home, and it was not possible to organize follow-up or training workshops. The first graduation in 2008 offers a good opportunity to evaluate both the curriculum and the conditions of its implementation.

3.5  The primary school sector In 2007, the new curriculum was implemented in the first grades of eight primary schools in the RAAS: 5 Kriol schools, 2 Miskitu schools and 1 Ulwa school. All the students are supposed to study three languages: the mother tongue (L1) and two second languages according to their linguistic repertoire: for instance, if the student declares speaking Kriol as L1, the first L2 is Spanish and the second L2 is English. Compared with the “old” IBE program which only included 3 possible mother tongues, the number has now increased to five: Miskitu, Panamahka, Tuahka, Ulwa and Kriol. Thus, the new curriculum finally introduces Kriol to the curriculum as the mother tongue of Creole, Rama and Garifuna children, providing them with the same human linguistic rights and the same pedagogical advantages as the children from other ethnic groups. Until the introduction of the new curriculum, the education system pretended that English was the mother tongue of these children, leading to severe educational problems. These problems were further aggravated by the fact that most of the teachers€ – 100% Kriol-speakers€ – have only a limited competence in English; children were orally taught through Kriol while reading and writing was introduced using English strongly influenced by Kriol. Spanish and English are taught as second languages. Rama and Garifuna have recently been officially integrated into the curriculum and are now being taught as a third language in schools predominantly attended by Rama and Garifuna children. The other areas of the curriculum focus on different areas of local knowledge from the indigenous and Afro-Caribbean people. Topics include sciences, cosmovision and culture such as ethno-science and ethno-mathematics, traditional medicine, management of natural resources, arts, music and dance.

3.6  An orthography for Kriol Although some poets from the Caribbean Coast (June Beer, Sydney Francis, etc.) have been using Kriol in their writings since the 1980s, serious work on its orthography



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

only started in 2001, conducted by IPILC-URACCAN. In the period from 2001 to 2004, five workshops were organized in Bluefields. They were attended by approximately 30 to 35 Kriol-speaking teachers, pedagogical advisors from the Ministry of Education and IPILC staff. Technical support was provided by members of the Belizean Creole/Kriol Project, Bileez Kriol Projek, especially MSc Silvana Woods, and by members of the FOREIBCA Project. These workshops defined the basic orthographic rules for Nicaraguan Kriol and produced some educational materials such as collections of stories, poems, songs and other cultural materials. The workshop participants opted for a phonemic writing system with a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes in order to facilitate the acquisition of reading and writing skills for children. Another advantage of the phonemic system is that it will make it easier for children to learn to read and write in the national language Spanish whose orthography is also highly phonemic. This phonemic system also highlights similarities between the Nicaraguan Kriol, the Islander – San Andres Creole and the Jamaican Creole using a similar system, but distanced it from Belizean Kriol, which uses a rulebased phonemic model (see Bartens 2003 for the Islander orthography; Cassidy€& Le Page 1991 for the Jamaican orthography; Crosbie 2007 for the Belizean orthography; see also Koskinen 2006). As a result, the writing system of Nicaraguan Kriol is based on the principle of “one sound€–€one symbol”, long sounds marked with two letters, short ones with one letter. The vowels and consonants of Kriol are the following: Vowels: Short vowels: a – e – i – o – u – y Long vowels: aa – ii – uu Diphtongs: ay – ai – ie – ou – uo

pat ‘pot’; tel ‘tell’; hit ‘hit’; kot ‘cut’; put ‘put’; yu ‘you’ faas ‘fast’; iina ‘in’; muuv ‘move’ faya ‘fire’; hai ‘high’; plie ‘play’; kou ‘cow’; nuo ‘know’

Consonants: b – ch – d – f – g – h – j – k – l – m – n – p – r – s – t – v – z bai ‘buy’; chrai ‘try’; ded ‘dead’; frii ‘free’; go ‘go’; hat ‘hat, hot’; jraiv ‘drive’; kaal ‘call’; luk ‘look’; mous ‘mouse’; nais ‘nice’; pat ‘pot’; ron ‘run’; smail ‘smile’; taal ‘tall’; hevi ‘heavy’; zip ‘zipper’

One exception to the rule among the above mentioned consonants is /ch/, representing one sound but written with two symbols. Another exception is the sound [ŋ]. It is represented using a combination of two consonants, ng, when it occurs word finally (e.g. dong ‘down’, sing ‘sing’) but with /n/ when combined with /k/ (e.g. monki ‘monkey’, tink ‘think’). Finally, the pronoun ih ‘he, she, it’ and words with a short [e] in wordfinal position are marked with the letter h to emphasize the shortness of the vowel (e.g.€weh ‘where; what’; tudeh ‘today’).15 .  This idea was introduced by the Belizean expert in the Kriol workshops: originally the ‘rule’ was to add /h/ after any word-final vowel as in the Belizean system, but it was modified

 Arja Koskinen

The development of Kriol follows the decision of the other indigenous and Afrodescent peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua to pursue language normalization instead of standardization. The normalization process is supposed to make the use of a language that has been historically displaced from certain contexts just as “normal” as the use of any other language by abolishing any social prohibitions around using it and by gradually developing the necessary linguistic resources for its use in new contexts. An important strategy for achieving this is allowing variation in its written representation, instead of decreeing only one form as the only acceptable form, as is typically the case in the process of standardization. Unlike the standardization process which seeks to eliminate linguistic variation, the normalization process actively encourages to positively value variation. An important advantage of the latter approach is that it does not directly socially order varieties of the same language and thereby contribute to the creation of status differences based on language. The normalization approach is supposed to take place in phases, especially if the goal is to reconstruct a language as the expression of the original culture of its speakers, instead of forcing it towards “modernization” too fast. Another outcome of the workshops was the creation of a Kriol commission (Kriol Komishan) charged with continuing the normalization work and with raising awareness among Creoles about their language and culture. However, the commission has not been able to arrange permanent meetings or workshops, mainly due to lack of financial support.

4.  Kriol in the teacher training In the beginning, using Kriol in the classroom met with resistance from some parents who felt that it was not adequate for the task of formal instruction. However, after explaining the purpose of this change in strategy to the parents in a series of informative sessions, most parents accepted the change. Like their parents, some of the students were initially also skeptical about the new role of Kriol in the classroom. This initial reservation was, however, easily overcome. Most students quickly showed great enthusiasm and willingness to learn once teaching through Kriol had begun, and most of them also acknowledge that learning through Kriol has improved their performance in English.16

afterwards to be applied only to [e] in word-final position. The reason for its maintenance following [e] was because non-linguist workshop participants felt that it was perceptually salient and therefore needed special marking. .  The information was obtained from teachers and students of the Teacher Training School through oral interviews during the first semester of 2007.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

One of the problems in language teaching has been that the Ministry of Education has not provided and trained additional teachers for the different subject areas, among which “Language and Communication” has the highest number of hours. For instance, originally only one teacher taught both Kriol and English. However, as the number of language classes in the new model increased with the years, she was no longer able to teach all the required classes in English and Kriol. As a result, the classes in Kriol were temporarily suspended in 2008 with the effect that the new students did not receive any instruction in Kriol during the first semester. The selection of English over Kriol during that time was justified as being due to the fact that teachers are either not sufficiently trained to teach Kriol or that those working in other subject areas are not willing to do it. The impression is that there is a lack of understanding and, more importantly, open resistance to the teaching of the regional languages among the teaching personnel and the civil servants of the Ministry of Education. The latter impression is reinforced by the fact that this issue has not only arisen in relation to the teaching of Kriol but also affects the teaching of Miskitu as an L1. This comes as no surprise as the director of the school and the regional delegates of the Ministry of Education are Spanish-speaking Mestizos and on several occasions civil servants of the Ministry of Education at the central level in Managua have expressed their disagreement with the number of languages in the curriculum –€they feel that three languages are far too much€– and the importance of Kriol as the mother tongue of Kriol-speakers. Thus, there is an urgent need to carry out an awareness-information campaign to educate both lay people and government officials about the issues involved in order to obtain support for the new curriculum.

5.  Piloting Kriol in primary schools Although the new curriculum was ready for piloting in schools at the beginning of the year 2005, it was only implemented in 2007 due to lack of funding. It was eventually made possible through the financial support of the Danish Government to the Autonomous Regional Governments, which, following the Autonomy Law and the General Education Law, is responsible for administering education on the Caribbean Coast. The schools that initiated the pilot project in 2007 were carefully selected by the Sub-Commission for Curriculum Transformation of IBE in conjunction with the Secretary of Education of the RAAS. The pilot schools were located in the two main Creole municipalities, Corn Island and Pearl Lagoon. They were selected from among the public schools that had already implemented IBE for several years. The two Corn Island pilot schools were the Olive Brown Primary School and the Rigoberto Cabezas Primary School. The selected schools in the municipality of Pearl Lagoon were the Salvador Scheffler Primary School in Tasbapauni, the Andres Castro Primary School in Haulover and the Padre Hugo Heinzen Primary School in Brown Bank. The

 Arja Koskinen

Padre Hugo Heinzen Primary School is a multigrade school while all the others are monograde schools. Before initiating the pilot phase, the Secretary of Education of the RAAS together with members of the Kriol Komishan visited each community and presented the new IME model that now includes Kriol being taught as a first language and Spanish and English as second languages. The pilot phase was initiated only after the local assemblies gave their consent.

5.1  Schedule of the curricular areas Table€3 introduces the weekly schedule of hours for each integrated area during primary school from 1st grade to 6th grade. The number of hours per area was discussed thoroughly in the curriculum commissions and, later on, approved in the Sub-Commission for Curriculum Transformation. The high percentage of hours in the area of language initially met with some concern but was eventually approved nevertheless. The second highest number of hours is spent on the area of “Person, Culture and Nature” mainly because it covers three important areas: “History and Society”, “Environment” and “Science and Technology”. Table€3.╇ The division of weekly hours between the different areas in the primary school Area

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th Total (h)

Language and Communication Person, Culture and Nature Mathematics Arts, Recreation and Physical Education

16 9 4

14 6 6 4

10 10 6 4

10 10 6 4

10 10 6 4

10 10 6 4

70 46 39 24

Total

29

30

30

30

30

30

179

% 39.11 25.70 21.79 13.41 100

Table€4 shows the number of weekly hours spent on each of the three languages in the area of “Language and Communication” for grades 1 to 6. The schools in the Garífuna, Rama and Miskitu communities where language shift to Kriol is complete adjust the hours of the study plan to include their ancestral language. Table€4.╇ The division of hours within the area of Language and Communication Subarea

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

L1 L2 L3 Total

8 6 2 16

6 6 2 14

4 4 2 10

4 4 2 10

4 4 2 10

4 4 2 10



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

In the first grade, the main focus is on learning to read and write. Reading and writing is developed in the mother tongue of the children, for example Kriol. Spanish as a second language is taught both orally and in written form while English is only taught orally in order to avoid confusion in the acquisition of writing skills through Kriol. To date, English and Spanish are taught as subjects and are only used as media of instruction within the area of “Language and Communication”, which does not really contribute to the development and maintenance of balanced bilingualism, as specified in the study plan. To achieve this, other areas would also have to be at least partly taught through these languages. This issue is still pending and will have to be taken into consideration in the near future when the pilot phase advances to higher grades.

5.2  The textbooks The new textbooks were elaborated by Kriol-speaking teachers and technical personnel of the MINED and URACCAN with support of experts in IBE/IME. They are new designs, based on an active, participative methodology and taking into account, as far as possible, the reality of the children. Both the contents and illustrations reflect the local culture, history and everyday life in the communities. For the first grade, three textbooks were elaborated: a textbook for work on the children’s L1 or Mother Tongue (Friidom 1 ‘Freedom’),17 another one for Mathematics (Jaks 1 ‘Jacks 1’) and one for learning Spanish as a second language (Fruta de Pan ‘Breadfruit’). For the area of “Arts, Recreation and Physical Education”, only a teacher’s guide but no textbook was elaborated. For the pilot phase, the textbooks were simply copied for every child in the first grades of the pilot schools. This was quite a luxury since in many of the schools of the Caribbean Coast normally only the teacher has a textbook. The aim of the pilot process was to collect the comments and suggestions for improvements from the teachers and the children at the end of the school year in order to locate possible mistakes and to identify areas where improvement was needed before the textbook could go to print. For the first grade, the checking process is now complete and by December 2008 it will be completed for the second grade. There are four textbooks for the second grade. One for teaching of the L1 or Mother Tongue (Friidom 2), another one for the area of “Person, Culture and Nature” (Niecha Gyadn ‘Nature’s garden’), a third one for the teaching of Mathematics (Jaks 2) and the fourth one focuses on Spanish as a second language (Mango). Each of the textbooks has a separate teacher’s guide. For the area “Arts, Recreation and Physical Education”

.  According to the authors Sheldene Bruster and Hazeldene Wilson, the name Friidom reflects the feeling of the Kriol-speakers when they are finally able to use their mother tongue in school.

 Arja Koskinen

only a teacher’s guide and a workbook for children (Rienbuo ‘Rainbow’) were developed. Instead of developing a new textbook for the teaching of English, it was decided to use one of the existing series of textbooks for English as a second language.

5.3  Teacher training The first grade teachers from the pilot schools had to attend a so-called Diploma Course of 200 hours offered by the University URACCAN before they were eligible to teach in the pilot phase. The Diploma Course covered themes such as the SEAR, the role of languages in education, the Kriol orthography, comparative grammar KriolEnglish and two courses in pedagogy that focused on Kriol as an L1 and English as an L2. The Diploma Course also included 40 hours of teaching practice monitored by teachers of URACCAN. In addition, the first grade teachers and the directors of the pilot schools received a one-week workshop on the principles, philosophy and contents of the new IME curriculum as well as on the use of the new programs and textbooks. Once they had successfully completed these courses, they were allowed to pilot the new curriculum. However, due to lack of funding, the courses could not start until May 2007 so that the children had to be taught through the old curriculum and through English during most of the first semester. In most of the cases, the same first grade teachers also taught the children when they entered the second grade in the following school year, in 2008. The new first grade teachers received a new Diploma Course at URACCAN that was this time amplified with an additional 40 hours of English because many of the teachers did not have the required level of English for the program. Many of the teachers currently working in the system do not have the required teacher training and even those who graduated from teacher training schools have never formally studied English since the old curriculum did not include English as a subject. It is also worth mentioning that several of the teachers have a scholarship for pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Intercultural Bilingual Education at the University URACCAN. This degree course includes a three-level course in Kriol language and two two-level courses in the Didactics of Kriol and in the Didactics of English as a second language.

6.  Evaluating the pilot phase in primary schools At the end of the first year of the pilot phase, the Secretary of Education, through URACCAN, organized a workshop with the first grade teachers and the directors of the pilot schools in order to evaluate the new curriculum including the textbooks and teachers’ guides, and to discuss the experiences and the results of the pilot phase.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

6.1  Positive results The results proved to be overwhelmingly positive: the children appeared to be very positive about the new role of Kriol as both a language of instruction and as a subject. According to the teachers, the academic achievements of the students improved considerably. The children learned to read more easily and quickly and also participated much more actively in the teaching-learning process. They were particularly fond of the short texts that reflect life in their community and region. Another positive result of the study of Kriol is that by teaching Spanish as a second language and by learning reading and writing in Kriol first, the children were also able to learn to read in Spanish more easily. This has been enhanced by the fact that the orthographies of the two languages are relatively similar due to the phonemic principle. Moreover, teachers also reported that children are able to differentiate between Kriol and English. Although in the first grade English is only supposed to be taught orally, one school reported that they had also taught writing in English and found that students had no problem differentiating between writing in Kriol and in English. In the workshop it was, however, stressed that reading and writing should initially be taught in one language only: the mother tongue.18

6.2  Difficulties with implementing the new curriculum The evaluation of the pilot phase also brought to light a few difficulties that are hampering the successful implementation of the new curriculum.

6.2.1  Institutional difficulties The discussions during the workshop revealed that the level of cooperation among the teaching staff varied between pilot schools. In several schools the teachers and the director pursued a collaborative approach and supported each other when problems arose. However, in a few other schools the directors were not completely involved in the piloting process and it seemed that in spite of the excellent results, they were still not completely convinced of the advantages of accepting Kriol as the mother tongue of the children.19

.  According to the curriculum, the 1st grade also includes written Spanish. It is taught in the last part of the school year assuming that at that stage the children already know how to read and write in their mother tongue. The ideal model, however, would give the children enough time to consolidate their skills in the L1 only. .  The directors were not directly involved in the selection of the pilot schools but they participated in the communal assemblies in their respective communities and did not disagree with the selection of their school as a pilot school.

 Arja Koskinen

A more serious problem, however, is the physical condition of schools on the Caribbean Coast. First of all, the number of children in a classroom is much too high for effective teaching. Due to the lack of both teachers and classrooms there are about 40 children per class which makes effective teacher-student interaction rather difficult. Second, teaching materials are scarce in schools. For instance, there are no markers, paper, cardboard, colors or any other didactic materials. Third, in many cases the school buildings are in a partial state of dilapidation. Leaking roofs and missing window panes are no rarity. For instance, in Tasbapauni, Hurricane Beta destroyed the doors and windows of the school buildings in 2005, and only in 2008 were they being replaced.

6.2.2  Heterogeneity of the student population The communities in the RAAS are mostly multiethnic and multilingual. As a result of continuous immigration of Spanish-speaking Mestizos from the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua, the demographic structure of the region has changed rapidly in recent years. The so-called agricultural frontier is advancing without control, threatening to some extent the traditional way of life and customs of the indigenous and Afro-descent peoples and their natural resources. This demographic change is clearly reflected in the schools as the number of Mestizo children is continuously increasing in the traditional indigenous, Creole and Garífuna communities. These children are typically monolingual in Nicaraguan Spanish but are, due to lack of resources, usually integrated into the IME-classrooms since each community typically only has one (public) primary school. Instead of providing them with a curriculum in which Spanish is taught as a mother tongue and one of the regional languages and English as second languages,20 they have to generally follow the IME combination of the numerically dominant group in the community, e.g. that for Miskitu or Ulwa children. This to a certain extent disadvantages them and can therefore be considered to be a weakness of the system. Many of the Mestizo families are also very mobile, partly because they do not have roots in any of the communities of the Caribbean Coast and partly because once the lands they work no longer yield sufficient returns they are obliged to move to more fertile grounds and/or win new agricultural land from the rainforest. This results in frequent moves that make it rather difficult to provide continuous and appropriate education for their children because all communities of the Caribbean Coast are not equally equipped with teachers and resources to respond to the needs to Mestizo children. Another problem is the high rate of absenteeism among Mestizo children which

.  This combination has not been implemented yet due to lack of both human and material resources.



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

seriously undermines their educational success. The reason for this is that Mestizo families frequently require their children to carry out agricultural tasks that are part of the yearly farming cycle. A similar situation prevails among the Miskitu people from the RAAN. Many Miskitus often move from place to place “following the fish”: when fishing is better in the South, they move southwards and as fish becomes scarce there, they move northwards again. Little Corn Island in particular is a place where the population is very unstable: Miskitu and Garífuna families come and go, and the matriculation and dropout rates in the local school rise and fall accordingly. In addition to ethnic and linguistic diversity, there are also the usual differences in learning abilities. Due to lack of special schools or special provisions for children with disabilities in the regular schools, children with disabilities have to attend regular classrooms and often find it difficult to participate adequately in the learning process. According to the teachers who took part in the pilot phase, most of the children who did not learn to read in first grade belong to this group.

6.2.3  Attitudes towards Kriol As a result of years of oppressing Kriol as a language and denigrating it as “bad English” or “broken English”, many teachers, parents and students€– including many of the native speakers of Kriol€ – have internalized negative attitudes towards Kriol. Before the new curriculum could be properly implemented, it was therefore necessary to raise awareness among speakers of Kriol about the importance and value of their language. An important task that had to go hand in hand with the pilot phase was convincing sceptical parents. Most of the pilot schools reported the same situation as the Teacher Training School: after initial hesitation, most of the parents are now in favor of using Kriol in the school and have positive attitudes towards the language. In all these communities parents have also asked for a course on reading and writing in Kriol to be able to support their children in their homework and to manage the writing system themselves. This enthusiasm is matched by the students themselves who since the introduction of Kriol are much more actively participating in school. However, some sections of the Kriol-speaking community still reject Kriol, partly due to lack of information and partly because of traditional language ideologies that categorize some languages as “more useful” or “more developed” than others. In the case of Kriol vs. English, the most common argument against Kriol and in favor of English is the fact that the latter is seen to be more internationally “useful” than Kriol which is only spoken in Nicaragua. This is an important issue because most young Kriol-speakers typically hope to find work on cruise ships where English is obligatory. They therefore feel that early exposure to the language is vital. However, at the same time most of these same young people habitually achieved low educational results mainly because the traditional English-only approach did not teach them how to

 Arja Koskinen

systematically differentiate between Kriol and English. Several of the participants in the communal assemblies picked up on this matter and used it as an argument in favor of the SEAR. They maintained that given the disencouraging results produced by the traditional education system, the new system which makes use of Kriol as a medium of instruction should at least be given a change. In part the opposition to using Kriol was due to the fact that some participants erroneously believed that by introducing Kriol as an L1, English would be removed from the study plan entirely. When they were assured that students would still be learning both English and Spanish, but merely as second language, their opposition subsided. A more serious obstacle is the set of attitudes of the more educated and more powerful members of the Creole community, including politicians, reverends and other opinion-makers such as journalists. There are specific radio programs where persons€– speaking Kriol€– argue in favor of banning the use of Kriol in the school and even in the streets claiming that it is a bad and “primitive” language. At the same time, it is interesting to observe that among all the vernacular languages, only Kriol receives such negative attention. Even a language like Rama with a small number of speakers and with the historically lowest social status, has now, due to the changes in policy and the provision of information, come to be highly valued among the Ramas and also among other ethnic groups as a symbol of ethnic identity, and these communities feel that it is important to revitalize it. The supporters of the SEAR are therefore positive that the negative attitudes towards Kriol will also subside. However, it is clear that this will take some time and continued concerted efforts on the part of all local social actors. The reactions of the Creole community towards the use of Kriol in the school reflect well the complexity involved in Creole identity management. As Gordon (1998:€192–194) points out, Creoles historically inhabited three transnational identities simultaneously, identified by the names that Creoles have called themselves: the black Caribbean diasporic identity (“Blacks”), the Anglo diasporic identity (“Creoles”) and the indigenous identity (“Costeños”, that is, the Coast people). According to Freeland (2004:€111), the tension between the different identities becomes particularly evident in relation to language. Clearly, the opponents of Kriol are usually bearers of the Anglo diasporic identity.

6.2.4  Teachers’ problems in writing Kriol As to the Kriol writing system, some issues still remain to be resolved. A number of the teachers still have difficulties with the representation of some of the consonant sounds, consonant clusters and diphthongs. Because of their prior exposure to writing in English, some teachers find it difficult to determine the distribution of the letters j/g, jr/dr, chr/tr (e.g. chienj – *chieng ‘change’, jraiv – *draiv ‘drive’, chrii – *trii ‘three; tree’)



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

and the diphthongs uo/ou (huom – *houm ‘home’). The children will not have this problem because they did not previously acquire writing in English. Another difficulty involves the representation of the high front vowel in diphthongs. Teachers seem to alternate between representing it using the letters y and i. So, for instance, they are not sure whether they should orthographically represent the Kriol word for ‘car’ as kyar or as *kiar or the Kriol word for ‘fire’ as faya or as *faia. Some of the teachers have been asking for more exercise material to practice this distinction. Some teachers as well as some of the students also have difficulties accepting variation in Kriol. Teachers often react negatively towards forms that they claim they do not use themselves and that they consider inappropriate or unacceptable. For instance, using ih to refer to both male and female third person singular pronominal subjects, instead of ih and shi is evaluated negatively by some teachers. The same is true of the variation between neh on the one hand and dem and deh on the other to refer to a third person plural pronominal subject or object (‘they’, ‘them’) or possessive marker (‘their’). Many teachers also react negatively to the absence of the phoneme /r/ in words like haas ‘horse’ and laan ‘learn’ and the use of the elements mi and mi-di instead of di and did to convey past time reference. Having chosen a normalization over a standardization approach, the textbooks preserve this kind of variation, allowing speakers to write the form that they are actually using in their local variety. These attitudes are clearly reflecting the common preconception that socially valued languages are static and have to be strictly regulated.

6.2.5  Ancestral languages and Kriol Originally, seven pilot schools were selected for the piloting of the Kriol program at primary school level. However, two of the schools, the Garífuna school in Orinoco and the Rama school in Rama Cay did not start the piloting phase because they were resisting the idea of implementing Kriol. Several of the community leaders felt that instead of Kriol their ancestral languages, Garífuna and Rama, should function as the main media of instruction. By implementing Kriol as the main medium of instruction they felt that their ancestral language was relegated to secondary status and disadvantaged. However, this is not in fact the case since the new curriculum finally provides for the possibility to do both, facilitate education in the language that is spoken by the children, Kriol, and at the same time revitalize Garífuna and Rama. For the first time, Garífuna and Rama have now been conferred official status in the school context. The main difficulty with regard to this issue is that ethnic identity is being promoted at the expense of vital educational issues. It is hoped that this question will be efficiently resolved in the near future with the help of an awareness campaign. It is very likely, however, that these two schools will be participating in the second pilot phase because the teachers from both schools have already completed the Diploma Course in

 Arja Koskinen

Kriol and the communal assembly in Orinoco already gave their go-ahead for the pilot phase in 2007. The starting date has had to be postponed, however, due to resistance from a few community leaders. A similar situation prevailed in Tasbapauni, a Miskitu community, where language shift has advanced to a degree where the majority of the people in the community now speak Kriol as their first language. While the initial response of the communal assembly was in favor of implementing Kriol as the mother tongue, in later meetings some leaders raised doubts about the use of Kriol, demanding that Miskitu become the main medium of instruction in schools. Unlike the case of the Garífuna and Rama schools, the new curriculum was eventually implemented and Kriol now functions as the main medium of instruction. However, in spite of the excellent educational results that were achieved through Kriol, a new campaign in favor of the use of Miskitu has reemerged.

7.  Conclusion The new curriculum in Intercultural Multilingual Education introduces Kriol in primary schools as an L1 of Kriol-speaking children and defines English as one of the second languages. The piloting of the curriculum in five primary schools on Corn Island and in the Pearl Lagoon area has reached the second grade and the first evaluations were carried out by the teachers and technical staff. At the same time, teacher training was transformed from the traditional monolingual model to IME; the first teachers trained in the new approach are graduated in 2008. The pilot phase both in the primary schools and the teacher training schools clearly shows that the use of Kriol, the students’ mother tongue, as the language of instruction and as a subject helps children to develop their reading and writing skills much faster and much more easily than an approach that uses English as the language of instruction. This mother tongue educational approach also positively impacts on the learning of reading and writing in Spanish. In the case of English, the impact of the new curriculum is not yet clear since it has only been taught orally in first grade. An important issue that has not yet been properly addressed is the teachers’ inadequate competence in English. The Teacher Training School has a crucial role to play in this matter. In fact, it is expected that the new teachers graduating from a program that uses the new IME model will have a higher level of competence in English since they are receiving more systematic instruction in English. However, since the level of untrained teachers is and probably will remain very high for years to come especially in the rural areas, other strategies such as in-service training will have to be put in place in order to address this problem. The University URACCAN is planning to offer a Técnico Superior en Lenguas, a three year degree program in Language that is aimed



Kriol in Caribbean Nicaragua schools 

at teachers and is dedicated to the study of Kriol or another regional language, Spanish and English, but to date no such program exists. The normalization process itself is still in the beginning stages. There is a need to establish a permanent institution to lead the process in the future. In addition to such a formal institution, more in-depth sociolinguistic research needs to be carried out on the different regional languages such as Kriol in order to document their sociolinguistic situation. Such research should serve as a vital basis for determining how patterns of language variation could be effectively integrated into teaching and teaching materials. Both teachers and students also need more practical training in reading and writing in Kriol. Such training should be offered through locally organized further education courses and workshops in order to give community members an opportunity to participate. Such courses are very useful as they may also lead to the production of new and much needed written materials in Kriol for use both in school and outside of the school context. There is still a lot of misinformation and lack of awareness among both speakers of Kriol and speakers of other languages with regard to Kriol. People are not aware that it is a language in its own right, that it is one of the official languages of the Autonomous Regions and that it is the children’s mother tongue. Like any other language, it should therefore be squarely part of the education system and play an important role in the children’s general learning process. It is important for everybody to realize that by depriving Kriol-speaking children of the possibility of being educated through and about their mother tongue, they are denying them fundamental human rights, specifically their linguistic and cultural rights, as well as an equal opportunity to get ahead in life. In order to learn, children need to have high self-esteem and feel proud about their history, culture and language.

Swimming against the tide Jamaican Creole in education Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish The University of the West Indies

In implementing its Bilingual Education Project (BEP), involving the use of Jamaican Creole and English, the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) has sought to meet the criteria set out by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture in Jamaica for teaching in the home language (MOEYC 2001). The Ministry and the general public needed to be convinced that the pilot BEP did not (i) do academic harm to the children involved, (ii) has produced an improvement in the children’s competence in English, and (iii) has produced improved results in the bilingually taught content subjects. This paper is a midstream evaluation of the success indicators, focusing on the children’s performance in standardised tests in both Jamaican and English, and other content subjects. Keywords:╇ bilingual education; creole; English; models; language research; research in education

1.  Background In 2004 the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, approached the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture (MOEYC) of Jamaica. The JLU sought approval to conduct a pilot project involving bilingual education in Jamaican (Creole) and English in Grades 1 to 6 at the primary school level. The project was conceived of as embodying a full bilingual model of learning and teaching over the six years of primary education. It sought to address the chief concerns expressed in the Language Education Policy of the MOEYC (2001) about the formal use of Jamaican, namely: (1) the lack of a standard writing system for the teaching of Jamaican (otherwise referred to by the Ministry as the “home language”); (2) the absence of written teaching materials in Jamaican; and (3) the perceived lack of public will to have children educated in Jamaican. The BEP was implemented in 2004 in three publicly funded primary schools, and involved a significant modification to the original plan proposed. The change involved a reduction in the number of grades to be covered by the project. Instead of covering

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

Grades 1 to 6 as originally proposed, the BEP was implemented over Grades 1 to 4, and the project was set to last 4 years. The earliest form of the project proposal required that the project run for six years up to Grade 6, the end of primary schooling in Jamaica. The MOEYC, however, pointed out that the last two years of primary school were extremely sensitive, determining in a very significant way the life chances of children. These years were focussed on preparing children for the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT). The GSAT is a secondary school placement test used to determine the kind and quality of secondary school children would be placed in at Grade 7 and beyond. Any implementation of a new, untested methodology during that period could, therefore, have been interpreted as damaging the interests of the children involved in the project. There was, however, very good reason for the project to run for 6 years. The best research on the subject available to the proposers suggested that pupils had to have been in fully bilingual education for between 5 and 7 years before the positive impact of bilingual education could begin to be measured (Thomas & Collier 1997). Given that the project would have to be judged on measurable success, shortening the time span ran the risk of showing no measurable benefit to the project pupils at the end of the project period. Such a result would be pounced on by those hostile to the approach, as proving that the method was ineffective. This created a serious dilemma. Respecting the concerns of the MOEYC was clearly the only sensible way to go. However, accepting that the project would last only 4 years meant that it had to demonstrate measurable benefits in a shorter period of time than the existing research suggested was likely. The only way forward was to take a huge gamble. This we did.

1.1  The MOEYC ‘Home Language’ Approach The official position of the Jamaican state, as expressed in the Language Education Policy (MOEYC 2001), favoured an approach that saw the school bridging the divide between the ‘language of the home’ and the ‘language of the school’. In this policy statement, ‘home language’ was used as a synonym for Jamaican (Creole) or speech forms influenced by Jamaican. The ‘home language’ was contrasted with the ‘language of the school’, a synonym for English. The children were to be assisted in making the shift from the language they came into the school system with to the official language of education, English. From the perspective of this policy, an approach which valued the integrity of the ‘language of the home’, whatever that happened to be, did not run the risk of offending the sensibilities of any parent who might consider that their children were members of an ‘English-speaking’ household. It avoided, as well, having to provide differential treatment for children, depending on the kind of linguistic home background they were deemed to have come from.



Swimming against the tide 

The ‘home language to school language’ transition was presented in the policy as applying to all children, without the politically loaded labels, ‘Jamaican (Creole) speaking’ and ‘English speaking’ backgrounds being applied. The two labels ended up being interpreted by those who read it as shorthand for underprivileged/economically deprived, and privileged/economically well off. Because this policy document sought to arrive at a consensus, it avoided public controversy by, from its inception, not making any explicit suggestion that different approaches should be taken to the education of the ‘privileged’ and the ‘underprivileged’. In spite of this fudge, however, the problems faced by children whose home language was similar to that of the school was going to be much less than that of children whose home language deviated significantly from the school language. The educational performance of the former group was likely, by definition, to be superior to that of the latter, in spite of or maybe because of, the pretence at equality of treatment within the policy. The ‘language of the home as bridge to language of the school’ approach was clearly asymmetrical, having no relevance to that numerically small but socially significant minority of children who arrived in school as native speakers of English. In terms used by Craig (1999), the most appropriate label for the official policy on language education in Jamaica, as described in the Language Education Policy (MOEYC 2001) was ‘Monoliterate Transitional Bilingualism’ (MTB). Not only was the programme supposed to be transitional from Jamaican to English but it was not designed to teach literacy in Jamaican or systematically use material written in that language. Whatever the criticisms that might be leveled at the MTB approach, however, it was revolutionary in a context where traditionally English was being taught as the presumed mother tongue of children who were speakers of Jamaican. Another challenge facing the BEP project was that teachers in the classroom had yet to fully accept Jamaican as a language distinct from English rather than as a non-standard dialect of English. Many of the assumptions and practices associated with English as a Mother Tongue (EMT) were alive and well. Children in primary schools in Jamaica were being exposed to a hybrid system, involving an official policy context which was MTB and teachers who were yet to be convinced of this new approach and who found themselves at various points on a continuum from EMT to MTB.

1.2  From problem to opportunity A fully bilingual education system that operated in both Jamaican and English could be justified on the ground that it sought to develop amongst school children the use of the two widely used languages in Jamaica. There were, as well, the numerous claims in the literature about the positive cognitive effects of bilingual education (Craig 1999; Scribner & Cole 1981). The best documented set of claims so far, however, were those

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

based on the 700,000 records of minority students in the USA studied by Thomas & Collier (1997) and subsequent publications (cf. Thomas & Collier (2002)). Thomas & Collier (1997 & 2002) clearly established the educational value of fully bilingual education as a predictor of high academic performances across the board. The advantage, it should be emphasised, however, came from fully bilingual as opposed to transitional bilingual educational programmes. Programmes in which both languages were maintained right throughout the entire education process, and were given equal roles and functions, produced superior results to either transitionally bilingual programmes or those that adopted English as a Second Language methodology. These fully bilingual programmes represented the model for the Bilingual Education Project (BEP). Against the background of the Thomas & Collier (1997) research, we reasoned that the existence of two widely used languages within the same society was a distinct advantage that should be exploited by the education system. In such a situation, the education system was presented with the opportunity to benefit from being fully bilingual, rather than simply developing literacy skills in the first language of children. This fully bilingual approach, involving the equal and continuing use of both languages, has subsequently come to be deemed ‘dual language education’ (TorresGuzman et al. 2002). There was one weakness that could not be effectively addressed in the initial justification for the project in 2004. Whether the approach was fully bilingual, transitionally bilingual or simply involving education in the first language, the Jamaican language would have to become a formal language of education and a language in which literacy was taught and exercised. The Language Education Policy (MOEYC 2001) took the view, unsupported by any evidence, that there was a lack of public will to support the formal use of Jamaican in the school system. Would the Jamaican public, therefore, accept the formal and official use of Jamaican in the school system, inclusive of the teaching of literacy skills in that language, as required of the BEP?

1.3  Testing public attitudes The National Language Attitude Survey of Jamaica was carried out by the Jamaican Language Unit in 2005, a year after the BEP was launched. The results provided an answer, albeit after the fact, to the question of whether the public would accept the formal use of Jamaican in the education system. The survey was a country wide study conducted by the Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies to assess the opinions of Jamaicans on the two main languages used in the society, Jamaican and English. The sample used in the survey was a random stratified sample. Stratification took place for the variables of gender, urban versus rural, age broken down into categories of young, middle aged and old, and region, i.e. eastern, central or western. The sample was designed to be representative of the gender, regional and urban-rural



Swimming against the tide 

composition of the Jamaican population. The age groups surveyed were divided equally into young (18–30), middle (31–50) and old (50–80+) and not according to their relative numbers in the population. Based on the composition of the actual population, the sample was, in fact, skewed towards the older age groups. Data collection was by way of respondent intercepts in heavily trafficked areas such as malls, markets and bus stops. The resulting spread across occupational groups, i.e. Student 4.2%, Unskilled/Housewife 18.2%, Clerical/Sales/Services 25%, Selfemployed/Professional 13.7%, Retired 3.5%, Farmer 6.1%, Skilled/Craftsman 17.7%, and Service/Professional 6.7%, gives some sense of the diversity thrown up by selecting informants randomly. The actual sample size was 1,000, a figure well in excess of what was needed to produce statistically significant results for any of the categories for which the sample had been stratified. The results of importance to the BEP turned out to have very strong statistical significance. The survey questions were divided between those that sought people’s perception of their actual current language behaviour, and those that asked about the language situation in Jamaica to which they aspired. In answer to the question concerning the languages that they spoke, 89.3% declared themselves to be speakers of English and 88.9% speakers of Jamaican. Of these, the percentage claiming to be speakers of both languages was 78.4% of the sample. In the area of aspirational questions, 67.8% of the respondents considered that the use of Jamaican formally in a parliamentary speech by the Prime Minister or Minister of Finance would represent an effort to ‘communicate better with the public’ as compared, with a figure of 20.6 who thought it would have indicated an intent to ‘talk down to the masses’. Similarly, when asked what they thought about Jamaican being made an official language alongside English, the total percentage of those in favour of this proposal was 68.5%. When asked which of two possible schools respondents thought would be best for Jamaican children, 71.1% of the informants opted for the school in which children were taught to read and write in Jamaican and English as opposed to one in which only English was used. The conclusion from this, after the fact, was that the BEP type approach did indeed have majority public support, contrary to the unsubstantiated claim in the Language Education Policy (MOEYC 2001).

1.4  Official commitment In early 2004, the Jamaican Language Unit made a formal proposal for implementation of the BEP in three primary schools, to involve full bilingual education for 4 years in the two main languages of the society, Jamaican and English. This required the sanction of the MOEYC. It granted permission for a pilot Bilingual Education Project to go ahead in three primary schools. At the time, in early 2004, neither the MOEYC nor the proposers, the JLU, had the benefit of the results of the 2005 National Language

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

Attitude Survey. The political and technical officers of the MOEYC, therefore, demonstrated great political courage in giving the green light to a project that could result in their being attacked and pilloried in the press and in the very vibrant Jamaican electronic media. The Minister, herself, The Hon. Maxine Henry-Wilson, expressed support for the project in person and gave it her blessing. As is the way with political accommodations, two elements were at play. There was the expressed commitment in the form of an official letter from the Ministry stating it “… is very pleased to be associated with the work undertaken by the Jamaica Language Unit. We fully endorse your proposal to conduct a pilot project in Bilingual education for primary school children enrolled in Grades 1–4 in three institutions.” (Letter, Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture, 6th May, 2004). There was, in addition, however, an unexpressed understanding that this commitment would be interpreted in any manner which might be deemed expedient at a given time. The proposers of the project had to recognise that they were engaged in a political process and that pragmatism would guide the behaviour of those who were granting permission for the pilot project to go ahead. The MOEYC officials expressed an understandable desire that the project proceed without too much publicity, since this could potentially produce public controversy. Inevitably, of course, the matter did come to the attention of the media; a year after the project began. The Hon. Maxine Henry-Wilson, Minister of Education, Youth and Culture, was interviewed by a newspaper reporter who was in the process of collecting information for an article which turned out to be quite sympathetic to the project. But Henry-Wilson, though acknowledging that while the new education policy speaks to some of the issues discussed by the researchers, was noncommittal on implementing bilingual instruction on a formal scale after Devonish’s project wraps up in 2008. … “They are doing some fieldwork through the formal education system and we would like to see whether in fact the views expressed are true, that is, whether they will prove that the students would be more productive,” said the education minister… “But we must be mindful that English is a global language; Patois isn’t,” she added… “India has their local dialect [sic], but the country recognises the importance of speaking English…One of the assets we need to optimise is that we do have English as a formal language, it’s universal, and we need to ensure that our children are able to mine that advantage” (Martin-Wilkins, The Sunday Observer, 20th Nov., 2005:€8–9).

The Honourable Minister’s commitment or lack thereof to implementing bilingual instruction more generally was, as she stated, dependent on ‘… whether they prove that the students would be more productive’ (Martin-Wilkins 2005:€8). Her definition of what constituted ‘more productive’ was clearly the children’s ability to function in English, given her extended discourse on the wonderful advantages afforded globally to speakers of English. The promises made by the BEP proposal and correspondence were mindful of this kind of concern, but went well beyond this, stressing that the



Swimming against the tide 

advantages related to cognitive benefits and improved mastery of content subjects. However, given the role which competence in English plays in the social hierarchy of Jamaica, it was competence in English that would be the basis of support for or opposition to a more general implementation of the bilingual approach.

1.5  Project promises The BEP was a pilot project aimed at determining the most effective means of encouraging full bilingualism for the primary level in Jamaican (Jamaican Creole) (JC) and Standard Jamaican English (SJE) over a four year period. The promises made relevant to the present paper were as follows: –â•fi –â•fi

–â•fi

The BEP would, at a minimum, do no harm, notably to pupils’ competence in English. The BEP would produce an increase in Language Arts skill levels in English amongst pupils within the project relative to those in traditional modes of instruction. The BEP would produce an increase in absolute literacy levels of pupils in the project, as manifested in their literacy in their native language, Jamaican, as compared with the literacy levels of non-project pupils for whom English was the only language of literacy.

The BEP was planned to run for four (4) years. It began in May of 2004 with the training of teachers and in September of 2004 with the start of bilingual instruction in the schools. All participation was on a voluntary basis, on the part of schools, specific teachers and parents of pupils. Parents were also briefed on the nature of the project and individual written consent was sought for the inclusion of the children in the fouryear process. The BEP was initially quite ambitious, and by its second year, included 4€schools and some 6 streams. By the third year, in spite of expressed agreement to the contrary, school internal reorganisation and streaming had taken place that compromised the internal composition of the groups of children who were originally part of the project. This made it difficult to identify groups of children who were in continuous receipt of bilingual instruction. For purposes of ensuring the validity in the findings, research for the project focussed on what by the beginning of the fourth year was the only group of students who had had four (4) consecutive years of bilingual instruction. These children began with the BEP in Grade 1 of their primary education and had continued in the project through to Grade 4. Each year of the project was broken down into four separate phases: (1) translation of teaching materials, (2) teacher training in bilingual delivery, (3) implementation within the schools, and (4) project evaluation.

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

2.  Researching performance in BEP 2.1  Measuring success As this paper was being written, in the last three months of 2007, the BEP was at the start of its fourth year. The final results that could establish that the BEP was able to deliver on its promises were 9 months away. There was, however, an opportunity at the end of Grade 3, in May-June, 2007, to assess the progress that had been made towards fulfilling these promises. As part of the normal annual evaluation activities of the MOEYC, a nationally administered Grade 3 Language Arts Diagnostic Test in English Language Arts and a Communication Task were taken by all the Grade 3 pupils in the project school, both those within and outside the BEP. The BEP designed and administered to the BEP participants a parallel test in Jamaican Language Arts as well as a Communication Task in Jamaican, both modelled closely on the official English Language equivalents. The opportunity provided for this evaluation of progress before the final year of the BEP was critical given the short duration of the project, 4 years rather than the preferred 6. The BEP fitted the description of what Collier & Thomas (2004) call a ‘oneway enrichment dual language programme’, i.e. a programme which is fully bilingual in L1 and L2, and in which all of the children have the same L1. This fact is significant and of concern to us since, with reference to the enormous body of data collected on such programmes in the U.S.A. In every study conducted, we have consistently found that it takes six to eight years for ELLs [English Language Learners] to reach grade level in L2, and only one-way or two-way enrichment dual language programs have closed the gap in this length of time. No other program has closed the gap in this length of time  (Collier & Thomas 2004:€5).

These findings are similar to those of Thomas & Collier (1997:€36, 53). Collier & Thomas (2004) further stressed that no other programme had been able to close, in the long term, more than half of the achievement gap with native English speakers. These speakers continued to improve their language competence in their L1, even while English Language learners try to catch up with them. English Language L2 learners, therefore, could only close the gap by making more than one year of progress in their L2 with every year of schooling. The children in dual language enhancement programmes studied by Collier & Thomas (2004) achieved this. What gave hope that positive results could be achieved for the BEP in 4 years was that the groups of children with which the BEP population would be compared were not L1 speakers of English being taught monolingually in their L1. Rather, they were the majority of the primary school population in Jamaica. These children had Jamaican as their L1 and were being taught using a hybrid of approaches, including



Swimming against the tide 

the traditional one involving the English as a Mother Tongue approach. The target being aimed at, therefore, may not have been as unachievable in 4 years as it might have first appeared. Against this background, we sought, at the end of Year 3 of the BEP, to monitor the progress of the project children. Their performance was examined across both languages, and in comparison to the English Language performance of children in the project school of the same grade but who were outside the project. The question at the back of our minds was that of the extent to which the BEP pupils might be beginning to show movement towards the kinds of competence in L2 predicted by studies in full bilingual education. These were early days yet, given the 5–7 years prediction of Thomas & Collier (1997). The BEP pupils were given the We Gried Chrii Pikni Kyan Du Tes, i.e. the Grade Three Jamaican Language Arts Diagnostic Test in Jamaican in May 2007, and the MOEYC equivalent, the Grade Three Language Arts Diagnostic Test for English, in June 2007.

2.2  The instruments: The English and Jamaican Language Arts Tests Let us examine an outline of the structure of the Grade 3 English Language Arts Diagnostic Test, a national test, designed and implemented by the MOEYC in all primary schools in Jamaica. This is also the outline of the equivalent Grade 3 Jamaican Language Arts Diagnostic Test designed by the BEP to parallel the structure, and as much as is linguistically appropriate, the content of its English Language equivalent. The Jamaican Language Arts test is outlined in Table€1 below. Table€1.╇ The Jamaican Language Arts Test

Part I

Sections

Questions

Phonics

Questions 1–10

Listening Comprehension Part II

Structure/Mechanics

Questions 11–14

Vocabulary

Questions 15–42

Study Skill

Questions 43–52

Reading Comprehension

Questions 53–61

Part 1 was made up of two sections, Phonics and Listening Comprehension (questions€1 to 10). In the Phonics section, pupils were asked to identify initial and final sounds, count the number of syllables in given words, differentiate between syllable internal vowels, and identify words with a similar sound to that given in the question. In some questions, students were asked to write the appropriate grapheme and, in others, an entire word. In the Listening Comprehension section, there were

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

four questions based on a factual text and pupils were asked to listen to the passage and then to four related questions, choosing the most appropriate answer from the options given. Part 2 was made up of Sections€3, 4, 5 & 6. Section€3 − Structure/Mechanics€− contained twenty items which dealt with the grammar of the language, its use of pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions, the proper use of tense markers and punctuation marks, superlative adjectives, contractions, etc. (questions 11 to 14). Section€4 dealt with Vocabulary covering homonyms, antonyms and verbs (questions 15 to 42). Section€5 was Study Skills and checked whether or not students could use a dictionary or find information using the content page as their guide (questions 43 to 52). Students were also expected to tell directions using the map and cardinal point provided. Section€6 − Reading Comprehension − required pupils to read and understand a factual passage after which they would answer nine questions dealing with synonyms, the main idea of the passage and other information gained from reading the passage (questions 53 to 61).

2.3  Results: The Language Arts Diagnostic Test The following is an analysis of the results of the English and Jamaican Grade Three Language Arts Assessment Tests sat by 36 BEP children in the May-June, 2007 period at the Hope Valley Experimental School, Kingston, Jamaica. Table€2 below allows us to compare the mean scores for the BEP group in Jamaican and English, as well as the non-BEP group scores for English alone. There were 34 pupils in the BEP and 74 in the non-BEP group. Table€2.╇ Mean Scores on Grade 3 Language Arts Diagnostic Tests for Jamaican and English Scores

BEP Jamaican

BEP English

Non-BEP English

Mean

64%

62%

61%

Maximum

95%

90%

93%

Minimum

30%

20%

23%

It is clear from the above that performance in the L1 (Jamaican) that it is marginally ahead of that for the L2 (English) in the BEP group. The mean score for English in the non-BEP group is slightly less than that for English in the BEP group. This difference is small and therefore prevents us from treating it as significant. All the mean scores are clustered together between 61% and 64%. The lead for Jamaican in the BEP group is to be expected since it is the L1 of the children. However, the gap between it and the mean scores for English in the two groups is not as wide as one might have anticipated.



Swimming against the tide 

For the BEP project group, the range of scores was between 30%–95% for Jamaican and 20%–90% for English. Again here, the performance of children in Jamaican spans a range that reflects a better overall performance than that for English. In the case of English, the non-BEP scores of 23%–93% is marginally better than the English 20%–90% spread of scores for the BEP group. For the BEP group, 20 of the children perform better in Jamaican than in English, whilst 12 performed better in English than Jamaican and 2 had the same scores in both languages. This supports the tendency already observed for performance by the BEP group in Jamaican to be better than that for English. Table€3.╇ Percentage Scores on Sections of Grade 3 Diagnostic Tests Scores

BEP Jamaican

BEP English

Non-BEP English

Mean

64%

62%

61%

Maximum

95%

90%

93%

Minimum

30%

20%

23%

Above is presented the mean scores for each section of the test (Table€3). It can be seen, for the BEP group, that in Vocabulary, Study Skills and Reading/Listening Comprehension, Jamaican at 61.3%, 68% and 61,5% respectively, outscores English at 52.63%, 50.3% and 58.3%. In Phonics as well as Structure & Mechanics, by contrast, Jamaican, at 63% and 60.5%, is outscored by English at 74.5% and 63.65%. The significantly lower score for Jamaican in Phonics requires a special explanation. The source may be interference from English. English has multiple graphemes for the same phoneme as compared with the strictly phonemic nature of the Jamaican orthography. The Phonics mean score for Jamaican may have been reduced due to the transfer from English of multiple graphemes such as 〈c〉, 〈ce〉 and 〈ss〉 for a single phoneme such as /s/ written in Jamaican as 〈s〉. The low Phonics score in Jamaican is what is responsible for the overall Jamaican language scores not distancing itself much more from overall mean scores for English in the two groups. The fact that the English Phonics score for the BEP group relative to the non-BEP is slightly lower, and against the run of mean scores across the various sections, is worth noting. This suggests that there was also a reverse influence amongst the BEP group, with their knowledge of the near phonemic writing system for Jamaican interfering with their sound-letter correspondences in English. That this effect was less than that from English to Jamaican is very understandable. A major criticism of the programme by the external reviewers was the shortage of reading material in Jamaican. With the lack of practice in seeing written Jamaican relative to written English, the effect of the impact of the English writing system on writing Jamaican was considerably greater than the reverse effect, that of Jamaican on English.

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

The mean score for the BEP group in Jamaican was 64% as compared with 62% for BEP English and 61% for non-BEP English. By excluding the Phonics scores, the mean for the BEP group in Jamaican was 63.21, for English 57.89% and for non-BEP English, 56.78%. The gap between the mean score for Jamaican within the BEP group and that for English in both BEP and non-BEP groups widened to between 6% and 7%. This supported our expectation, based on the projections by Collier & Thomas (2004) that performance in L1 would still be significantly ahead of that for L2 three years into a bilingual programme. All of the preceding is purely academic. In the public debate on language education, any argument that focuses on the literacy skills of children in the L1, Jamaican, is likely to get little traction. The main concern would be, at this point, competence in the L2 amongst the BEP pupils. Would it be significantly lower than that of the non-BEP group? For the critics of the programme, such would be the expectation given their subtractive approach to language learning, i.e. if children are encouraged to use Jamaican, they would have no incentive or motive to acquire skills in English. Were this to turn out to be the case, critics and skeptics would have the opportunity to mount public attacks on the BEP on the ground that the programme was holding back the L2 competence. They would do so even in the face of the argument that this delay was temporary and represented an investment in future, above normal, performances of the BEP pupils in both L1 and L2. The arguments put forward in the following quote would, therefore, fall on deaf ears. Students who are raised in a dual language environment need at least 4 years of schooling in L1 and 4 years of schooling in L2 to achieve on grade level in either of the two languages. Providing bilingual schooling in the U.S. meets both needs simultaneously, typically in 4–7 years, leading to high academic achievement in the long term (Thomas & Collier 2002:€12).

Mercifully given the hostile context within which the BEP has operated, the mean score in English for the non-BEP cohort turned out to be 61%, 1% below that for the BEP group. The performance of the BEP group was at least normal for the particular school, by comparison with the non-BEP group. This occurred in spite of the fact that the actual exposure to English of the BEP group would, at least in principle, have been less than that for the non-BEP group. Exposure to English in the BEP classroom would have been shared equally with Jamaican, by comparison with the non-BEP classes where English would have been the dominant if not sole language of instruction. These results suggest that, already by this stage, three years into the programme, the benefits of bilingual education have already kicked in. The similarity of the BEP pupils’ mean score in English as compared with that of the non-BEP group score, is significant if we accept the model of progression in



Swimming against the tide 

bilingual education presented by Thomas & Collier (2002) and Collier & Thomas (2004). According to this model, after an initial period of 4 or 5 to 8 years, test scores in both languages surpass those of monolingual L1 educated users of both languages. The slightly higher mean score for English within the BEP as compared with the non-BEP, suggests that BEP performance in English had already passed that of non-BEP children. In all this, the evidence seems to suggest that as early as the end of Year 3 of the BEP, performance in English, the L2, had begun to exceed that of children only taught literacy in L2. Unlike with the U.S. programmes, we do not have a means of comparing L1 scores across BEP and non-BEP groups since, by definition, the latter are not literate in the L1 and cannot, therefore, sit a written test in that language. We, therefore, have no immediate way of establishing whether, as in the full bilingual programmes in the U.S. the performance in L1 also eventually outstrips that of groups educated using transitional bilingual or English as a Second Language methods. In time, we will be able to establish this, using tests for Jamaican language competence that do not rely on literacy. Certain conclusions are clear. The 3 year period that it has taken for L2 scores of the BEP group to catch up with, and marginally exceed that of the non-BEP group, is earlier than might have been expected from the literature. The time range predicted was 5–7 years as identified by Thomas & Collier (1997), 4–7 years in Thomas & Collier (2002) and 6–8 years in Collier & Thomas (2004). The BEP results for Jamaica provide circumstantial evidence supporting the view of Craig (1999) that situations such as those involving a traditionally low status Creole language and a lexically related high status European language, creates special handicaps for the learning of English, when compared to other language learning situations. The fact that the BEP group has caught up with the non-BEP one so quickly suggests that the non-BEP approach was particularly ineffective, thus amplifying the positive effect of the fully bilingual approach.

2.4  Results – Communication task The Communication Task constituted Part 3, Section€7 – Communication of the test. It was aimed at testing writing ability in the relevant language. In this exercise, students were asked to write a story based on a given picture or series of pictures, using the writing system previously taught. No word limit was set (MOEYC Student Assessment Unit, Appendix 3, p 11). In marking the test performance was assigned to one of 5 evenly separated levels. We used the example of a rubric for scoring the English Language Communication Task provided by the MOEYC (undated) as the basis for scoring the Jamaican language Communication Task devised for and administered to the BEP pupils.

 Karen Carpenter & Hubert Devonish

Table€4.╇ The Communication Task Results in English and Jamaican BEP Jamaican

42.5%

English

47.5%

Non-BEP English

47.5%

What is striking is that the Jamaican language score for the BEP group is lower than that for English in either of the two groups. The explanation may be the relatively low amount of writing in Jamaican actually done by the children in the course of the project. Again, however, it was clear that the project had had no negative effect on the performance of the children in English since the scores for both the BEP and non-BEP group came out at 47.5%. Within the BEP group, 11 had the same scores for Jamaican and English, 6 with a higher score in Jamaican than English and 12 with an English score that was higher than that for Jamaican. The large number of children with identical scores for the two languages or higher scores for English than Jamaican supports the notion that the BEP delivery did not interfere with their performances in English. Even though the English Communication Task mean scores for the two groups were the same at 47%, the spread was greater in the BEP group with 2 pupils achieving the maximum score of 100%, i.e. 4 points out of 4. The range in both the English and Jamaican BEP Communication Task results was 0%–100%, i.e. 0–4. By contrast, for the non-BEP group, the range for the English results was 0%–75%. The BEP seems, therefore, to have had a positive effect at the top end of the performance scale. The performances of the two groups on the Communication Task are, from the point of view of their mean scores, exactly the same. The teaching of literacy in Jamaican, the L1 of the pupils, has most emphatically not had the anticipated devastating effects predicted by the naysayers.

3.  Conclusion …[S]tudents schooled all in English initially make dramatic gains in the early grades, whatever type of program students receive, and this misleads teachers and administrators into assuming that the students are going to continue to do extremely well (Thomas & Collier 1997:€34).

What was striking about the results presented at the end of Year 3 of the BEP was the unexpectedly strong mean score for the L2, English, relative to that of the non-BEP group. The ‘early grade’ effect described in the above quote is either diminished in the Jamaican situation or is at least compressed into a shorter period of time. By the end



Swimming against the tide 

of Year 3 in the BEP in Jamaica, the scores of the fully bilingually educated group had caught up with those not taught using an L2 dominant approach. Three promises had been made in relation to targets to be achieved by the end of Year 4. Below is the scorecard as of the end of Year 3: –â•fi –â•fi

–â•fi

The BEP could establish, by mean scores in English for the BEP group relative to the non-BEP group, that it had done no harm to pupils’ competence in English. The BEP could not yet establish beyond a doubt that it had produced an increase in English Language Arts skill levels amongst BEP participants relative to the comparison group not included in the project. The BEP could show that it had produced an increase in absolute literacy levels of pupils in the project, when judged by the mean score in the Grade 3 Diagnostic Test in Jamaican, as compared with mean scores in English for both these groups, but not when judged by a comparison of scores on the Communication Task.

The final year of the BEP, on which its success or failure will be judged, is Year 4. The BEP has covered three quarters of the distance. Whether full bilingual education comes to be regarded as a viable option in Creole language situations such as that of Jamaica will depend in large measure on whether the gamble that was taken when we took the plunge in 2004, turns out to have been a judicious one. A lot will depend on the tide in the fourth and final year. That remains, at the time of writing, in the future.

Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia Hazel Simmons-McDonald

The University of the West Indies This chapter presents a general background to the language situation and language use in St. Lucia, and discusses the model and rationale for use of French Creole in instruction. It also summarises the results of a pilot project in using French Creole in instruction, to show the effects of such a model with older students who were unable to learn English after five years of schooling. Subsequent work in preparation for wider implementation of the models is also presented. A description of the materials preparation as well as the other issues that need to be considered before implementation on a wider scale is also given and a summary of the current status of the project is provided. Keywords:╇ French Creole; Kwéyòl; English Lexicon Vernacular; SLEV; education

1.  Introduction A few years ago I made a presentation to a group of St. Lucian undergraduate students on the language situation in St. Lucia, and I suggested that if policy and practice with regard to the French Creole (FC / Kwéyòl) in education remained unchanged, St. Lucia would most likely experience language change of the magnitude that had been experienced in Trinidad, a situation in which the French Creole would no longer be widely spoken but would probably be used for communication among one or more small groups who wished to retain the language for this purpose, and as a mark of identity, as in the Paramin community. I surmised that in the longer term, in another century or two, St. Lucia might have a profile similar to that of Grenada, where according to Ron Kephart (personal communication) “there are probably some elderly French Creole speakers left.” Kephart reported that there was definitely one person who spoke the language in Grenada in 2007, and he suggested that some speakers migrated to Grenada from Carriacou (where FC is still spoken). He indicated that based on

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

his experience with Carriacou it was “not likely that FC was being used much for communication.” He pointed out further that “every one of my consultants on Carriacou reported learning FC when they were in their teens, rather than as a first language, because they wanted to understand what their parents were talking about”. However, remnants of French Creole are evident in place names and foods in Grenada. The students’ reaction was that it was impossible for FC to die and that I was being unpatriotic to suggest it. Even as early as the 1960s, writers were becoming aware of language shift in St.€ Lucia. Harold Simmons (1989:€ 33),1 pointed to such an eventuality when he remarked that the French Creole “is being pushed gradually out of existence by educational policy as well as by social forces not directly subject to control.” Language death is not a strange phenomenon, as has been reported in the literature (see, for example, Crystal 2000, and Nettle & Romaine 2000). The point has been made that when there are only a few remaining speakers of a language and they no longer use that language to communicate the language can be considered to be dead. Also, if fewer and fewer people speak a language and children do not acquire it as a first language it can eventually die if that pattern is perpetuated over successive generations. Ian Robertson (personal communication) suggested that Berbice Dutch can be considered a dead language as the last known speaker is 93 years old and the language is no longer used for communication. This chapter describes the research project that is being undertaken as an approach to forestall language death in the Saint Lucian context. It focuses on what is required in the educational context for the implementation of a bilingual programme in English and FC, presents the approach being undertaken in the preparation of instructional materials as well as a summary of findings from a preliminary project which resulted in the successful acquisition of literacy in both languages for the students in the study.

2.  A brief sociohistorical and sociolinguistic background of Saint Lucia Saint Lucia is a volcanic island in a chain of islands in the eastern Caribbean. It is one of the four Windward Islands in the chain, and is bounded on the east by the Atlantic

.  The articles by Harold Simmons referred to here were probably written between 1950 and 1963. A selection of his writings were compiled by D. Jules and published by The Folk Research Centre in 1989. That collection has not recorded the dates of publication in every case. The page references cited here are from that publication.



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

Ocean and by the Caribbean Sea on the west. The Francophone island of Martinique is its closest neighbour to the north and the windward island of St. Vincent lies to its south. It has a population of 160,765 (2005 census) and the report on its Website indicates that the majority (82.5%) is of African descent, with the rest comprising mixed minorities of “Indo-Caribbean or Indian groups at 2.4%” a small group comprising the “descendants of French, British, and Irish colonists” and “small numbers of Lebanese, Syrians and Chinese” (http:wikipedia – see list of references). The report also noted that the Arawaks who may have travelled to the island from the northern parts of South America were the first inhabitants of the island, and they were later replaced by Caribs in the period 800 to 1000AD. Carrington (1984:€1–2) pointed out that the first attempts to settle Saint Lucia by the passengers of a British Vessel on the way to Guiana were unsuccessful because the majority were killed by the Caribs. However, despite their reputed ‘ferocity in battle’ and their ability to resist successive groups of Europeans who sought to inhabit the island, the French finally succeeded in establishing a colony in 1642. In the sixty-one years following, the British and French fought to gain possession of the island which changed hands no fewer than fourteen times during that period, until the island was finally ceded to the British in 1803. Carrington (1984) points out that between the years 1664 and 1803 “every treaty awarded the island to France – Breda, 1664; Aix-la-Chapelloe, 1784; Paris, 1763; Versailles, 1783; Amiens, 1802.” He further notes that “the capture of the island by the British in 1803 was ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1814” (p.2). The island remained a colony of Britain until it became a State in association with Britain in 1967. This arrangement meant that Saint Lucia assumed responsibility for its internal governance, but Britain retained responsibility for its foreign affairs and defence. The island achieved full independence on the 22nd February 1979, but it remained a member of the British Commonwealth of nations and it continues to recognise Queen Elizabeth II as the titular head of state, but appoints a Governor General to preside locally over the affairs of Government. For many years after St. Lucia was ceded to Britain by the French, French remained the dominant language which was spoken and the affairs of court were even carried out in French. Carrington (1984:€3) reported that several proclamations to institute English as the only official language were unsuccessful until a “dispatch from the Secretary of State in reply to a petition” which appeared in the Gazette of March 30, 1842 refused “to defer any longer the introduction of the English language”. Carrington noted further that: These proclamations seem to have been of official importance only, since the majority of the island’s population was constituted of recently freed African slaves whose language was neither French nor English but that form (of) speech which we now call Creole or Patois.

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

The abolition of the African slave trade by the British in 1807 did not bring immediate freedom to the African slaves in Saint Lucia, as they continued to exist in slavery until 1834 and thereafter to serve as apprentices to their former masters until 1838 when they eventually gained full freedom. General information on Saint Lucia lists the official languages of the island as English and Creole, but this masks the more complex sociolinguistic situation that characterises the St. Lucian situation which is now reported to have a significant number of speakers of an English lexicon vernacular as well as English and French Creole (Carrington 1984; Garrett 2003; Isaac 1986; Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985; Simmons-McDonald 1988). Trends in St. Lucia indicate that since the census of 1911, when the number of exclusive speakers of Kwéyòl (the French Creole name for the language) was higher proportionate to English and bilingual (English & Kwéyòl) speakers, distribution patterns have changed to the extent that Carrington (1984:€5), comparing the 1911 census figures with those of 1946, reported “a decrease in the percentage of exclusive Creole speakers (and) a proportional increase in the percentage of persons speaking both languages.” The absence of information on language use in more recent census surveys makes it difficult to report accurately on actual changes in language distribution, but reports on sub-samples of speakers, for example, the report (Simmons-McDonald 1988:€9) on language use by primary school age children indicated a lower percentage of exclusive Kwéyòl speakers in urban areas (2%) than English speakers (55%) and bilinguals (43%), and a lower number of bilingual than exclusive English speakers. The report also indicated a lower percentage of Kwéyòl speakers in rural areas (3%) than English speakers (12%) or bilinguals (85%). The latter survey indicated that the pattern of higher use of Kwéyòl in rural areas reported in the earlier study by Carrington had not changed. Alleyne (1961) had indicated the use of an English lexicon-based variety in St. Lucia and other research studies confirmed the emergence and widespread use of the English vernacular variety in the St. Lucian context. Writing about the sociolinguistic situation in St. Lucia, Le Page & Tabouret-Keller (1985:€155) described it as one in which there is “a gradual shift of a population from a French-Patois-like vernacular to creolised English as their native language, via an intermediate stage of Standard English as a second language in the classroom.” Alleyne (1961:€ 5–6) described this vernacular as being “strongly influenced by Creole phonetic, semantic and syntactical patterns”. Isaac characterised it as consisting of calqued forms from the French Creole and retaining the structure of this language, for the most part. Garrett (2003) provided a summary description of the variety. In an earlier paper, Garrett (2000) made the point that although the vernacular is “… acknowledged to exist in recent scholarly literature… it is not acknowledged by most St.€Lucians.” He went on to say that:



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

St. Lucians are certainly attentive to the fact that some persons speak English better than others –€that is, that some speak more in accordance with pedagogical standards… But for everyday purposes of most St. Lucians, English is English, and no further distinctions need be made. (Garrett 2000:€73)

Garrett’s comment (2000:€73) that “for everyday purposes of most Saint. Lucians, English is English and no further distinctions need be made” points to the fact that in general, St. Lucians in casual communication do not distinguish between the official variety and the vernacular, but Saint Lucian writers and educators have recognised the difference between the English used by the courts and for other official purposes including education and the vernacular commonly used for casual communication. This variety is now being acquired as a first language by many children, and it is a productive lect that is used in many communities in which FC/Kwéyòl was formerly dominant and would have been more likely to have been the acquired first language. St. Lucian Standard English is the official language and it is ascribed a higher status than either Kwéyòl or the St. Lucian English Lexicon Variety (SLEV). The emergence of the SLEV and its recognition as a lect that is different from the official variety is fairly recent, and the few early empirical studies that were done on attitudes to language in St. Lucia did not include it as a variable for analysis. Early studies on the language situation in St. Lucia made comparisons between St. Lucian Standard and Kwéyòl, and, for the most part, the views expressed about Kwéyòl were mostly negative, while English was valued as superior. The following comments reported in the literature reflect some attitudes towards Kwéyòl. “Patois (Kwéyòl) is inferior to English; it is not a language; it has no grammar; it is only broken French…” (Vérin 1958:€164 writing about language use in the school system and commenting on the “postulates … pumped into the scholar’s head”) ii “The negro language is a jargon formed from the French and composed of words or rather sounds adapted to the organs of speech in the black population… It is in short, the French language, stripped of its manly and dignified ornaments and travestied for the accommodation of children and toothless old women…” (Breen 1844: 184) iii. “Patois is making (St. Lucians) backwards; it is nothing but palawala and it is merely a ploy to keep us back” (Yarde 1989, 1990). i.

Despite these negative sentiments, some studies reported that St. Lucians were ambivalent about Kwéyòl but may have a higher regard for it than for English, as they showed reluctance to admit occasions when they used Kwéyòl but they readily admitted

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

instances when they used English. They rated Kwéyòl versions of a story in a matched guise test “more confident” and “more wise” than English (Liebermann 1975:€ 487). Simmons-McDonald also reported that attitudes towards Kwéyòl in the teaching profession had changed for the better, since 81% of principals in the study reported that they allowed teachers to use Kwéyòl to children in class when necessary and 92% of primary school teachers reported that they used Kwéyòl with children for a range of purposes. This was viewed as an encouraging trend (Simmons-McDonald 1988:€30) as earlier studies had reported that students would sometimes be punished for using French Creole on the school compound and this had been done as a means of eradicating it. More recent developments in St. Lucia, such as the celebration of Jounen Kwéyòl in the month of October, the use of Kwéyòl for some radio and television programmes, the use of Kwéyòl to deliver a portion of the address to Parliament by the Governor General and more easily available information and better education about language in general have led to a higher valuation of the French Creole. While the ambivalence reported by Alexander (1993) Liebermann (1974, 1975) and Simmons-McDonald (2006b) still exists to some degree, the latter study revealed more positive attitudes to Kwéyòl among teachers. Based on the results of a matched guise test involving the three language varieties used in St. Lucia, and conducted with student teachers, Simmons-McDonald reported as follows: A comparison of the language varieties showed that there was a more positive correlation between SLSE (Saint Lucian Standard English) and Kwéyòl (0.93) than between Kwéyòl and SLEV (Saint Lucian English Vernacular) (0.54) or SLSE and SLEV (0.20). Overall, SLEV was less highly valued than either SLSE or Kwéyòl, whereas there was greater similarity in the valuation between SLSE and Kwéyòl on all traits. This indicates that Kwéyòl is valued as highly as SLSE, whereas SLEV is not as highly valued as either of these other two varieties. The findings suggest a positive shift in attitude toward Kwéyòl among the student teacher population.  (Simmons-McDonald 2006b: 73)

An interesting finding from that study was that teachers were more likely to allow the use of Kwéyòl in the classroom for purposes of providing explanations to students but they were less tolerant of the use of SLEV which they characterised as “broken or bad English”. The SLEV variety has been referred to variously in the literature. Garrett who had used the natural acronym SLEV for St. Lucian English Lexicon Vernacular to refer to this variety, later used the acronym VESL€– Vernacular English of Saint Lucia€– to refer to the variety to avoid the phonetic resonances to the word ‘slave’ suggested by SLEV. Simmons-McDonald (2009) observed that the naming of the variety remained



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

unresolved but that the name Saint Lucian English Lexicon Vernacular and the corresponding acronym SLEV seemed more natural to St. Lucians than VESL. She has continued to use the former in subsequent works. SLEV has been described as having Creole English features, and it is used increasingly with Kwéyòl and Standard St. Lucian in the work of writers to portray the language and culture of St. Lucians in a realistic way. However, unlike English and Kwéyòl which have standardised orthographies, SLEV is represented variously in writing with adjustments to English spelling to represent the spoken language. The existence of this third variety complicates the task of teachers in the primary school system, as they need to tailor instruction to groups of children who speak three different varieties as their first language, and some appear to find it difficult to do so effectively.

3.  Education policy regarding French Creole Carrington (1984:€2–3) pointed to the vacillation that existed in St. Lucian society in the early 1800s regarding the introduction of English as the language of the courts and the official language which indicated the strong resistance to English at the time by a predominant French-speaking community. It is interesting that while Kwéyòl must have been used widely for communication in the first three decades of the 19th€century, the discussion about the use of language does not make reference to this variety. Carrington (1984:€3) observed that the first reference to it appeared in Breen’s 1844 text on St. Lucia. The widespread use of the Kwéyòl at that time is alluded to in the following statement by Breen and cited in Carrington; “I regret to add that it has now almost entirely superseded the use of the beautiful French language even in some of the highest circles of colonial society.” Breen’s comment and the rejection of Kwéyòl as a language for purposes of education point to views generally held in the community that the language, while preferred for communication by its speakers and valued as being more expressive than English in casual communicative contexts (Alexander 1993; Liebermann 1974, 1975), was somehow deficient for purposes of education. In the bilingual context of St. Lucian society, English came to be valued as the language of the school, of success and social advancement. Some researchers have expressed the view that the monolingual policy of English for instruction in school from the reception class (Kindergarten) has not only been partially responsible for the emergence of the English lexicon vernacular but also for many exclusive speakers of Kwéyòl being disadvantaged compared with their Englishspeaking counterparts. With regard to the first point, Christie (1983) commenting on the Dominican situation, which is similar in some ways to that of St. Lucia, proposed

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

that the vernacular was acquired through “direct teaching” and developed and spread “through informal contact”. Simmons-McDonald (1988) supported this view with respect to St. Lucia based on the results of her study of five year old exclusive speakers of French Creole learning English in school and who acquired the SLEV variety after a year of study but did not make progress towards acquiring proficiency in the Standard variety to permit them to advance to higher grades. The policy of English only for learning and teaching from the primary level of the school system as well as its exclusive use for teaching native speakers of Kwéyòl or bilingual speakers of Kwéyòl and SLEV have had negative outcomes on student proficiency and success in school. Carrington (1984:€176) referred to “the unacceptably high rate of functional illiteracy in the population” which he suggested indicates the folly of the “current educational policy in which English is the sole medium through which literacy can be achieved.” Carrington’s estimate at the time was that “64% of the population aged 15 years and over could be considered … functionally illiterate.” Simmons-McDonald (1994:€35–36) listed several factors in the teaching context that exacerbated the learning of literacy by speakers of Kwéyòl. These included: (i)€the high percentage of unqualified teachers in the Stage One (Kindergarten or Reception class for 4 to 5 year olds) particularly in rural areas which have a higher concentration of Kwéyòl speakers; (ii)€inadvertent use of the SLEV variety by teachers in the classroom thereby reinforcing the vernacular variety; (iii)€large class sizes, average 35 students per class; (iv)€absence of differentiation in the instruction used for Kwéyòl and SLEV speakers and lack of scaffolding for the former; (iv)€use of repetition or rote learning; (v)€limited opportunities for communication by students in either Kwéyòl or English; (vi)€misdiagnosis of the students as having learning disabilities rather than identification of their first language as being different and therefore requiring a special approach to instruction. Studies conducted in other contexts from as early as the 1920s have pointed to the negative effects on learners’ development when their first language is excluded from the learning and teaching context. Several of these are cited in Simmons-McDonald (1996) and include the following: West (1926), Eichorn & Jones (1952), Anastasi & Cordova (1953). Studies done in the Caribbean also had similar findings; for example, Craig (1977) indicated that one of the results of promoting a monolingual standard in a bilingual situation could be that “the child’s normal development in his/her home language, Creole, becomes stifled while, at the same time, the child fails to acquire native fluency in the language of the school”. Simmons-McDonald (1988) also pointed to the negative effects on exclusive speakers of Kwéyòl of monolingual instruction in English. However, some more recent studies have indicated positive effects of the use of the child’s home language in education. The collection of articles in Tabouret-Keller et al. (1997) discussed conditions that are conducive to the use of vernacular literacy



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

in education and presented several contexts in which such programmes have been successful. Other studies, for example, Bialystok (1991), Cummins (1994), Swain & Lapkin (1991), Walker (1984), Siegel (1999b), and selected others listed in Ovando & Collier (1998) pointed to the positive effects on students when the first language is used for education and for literacy development. The overwhelming evidence in favour of the use of the first language in education even when that first language is a vernacular prompted study to test the effects of Creole on literacy development in the Caribbean context. One such study is that being conducted by Devonish and his team in the Language Unit at the UWI, Mona Campus, Jamaica (see this volume) with Jamaican Creole and another is the ongoing study with French Creole speakers reported on in this paper. The idea for an experiment to use the French Creole in education emerged as a natural outcome of assessments of student performance in St. Lucia which reported high failure rates in English and mathematics for students at Primary level in minimum standards tests and the promotional Common Entrance Examinations (CEE) as well as the results of studies done in other contexts which reported benefits to students when their first language was used in instruction (e.g. Ovando & Collier 1998). Suggestions that the children’s first language should be used in education as a means of facilitating their learning had been ignored for decades by officials in the Ministry of Education who, like others, may have been influenced by the perpetuation of negative views about Kwéyòl in the press such as those expressed by Yarde on various occasions (1989, 1990) as well as the view that the promotion of FC /Kwéyòl would prevent children from learning English and would hinder its speakers from competing in the wider world. As noted in an earlier paper (Simmons-McDonald 1996:€122) the latter position was based on the presupposition that inclusion of FC in education meant that Kwéyòl would be the primary and perhaps only language of instruction. Several options for instruction were outlined in that paper to indicate the need for an education policy to be tailored to meet the particular needs of St. Lucia.

4.  A  model for using FC/Kwéyòl in instruction in the Saint Lucian context A rationale for a policy to include Kwéyòl in instruction for native speakers of this variety was presented by Simmons-McDonald (1996). It was proposed that such a policy should consider the learner-group characteristics based on the first language of students. The learner characteristics were presented in a table which has been adapted for this publication (p.133).

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

Table€1.╇ Learner characteristics Groups

I

II

First/dominant language Comprehension

French Creole (FC/Kwéyòl) FC and possibly some comprehension of SLEV

St. Lucian English Lexicon Vernacular (SLEV) SLEV, some comprehension of SLSE and possibly some comprehension of French Creole (FC / Kwéyòl)

Production

Communication skills in Kwéyòl

Communication skills in SLEV

III St. Lucian Standard English (SLSE) Some comprehension of SLEV. Some minimal comprehension of Kwéyòl is possible. Communication skills in SLSE and some communication skills in SLEV also.

A tri-partite model for vernacular instruction based on the groupings indicated in Table€1 was designed as a platform for developing a policy which could be implemented subsequent to experimental research using the model. A model with three components was considered necessary in the Saint Lucian context not only because of the variability of the home language of children –€as indicated in Table€1€– but also because of the strong cultural thrust towards a revival of the French Creole language and culture among Saint Lucians as evidenced in the use of the language for news reports and other broadcasts, and the island wide annual French Creole cultural celebration on a given day (Jounen Kwéyòl) in October across the nation. Nwenmely (1996:€29) suggested that the creation of Jounen Kwéyòl “is perhaps the most important initiative in the marshalling of community-wide support for the language.” But a fundamental issue that has not been considered is whether one day or one week of activities devoted to highlighting the French Creole language and culture will be sufficient to restore widespread and enduring interest in that cultural heritage or kindle a desire among younger generations of St. Lucians to speak Kwéyòl and to become literate in it. Ironically, even as interest in Kwéyòl and French Creole culture has increased as a result of the efforts of agencies such as the Folk Research Centre, the policies governing official language use in education have resulted in a situation in which Kwéyòl has been pushed even further “out of existence” and it now has fewer exclusive native speakers than it did at the time Simmons commented on that situation some fortyeight years ago. While Government policy has changed in recent years to allow the use of Kwéyòl in the speeches of parliamentarians in the House, the obduracy with regard to educational policy has, perhaps, been one of the most significant factors that have affected language distribution patterns and language change in St. Lucia, and which has also had a direct impact on the maintenance of French Creole folk traditions which are transmitted primarily through Kwéyòl. Another major effect of the



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

policy has been the continued retardation of the process of “intellectualization of the language” (Alleyne & Garvin 1982), which can only be achieved through a broadening of its functions, primarily through its use for literacy and academic purposes by young people. A central contradiction resides in the fact that the preservation of the French Creole culture depends to a large extent on the maintenance of Kwéyòl but the latter continues to be eroded by alternative cultural trends and policies that run counter to its survival. On the one hand, St. Lucia promotes a tourist industry that is predicated on “uniqueness” deriving from the existence of Kwéyòl and FC culture, particularly the folk traditions associated with the language and culture. On the other hand, rejection of the language in those domains that would foster reclamation and maintenance serves to erode the very basis on which the country seeks to promote itself as different and attractive. Consequently, there is a strong cultural argument for a model that would cater to the variable language profiles of St. Lucians, and which would serve the purpose of literacy development, maintenance and reclamation of French Creole. Further, from the language acquisition perspective, studies conducted in other contexts have pointed out that skills basic to academic progress are most easily learned in the first language (L1) (Swain, cited in Walker 1984:€ 165). Siegel (1997b, 1999b) presented information which showed first (1997b) that the use of a Pidgin (Tok Pisin) in a programme for the development of literacy in pre-school children resulted in greater gains for the children with whom Tok Pisin was used than for those who had not been exposed to the Pidgin in the programme. In that case, the Pidgin had been a help and not a hindrance to its L1 speakers. Second, Siegel (1999b: 721) conducted a comprehensive review of research which reported on the use of stigmatised varieties in the classroom and he wrote that if the methodologies used were appropriate, use of the “students’ vernaculars may actually help them acquire the standard”. Wilson, Smikle & Grant (2001) reported on a study conducted in Jamaica to improve the literacy skills of students through a literature-based programme in which they found evidence for significant gains in the improvement of literacy skills for Jamaica Creole speakers resulting from the inclusion of literature in Jamaican Creole in the programme. These studies all provide evidence that the appropriate inclusion of vernaculars in education can lead to additive rather than subtractive bilingualism for the speakers of these varieties. It is within this context that the St. Lucian project for L1 speakers of French Creole and English Lexicon Vernacular (SLEV) was conceptualised. A full description of the tripartite model is presented elsewhere, so a brief summary of the rationale for the model is dealt with here, and the French Creole component on which the experiment was based is more fully outlined. The model is designed for heterogeneous classroom contexts, comprising learners of the language profiles indicated in Table€1. The components of the model for English and vernacular speakers are similar as they emphasise early literacy in English, raising learners’ awareness

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

to enable them to determine the differences between the language varieties and they also facilitate learning (about) Kwéyòl as a subject. The SLEV speaking group constitutes a special case. Acquisition of the Vernacular as a first language by many St. Lucian children complicates the issue of language education. While some studies have promoted the use of same lexicon vernacular languages to teach the Standard, others have cautioned that in cases where the vernacular is close to the Standard it is sometimes difficult for students and some teachers to detect the difference. For example, it was reported that once Kwéyòl speakers shift from what Isaac (1986) termed a “basilectal” form of St. Lucian English towards the acquisition of forms that approximate more closely to the Standard, the shift towards full acquisition of the standard variety used for school purposes becomes slower and more difficult (Simmons-McDonald 1994, 1999). While the use of vernacular varieties to teach the Standard may be a help as has been reported in the case of Tok Pisin (Siegel 1997b), the question of the distinctive differences between the varieties in question will be a factor that may influence learning of the second language and the development of literacy in it. Carrington (1976:€36) proposed a set of principles for the use of English-lexicon varieties in instruction. The first principle states that in situations in which a language is “related to the official language, conditions are linguistically unfavourable for its use as a medium of instruction”. The use of the vernacular as a language of instruction might be useful to help learners contrast the two English dialects and to become aware of the differences between them. The findings of some studies (e.g. Rickford & Rickford 1995; Rickford, A. 1999; Siegel 1997b) suggested that the vernacular can be a help in the learning of the L2 and the experiment being undertaken by Devonish with Jamaican Creole (this volume) is expected to provide some definitive results in the case of same lexicon creole varieties. It may well be that where differences between the varieties are more transparent to learners they can use the vernacular as a stepping stone towards the acquisition of the second language or dialect. Craig (1977) used the term “the area of interaction” to describe situations in which differences cannot be easily detected by the learner. Cases are said to be “opaque” where differences are less clearly discernible by learners. It seems logical to assume that in such instances, the case for use of the vernacular as a language of instruction is weak. With this as a point for consideration, the component for children who had acquired SLEV as L1 recommended the use of ESL approaches, as well as the use of literature which includes the vernacular to provide a rich, culturally relevant context to develop learner awareness of the contrasts between the English lexicon varieties and their appropriateness for use in different situations. However, the second and third components of the model deal specifically with SLEV and St. Lucian Standard English respectively, and neither was introduced



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

in the preliminary experiment. Another project will be undertaken to test the hypotheses presented for these components and a report on the findings will be presented at a later date. The primary objective of the preliminary study was to determine whether bilingual instruction using French Creole and English would be beneficial to native speakers of FC/ Kwéyòl and facilitate the development of literacy in both languages. The model is designed to be used from the earliest stage of schooling (PreKindergarten – PK) to Grade VI, which is the level at which learners write the Common Entrance Examination. It allows for treatments that will expose learners to one-anda-half hours of instruction in Kwéyòl and three-and-a-half hours in Standard English on a daily basis. This approach is preferred since it allows for the development of early literacy in Kwéyòl even as learners are acquiring communicative competence in English. The model proposes that during the time devoted to Kwéyòl instruction in the early grades (PK – Grade I), learners will be exposed to a programme that will focus on emergent literacy in Kwéyòl. As learners become literate in Kwéyòl and acquire increasing communicative competence in English, literacy in the latter will be given increasing focus in the higher Grades, particularly through the use of the language in other subjects on the curriculum. The component of the model presented as Figure€1 emphasises the development of critical literacy in the two dominant language varieties, Kwéyòl and English, in the framework of an integrated programme, which incorporates a rich variety of texts in both English and Kwéyòl. KWEYOL Instruction - 1 ½ HOURS

SLSE Instruction - 3½ HOURS

Allows speakers of Kwéyòl to:

Allows speakers of Kwéyòl to:

1. develop literacy in Kwéyòl

1. acquire communicative competence in English 2. develop literacy and academic proficiency in English 3. use English for school work and for creative expression

2. use Kwéyòl for creative expression 3. develop academic proficiency in Kwéyòl

OUTCOMES Communicative competence and proficiency in Kwéyòl and SLSE Biliterate bilinguals

Figure€1.╇ Kwéyòl Component

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

The other two components of the model present procedures for dominant speakers of SLEV and for children who speak English as the first language. Each component indicates the way in which the model would operate with speakers who are dominant in a specific variety. The model recommends the teaching of Kwéyòl for all the groups for several reasons. The first is that learners are reported to derive cognitive benefits when they acquire two languages in early childhood, and the subsequent acquisition of a third language is much easier. Such benefits, which were reported in a series of studies summarised by Ovando & Collier (1998) were considered to be “cognitive advantages over monolinguals on measures of cognitive flexibility, linguistic and meta-linguistic abilities, concept formation, divergent thinking, and creativity (Baker 1993; Bialystok 1991; Cummins & Swain 1986; Díaz 1983; Hakuta 1986, 1990; Hamers & Blanc 1989; Homel, Palij & Aaronson 1987 –€all cited in Ovando & Collier 1998:€256). It was reasoned that in the case of St. Lucia, the early introduction of Kwéyòl for which there is local support (i.e. learners can hear Kwéyòl spoken around them and they have opportunities to use it in the community) makes good sense. Further, based on the reports of the studies referred to above, if the instructional programmes promoted by the model are effective and lead to the learning of Kwéyòl and English, the learning of a third language (French or Spanish), in a higher grade should be easier. Another strong argument for the tri-partite model which allows for Kwéyòl to be used with all the children is that disruption with respect to classroom configuration will be minimised. It is expected that typical classrooms in the areas to be specially selected for the study will be heterogeneous and will comprise children with competence in one or two of the three varieties spoken on the island. By allowing the study of Kwéyòl in one shorter segment and English for the longer segment of the school day, the model will allow for the achievement of the objective of developing bilingualism in the full sample. Issues such as disruption of groups can thus be avoided, although more effective grouping for specific activities based on language backgrounds can also be accommodated. The model provided a framework for a carefully considered project to be conducted in a series of phases as a controlled research study in St. Lucia. This would permit comparison of findings with similar studies conducted elsewhere. As noted earlier, the complete model is fully described in another publication and only the Kwéyòl / SLSE component (Figure€1) is being considered in this paper. The FC component of the model was modified to accommodate a preliminary experiment to use Kwéyòl as a language of instruction in a bilingual programme. Permission was granted by the government for the first phase of a longer project which would proceed if positive effects were derived from the experiment. The project has therefore been designed over the four phases indicated in Table€2.

Preliminary Attitude Survey (Teachers) Writing Instructional Materials

I. Preliminary Pilot Controlled Study II. Planning and Preparatory work for larger study III. Implementing Larger study (Phase I)

IV. Wider project St. Lucia implementation

St. Lucia – Selected Schools

Activity 1

Phases

Island-wide attitude survey

In progress – September 2009

Sample text prepared, June 2010

Done

Training of teachers

Analysis & assessment

Status – Activity 4 Projected Completion

Experiment – 2012 – Haiti subject to funding

Use of full model

Testing materials

Implement model/

Status – Activity 3 Projected Completion

Instrument designed – December 2009 Longitudinal – Monitor Data Sept 2010 – student collection July 2013 performance and analysis 2012 – Experiment – 2012 – Dominica subject to funding

Materials preparation

Activity 2

Done, and report published

Status – Projected Completion

Table€2.╇ Design of the Bilingual French Creole – English Project

Annual reports on progress

August 2010

Done and report published.

Status – Projected Completion

Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

4.1  Preliminary phase – The preliminary piloting The preliminary phase of the project was a small-scale experiment which was conducted in a village in the north east of the island. This is a rural bilingual community in which children speak either French Creole or the English Lexicon Vernacular (SLEV) as the first language, but many are bilingual in Kwéyòl and SLEV. The model was modified for the preliminary pilot. It was not possible to begin the experiment with a Kindergarten group as recommended in the model, but permission was given for the experiment to be conducted with a small group of learners in Grades V and VI who had not learned to read. The children in this group were all exclusive speakers of French Creole when they entered school. The modification meant that the experiment could not be conducted over an extended period of several consecutive weeks of instruction, which was the ideal condition. It had to be done in a shorter period of six intensive sessions each of one week’s duration over three terms. This was not the best condition for the experiment, but at the time there was no alternative solution. However, it was determined that the research design (Single-subject; Newman & McCormick 1995) would indicate whether gains accrued directly from the Kwéyòl intervention, and if there were such gains, they would attest to the value of such an intervention for Kwéyòl speakers. The model was modified to allow for forty-five minutes of instruction in Kwéyòl and one hour of English in each instructional session. The study and its findings are described fully elsewhere (Simmons-McDonald 2006a), so a brief summary is presented to indicate how the experiment was incorporated within the context of the larger project. The choice of a single subject research design facilitated the implementation of the experiment over an extended period of non-consecutive weeks, as student performance could be related directly to the interventions that were conducted. The design allows for “a student’s changes in response (to be) … compared with the student’s own pre-intervention level of responding” (Newman & McCormick 1995:€5). Sixty-nine children at the school had been identified by their teachers as having severe reading problems. They were given reading diagnostic tests to determine their levels of literacy and three of those in the 10 to 12 age range who spoke Kwéyòl as a first language and were considered to be at greatest risk were selected for the intensive preliminary pilot study. The subjects were two boys, Ado and Dovi, who were 12 and 11 years old respectively, and one girl Uka who was 10 at the start of the study. By the time of the experiment all three children also spoke the SLEV fluently. The children had not received any formal instruction in Kwéyòl before the experiment. Of the three, only Ado had participated in an end of term reading session in Kwéyòl that had been organized by the publisher of Kwéyòl texts, An



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

Tjè Nou, who had made available some storybooks with Kwéyòl folk tales for the children at the school. However, although Ado knew one of the stories, he could not decode the words in the text nor could he read it. The children’s literacy levels in both languages at the start of the experiment were very low, that is, they could not read text at grade I level. The group teaching sessions closely followed the framework outlined in the description of the model at Figure€1. A typical teaching day began with the Kwéyòl session which lasted for forty-five minutes to an hour. This was followed by a mid-morning break then the English session which lasted sixty to seventy five minutes with the whole group. During the afternoon, sessions were scheduled for individual interaction with the children for the purpose of working with them on areas in which they needed attention, and also for giving them opportunities to practice reading, to talk about what they had read and to retell stories. Reading records were usually scheduled during early morning sessions. Kwéyòl and English were alternated in individual sessions unless the children asked specifically to read in both languages, which they were sometimes allowed to do (SimmonsMcDonald 2006a).

4.2  The materials A wide selection of reading materials was used in the pilot. The new readers produced by the Curriculum and Materials Development Unit (CAMDU) in Saint Lucia were the readers of choice in the school. These as well as selections from the Nelson Readers First, Second and Third Primers, and a wide range of stories, including several from the Longman Read Awhile series were used for English. These were all prescribed texts in use in the school and available in the school libraries in cases where they were not the basic text in use in the year in question. The availability of multiple copies for individual use by the students was a factor in the choice from among the texts listed for use in the English sessions. For the Kwéyòl component, the basic reader Li Ek Ekwi Kwéyòl which had been developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics was found to be suitable for providing instructional material for use at that level. However, the material had to be adapted and lessons prepared to focus on phonological awareness. This was done by the primary researcher for the preliminary project. Although an eclectic approach was used in teaching the children to read, the development of phonological awareness was emphasised to help the children recognise the correspondences between sounds and symbols in both languages. A wide selection of stories from the Kwéyòl language series published by An Tjè Nou was used for group sessions and individual silent reading.

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

4.3  Summary of the results of the experiment None of the children had received any formal instruction in Kwéyòl and although they knew several stories and could retell them in Kwéyòl, they were unable to recognise any of the sound symbol correspondences in Kwéyòl. The experiment therefore focused on shared reading experiences in Kwéyòl and drawing the children’s attention to phonics in context as well as providing additional opportunities for word recognition. The children were given the opportunity to listen, speak, read and write (or draw) in every session. A typical session began with discussions in Kwéyòl about school, community and personal activities that the children had engaged in on the weekend or on the previous day. After this, a story selected from the An Tjè Nou series by the children was read and a discussion session followed in which the children expressed their personal responses to the story. An integrated approach was used in both Kwéyòl and English instruction sessions. The results of the experiment showed that there was comparability in the levels of literacy development in Kwéyòl and English, and that the use of a model which incorporated the native language (Kwéyòl) directly was beneficial. Figure€ 2 which 120

% Accuraty rates in L1 & L2

100 93 91 85,5 80

80

98 91

95 91

91 91 87,5 83

97 95

97

96 94

English

60

Kweyol

40

20

0 S.1

S.2

S.3

S4

S.5

S.6

S.7

S.8

Sessions Figure€2.╇ Accuracy percentages for Kwéyòl and English – Ado

S.9



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

plots the development of both English and Kwéyòl in the intervention sessions for the oldest child in the study, provides an example of the comparability of development in both languages. A full description of the methodology used for the preliminary study is presented in Simmons-McDonald (2006a). A record of reading behaviour developed by Depree€ & Iversen (1994:€ 128) was used to take records of the children’s reading behaviour in both English and Kwéyòl. “The reading levels were determined by calculating the error rate, then finding the corresponding accuracy percentage, using either the formula or the conversion table that Depree and Iversen had developed for this purpose”. A score of 95 to 100% indicates that the reading is fluent and the reader has little difficulty with the text. A score of 89 or less indicates that the text is too difficult for the student to read independently. Figure€2 plots only the accuracy scores (or fluency measure) for one of the subjects in the study. In addition to accuracy scores, the study also recorded self-correction rates, phonological awareness and word recognition abilities of the students. Simmons-McDonald (2006a) reported that gains made by the student, Ado, whose results are presented in Figure€2 made it possible for him to write the Common Entrance Examination at the end of the year, in the Sixth Grade, and gain a place in a secondary school. The trends in Ado’s case (Figure€2) show a close correspondence in terms of accuracy in reading in both languages. His accuracy percentages for Kwéyòl were higher at the start of the study but at the end, performance in both languages was on par. In the case of all three children, the results of the pilot experiment showed a comparable performance in L1 and L2. This indicated balanced literacy development in both English and Kwéyòl.

4.4  Other aspects of the preliminary study Earlier in this paper reference was made to negative attitudes that existed among the general population towards Kwéyòl. Reports on attitudes among teachers indicate that even among this group there were negative attitudes towards the language. Vérin (1958:€164) reported negative attitudes towards Kwéyòl in the school context. He said “There Patois is forbidden, and several postulates are pumped into the scholar’s head: ‘Patois is not a language’, ‘Patois cannot be written’, Patois has no grammar it is only broken French’, ‘to speak Patois displays inferiority’ and so forth”. Alleyne (1961) reported that at the time he conducted his survey in St. Lucia, teachers did not consider FC highly. He said “They rejected it as unintelligible gibberish and associated it with backwardness”. However, later reports indicate a change among the community of educators towards Kwéyòl. Carrington (1984:€6) reported that in 1966 teachers expressed a willingness to use Kwéyòl for explanatory purposes and this was

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

“partnered by a feeling among a small but increasing number of persons that Creole represents the soul of the St. Lucian people and should be preserved as carefully as€possible Prior to introducing the experiment with Kwéyòl instruction in the preliminary pilot study, an attitude survey with student teachers had been undertaken to determine whether there was more tolerance for Kwéyòl among those who would be directly responsible for teaching in a programme that included Kwéyòl. The study used three instruments: a questionnaire, a matched guise procedure and an interview. The questionnaire consisted of forty-seven items each with a five-point scale. Thirty eight (38) of the items measured language attitudes towards SLSE and Kwéyòl; five (5) explored attitudes towards SLSE and SLEV and three (3) examined attitudes towards Kwéyòl and SLEV. Because domains of use of SLEV are at best blurred and some St. Lucians are not aware that there are at least two different varieties of English in use, the number of items listed for the SLEV / SLSE duality was fewer than for the other two dualities. The matched guise procedure was used with a three point specific differential scale. The purpose of its use in this preliminary study was primarily to check for consistency in the responses in the second category in the questionnaire on attitudes, namely, those related to personality traits and speaker characteristics. The interview was based on a structured questionnaire that was administered last, with the intention of seeking further clarification with regard to responses given on the attitude questionnaire. This consisted of twelve (12) items that focused on the language background of the respondent as well as language dominance and preference or choice for use in particular domains. The last four items explored further attitudes towards the vernacular (SLEV). The sample for the attitude survey comprised 58% of student teachers in Year 2 who were registered at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) in Saint Lucia. The matched guise procedure was administered first to each individual and this was followed by the language attitude questionnaire and then the interview. The data were collected over a period of five (non-consecutive) weeks. The sample was roughly proportionate to the distribution of the student teacher population in Year 2. There were only 5 males in the sample, 2 from urban and 3 from rural settings, and there were 30 females, 10 from urban and 20 from rural settings. A total of 35 student teachers were interviewed. The results reported for this study (Simmons-McDonald 2006b) indicated that the student teachers in the sample had very positive attitudes towards Kwéyòl. Attitudes towards SLEV were mostly unfavourable when compared with SLSE, and a comparison of SLEV with Kwéyòl showed a more positive attitude towards Kwéyòl than SLEV. These results represent a shift in terms of the attitudes reported in the studies (on SLSE and Kwéyòl) done around the mid 1980s and earlier, as noted



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

in foregoing paragraphs. The matched guise results indicated that there still appÂ� ears to be an element of ambivalence regarding the status of Kwéyòl. Most student teachers in the sample were of the view that Kwéyòl does have a grammar but a substantial number of them were either unclear about the properties of Kwéyòl as a language or believed that it is a disorganised communication system. The uncerÂ� tainty about the status of Kwéyòl was more evident in the second category – Domains of use and acceptance of the language in these domains. There was a stronger acceptance of SLSE than Kwéyòl for official purposes among the respondents for this study. Most did not agree that children should be discouraged from speaking Kwéyòl. Although Kwéyòl is more widely used in the media than hitherto, 12% disagreed that it should be more widely used in this domain and 20% were uncertain. At present, it would seem that hesitance about the acceptance of Kwéyòl emerges primarily with respect to its use in official and public domains, although the majority of student teachers seemed more favourable than hitherto towards its acceptance in education. The positive results from the experimental study as well as the findings of more positive attitudes towards Kwéyòl overall, provided a basis for a case to pursue planning for the larger project in St. Lucia.

4.5  Planning for an extended project – Phase I Funding for a segment of Phase I –€Planning and preparatory work of the larger study€– was provided by the Caribbean Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (CCETT) for the specific purpose of preparing materials in Kwéyòl for use in the study as well as the development of an instructional manual for teachers and the development of a phonological awareness test in Kwéyòl (PATIK). The funds were adequate to support the writing of the first four books in the series and these are being prepared at present, but the phonological test PATIK could not be completed with the funding provided. The texts written for the project are as indicated below. Pwèmyé Liv Kwéyòl Pou Piti Zanfan (Introductory French Creole Book for Beginners) ii. Mwen Sa Li: An Liv Kwéyòl pou Piti Zanfan (I Can Read: A Kwéyòl Reader for Beginners) iii. Mwen Sa Konté: An Liv Kwéyòl pou Piti Zanfan (I Can Count: A Kwéyòl Reader and book of numbers for Beginners) iv. Apwann Li: Dézyenm Liv Kwéyòl Pou Piti Zanfan (Learn to Read: Kwéyòl Book 2 for Beginners) – This is a text for Grade I i.

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

The introductory book presents an approach that emphasises the development of phonological awareness, and the supplementary texts in the series present materials for reading practice, discussion and comprehension. The Dézyenm Liv… –€ see the title listed at (iv)€– which is the basic text for use at Grade I presents an integrated approach to the language, and it draws on topics from across content areas of the curriculum to expose students to concepts in other subjects in Kwéyòl. A writing team was formed for the design and preparation of these materials.2 It was surmised that support of government officials for the work of the project would guarantee its introduction on an experimental basis; but expertise in curriculum development and with the language itself as well as the strong support for the project were overriding factors in the selection of the writing team. A short sample of the material included in the Pwèmyé Liv Kwéyòl… (the Introductory book) is presented in Appendix 1. A component of Phase II of the project makes provision for an island-wide survey to determine the attitudes of St. Lucians towards the three languages spoken on the island. The survey will include another large sub-sample of teachers across all levels of the education system to verify whether the trends identified in the earlier experimental study (with student teachers) are evident in the larger population. Another component of Phase II includes an intervention which uses the Kwéyòl with a sub-sample of students in selected schools. The success of this part of the project will depend for the most part on the willingness of teachers to be trained and to become involved in the project. It is planned that Phase II of the project, including testing of the materials and training of a small group of teachers will be completed by the end of August 2010, and the actual introduction in selected sample schools will commence in September 2010. However, Phase II can only be successfully completed if funding can be accessed and the government continues to provide its support for the experiment.

5.  Conclusions and outlook The project is longitudinal and one cohort will be followed through from Reception Class (Kindergarten) to Grade VI so that the effects of the programme over the years

.  The team comprises (i) the author of this paper, (ii) the Governor General of St. Lucia who is a fluent speaker and accomplished writer of Kwéyòl and who also presents a strong advocacy for the language, and (iii) a curriculum development specialist who is also the Deputy Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education.



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

of primary schooling can be determined. Annual assessments through tests and data collection of teaching procedures will influence the continuation of the project with successive cohorts of children. Implementation of the project on a much wider basis in St. Lucia (Phase III) will depend upon positive effects of the bilingual programme with children having the language profiles indicated in Table I and also on the willingness of educators in the system to pursue it as a possible solution to the illiteracy problems in the country. Wider application to other countries with similar sociolinguistic situations is possible if funding becomes available and governments are willing to implement an approach that validates the vernacular. The controlled research conditions under which all phases of the project will be conducted will protect against any deleterious effects accruing to the children in the study. Current proposals estimate the cost of Phase II of the project at approximately US$50,000.00, and this includes a series of activities to complete the tasks set out in Table€1. While funding has been assured for the preparation of the instructional materials for the project, proposals are being written to fund Phase II, which includes the island-wide attitude survey, an important part of the project. An investment of the sum indicated is minimal when measured against the potential loss to the country of its human resources resulting from an educational system and policy that continues to produce too high a percentage of functional illiterates. Implementation on a wider scale will also permit comparison with other projects being undertaken elsewhere in the Caribbean, for example, the Jamaica Language Project. Unlike the St. Lucian project, the Jamaica project was widely implemented from its inception because of a mandate from the Jamaican government for it to be undertaken. While the St. Lucian project has proceeded incrementally with limited funding, progress on a wider scale has been possible with the Jamaican Creole experiment. Despite these differences, however, the generation of results from both of these controlled studies will provide evidence regarding the effects of the use of a creole which has a lexical base that is the same as the language in use in education in the country, as in Jamaica, and also the effects in a context in which the creole has a different lexical base than the primary language of instruction. Most important is the aim of this project to effect a change in policy and in the lives and well-being of children who are speakers of French Creole and who have the right to an education system that promotes their development and which facilitates that development by using the language, skills and attributes with which the children come to school. The project is also an acknowledgment of the sociolinguistic reality of St. Lucia, namely, that it is a bilingual community in which speakers have varied first languages and therefore deserve a system that will cater to these differences in an equitable way without placing any one group of speakers at a disadvantage.

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

Appendix 1 Sample from Introductory book

Sé Chapit-la

(Table of Contents) Lèt èk son alfabèt Kwèyòl

(Letters and sounds of the Kwèyòl alphabet)

Vwayèl

(Vowels)

Konsonn

(Consonants)

Wépétisyon son sé lét Kwèyòl-la

(Patterned practice with letter sounds)

Wépétisyon sé son konsonn-lan èk sé vwayèl-la (Patterened practice with onsets and rimes)

Konbinasyon konsonn èk vwayèl (consonant & vowel combinations)

Mo idantifikasyon (Demonstratives)

Mo plasman

(Location words)

Kò-a

(Parts of the body)

Fwaz an Kwéyòl

(Phrases and sentences)



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

a

agouti

b

ban

ch chapo

Sé atik-la

 Hazel Simmons-McDonald

-a

tifi-a

-an

lapen-an

-la

chat-la Fwaz an Kwéyòl

An mèl ni dé zèl.



Introducing French Creole as a language of instruction in education in St. Lucia 

Wat-la ka bat chat-la.

Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono Prospects and possibilities for language preservation Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine/SIL International Kheuól or Amazonian (or Amapá or Amerindian) French Creole (AFC) is spoken by the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono, indigenous Brazilians who also belong to the wider Caribbean French Creole-speaking world. They are bilingual in AFC and Portuguese to varying degrees, and language attitudes vary among groups and villages. Working alongside government agencies, religious organisations have been promoting a three year bilingual education primary school programme among these AFC speakers. It is through bilingual education that many Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono are exposed to Portuguese, the official language and medium of secondary education. The paper offers an overview of bilingual education among these groups, considering the opportunities and challenges for language maintenance, government policies and the materials in use. Keywords:╇ French Creole; Karipúna; Galibi-Marwono; Bilingual Education; Amazonia

1.  Introduction In the Americas, there are three groups of Amerindians that claim French Creole (FC) as a mother tongue –€the Kalinago of Dominica (cf. Tassinari 2002:€125–126) and the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono of Brazil (cf. Couto 1997; Tarallo & Alkmin 1987). The latter two are from the northernmost Brazilian state of Amapá, bordering French Guiana, and are unrelated to the former. Many among the Kalinago are bilingual in French Creole (Kwéyòl or Patois) and English, while the Karipúna and GalibiMarwono are bilingual in French Creole (Kheuól, Crioulo, Patoá, Patuá or Patúa, or here, Amazonian/Amapá/Amerindian French Creole-AFC) and Portuguese. The language of the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono, and the role it plays in the education of its speakers, is the focus of this paper. This paper is not intended to be a

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

definitive statement on this dynamic interface among Creole language studies, Brazilian indigenous studies, legislation, and bilingual education, and is offered as an overview of and an introduction for Caribbeanist and Creolist scholars unfamiliar with these two ethnolinguistic groups. This initial foray into this complex area only scratches the surface,1 and readers are directed to the extensive anthropological research carried out by Antonella Tassinari, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, working in Uaçá, Amapá, Brazil since 1990. Because of their heterogeneous origins, and their own view of themselves as “mixed Amerindians”, these groups were not always considered or counted as Amerindians (see Tassinari 2006’s discussion of the official and politically-based recognition of the groups as “indigenous” by the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI)). Today they are recognised as indigenous Brazilians. Many members of the Karipúna and GalibiMarwono groups are aware that they are in the unique position of being Amerindians who speak French Creole. As French Creole (Kheuól) speakers, they are associated with French Guianese French Creole speakers who, of course, belong to the wider Atlantic and Caribbean French Creole-speaking world. Brazilians generally consider the Caribbean to be very remote from daily Amazonian life, although Martiniquan connections are remembered and recognised by older members of the Amerindian groups and others. (See below for mention of Martinique.) Speakers of Kheuól see themselves as quite distinct from French Guianese Creole speakers, but are aware that the language varieties are highly similar, and mutually intelligible. Several KariÂ� púna and Galibi-Marwono have relatives, or know of other persons, living and working in French Guiana, in both the border town of Saint-Georges-de-l’Oyapock and much further afield in the capital of Cayenne. Further research into historical and current relations with French Guianese, on both sides of the border area and beyond, is crucial. The language also serves as the lingua franca of the area and is spoken as a second language by speakers of two other Amerindian languages of the area, namely, Palikúr (belonging to the Eastern Maipuran, Arawakan family) and Galibi do Oiapoque (or Kaliña, a member of the Carib family). There are also Apalaí and Wayana (Carib) and Wayampi (Tupi) on both sides of the border, and Emerillon (Tupi) on the French Guianese side of the border, among whom a few individuals may speak French Creole to varying degrees.

.  The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Isabel Murphy, Isaac Souza, and the comments of two anonymous reviewers, and wishes to note that all limitations of this prefatory study are entirely her own.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

Kheuól, while not native to or indigenous to Brazil in the traditional sense (cf. Arnaud 1966; Rodrigues Dall’Igna 1986; Novaes 1994), is now considered and treated as an indigenous language in the Brazilian education system, which has a department governing indigenous educational needs. Government policies give full rights to indigenous peoples and their education. FUNAI, the Fundação Nacional do Índio (National Amerindian Foundation) was officially responsible for Amerindian education until the Ministério da Educação (MEC) took over in 1992, four years after the new Brazilian Constitution was passed in 1988. Ministry-trained teachers have also included members of both Catholic and Protestant organisations. CIMI (Conselho Indigenista Missionário), a Roman Catholic organisation, has had strong input into developing both training programmes for indigenous teachers and monitors as well as mother tongue materials. MEC, in consultation with FUNAI, develops teacher training courses for indigenous leaders, teachers and monitors, and also works with the Comissão Nacional de Educação Escolar Indígena or CNEEI (National Commission of Indigenous Education) which is composed of 15 indigenous representatives selected by various indigenous organisations across the country. Schooling takes different forms in different areas, with programmes ranging from monolingual programmes (in the indigenous language of the group in question) to transitional bilingual programmes, and to immersion programmes. Immersion programmes may be those that are fully monolingual in Portuguese, or in an indigenous language not native to the group in question, as in the case of the language of the Terêna, a dominant ethnolinguistic group of the region of Mato Grosso do Sul, comprising 16,000 persons living in 20€villages and 2 cities. In this case, for example, smaller groups sharing the same geographical space as the Terêna are often educated in Terêna before Portuguese, even if Terêna is not their mother tongue. Sometimes, Portuguese has actually been considered a neutral choice, especially in cases of historical or ongoing conflict between and among neighbouring ethnic groups. The choice of programme generally and broadly depends on the particular sociolinguistic context of the ethnic group(s) in question. This paper aims at a preliminary investigation of some of the sociolinguistic by-products and long-term issues that have arisen out of transitional bilingual education programmes, particularly to what extent they may contribute to language maintenance, or whether they are in fact agents of change, leading towards community language shift. While educational advancement is a clear goal of any education programme, monolingual or bilingual, bilingual programmes may either inadvertently or purposefully contribute to either maintenance or erosion of the group’s mother tongue, depending on the underlying goals, attitudes and pedagogical approaches of the educators.

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

2.  Kheuól (French Creole) in Brazil Kheuól or FC in Brazil is known to outsiders mainly as Karipúna Creole French or Karipúna French Creole (KFC), and has been coded in Ethnologue (Lewis 2009), using ISO standards, as [kmv]. It can and should be more accurately referred to as Amazonian or Amerindian French Creole (AFC) since this branch includes not just Karipúna but also Galibi-Marwono French Creole (GMFC), both varieties being dialects of the same language, differentiated only on the basis of a few phonetic differences (accent) and vocabulary. Tassinari (2002:€383) notes that fazem-se notar acentos diferentes dados por cada grupo, e a preocupação constante em diferenciar-se: os Galibi-Marwono, por exemplo, fazem questão de ressaltar que o patois que utilizam é diferente daquele falado pelos Karipuna, o€qual se assemelharia ao usado pelos crioulos da Guiana.2

Amazonian French Creole is one of three varieties of French Guianese Creole (Guianese or FGC, cf. Corne 1999:€150), comprising FGC itself, as well as a third variety, namely, Lanc-Patuá of southern Amapá, which is supposedly a derivative of Lesser Antillean Creole, having been taken to Macapá by St Lucian migrants (see Andrade 1988). Guianese is in turn one of four main branches of Atlantic French Creole (including Louisianan or Louisiannais, Haitian or Haïtien and Lesser Antillean). (See Figure€1.) Referred to as “peripheral varieties” of FGC by Corne (meaning those spoken outside of Cayenne), modern Amazonian FC varieties spoken in the protected and rural Amerindian reserve (or reservation) of Uaçá have been relatively isolated from French Guianese and French since 1900, at which time the area definitively became Brazilian and was no longer in French hands (see discussion below). As predominantly Amerindian but heterogeneous groups, the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono populations are linked to but remain mostly outside the Euro-Afro ethno-cultural mix usually associated with creole languages of the Americas. In addition, the sociolinguistic situation of the multilingual Uaçá area is very different from those of the Caribbean and elsewhere.

.  [“they note the different way the (orthographical) accents are marked [in each language] and there is a constant preoccupation [for each group] to present itself as distinct: the GalibiMarwono, for example, insist that the Patois that they use is different from that spoken by the Karipuna, which is closer to that spoken by the Creoles of Guyane”.]



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

Atlantic French Creole North American Greater Antillean Lesser Antillean Louisiannais

Haïtien

South American

Martiniquais Guadeloupéen Guyannais Lanc-Patuá (S. Amapá) (several dialects each) Guyannais Amazonian (N. Amapá) Karipúna Galibi-Marwono

Figure€1.╇ Atlantic French Creole varieties3

According to Lewis (2009), referring to Arnaud (1969), the ancestors of the Karipúna of Amapá “formerly spoke Karipúna, an unclassified language, possibly from Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon” (web version). The Karipúna do Amapá or do Uaçá, also known as Caripuna, are not to be confused with the Karipuná or Karipuna de Rondônia. The latter group speaks Karipuná (also known as Karipuná do Guaporé, Caripuna, Jau-Navo, Juanauo, and Kagwahiva). This almost extinct language belongs to the Tupi family, although Loukotka (1968) identifies it as a Panoan language (cf. Hemming 2008:€200). It is to be noted that Loukotka has been resoundingly discredited by historical linguist Lyle Campbell (1997). Tassinari (2002:€111–112), in an extensive discussion of the origins of the group and the various names it has acquired over time, notes that Karipúna oral history contradicts this version of their story, and that the group has heterogeneous origins, not limited to any one majority ethnolinguistic group. Karipúna, also known as Karipúna do Amapá and Karipúna do Uaçá, is now extinct, and may have been a Tupi-Guarani language, spoken on the border between French Guiana and Brazil, but there was also input from members of Carib and Arawak ethnolinguistic groups as well (Tassinari 2002:€145). Lewis (2009) states

.  The term Guyannais appears twice because it is used as a cover term for Guyannais and Amazonian. A linear chart for the South American branch would look like this: D. South American 1. Guyannais a. Guyannais b. Amazonian (N. Amapá) i. Karipúna ii. Galibi-Marwono 2. Lanc-Patuá (S. Amapá)

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

that French Guianese and Karipúna French Creole share 77% mutual intelligibility but that there are “conflicting reports about differences from Guianese Creole French.” Throughout multilingual Brazil, Portuguese is the official language. In the 21st century, four other languages have been made co-official with Portuguese in two states. In São Gabriel da Cachoeira, located in the northern State of Amazonas, three indigenous languages were made co-official with Portuguese in 2002, namely, Nheengatu (also known as Modern Tupí, Língua Geral and Língua Brasilica, a Tupi language), Tucano (Tucanoan) and Baniwa (Arawakan). In 2008, Pomeranian (Low Saxon Pommersch, an immigrant Germanic language) became a co-official language in five municipalities of the State of Espírito Santo. In total, there are over 200 languages spoken or signed in Brazil, 180 of which are surviving indigenous languages (or 177, according to Franchetto 2000:€171), spread across three principal Amazonian language families, namely Arawak, Carib and TupiGuarani (Rodrigues Dall’Igna 2000:€17).4 These languages are spoken by 259 indigenous groups (Murphy 2009:€ 398), indicating that several indigenous groups have generally adopted either Portuguese or another indigenous language, and remain ethnically and culturally distinct from other groups. They are therefore identified as and counted by FUNAI as separate ethnic groups (whether or not they are speakers of their original ancestral languages, and whether or not more than one group speaks the same language). Speakers of modern indigenous languages represent only 0.5% of the total population of Brazil (Rodrigues Dall’Igna 1986), and the 180 languages represent only 15% of the indigenous languages that existed in the past. The location of Kheuól speakers is the Municipality of Oiapoque (over 22,625 km2, cf. Iepé 2009),5 once called Martinica because of an early settler-founder called Emile Martinique (cf. Tassinari 2002:€99). Oiapoque has 19,181 inhabitants (based on the 2007 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) census and estimates), of whom almost 50% are indigenous peoples (cf. FUNAI 2001). Of these, the 3,513 native

.  There are several languages families in Amazonia, seven or more of which are located in Brazil: Arauan (8 languages), Arawak (59 languages, several outside of Brazil), Carib (31 languages, many spoken outside of Brazil), Macro-Gê (32 languages, mostly in Brazil), Panoan (28 languages, some of which are in Brazil), Tucanoan (25 languages, most outside of Brazil), and Tupi (76 languages, the majority located in Brazil), as well isolated and unclassified languages (Lewis 2009). .  Oiapoque is popularly considered to be the northernmost point (or coastline) of Brazil, the southernmost city being the gaúcho city of Chui, Rio Grande do Sul, near the BrazilUruguay border. Do Oiapoque ao Chui is a popular expression meaning “encompassing all of Brazil.” A sign in the commercial river district of Oiapoque says Seja bem vindo ao Município de Oiapoque –€aqui começa o Brasil€– Bienvenue: “Welcome to the Municipality of Oiapoque€– Brazil begins here€– Welcome.”



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

St.-Georges-de-l’Oyapock

Oiapoque

Uaçá Reserve

Map 1.╇ Oiapoque and the Uaçá Reserve in northern Amapá, Brazil Source: Mapa geral da área Amapá/Norte do Pará, Povos Indígenas do Brasil, vol 3 (1983)

French Creole speakers form less than 20% of the total Oiapoque population. But even as a minority language in this context, the language remains vital as both a first language (L1) and as a second language (L2) among other Amerindian groups as well as some non-Amerindians in the region. Members of both ethnic groups are bilingual in French Creole and Portuguese to varying degrees. The degree of bilingualism depends on ethno-history and

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

geographical location and other factors. Language attitudes, including attitudes towards mother tongue and bilingual education, also vary from group to group and village to village. Most students appear to take early mother tongue education for granted, as it is now the expected norm and their only experience. Biliteracy is acquired in the school, and young people find it useful to be literate in both languages. Schools in Oiapoque, secular or religious, use Portuguese as a medium of instruction, even where there is a majority of pupils who do not have Portuguese as their mother tongue.6 It would be interesting to find out if students have an interest in higher education in their mother tongue, or whether they view both Kheuól and Portuguese equally as their own. Speakers live and work and are schooled in FUNAI-recognised reserves, and many are hunters, woodcutters, fishermen and (swidden) agriculturalists, planting cassava (Lewis 2009), and selling their highly-valued cassava farine (“cassava flour”) to others in the area through associations such as the Associação dos Povos Indígenas do Oiapoque (APIO), created in 1992. With regard to the Karipúna, Tassinari (2002) has delved into their complex past (cf. Röntgen 1998), tracing their origins to various groups, and Ladhams (1995:€118) has attempted to provide a simple summary of his theory of the social history of this group in seeking to provide answers to questions earlier raised by Holm (1989:€381). Both authors, though not entirely in agreement, tackle the apparent mystery and uncertainty surrounding the sociohistorical origins of KFC, one variety of the AFC language spoken on both sides of the border between French Guiana and Amapá, an area of Brazil once heavily influenced by both the French and the French Guianese, and still influenced by these two groups. Except for Tassinari (2002:€71–72, 80–107) and Vidal (2000), little other research has been done or published about the origins of the Galibi-Marwono, an AFC-speaking group that also has heterogeneous origins. Calvet (2009:€38) assumes that this group migrated from Guyane “au milieu du XX0 siècle, et a donc emmené le créole avec lui”, although it is the Galibi do Oiapoque (Galibi Kaliña) that came from Guyane in the mid-twentieth century, and not the Galibi-Marwono. The French presence in Brazil dates back to the sixteenth century. Two of the French colonies in Brazil include Vice-Admiral Durand de Villegaignon’s France Antartique at Fort Coligny or Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, 1555 to 1560, and Daniel de la Touche’s France Equinoxiale at São Luís de Maranhão 1612 to 1615 (see Burns 1980:€41; Eccles 1990). Further north, in 1713, in an area disputed by Portugal and France, the Treaty of Utrecht ceded (Portuguese) settlements in the area between the Amazon and Oyapock (or Oiyapoque) rivers to Portugal (later Brazil, independent by 1822), not to France, with the Oyapock River firmly established as the border between

.  Languages of the area include Kheuól, Palikúr and Galibi do Oiapoque, as well as others mentioned earlier.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

French Guiana and Brazil. Elsewhere, the area north of the Araguari River and east of the Oyapock River was, in fact, territory hotly contested by both France (via French Guiana) and Brazil for almost two centuries. This conflict, based on gold deposits, lasted from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In 1885, the Republic of Counani, named after a village in the area, was briefly established in this Brazilian territory (1885 to 1887). After a bloody battle in 1895, France and Brazil decided to take this case to Switzerland, and on 1 December 1900 the dispute over the territory was finally settled in favour of Brazil by the Swiss Federal Council in the Arbitration Commission of Geneva (Rippy et al. 1935, quoted in Poleon 2009:€35). The area was ceded to Brazil and became part of the state of Pará, later becoming Amapá. After more than 40 years, the Federal Territory of Amapá was created on 13 September 1943, eventually achieving statehood in 1988 (Drummond & Pereira 2007:€65–66). One contentious view holds that the Karipúna may have originated in the Island of Marajó in the mouth of the Amazon, in the state of Pará (referred to in Lewis 2009). The following is based on Ladhams’ (1995:18) summary of the origins of the Karipúna. This view holds that they came to settle in the Oiapoque area after a series of migrations, for a variety of reasons, starting shortly after a revolt in Pará in the mid-1830s. Hemming (2008:€119) describes the political and economic tension in that period: Brazilian Amazonia seethed with discontent during the decade after independence. The region was in economic decline, and the new nation Brazil suffered from inflation. Regional separatism simmered, and provincial presidents sent from Rio de Janeiro were inept or unduly harsh. Local politics were polarized between liberals, who focused their hatred on newly arrived Portuguese, and conservatives who opposed reform. By the 1830 there were sporadic disturbances and mutinies in settlements and forts on different Amazon rivers.

Hemming goes on to describe the Cabanagem Revolt, an unplanned but full-scale revolt, “named after the cabanos, homeless migrants who lived in temporary huts or cabins on the mudflats of the flood plain” (ibid.). The cabanos held the city of Belém from January 1835 to May 1836. At that time, many Tupi-speaking Amerindians from the mouth of the Amazon chose to move north-west to French Guiana, initially settling along the Ouanary River in French Guiana. At some point later, they moved further south to Oiapoque in Brazil, then moving back east, to the north of the Curipi River in Brazil. Later, an outbreak of smallpox caused them to move again, this time to the south of the Curipi River. The group later came into contact with nonAmerindian Brazilians and others, including speakers of French Creole from French Guiana, and speakers of Wayampí, a Tupi language, and also with French and French Creole-speaking missionaries in the Uaçá area. Having settled in the Curipi area, they were later joined by many gold miners and would-be gold miners of various origins (including French and French Creole-speaking Martiniquans and others) who moved

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

to Oiapoque and Curipi in search of gold. This was during the gold rush near Approuague, another river further west in French Guiana in 1854. This general theory has the Karipúna as possibly Tupi-speaking Amerindians, moving from the state of Pará to the state of Amapá, eventually settling in the Uaçá area, including Oiapoque and Curipi, bordering French Guiana, where they came into close contact with other Amerindians as well as French and (Guyanese and Martiniquan) French Creole-speaking settlers. The result is a heterogeneous group with a strong ethnic Amerindian base, speaking mostly French Creole, as well as Portuguese (cf. Röntgen 1998:€58–59). This theory, however, has not necessarily been accepted in full by all scholars –€see Tassinari 2002 and Calvet 2009. Ladhams (1995:€117) also notes that in the late nineteenth century, “all Amerindians, except the Palikúr, were fluent in Creole” (citing Coudreau 1893: 378). Today that has changed and many Palikúr also speak Kheuól/Patuá (Diana Green, pc, February 1998, cf. Calvet 2009:€ 41). The Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono number a little over 1,700 each, bringing the native créolophone population to over 3,400, while the Palikúr number some 1,500 and the Galibi do Oiapoque number only 30, bringing the Amerindian population speaking the language as an L2 to over 1,500 (see Ferreira & Alleyne 2007, source FUNAI 2001). These figures are based on statistics gathered by FUNAI for the villages/reserves, and do not include the town of Oiapoque itself, so the totals are in fact probably higher. With regard to the sociolinguistic status of Kheuól in the region, as a lingua franca, Tassinari has this to say: O patois funciona, assim, como expressão da unidade dos povos da Uaçá frente aos não-índios, podendo também exprimir uma identidade com outros grupos da Guiana Francesa… Funcionando como “língua geral” do Uaçá, no entanto, o patois acaba sendo menos valorizado do que as línguas específicas faladas pelos Galibi do Oiapoque e os Palikur. Os Karipuna e Galibi-Marwono, assim, ficam em desvantagem quando querem tratar de assuntos mais restritos aos seus grupos, pois só podem fazer uso desse idioma compreendido pelos outros povos.  (Tassinari 2002:€382–383)7

Therefore, on the one hand, the language has great unifying value, uniting Amerindians and separating them from non-Amerindians. Among Amerindian groups, this .  [Therefore, Patois functions as an expression of unity among the Amerindian peoples of Uaçá, separating them from non-Amerindians, also used to express common identity with other groups of French Guiana… Functioning as the lingua franca of Uaçá, however, Patois has lesser value than do the languages unique to the Galibi do Oiapoque and the Palikúr. The Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono, therefore, remain at a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with matters unique to both groups, since they can only use this language that is understood by other groups.]



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

language of Amerindian unity, which used to be one of the least valued, even called a type of French or a “dialect”, is not a strong ethnic symbol unique to and associated with any one group. This said, the language and its speakers are more respected today than in the past. It is a fact that Amerindian languages throughout Brazil have low value compared to Portuguese (or even other international languages such as English and French). This historically placed Kheuól (a Creole variety spoken by Amerindians) at the very bottom of the Brazilian sociolinguistic ladder, for a variety of complex reasons, and for sociohistorical reasons different from those of Caribbean French Creole-speaking communities. Despite or because of its currency as a lingua franca, the language belongs to a group wider than its native speakers, and it belongs to everyone and to no one in particular. On the other hand, Galibi do Oiapoque and Palikúr are the heritage languages of those respective groups only, and have come to hold higher status among the Amerindians of Uaçá, uniquely representing and identifying those two ethnic groups, respectively. Today, at the official level, there is increasing contact between French Guiana and Brazil. The multilingual border area has long been fluid and open to residents and visitors of both sides of the border, with French Creole and Portuguese spoken on both sides of the border, and with French Creole playing the role of lingua franca€– from Brazilian operators of water taxis to French gendarmes. According to Léglise (2004:€ 118; Leconte & Caitucoli 2003), among Brazilian families in Saint-Georges, where at least 85% of children declare themselves to be trilingual (Léglise 2004:€115), Portuguese is beginning to be replaced by French, rather than French Creole, probably due to schooling and other influences. The new Oyapock River border bridge being constructed between Saint-Georges-de-l’Oyapock (French Guiana) and Oiapoque (Brazil), about 10km apart and currently accessible by boat only, will ultimately link the European Union to Mercosur. The bridge will be an extension of the Brazilian BR-156 interstate highway, one that connects the equatorial capital of Macapá in the south to Laranjal do Jari in the west and to Oiapoque in the north, and may contribute to a permanent change of the area’s sociolinguistic situation. It remains to be seen specifically how the more remote areas of the Uaçá reserve will be affected.

3.  Indigenous education in Uaçá Since 1980, the Catholic mission, CIMI, has been largely responsible for promoting a three year Kheuól education primary school programme,8 particularly through

.  There has been a general increase in children’s attendance at indigenous primary and secondary schools across the country: Em 2002 tínhamos 117.171 alunos freqüentando escolas

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

Sister Rebecca Spires and Fr Nello Ruffaldi, who have developed materials in reading and mathematics, and also with the help of linguists such as Ruth Montserrat (UFRJ) and Márcio Silva (then of UNICAMP). Since Kheuól is spoken by two indigenous groups (however mixed their origins might have been), government support is relatively strong, and there is also (unofficial) support from other Christian (Protestant) missions. Many of the teachers are Karipúna or Galibi-Marwono, although non-indigenous teachers continue to form part of the teaching cadre as well. The latter are all trained by MEC and certified to teach anywhere in Brazil. Much of their training specific to Uaçá is practical and happens on-site, after certification, rather than being theoretical and being learned in the university classroom. Indigenous teachers generally are prepared for their profession in their home areas, and in 2005, formed the Organização dos Professores Indígenas do Oiapoque (OPIMO), the Organisation of Indigenous Teachers of Oiapoque.9 CIMI sponsored an indigenous teachers’ training course from 1990 to 1995, and is still involved in teacher-training, though to a lesser extent than in the past. According to Murphy, educação diferenciada (differential or differentiated education) has begun to replace bilingual education in some areas for many indigenous educators. This model includes training and schooling (“ethno-schools”) different from national norms, and tries to respect the specific cultural differences of each group, working with them to develop materials which utilize local indigenous knowledge; which allows for indigenous participation in the educational product, often including a re-evaluation of orthographic decisions, so that nothing is imposed upon the societies from the outside (2009:5).

That author goes on to note the discontent felt by many indigenous leaders, who “are not convinced that differential education is to their benefit” (idem.), seeing it as being of a lower standard than education programmes for non-indigenous teachers. The advantage of this type of education is that there is a holistic approach to the students’ indígenas em 24 unidades da federação. Hoje [2006] este número chega a 174.255 estudantes em ����������������������������� 2002, we had 117,171 stucursos que vão da educação infantil ao ensino médio (MEC 2006). [In dents attending indigenous schools in 24 units of the Federation. Today [2006], this number has reached 174,225 students in courses ranging from kindergarten to middle school.] .  The following articles would have been helpful, but it was not possible to access them at the time of writing: L.F. Dias. 2001. Curso de formação e oficina para monitores e professores indígenas da reserva Uaçá. In Práticas Pedagógicas na Escola Indígena, M. Aracy Silva, M.€ Kawall Leal Ferreira (eds). São Paulo: FAPESP/Global, and A. Tassinari. 2001. Da civilização à tradição: os projetos de escola entre os índios do Uaçá.” In Antropologia, história e educação: a questão indígena e a escola, A. Lopes da Silva and M. Kawall Leal Ferreira (eds), 57–95, São Paulo: Global.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

environment. Indigenous practices and traditions are allowed centre focus and teachers can incorporate as many of these into a curriculum as desired by communities. The disadvantage is that it may ultimately place such communities on an unequal footing compared to non-indigenous communities around the country, thereby potentially hindering and limiting individual and group opportunities for educational advancement in the national and mainstream system. In Brazil, there are very few opportunities for higher learning in indigenous education studies. The Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso (Unemat) was the first to offer a postgraduate programme in indigenous education in April 2002, consisting of 9€courses, including the following: Foundations of Anthropology, Educational Management of the Indigenous School, Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Brazil, Teaching of Sciences in the Indigenous School, Foundations of Education in the Indigenous School, Philosophy and Epistemology of Education, Research Methodology in Teaching, Legal Foundations of the Indigenous School, and a Monograph Writing Seminar. The Universidade Federal de Pernambuco also started a postgraduate programme in indigenous schooling in 2006, but these two universities cannot cover the whole country. At present, CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) is also conducting an Observatório da Educação Escolar Indígena. Indigenous teachers and monitors are not usually expected to have completed undergraduate training, and non-indigenous teachers are not necessarily expected to have completed postgraduate training, a clear discrepancy between the two groups. Prior to the 1980s, the main teachers of Uaçá were non-indigenous, sent by the predecessor of FUNAI, namely the Government Serviço de Proteção do Índio (SPI), which operated in the Uaçá area from 1945 to 1967 (see Adamatti 2009). The overall purpose was that of incorporating Amerindians into national life, in this case in the extreme north of the country, which was between two worlds, those of French Guiana and Brazil. The model, according to Tassinari & Cohn (2009:€151), “is identified as an older assimilationist model”. Before the 1920s, there had been sporadic attempts by individuals to become literate, often with the help of outsiders living in or visiting the area. Later, from 1934 to 1938, two teachers were assigned to two villages, Espírito Santo (Karipúna) along the Curipi River and Kumarumã (Galibi-Marwono, then known as Santa Maria). One of the teachers, by the name of Verônica D. Leal (generally known as dona Verônica), was from the state of Pará (of which Amapá was then a part), and remained in the area for about 30 years (Tassinari 1997, 1998, 2002, 2006; Tassinari & Cohn 2009). The school closed in 1938, but then re-opened later. Among other groups, such as the Palikúr, the first attempt in 1945 failed, but four years later, the Palikúr were able to produce the first professor índio (“indigenous teacher”) of the region. From 1945 to 1951, another teacher was assigned to one Galibi-Marwono village. Later on, dona Verônica was assigned to the Karipúna village of Santa Isabel, and stayed there from 1948 to 1967.

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

Tassinari & Cohn (2009:€156–157) summarises the impact of schools on the Uaçá area: These first schools were established by the Government of Pará, along with the appointment of an Inspector of Indians in the region to act as an SPI employee. This school education project was based on the positivist, nationalist, coercive, and authoritarian ideology, which in general guided the actions of the SPI (Lima 1995). The schools worked in the homes of captains of villages and the residence pattern, with families scattered in small villages along the rivers, hindered its operation. Initially, the children traveled long distances daily in canoes or went to live in the schools. Over time, many families, valuing the knowledge acquired through schooling, decided to move to the village headquarters. In that sense, the establishment of schools has promoted a considerable reordering of the Indigenous villages of the Uaçá region.

Other effects of the schools on daily life included the promotion of national symbols, values, and institutions, including national holidays. By 1978, government policy began to be enforced through the Secretária de Educação de Amapá (SEC/AP). According to Tassinari (1997): A partir de 78, é aplicado o novo programa curricular para a zona rural (de 1a a 4a séries) incluindo: comunicação e expressão (português), matemática, ciências, integração social e estudos sociais.10

Portuguese was the language of instruction for all areas, including communication and expression, and ignorance of the language was often accompanied by punishment (pc Dominique Gallois 2008). Tassinari notes: Não conheci um Karipuna que não tenha elogios para a professora Verônica e encontrei, mesmo da parte de ex-alunos, elogios aos antigos métodos da palmatória e da proibição do uso do patois na sala de aula (2002:€360–61).11

This is because many Karipúna, living in isolated, river communities, saw dona Verônica’s school as the beginning of their advancement as a people, and as a means of shaking off the stigma of bichos-do-mato (“bush animals”). Many former students, in fact, were those who came to hold positions of responsibility in their communities, as leaders, nurses, FUNAI employees, and are among those supporting strongly positive community feelings towards dona Verônica, her school and her methods.

.  [From 1978, the new curriculum was implemented in rural areas (from Grades 1 to 4) including: communication and expression (Portuguese), mathematics, sciences, social integration and social studies.] .  [I have not met a Karipúna who has anything but praise for the teacher dona Verônica, and I have heard praises for the old methods of punishment and of banning Patois in the classroom, even among former pupils.]



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

In Uaçá today, many young people trained by CIMI seem to prefer the bilingual education model, while older heads prefer the older assimilationist models. Differential education does not seem to be favoured by either group (Tassinari & Cohn 2009:€153). It is true to say that, on paper, the formal qualifications of indigenous teachers are generally fewer and relatively lower than others from outside of the area, and that many non-indigenous teachers go into the villages without a knowledge of either Kheuól or of the principles of mother tongue or bilingual education. There seem to be four main waves of education in the history of the area: dona Verônica’s assimilationist model, CIMI’s original 3-year bilingual model, the government’s differential education model (mostly not adopted), and a new modified CIMI model, the Projeto Político Pedagógico das Escolas Indígenas Karipuna e GalibiMarworno, which modifies the original three-year programme, and offers a longerterm bilingual programme. The details and value of this new programme are not known, and it is worth waiting and seeing what impact it will have on language preservation in the long-term.

3.1  Bilingual education By the 1980s, the Kheuól-to-Portuguese bilingual education programme was instituted, largely through the efforts of CIMI (the Catholic Mission) and with the approval of FUNAI, and later MEC. CIMI’s goals, according to their educational materials (primers, mathematics books and storybooks), included the “processo de recuperação e valorização da língua, visando uma escola indígena bilíngüe e bicultural”12 (Spires & Ruffaldi 1996). Spires (1997b) states clearly, in Kheuól and in Portuguese, the goals of the project coordinators in developing an education programme that would (1) cultivate language maintenance/protection, (2) offer a bridge to the outside world for the young people, (3) prepare its students to defend Amerindian rights, and even (4), to help those learning the language as an L2: Kheuól: Dji pi 1978, no pov ka bat pu fe un lekol ki bai ke no gu. Un lekol ki hespete no zes viv, no metxe, no thadjisiõ. Lãdã sa, lekol-la djivet osi phuepahe no jonmun-iela pu konet biẽ lasosiete deho ke tut so bagaj ki nov i djifehã. Li djivet ide alun-iela save kõphan lua dji blang-iela, i tut ki ka pas ke no kõpãie ẽdjẽ pu ie save defeie dua ẽdjẽ, pu defeie no late, pu defeie no zes viv… Osi pu ie ki ka ãphan kheuol ie dezem lang. Portuguese: Desde 1978 os povos Galibi-Marwono e Karipuna trabalham para desenvolver um processo educativo escolar que respeite e anime seus valores, modo de

.  [process of saving and raising the prestige of the language, aiming at a bilingual and bicultural indigenous school.]

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

vida e expressões culturais ao mesmo tempo que prepare seus jovens para aproveitar as vantagens da modernidade e relacionar-se com seus vizinhos em Oiapoque. Ainda mais, esta educação, esta escola, deve cultivar a capacidade de analisar a realidade para melhor defender os direitos indígenas. Neste processo, a alfabetização na língua foi um dos primeiros passos e continua sendo de importância fundamental…. Também pode servir para os alunos que estudam kheuol como segunda língua.13

Murphy (2009:€7) concurs: “Schools, for many of Brazil’s indigenous groups, are perceived as a form of self-defense, and a means of understanding the dominant society and relating to it on their own terms.” In spite of the goals of the educators and despite the wishes of its chief protagonists, this bilingual education programme appears to have become an early exit bilingual education programme, not a maintenance bilingual education programme. It is designed to promote mother tongue literacy, but ultimately leads to transitional literacy and bilingualism, from the L1 to the L2, Portuguese, the language of wider communication, “…alfabetizando as crianças em kheuol antes de passarem para o ensino oficial, monolíngüe” (Tassinari 1997).14 Today, this method is used in many areas of Brazil, as part of the national policy of integration at all levels, starting with formal Government-approved and designed education. (Other traditional programmes are full immersion programmes in Portuguese.) It is not known if or how much research was done into the sociolinguistic situation of the region, prior to the implementation of this type of programme. According to Calvet (2009:€30), Mais il nous faut surtout souligner que s’il existe des études d’anthropologues, de sociologues, voire de musicologues sur la région d’Oiapoque, les linguistes brésiliens ne semblent guère s’y être intéressés. Les services de la Funai d’Oiapoque par exemple ne comptent pas de linguistes dans leurs rangs.15

.  [From 1978 the Galibi-Marwono and Karipúna have been working to develop an educational process which respects and uplifts their values, way of life and cultural expressions, while preparing their young people to benefit from modern living and to relate to their neighbours in Oiapoque. Furthermore, this education, this school, should cultivate in students the ability to analyse [their] reality so as to better defend indigenous rights. In this educational process, literacy in the language is one of the first steps and continues to be of fundamental importance… It [the material] can also be used by students of Kheuól as a second language.] .  [“educating the children in Kheuól before continuing on to the official, monolingual education system”]. .  The French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) currently has two research projects underway. French linguists, sociolinguists, anthropologists and geographers are currently working on the borders of the Guyanas through the project Dynamiques des circulations migratoires et mobilités transfrontalières entre Guyane, Surinam, Brésil, Guyana et Haïti



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

The choice of programme seems to lie largely in national policy-making, rather than being one based on research specific to this or other situations. This transitional programme, with a 3-year monolingual Kheuól phase to a monolingual Portuguese phase, serves two purposes, namely, (a) the 3-year Kheuól phase provides an L1 literacy foundation, and (b) the first language component acts as a bridge to biliteracy and bilingualism, making the latter accessible since basic transferable literacy skills are acquired at an early stage. The programme helps students cross the bridge from indigenous to wider Brazilian culture, and from French Creole to Portuguese. Literacy in the mother tongue is used as a vehicle for achieving literacy in Portuguese. It also raises the status of the L1, but this is mostly a by-product of any transitional programme. With only three years of Kheuól education, however, this may seem like a token use of the vernacular, especially since many students (and their parents) are not only keen to continue in Portuguese in the village schools, but in the town of Oiapoque.

3.2  Why transitional bilingualism Conditions for choice of transitional bilingual education include both group-internal factors and factors external to the group. Within the groups, the factors in favour of such a programme include the following-actual language use, language attitudes and the existence of materials by and for the groups in Kheuól. Outside the groups, there is social pressure to integrate into the wider society, and transitional bilingual education facilitates increasing familiarity with and control of Portuguese. There is active use of Kheuól, from birth, and while there is some penetration of Portuguese, certain domains are reserved for use of Kheuól (e.g., home and in some cases, spiritual life). These two factors make the language key to any education programme, especially at the basic, transitional level. Portuguese is used in other domains (secondary education and civic life), placing Portuguese at an extremely important level€– local, regional and national. As a result, there is a relatively strong tendency towards bilingualism, making Portuguese a strong contender for any education programme. There are many bilingual but not biliterate adults (and some children),

(ANR-DC2MT): see . The project Observatoire de l’Oyapock, also a CNRS project, Oyapock-un Fleuve en Partage, has as its focus the developing physical infrastructure between the two countries, namely the bridge across the river, whose completion is projected for 2010, and l’objet est de comprendre les paramètres qui vont influer sur la population humaine et l’environnement en lien avec cet évènement majeur€– see . Prof A. dos Martírios Barros and the Instituto Latino-Americano de Pesquisas Científicas (ILAPEC), Universidade Federal do Amapá (Unifap) have expressed an interest at varying times in carrying out research into the language and the language situations of the area.

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

and bilingual education programmes assist the current and upcoming generations to take their part in Brazilian civic life, desired by Kheuól speakers themselves, as well as the wider society. With the focus on mastery of Portuguese, many Amerindian languages, including Kheuól, are dropped from education programmes, after primary school, all across Brazil. Both learners and parents of learners object to studying in anything but Portuguese in the long-term, believing that exclusion from the wider society will hinder social and economic advancement in the wider society. Schooling is one of the first steps to the “ingresso na ‘sociedade brasileira’ que faz dos Karipuna ‘índios avançados’ e os contrapõe aos ‘índios do mato’ que ‘vivem como bichos’, ou seja, sem o estabelecimento de laços com o exterior”16 (Tassinari 2002:€363, referring to the way that many outsiders view Amerindians in general and the Karipúna in this case). There is existing literacy and other relevant materials in Kheuól, created and developed largely by the missions, so there is already a firm foundation in place, with room for improvement and expansion. Outside of the group, factors in favour of bilingual education include the following factors related to prestige, national education policy, and government resources: 1. The social prestige of Kheuól-speaking language groups is relatively low, vis-à-vis Portuguese, so a bilingual programme, no matter the ultimate goal of transition, raises and assures confidence among its speakers from early. As noted earlier, the sociolinguistic hierarchy of the area places Kheuól at the bottom of the ladder, with Portuguese at the top, Amerindian languages such as Palikúr and Galibi do Oiapoque in the middle, and Kheuól below. 2. National education is in Portuguese. However, most children in Kheuól-speaking villages speak only Kheuól, and gradually acquire Portuguese later, through school and contact with Portuguese-speaking adults. A transitional programme using the mother tongue of primary level students has the potential of raising interest and participation, even though modern pedagogical strategies are quite different from those used by dona Verônica, and honoured by older heads. 3. Although Brazilian national language policy did not favour mother-tongue literacy before 1988, it now does, and can and does accommodate the Kheuól programme, but in practice only for a limited time of a child’s life, since the ultimate goal is

.  [the incorporation into “Brazilian society” that makes the Karipúna “advanced Amerindians” and separates them from the “bush Amerindians” who “live like animals”, that is, those that have no links with the outside world.”] That author goes on to discuss the role of various other social mechanisms that help complete the Brazilian socialisation and nationalisation of all Amerindians in the area, namely, the Dia da Pátria, Dia do Índio, football (and other sports) and local politics.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

social and national participation. The original goal on the part of legislators and educators was national integration, and although the goals have changed, the reality is that national integration does indeed happen as a long-term by-product of the process. 4. While there are educational materials available in Kheuól for the primary level, there are limited government and mission resources for long-term bilingual education, so the creation of secondary school materials in Kheuól for a full bilingual programme is not envisaged for the near future.

3.3  The role of Portuguese As noted earlier, all education beyond primary school is in Portuguese, the official language, which is the language of prestige, power and offers possibilities for socioeconomic advancement. The groups are in contact with Portuguese through commerce and trade with non-Amerindians, education and the media. It is in the context of bilingual education that many primary school age Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono children are exposed to Portuguese in any significant depth. Television and other national media using Portuguese have played varying roles in different villages over time, the more remote having neither electricity nor television sets, the less remote having satellite dishes, but limited electricity, at specific times of day. In this language contact situation, a growing preference for Portuguese may well militate against language survival in these Amerindian French Creole minority communities. While the language has been important to group identity, Portuguese has begun to replace French Creole in the lives of those more or less permanently based in the town of Oiapoque. For those who do not migrate from the rural reserves, the language remains central to daily life and group identity. This area needs to be further investigated quantitatively through focus group interviews, individual interviews and language attitude surveys. More than likely, such investigations will show the importance of developing and employing different educational strategies to suit each situation, taking staffing, training and other cost-bearing factors into consideration. Discovering language attitudes, language awareness and language ideology is a necessary part of recommended future research. Although no defined project is underway at present, such research should focus on developing knowledge of individual experiences of language use in the home communities, as well as a reconstruction of language interactions and experiences in villages of origin. Preliminary findings indicate that the Karipúna tend to be less bilingual than the Galibi-Marwono (FUNAI 2001), age, education and mobility being important variables. Note that remote-access villages are not necessarily the most conservative€– language contact and language attitudes appear to have played an important role in language choice and use. Those communities that have had ongoing peaceful contact with the outside world, no matter how physically remote, are generally more open to bilingualism.

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

3.4  Issues At present, it is not known whether there are available, reliable statistics on the participation of children in the schools. In rural areas, schools are relatively few, including the Uaçá reserve in Amapá, and in the case of those that are sometimes difficult to access for those in the more remote areas (depending on the climatic conditions, the tide, transportation, etc.). In such cases, there may be relatively low rates of local participation, which may therefore have quite a different basis, group-external rather than group-internal. Bilingual education may be a two-edged sword, representing at once (a) a strong possibility for language maintenance, and (b) the source of possible long-term erosion of Kheuól by Portuguese. Many agree that “[o]ften these programmes support language shift and make no long-range considerations of institutional development or support of the mother tongue” (Matthews 1983:€16). Trudell (1995:€4) notes that “The principal goal of transitional bilingual education is the redistribution of opportunities to offset past discriminatory practices, but little concern is expressed for maintenance of the minority language or culture,” while Baker (2006) generally dismisses transitional bilingual programmes as ineffective in achieving biliteracy. Among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono, many young people are literate in both Kheuól and Portuguese, and aspire to further education in Portuguese. In brief interviews with four young Galibi-Marwono men under 21 (December 2007), varying degrees of literacy in and mastery of Kheuól were exhibited, but all of the young men were proficient and literate in Portuguese, having gone on to secondary education in Portuguese, mainly in Oiapoque.17 It appears that literature, whether Kheuól or Portuguese, is confined mainly to the school and the church, both domains requiring and using both languages to varying degrees. Those who leave the reservation villages must generally function in Portuguese and the younger ones are literate and able to function at schools, banks, and government offices. Anonby (2007:€9), referring to Vidal 2000, notes that elderly Amerindians of the area must go to Oiapoque “to receive their retirement pensions which form a large percentage of the income of each village,” and “must use Portuguese in their transactions with other Brazilians.” School materials are still basic, and further workshops could be mounted in order to develop more advanced materials, possibly including agriculture manuals, and translations of national and international legal documents, inter alia. The Museu Kuahí, inaugurated in 2007, can also begin to make use of the three indigenous languages of the region, including Kheuól, through not only displays of printed materials in the museum and on its website, but also bi/multilingual signs and posters in the museum. Some materials .  At one point during the interview, one of the young men excused himself to take a cell phone call. Cell phones are very popular, and Kheuól could be used for texting messages.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

are out of print or are only available in the cities where they were printed, and not even in Oiapoque, for example. There are no bookshops in Oiapoque, although one pharmacy sells Bibles in Portuguese, and educational materials are available through the missions and schools. The ongoing use of educational materials points to the success of the transitional nature of their early education programme, but raises serious doubts and questions about the future vitality of Kheuól, at least in specific domains, namely education itself, and local politics, indicating that the education system in place may lead to subtractive bilingualism, especially for young people who leave for Oiapoque in search of higher education. If more Kheuól materials, possibly more focused on modern life, could be developed and used in later stages of school life, this could be reversed. It is worth quoting Brazilian linguist Charlotte Emmerich (1974) at length (quoted in Kindell 1978:€13): The educational plan for bilingual speakers begins with instruction in the mother tongue and proceeds gradually to instruction in Portuguese. Above all, it is of fundamental importance to have a functioning bilingual instructor who collaborates with the Brazilian teacher. The training of these monitors has been a major preoccupation of FUNAI (National Amerindian Foundation) and several training courses already exist. Since the monitor is the key element of bilingual education, it is vital that all groups have trained monitors. Concerning the Brazilian teachers, it is important that they receive special training that enables them to plan their educational activities in accord with the world view of each culture, that is, the sum of ideas, beliefs, symbols, and customs of the indigenous group. Along with courses to train bilingual instructors, the development of courses to equip national teachers must be accomplished with maximum speed.

Three decades later, some of the same issues still need to be addressed throughout Brazil, and certainly for the Amerindians of Uaçá.

3.5  Materials Materials are all culturally relevant and are in use, and include appropriate illustrations, based on the daily, traditional life of children and adults in the communities. Most of the booklets were developed and tested by bilingual teams made up of indigenous teachers and monitors of both ethnic groups, representatives of the Núcleo de Educação Indígena (NEI), CIMI missionaries and anthropologists, at annual workshops and conferences, with all illustrations done by workshop participants. It is worth noting here that financial support came from the Government of Amapá and also from the Associação dos Povos Indígenas do Oiapoque (APIO), indicating the community-wide support of these projects. The convenors in one preface state esta iniciativa faz parte

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

de um projeto mais amplo que visa uma escola indígena em seu conteudo, metodologia e protagonismo,18 but the methodologies used are not explicitly stated. One storybook used in children’s literacy classes, however, indicates that the literacy method in current use includes the creation of stories (Spires 1997b). Materials include reading primers, mathematics texts, story books and dictionaries. Reading primers include the following, by Francisca Picanço Montejo: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Adult Primer 1: No ka kumase li i ekhi lãdã no lekol kheuól (We are Beginning to Read and Write in our Creole School) (Picanço Montejo 1985a), Adult Primer 2: Anu li i ekhi lãdã no lekól kheuól (Let us Read and Write in our Creole School) (Picanço Montejo 1985b), and Adult Book 3: Liv pu li lãdã lekol kheuól (Book for Reading at the Creole School) (Picanço Montejo 1985c).

Mathematics books include the following two-level book by Picanço Montejo, and use mainly indigenous images: (1985c) Anu kõte lãdã no lekol kheuol: Livro de Matemática (Let Us Count at our Creole School: Book of Mathematics).

Figure€2.╇ Anu kõte lãdã no lekol kheuol

.  [this initiative is part of a wider project aiming at a school that is indigenous in content, metholodogy and participants.]



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

Story books include the following story collections organised by Nello Ruffaldi and Rebecca Spires, CIMI missionaries, sometimes in conjunction with the State of Amapá and APIO: –â•fi –â•fi

No liv dji ixtua (Our Book of Stories) (Ruffaldi & Spires 1996a), No liv dji ixtua 2 (Our Book of Stories 2) (Ruffaldi & Spires 1996b),

Figure€3.╇ No liv dji ixtuá 2

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

–â•fi

–â•fi –â•fi

No ka kumase ãphan lãdã no lekol kheuol: cartilha no patoá kheuol (We are Beginning to Study at Our Creole School: a primer in Creole Patois, a children’s Grade€I primer) (Ruffaldi & Spires 1996c) (See Figure 4 below), Histórias de ontem e de hoje/Ixtuá dji aie e dji jodla (Stories of Yesterday and Today) (Spires 1997a), and Ixtua ki no fe la no lekol/Histórias que fizemos em nossa escola (Stories that We Wrote in our School) (Spires 1997b).

Figure 4.╇ No Ka Kumase ãphan lãdã no lekol kheuol

Other story books were published by SIL International and include Tobler & Tobler (1983): Balén ke lefã: A baleia e o elefante (uma história em crioulo Karipúna: Livro de leitura na língua karipúna (crioulo karipúna)), and Forte et al. (1983): Masak, masak! Adivinhações em crioulo karipúna. The materials appear to be effective in the use of language and appropriate cultural symbols, the most recent having been published since in the late 1990s. It is not known whether new materials have been developed and are awaiting publication –€since the materials in use are adequate, new materials could aim at higher levels.



Bilingual education among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono 

Both missions have published a bilingual dictionary each: A.W. Tobler (1987) and Picanço Montejo (1988). Carlos Guilherme and Deisemeri Corrêa, teachers and members of the Associação Cristã de Água Viva (ACAV), former members of Missão Novas Tribos do Brasil (MNT), have also compiled a dictionary (Corrêa & Lopes de Melo Corrêa 1998), currently being worked on by their colleague Adriana Carla Alves e Silva, a teacher at the Centro de Treinamento Missionário (CTM) of Oiapoque. See also trilingual word lists compiled by Green & Green (1996 & n.d.). There are also two grammars, one published in English (Tobler, S.J. 1983) in print and online, but this is not in use in the communities, and is only available in personal and administrative libraries in the town of Oiapoque itself, and the other, unpublished, is in Portuguese, by Montserrat & Silva (1984). (All of these materials include information on the orthography in current use, with minor differences here and there.) Some individuals and villages have small libraries with books in Portuguese, but it is difficult to say whether these books are in actual use or simply form part of a museumlike collection. Individuals may purchase and read newspapers and magazines in Portuguese, but these do not form part of the schools’ collections, for example. Literacy agencies, such as Alfalit, have also visited the village of Kumarumã, and many adults there have also been exposed to literacy classes in Portuguese. Since Portuguese is generally held in high esteem, adult literacy courses in the country’s main official language are highly valued. Thus far there has been no formal or informal evaluation of these programmes in terms of their effectiveness in both the short and long term.

4.  Conclusion Bilingual education programmes are often transitional, ultimately promoting language shift at both individual and community levels. In typical transitional bilingual programmes, the mother tongue is taught in the early years, continuing until the children’s mastery of the second language is sufficiently developed to the point that they can continue education in it. This is the case among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono. The transitional goals of the programme seem to be met at individual and community levels in Kheuól-speaking areas, but the possibilities and prospects for language preservation are not high, and Portuguese remains the language of prestige and power. There is great room for language development in Kheuól at educational and other levels. However, as Kindell (1978:€14) notes: educational programmes for the Amerindian groups of Brazil need to be planned according to the linguistic situation of each group. Evidently each will need a specific programme adapting teaching methods and materials to its sociopsycholinguistic peculiarities.

 Jo-Anne S. Ferreira

This is true for the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono, two groups with varying degrees of bilingualism and a variety of language attitudes. Areas for further research include surveys of linguistic vitality, language use and domains, bilingualism, language attitudes, language materials, a thorough ongoing evaluation of the programme, as well as application of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (UNESCO 1996) to the language situation(s) of Uaçá, as well as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations 2007).

Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

Consultant for Language and Education/The University of Aruba Although the Spanish/Portuguese-based Creole Papiamentu is widely used on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, its role in education continues to spark highly emotional debates. Except for four Dutch-medium schools, most schools in Curaçao and Bonaire use Papiamentu in the lower grades of primary school and some schools employ both languages in higher grades. In secondary and vocational education Papiamentu is taught as a subject and widely used to support Dutch-medium education. In Aruba, the medium of instruction is Dutch and Papiamentu is taught as a subject in the lower grades of secondary education. This paper critically reviews the process that led to Papiamentu becoming established in education and discusses current problems that hamper further expansion of its use in education. Keywords:╇ education in Papiamentu; language and education; language and politics in the Dutch Antilles

1.  Introduction The Dutch Leeward Islands, like most Caribbean territories, are multilingual, involving a local language, a former colonial language, and the languages of former migrant populations. The main languages spoken in the Leeward Islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao (the ABC Islands) are the local Spanish/Portuguese Creole Papiamentu, English, Dutch and Spanish. According to the latest census figures (2001) Papiamentu is by far the most widely used language. More than 80% of the population of Curaçao, 72.3% of people in Bonaire and nearly 70% of Arubans responded that they use Papiamentu as a home language. Dutch is only used in the home by 9.3% of people in Curaçao, 10.4% of people in Bonaire and 6.1% of Arubans. English is employed in the homes of 3.5% of respondents in Curaçao, 4% in Bonaire and 8.1% in Aruba. Finally, Spanish is reported as a home language by 4.6% in Curaçao, 11.4% in Bonaire and 13.2% in Aruba. Other languages are spoken by less than 1% of the population. They include Portuguese, Chinese, Sranan Tongo, French and French Creole(s). Moreover, most people who speak Spanish, English and Dutch at home, also claim to speak

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

Papiamentu as their second language. Thus Papiamentu is spoken by 90.5% of the population of Curaçao, the biggest of the three islands. Generally only children of Dutch and Surinamese origin have knowledge of Dutch when starting school. Therefore, most children will have no knowledge of Dutch words or Dutch grammar when starting their school career at age four. Despite widespread multilingualism, not all languages are officially recognized. Bonaire and Curaçao have adopted only three of these languages, namely Papiamentu, Dutch and English, as official languages, while Aruba only has Papiamentu and Dutch as its official languages. Until very recently Dutch, the language of the former colonial power, was the sole medium of education and Papiamentu, the most widely spoken language, was excluded from the school context. This gave rise to low levels of learning among the majority of the population. English is taught as a subject from the 6th grade on, and Spanish is taught as a subject form the 7th grade on. Advocacy for the use of Papiamentu in education has a long history, but it was only in the 1970s that the government started to consider changes in educational policies, including integrating Papiamentu. While much opposed by educational institutions and partially hampered by the fact that Aruba adopted a different orthography from Curaçao and Bonaire, the influence of Papiamentu in education has continued to grow in all three islands over the last two decades. It is now widely used in primary education and taught as a subject in secondary education and vocational training. The aim of the paper is to discuss the role of Papiamentu in education. This discussion is based on the following sources: a. Fieldwork & observation in Foundation-based primary schools in Curaçao and Bonaire during the period 2007 to 2009 (Dijkhoff, Snetselaar, Tormala-Nita & Richardson 2007; Dijkhoff & Welvaart 2007a, b & c; Dijkhoff 2008a & b.1 b. Structured non-directive interviews & discussions with principals, teachers, government officials, school boards and parent organizations (Dijkhoff 2009);2 c. Analysis of available documents on language policy and education such as reports, laws, memo’s, proceedings of meetings, minutes of meetings, census statistics, curricula, and school materials. Central questions to be addressed are: what choices were made at critical moments in time by those with the power to determine the position of Papiamentu in education?

.  The fieldwork was done for the Commissioner of Education of Curaçao and Bonaire, mainly to gather data to support recommendations for language policy in education. .  The interviews were held during 2009 and were partly done in the context of a project of the Commissioner of Education of Curaçao and the school board of the island’s public schools. The aim was to get a clear picture of the innovative capacities of the schools since the introduction of Papiamentu as a medium of instruction.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

What social forces determine these choices and how they operate? And finally if we look to the future what lessons can be learned from this process? What challenges will need to be faced in the future and which should be taken advantage of? The introduction of Papiamentu in education and its growing role in other official domains such as legislation is linked to speakers’ strong identification with their native language.3 However, this is a highly political process subject to much debate and likely to continue for years to come. An integral part of this process is continued lexical expansion and codification and greater awareness among those involved about the importance of careful language planning. According to Spolsky (2004), language planning is defined as management decisions of a community or polity on language issues. It encompasses (conscious or unconscious) language choices of the community and of individuals in a community, language management or language planning€ − formulation and proclamation of an explicit plan or policy on language issues€− and efforts to manipulate or intervene in the existent language situation either by a formal or an informal authority. The paper is structured as follows: Part 2 presents the educational history of the islands focusing on the roles of Dutch and Papiamentu in education and the social processes that led to the current situation. Part 3 presents the educational systems of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao and reflects on the role of Papiamentu in this system. Part 4 critically assesses the present situation. It addresses questions such as the following: How has the integration of Papiamentu changed the educational environment? How can speakers of Papiamentu maintain a sense of unity in the face of political disintegration/disunity? What should be the future role of Papiamentu in education? And how do these developments compare with developments in other Creole societies in the Caribbean?

2.  Language use in education: A historical overview 2.1  Educational entities and their responsibilities In the Netherlands Antilles there is a strict division between the different partners in education.4

.  The role of Papiamentu is also growing in importance in the legal domain. The Law Faculty of the University of the Netherlands Antilles is offering courses on ‘Papiamentu for Legal Purposes’ and court translators are an integral part of legal proceedings. In the police academy Papiamentu is widely used as an instrument for helping future policemen understand ‘Dutch’ law. .  World Education Forum Assessment 2000 country report of the Netherlands Antilles. http://www.unesco.org/education/wef/countryreports/netherlands_antilles/rapport_1.html

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

a. Policy on language and education is a prerogative of the federal government represented by the Antillean Minister of Education; b. Schools (buildings, teacher’s wages, teacher’s training, school materials) are funded by the island territories and administrated by a Commissioner of Education on each island; c. School boards are responsible for daily management such as the content of relevant school materials and the selection of human resources. Most school boards are denominational, and based in the long-standing Roman Catholic tradition in the provision of educational services on the three islands, see Table€1.5 d. Teacher trade unions are very active and represent the vast majority of teachers during negotiations with the island territories and the Minister of Education. These negotiations include the conditions for innovation and the improvement of€education.6 e. Parent organizations are active and organized under an umbrella organization subsidized by the island territory. Table€1.╇ Schools on the ABC islands7

Aruba Bonaire Curaçao

Roman Catholic

Protestant

Public

Other

Total

48 3 85 136

6 0 3 9

16 2 23 41

5 0 47 9

75 5 115 195

There is clearly ‘a language problem’ in education: Papiamentu and Dutch co-exist in a socio-economic system, which is based on a relationship with the former colonial power, and ideological control is exerted through language policy in the education system (Devonish 1986). In such a situation, not only does it matter which language a given individual speaks in a given situation, but also whether this language was acquired as a mother tongue or through formal education, for the languages themselves are divided within the community by function and prestige. Papiamentu, the language of the majority, is perceived as a language of low prestige in the educational domain and is sometimes referred to as a ‘dialect’ by non-linguists. A number of educators and the general public also feel that it is unsuitable for education. By contrast,

.  The few private schools follow a separate curriculum not to be discussed here. .  The teachers’ unions are in fact the most influential of the labor movements on the islands and are known for their persistence when either in favor or against communal issues. .  Other school boards are: Evangelist (2), Adventist (1) and Humanist (2).



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

Dutch is perceived as having high status, is the preferred language of education in formal institutions, and is generally felt to be more suitable for education. Although the Minister of Education has the authority to impose a language policy to counter these beliefs, no national proposals have ever been enforced by the responsible politicians, even though every government since 1969 has seen the language issue as one of its foremost preoccupations (Todd Dandaré 1982). None of the proposals presented by the Department of Education gained official status (cf.€Aanzet tot regulering van de Antilliaanse taalsituatie (1982); Een visie op het toekomstige onderwijsbeleid: contextuele voorwaarden (1989). Een consequent taalbeleid voor de Nederlandse Antillen (1992); Beleidsuitgangspunten talen in de Nederlandse Antillen (1999); Instructietalen in de Nederlandse Antillen (2001); Verschillende instructietaalmodellen in het Funderend Onderwijs: consequenties voor de uitvoering (2002b)). According to De€Vries & Menckeberg (2009), efforts of the federal government were generally aimed at legislation of language use in education and in government institutions (cf. Landsverordening Kleuteronderwijs, article 89; Landsverordening Basisonderwijs, article 10; Landsverordening Funderend Onderwijs, article 10; Landsverordening Voortgezet, article€12, Landsverordening and Landsverordening Secundair Beroepsonderwijs (SBO), article€13).8 The federal government is also responsible for the writing system and the standardization of the lexicon of Papiamentu (Dijkhoff & Todd€Dandaré 1985). Activities for the promotion of Papiamentu in the media, government institutions, and in schools, however, have generally been initiated by the island territories themselves. If we follow Haugen’s (1966) organization of the four components for language policy, we might say that selection of a norm and codification for spoken or written forms has been a federal affair, whereas implementation (concretizing and ensuring acceptance and compliance with the policy by the target population) and elaboration (the continued modification of the norm to meet the requirements of modernization and development), have been the responsibility of the island territories.9 However, the federal government, the island territories, school boards, and teacher and parent organizations, all have their own views about which languages are most appropriate for education. Any explicit intervention by the federal or the local territorial governments to manage or plan the language situation therefore affects the beliefs of these core

.  On the 27th of March 2007 the Antillean government also passed an ordinance stating that Papiamentu and Dutch, (in addition to English) are the official languages of the Netherlands Antilles. The ordinance contains no precise rules regarding communication between the government and the general population (Van der Velden 2008b). Citizens are allowed to address the government’s administration in one of the official languages, yet it does not prescribe nor bind the government to an active language policy. .  Norm selection is also part of status and corpus planning cf. Kloss (1969).

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

constituencies, and also affects unwritten or non-explicit language practices based on these beliefs. It is not surprising, then, that such action by the government has persistently given rise to problems. Dissatisfaction with the prospects of educational reform is a worldwide phenomenon, and often leads to the maintenance of the status quo (Fullan & Stiegelbauer 1991), but this tendency is aggravated in the case of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, where in addition to differences in educational approach, the language of instruction itself is part of the educational debate.

2.2  Before 1979: Dutch as the sole medium of instruction From the very beginning, despite having a marginal position in Antillean society, Dutch was the language of administration. In education, Dutch had to compete with other European languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and English. Outside of educational institutions, Dutch has always been superseded by Papiamentu which, despite its low status, has been the language of communication between the different ethno-cultural groups. Documents of the early period already mention the ‘badly’ spoken Dutch of young pupils of European descent and criticized the fact that white women generally spoke Papiamentu with their children and other members of their households. There are also documented cases of citizens of European descent who even in those times needed translators in court, as they were unable to conduct a formal conversation in Dutch (Van der Velden 2008b). Papiamentu was also the language of evangelization and instruction in the Roman Catholic mission for slaves and free blacks, who together constituted the majority of the local population (Smeulders 1987:€44). Initially, the West Indische Compagnie, who was in charge of the islands, funded a few public schools that were reserved for a handful of white Protestants. Other language groups and/or religious denominations provided for their own education, as education was a private affair between parents and individuals who offered their services to supplement their income (Smeulders 1987). A small number of free blacks received education from Roman Catholic missionaries whereas slaves were initially excluded from education and barred from learning Dutch. However, slaves were allowed to receive religious instruction from the Roman Catholic mission which eventually transformed itself into a formal education program. The continued influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the island’s education for the masses dates from this period (Goslinga 1956, as quoted in Smeulders 1987). Governmental regulation of education in the colonies began quite late. The first provisory directive (P.B. no. 28) appeared on the 29th of November 1819. In 1884, a second directive (P.B. no. 18) followed, allowing the use of English in the lowest grades on the Windward Islands. In the new ordinance of 1935 Papiamentu was permitted in Catholic and other non-public schools, but permission had to be granted by the governor. However, since the status of Papiamentu was low, no school ever asked



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for permission to teach in it, but books and records of instructional materials from that time attest to the possibility (Buki di spèl pa uso di skool di muchanan na Curaçao (Anonymous 1885); Boeki di leza pa uzo di skool (Anonymous 1881). Rekenboek pa muchanan di Curaçao (Anonymous 1882), Buki di som pa muchanan di school catolico; di dos; di tres; di cuater i di cincoe buki (Anonymous 1991).10 In 1936 when the Netherlands finally banned all discrimination based on religion, Roman Catholic schools were able to obtain funding and expand their operations. The only condition was that they had to use Dutch as their medium of instruction (Article 36, PB 1935,€43.) Although there were still advocates for the use of Papiamentu in education, from this point on (Hellinga 1951; Prins-Winkel 1955; Gualbert 1956) the influence of Dutch on education continued to grow. The general acceptance of Dutch as the sole medium of instruction started to wane in the 1960s, however, when both local teachers and principals started to outnumber European-born teachers and principals (De Bekker 1974). Through their trade unions, these locals became a powerful political voice, criticizing the educational situation that disadvantaged local children because they had to learn to read and write through a foreign language, Dutch (Vereniging Leerkrachten Curaçao (VLC) 1975; Sprockel 1967; VLC 1976; Sindikato Trahadonan Enseñansa Kòrsou (SITEK) 1983/1987). At the same time, some members of parliament started advocating in favor of Papiamentu as a medium of instruction in the lower grades of primary schools (cf. Van der Velden 2008b: 3). Several publications that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s strongly identified with Papiamentu and denounced the negative impact of Dutch-medium education on students’ learning and general performance (Van Bergeijk 1970; Prins 1974; Prins-Winkel 1975). Devonish (1986) also discusses other important events that led to the population’s greater identification with Papiamentu such as the social disturbances of May 1969, the publication of the newspaper Vitó in Papiamentu and the subsequent organized labor movement that focused on political independence from the Netherlands, the need for a cultural revolution and the granting of official status to Papiamentu (see also Martinus Arion 2004). Popular pressure and political demands from the island territory of Curaçao (Scholma 1988:€ 13–15) prompted the Antillean government to seek solutions for improving the quality of education.11 In 1976 the Ministry petitioned UNESCO to

.  Many of these materials were lost during the disturbances and fires of May 1969 in Willemstad. .  Primary schools were formerly divided into three categories. Schools in category A and B were free of charge and reserved for the poor in the countryside and the city respectively. Category C schools were reserved for those who could pay additional fees for their children’s tuition. This highly segregate school system remained intact as late as 1963. At present

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analyze the existing problems and to present proposals for improvement. The UNESCO report targeted Dutch-medium education as one of the main problems that hampered educational advancement for students (UNESCO 1976).

2.3  Missed opportunities and political disintegration The ordinances for pre-primary and primary education of 1979 which aimed to make Papiamentu the language of instruction in pre-primary and in grades 1 and 2 of primary school (article 9) were supposed to resolve the language problems so heavily discussed in the Antillean community in the 1960s and 1970s. Landsverordening Kleuteronderwijs, PB 1999 no. 20, Article 7 mandates Papiamentu in kindergarten. The ordinance made an exception for four Dutch schools. The ordinance however, did not make it through parliament because of conflicts between the Roman Catholic school board and the island government, and its consideration was postponed until 1998. Landsverordening Basisonderwijs PB 197 no. 28. Article 9 relates to language use in primary schools and was accepted by parliament in Publicatieblad no. 28, 1979. Article 9 however, did not become operational in the Leeward islands, due to differences of opinion between the school boards and the federal government on the one hand, and the teachers’ union and the island government, on the other hand. When after much discussion, the ordinance of 1979 was finally accepted, it did not change the daily practice in the classroom, except in the case of Kolegio Erasmo (see below). Why was this opportunity to introduce Papiamentu into education not used by the school boards? Retrospectively, there appear to be several reasons. First, there are historical and socio-cultural reasons (Martinus Arion 1990). Due to its origin in slavery, many felt that Papiamentu would be inadequate to cope with the necessities of formal education. This translated into a hesitant and ambivalent attitude of native speakers towards the use of Papiamentu in the classroom. Second, the controversy over the nature of Papiamentu’s orthography negatively impacted the codification process, and contributed to the feelings of its inadequacy. Briefly, the persons involved in the codification process fell into two camps, one advocating an etymological spelling system which linked Papiamentu words to their Hispanic (and sometimes Dutch) origin, and the other proposing a phonemic orthography. This discussion took on a political dimension when Aruba linked their advocacy for an etymological spelling system to their movement for separation from the Netherlands Antilles (Martinus Arion 1990:€141–142). Aruba declared itself against the ordinance presented to the Antillean Parliament, which was based on a phonemic spelling system and came with its own proposal (Afkondigingsblad Aruba 1977 pre-primary and primary education are free of charge (De Bekker 1974), yet informal divisions between schools in the countryside and schools in the city still persist.



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no.€1. Besluit van de eilandsraad van Aruba van 30 oktober 1976 tot vaststelling van de schrijfwijze van de Papiamentse taal). The federal government promptly delegated its authority to determine the spelling of Papiamentu to the island territories (Letter of the Council of Ministers, dated the 18th of April 1975). At that time the lack of consensus on an official orthography did much to discourage schools from implementing article 9 and from introducing Papiamentu into their curriculum. Third, prejudices against Papiamentu were linked to a lack of knowledge about language development and the slow processes of standardization. School boards, teachers and parents were accustomed to language programs and school materials in a highly standardized language, Dutch, and expected the same from materials in Papiamentu. However, the emergence of an official written form from the various existing spoken forms through a democratic process of consultation proved to be slow and complicated, leaving teachers without the terms of reference necessary for their daily work. This was further hampered by the fact that the financial and practical contributions from the different island territories were not always forthcoming. At one point, the codification process came to a complete halt. The standardization committee met regularly between 1983 and 1994, but has been inactive since then. The language and education professionals of the Antillean Ministry and those of the island territories also differed on practical aspects concerning the implementation of article 9. The Ministry and the school boards wanted article 9 to apply to the 1st and 2nd grades only. The island territories rejected this sort of rapid transitional program and wanted article 9 to apply to grades 1 to 6. This debate paralyzed the implementation of Article 9 for a considerable amount of time. The controversy was eventually resolved in 1982 when the Minister of Education finally agreed to allow the use of Papiamentu as a medium of instruction in grades 1 through 6. Dutch would be taught as a foreign and second language.12 However, despite this progress, the school boards on the one hand and the teachers’ unions on the other hand, could not agree on the implementation of article 9. A compromise was eventually reached in 1984. In the short term (August 1985), Papiamentu was to be introduced as a subject in all primary schools in Curaçao and Bonaire. The Antillean government who had already delegated its authority on the introduction of Papiamentu in education to the island territories in a letter known as “Brief aan het onderwijsveld” in September 1982, signed an agreement for its implementation in August 1984 (Protocol van Samenwerking tussen Land

.  The policy plan Kuadro Konsistente i Koherente enkuanto nos idioma materno, was accepted by the parliament of Curaçao in August 1983 and became part of different subsequent educational policy plans such as: E kompromiso Nashonal pa Edukashon (April 29, 1989); Bijdrage tot een stappenplan voor de vernieuwing van het basisonderwijs op Curaçao (November 1991) and De nieuwe Curaçaose Basisschool (August 1993).

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

en Eiland m.b.t. de Invoering van het Papiamentu in het Onderwijs (Cicilia, Molina€& Anthony 1987). The islands of Bonaire and Curaçao thereafter signed an agreement of cooperation for the introduction of Papiamentu as a subject in 1986 and the two islands subsequently remained in close cooperation in matters relating to this issue (Protocol van Samenwerking tussen Bonaire en Curaçao, July 1986). The introduction of Papiamentu as the medium of instruction in primary schools became part of a long-term language policy (Énfasis 1984:€24). In Aruba, which was no longer part of the Netherlands Antilles, Papiamentu became the medium of instruction in special education.

3.  Language and education in Curaçao and Bonaire This section discusses the role of Dutch in primary education in Bonaire and Curaçao and the early experiences with Papiamentu in a Dutch-based school system. The predicament of one school, Kolegio Erasmo, that implemented article 9 against all opposition receives special attention. Eventually, dissatisfaction with the school results on all islands prompted the Antillean government to initiate an innovative campaign known as Foundation-based Education that included Papiamentu as the medium of instruction for Bonaire and Curaçao from kindergarten, in grades 1 through 6 of primary education and in the first two years of high school. This innovative program is currently being implemented.

3.1  Experiences with Dutch in a Papiamentu context: 1979 to 2001 Modern theories on learning have since the 1950s consistently emphasized the important impact of (the native) language on students’ educational performance. Children’s language is constructed from concrete to abstract reasoning and it is built on their cognitive development from infancy, through pre-school and childhood in a chronological sequence, until they reach 11 to 12 years of age (Piaget 1968; Slobin & Ferguson 1973). Social interaction in the child’s language also proves to be important for the child’s language development (Vigotsky 1978; Snow 1995). The native language of learners is furthermore a highly significant system on which learners rely to learn a second language (Brown 2002). This theoretical background has prompted UNESCO to encourage the use of a child’s native language in education (UNESCO 2003a). Yet until 2001 formal education in the Leeward Islands was essentially a case of L2 submersion: children who had Papiamentu as their main language had to engage in education through Dutch. The daily routine and practice in primary schools was to teach as if Dutch was the children’s native language. Pupils had to acquire new



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

knowledge through a language that they were not familiar with, while at the same time learning that language. It was believed that children would ‘just pick up Dutch’ easily through having to read and write in it. Instead, children got stuck in a vicious cycle: they did not manage to learn sufficient Dutch and were not able to learn enough subject knowledge. This led to frustration for both teachers and pupils and further slowed down language development in both Papiamentu and Dutch (Prins-Winkel 1975). A great number of children had to repeat one or more classes, had low performance levels in mathematics and other subjects throughout their primary education, and eventually dropped out of secondary school (Dutch Caribbean Management Consultancy 1998). The dropout rate for the Antillean islands was between 50% and 60% for students up to 15 years of age in 1992 and between 40% and 50% in 2001. (Central Bureau of Statistics, Netherlands Antilles 2001). Moreover, as in similar sociopolitical situations (Cummins 1984, 2000), a disproportionate number of children have been misdiagnosed with developmental delays or disorders due to their inability to speak Dutch fluently. Essentially, only a small group of elite students make it into preuniversity training programs (16%) –€the drop out rate at this level was between 50% and 55% in 1992 but dropped somewhat in 2001€– with an even smaller percentage finishing university (11%). Most students graduate from vocational training programs (46%), probably because even at higher levels of vocational training Papiamentu is the main medium of instruction (Dijkhoff 2008b). The use of Papiamentu in vocational training has a long tradition and persists even to this day, although Dutch is the officially prescribed medium of instruction. This may be due to the fact that vocational training developed from a non-formal educational environment, where trainees were apprenticed to an experienced worker and learned a trade through modeling.13 The traditional language policy has had far reaching consequences on the quality of language instruction and language learning in Leeward Island classrooms. In school an extended vocabulary and comprehensive reading skills are necessary in order to understand the highly abstract and information-packed language of school texts. However, this kind of vocabulary was not explicitly taught to Antillean children who only had limited prior knowledge of Dutch. Instead, as in the Netherlands, Antillean children were mostly confronted with fictional texts (Snetselaar 2000). The education system therefore became counter-productive: it did not provide Antillean students with

.  Vocational training used to be split in three components: Economisch Technisch en Administratief (ETAO), Huishoudschool (HHS) and Lagere Technische School (LTS). The three were integrated in Beroepsvoorbereidend Onderwijs (BVO) at a later date. At present vocational training at the lower level has been renamed Voorbereidend Secundair Beroepsonderwijs (VSBO) and is followed by Secundair Beroepsonderwijs (SBO) at the middle level.

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the knowledge they needed in order to understand and absorb school texts in Dutch. Furthermore, schools in the Netherlands introduced new pedagogic approaches such as action or experiential learning,14 discovery learning, context learning and communicative or cooperative learning,15 which are less explicitly cognitive and where language development (in Dutch) is integrated within the learning process. When these same innovations were introduced, they made the learning process even more difficult for the native speakers of Papiamentu struggling to master Dutch. Teachers moreover, were trained to teach Dutch as a mother tongue, when it was actually a foreign language for most students. They did what they could to help students along: they used Papiamentu to explain the contents of Dutch books and employed visual materials, reformulated or rephrased texts into a simpler version of Dutch, or partitioned the text into smaller units. Cognitive complexity however, was reduced along with the quality of education: students learned most of the knowledge offered by heart, application of knowledge was limited to a minimum, and productive or problem solving tasks requiring language proficiency (in Dutch) were excluded from the curriculum. At the end of the sixth grade all pupils were given the same test, and schools that did well were those following the standards set by the tests. Objective standards to evaluate students’ proficiency in language and other subjects were non-existent.

3.2  Papiamentu as a subject in Dutch schools: 1979 to 2001 Papiamentu was introduced as a subject at a time when the island territory had set goals in relation to both short and long term language policies. In the short term, a

.  Experiential learning assumes that knowledge is formed from experience. What a student learns is actually relearning: based on new experience in a different context the student refines and validates knew knowledge on the same set of issues. The education process brings out the learner’s beliefs and theories, examines and tests them, and then integrates them with new more refined ideas. Learners experience knowledge, reflect on what they know, and integrate ‘new’ knowledge to make decisions and solve school problems. In order to reflect on their learning process, based on internal reasoning, learners must have a great amount of fluency in the school’s language. They must be able to record their learning process in language and use logical reasoning to validate their choices and solve educational problems, for example in biology or chemistry classes (Kolb 1984). .  This is a learning approach based on interaction between students. The idea is to gain support for individual ideas within a group or use group ideas and products to present a new coherent idea in, for example, debates and discussions in history class. Being able to communicate fluently, discuss and summarize ideas of others in the school’s language is therefore a must (Jacobs & Hall 2002).



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language program was developed to teach Papiamentu as a subject in primary schools (Papiamentu nose Idiom). The program was applied in grades 1 through 6. In each year, teaching materials dealt with several topics, and each topic represented an educational unit lasting two to five weeks (including an introduction and evaluations or tests). The program consisted of 200 lessons per year and ± 1,200 lessons in total. Lessons were programmed to take place five times a week for 30 minutes each. The language domains were divided into speaking, reading, writing and reflection on language and a larger set of sub domains. Children were taught to read and write in Dutch. Reading and writing in Papiamentu received very little attention in grades 1–2 and only fully started in grade 3. According to an evaluation of the program in 1990 (Centrum voor Leermiddelenstudie of the University of Utrecht 1990) 31% of the Papiamentu lessons were about speaking,16 29% dealt with reflection on language, and a mere 18% taught reading. Eleven percent of reading lessons were reserved for technical reading and only 6% were dedicated to reading comprehension. Little attention was given to reading for learning (1%) and none to the development of positive attitudes toward reading. Of the remaining time, 25% was reserved for writing, divided into writing development (2%), writing of texts (6%), and spelling (17%). By way of comparison, in regular programs for language teaching in primary education, it is recommended that 20% of the time be spent on speaking, 40% to 50% on reading, 10% on writing and 10% to 20% on reflection on language and vocabulary development (Van Wessel & Beernink 2004). With respect to the teaching personnel, Papiamentu was to be taught by the common school teacher, who had received no formal education in his or her own language. Between 1986 and 1989, Sede di Papiamentu and Komishon pa Maneho di Papiamentu, who were in charge of the implementation process, began to prepare and conduct teacher-training courses. The courses were aimed at primary school teachers and lasted four years. Lessons were programmed one to two times a week for a two to three hour period. Participation in the courses was mandatory in the beginning, but pressure from the teachers’ union forced the government to agree to optional participation after the first year. Teachers had to attend lessons in the afternoon after having discharged their teaching obligations, which created a lot of resistance. Subjects taught were spelling, grammar, oral and written literature, children’s literature, and written and spoken language. The material was developed by a group of language professionals from the Instituto Lingwístiko Antiano (Marta Dijkhoff and Frank Martinus Arion)

.  In the first two grades attention was paid almost exclusively to speaking (because reading and writing started in Dutch) and one would expect that the time allotted to speaking would become less in the higher grades, but is seemed to be disproportionally high in all grades (31% of the allotted time).

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in cooperation with Sede di Papiamentu. Twenty-four former school teachers who had completed a two year degree in Papiamentu helped with the development of training materials and also participated as trainers during the course. Surveys at different moments in time attest to a declining interest among teachers (Weeber 1990) in training in Papiamentu. After the 1st year, when the course became optional, the amount of teachers following the course decreased by 8% and in the 4th year attendance had dropped to about 50%. Eventually, only 56% of the total number of teachers who had started in 1986 finished all the modules. Among principals the number was even lower, about 44% (Weeber 1990). Twenty-five percent of teachers who did not participate were non-native speakers of Papiamentu, and felt that this kind of training did not address their most immediate needs. The 1994/1995 survey conducted by the Department of Education (Inventarisatie en prognose bevoegdheden Papiamentu. Inspectie Basisonderwijs, non-dated) confirmed the conclusions of Weeber (1990). The aim of this survey was to determine the number of teachers who had completed their education in Papiamentu and were therefore capable of teaching Papiamentu as a subject, as well as other subjects through Papiamentu. About 50% of the teaching staff had completed the necessary requirements to teach in Papiamentu. Kindergarten teachers, who were supposed to teach in Papiamentu only, had not received any specific training in their native language. More recent research (Dijkhoff€ & Welvaart 2007b) shows that at present as many as 31% of kindergarten and primary school teachers have not yet received formal education in their native language. The introduction of Papiamentu as a subject initially appeared to be rather odd to both students and teachers because it did not seem to contribute to the main goal of education at the time, which was directly or indirectly focused on learning to read and write in Dutch. The curriculum in Papiamentu did not pretend to extend children’s general knowledge nor did it develop their talents or needs as a native speaker in a thorough way. The activities in this subject, similar to the activities in the subject of Dutch, primarily focused on spelling, memorizing and reproduction of knowledge and elementary reading. All of these activities were part of a language approach geared to knowledge reproduction and only some comprehension skills. Few if any activities dealt with developing children’s cognitive skills, problem solving, creative language skills or higher levels of reading such as comprehensive and analytical reading, vocabulary development, and creative writing. The development of higher levels of thinking such as analysis, synthesis, and application and evaluation of knowledge only played a marginal role at best. Moreover, language tasks did not cater to different learning trajectories: for example those of non-native speakers of Papiamentu, and quick or slow learners. The transition from teaching a foreign language (Dutch) as a mother tongue, to teaching Dutch as a foreign language and Papiamentu as a mother tongue, was (and



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still is) a very difficult task for teachers. Teachers were not sufficiently trained to deal with this new situation. They could not easily transfer their ‘old’ frame of reference to a ‘new’ one, namely language development in Papiamentu, and reverted to the strategies they used for teaching Dutch, when teaching Papiamentu. They focused on drilling students to memorize the intricacies of Papiamentu spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar rules, superficial question and answer tasks, composition or “fill-in-the-blank” exercises. Teachers therefore considered the teaching materials for Papiamentu to be ‘easy’ and ‘known’ and unworthy of their full attention. The fact that Papiamentu was an ungraded subject also contributed to its low status in schools. By contrast, Dutch continued to be seen as ‘difficult’ because proficiency in Dutch determined children’s access to secondary school. Papiamentu was an obligatory subject, yet it was not taught in all grades. In the 1980s, some schools went so far as to disregard the teaching of Papiamentu entirely and instead dedicated the 30 minutes per day allotted to Papiamentu to Dutch.

3.3  Making a difference: Kolegio Erasmo On September 15, 1987 Kolegio Erasmo was founded by the humanist school board Fundashon pa Skol Humanista na Papiamentu (Foundation for Humanist Schools in Papiamentu) and 100 parents under the guidance of the linguist Frank Martinus Arion and his wife. They had a four year old daughter who had just entered Kindergarten and their experience with the Dutch authoritarian system was crucial to this decision. The parents wanted ‘a creative school in Papiamentu’ (Martinus Arion 2004:€14) and asked permission to start one under the provisions of the much discussed Article€9. As the school had to bridge the religious and philosophical differences between parents, they adopted humanism as a common denominator, and thus also became a novelty in the Antillean educational system, which is heavily dominated by denominational schools. The International Humanist and Ethical Union defines humanism as “a democratic, non-theistic and ethical life stance which affirms that human beings have the right and the responsibility for giving meaning and shape to their own lives. It therefore rejects supernatural views of reality.” This definition of humanism was accepted by the Board of the International Humanist and Ethical Union at its meeting in Prague, July 11–13 in 1991. In several countries, like the Netherlands, humanism is accepted legally as an alternative to religion. In education it translates into a pluralist school system where people of different philosophies and world visions may participate. No religion is imposed and information about various life stances is taught as objectively as possible. (Thielman undated, Humanist Education in the Netherlands). The humanist school board applied for funding and Angel Salsbach, the Commissioner of Education at that time, being a supporter of Papiamentu in education, convinced the island

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territory to grant the school the ‘usual’ funding for teacher salaries, a school building and expenses. The subsidy did not include teacher training, the development of school materials in Papiamentu, or any other additional needs the school might have such as the translation of Dutch final exams into Papiamentu. The school has dealt with various complex problems during the course of its existence, but its main problem was Dutch, as the school had to maintain the same level of Dutch as the other traditional schools, if they wanted their students to proceed to higher levels of education. This problem was aggravated by the fact that parents wanted the best of both systems. They liked the way their children responded to education in Papiamentu (greater self confidence in general, the positive ways in which children acted and reacted in their educational process, and the more relaxed and open channels of communication between teachers and students), yet they also wanted their children to score high in Dutch on the final exams. Thus after the 4th grade, parents tended to move their children to Dutch schools. When confronted with this behavior, teachers were inclined to sacrifice the rest of the curriculum to teach as much of the Dutch language as possible. The school had to aim at a longer period of education in Papiamentu in order to keep their pupils. Yet it took 6 years before the Minister of Education granted the school board official permission to use Papiamentu as a language of instruction (Publikatieblad 1994, no. 85) in the higher grades of primary education, and it took another ten years before a four grade high school, Skol Avansá Integrá (SKAI), could be added to the school’s 6 year program. In 1996 the inspectorate of education reported on the school’s progress and concluded that they were below average (Department of Education, Inspectie Basisonderwijs afdeling Curaçao, May 1996). The school board reacted with a counter report (Reactie bestuur Kolegio Erasmo op het rapport ‘Kolegio Erasmo onder de loupe’, July 1996). They stated that they had received no extra funding in their first years of existence nor were their particular circumstances given any consideration. The school had no head master during its first 6 years, there was no separate curriculum provided by the government for Papiamentu nor additional materials developed or teacher training offered. The school had to organize all this on its own. They also argued that the positive aspects of the school were not taken into account by the report. These include additional programs for sports, music, painting and creative arts, a science program, English lessons (starting from grade 4), and most important of all, the positive psychological effect of the use of the native language on the child’s development. Besides, the governments’ report did not mention that thanks to the perseverance of Kolegio Erasmo’s teachers some students who had been given up on elsewhere were offered a second chance to attain a reasonable level of education, something from which they would otherwise have been excluded. The overall results of the school were also tainted for the following reasons. First, most of the children that attended the school in the early years came to the school



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because they could not perform (for whatever reason) in Dutch schools. Second, the parents of these same students tended to transfer their children to Dutch schools as soon as their educational results started improving. Third, despite a relatively high preponderance of children with learning difficulties in the early years, the school was not granted remedial teachers. Kolegio Erasmo also experienced many other hardships. For example, in the initial years the school was housed in an old school building with substandard facilities for learning. The lack of additional funds for the development of teaching materials continues to be a persistent problem. The school board along with the teachers, are still saddled with this task. However, the situation has improved somewhat in recent years compared to that of 20 years ago because the government has started providing some teaching materials, especially since other schools started teaching through Papiamentu. At present Kolegio Erasmo has about 440 pupils (20 in pre-kindergarten, 40 in Kindergarten, 160 in primary school, and 220 in high school). Recent reports show that Kolegio Erasmo’s results have greatly improved over the years. Between 2001 and 2008 84.1% of its students finished their primary school and proceeded to higher levels of education in both the vocational and the academic streams. After the four year high school program was added, 82% passed the first exams in 2001, 95.3% in 2002 and 90.3 % in 2003, the national average being between 60 and 70% (Martinus Arion 2004). Despite the initial refusal of the Commissioner of Education to grant it the necessary funding, the humanist school board is currently trying to set up a 5 to 6 year high school at the most advanced level (pre-university training), and it will then become the first and only secondary school which teaches in Papiamentu throughout its entire curriculum.

3.4  Steps to a better future: Foundation-based Education General dissatisfaction with students’ negative school results eventually prompted educational reform in pre-primary and primary education in the 1990s. The first step in this direction was the 1989 report entitled “Education for all” (Lamp 1989). However, it was not until 1994 that the federal government got actively involved in the process of educational reform. The framework that was selected was Foundation-based Education. Foundation-based Education involved a ten year period of innovation, and was developed by the local education professionals as a means of decoupling the Antillean education from the Dutch system, while maintaining a link with it through secondary education. In the educational approach of Foundation-based education the children’s environment and their development in it are at the center of educational activities. Children first learn about their immediate environment, the Leeward islands, then about the wider area such as the Antillean and Caribbean communities and eventually learning focuses on matters relating to the global community.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

Foundation-based education involved the following educational reforms. Learning environment: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Instruction through the language spoken by the majority of the population (Papiamentu) on Curaçao and Bonaire for ten consecutive years Inclusive setting for children with learning and behavioral problems Heterogeneous classrooms incorporating different age groups

Learning approach: –â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

Competence based education: content alone is no longer the starting point for curriculum development. Knowledge, skills and attitudes combine to enable the child to recognize and solve problems. Design of a curriculum that addresses the needs and interests of children: thus methods directly imported from Holland, with no relevance to the child’s environment and cultural context should be excluded form the curriculum. One unbroken line of education with no prior selection: That is the existing system that consisted of pre-primary, primary and basic secondary, education is to be fused into an educational system with three cycles.17 The First cycle includes children aged 4 to 8 years and consists of a four-year program. The second cycle focuses on the age group of 8 to 12 year olds and is also a four year program. The third cycle addresses 12 to 14 year olds and consists of a two year program. Constructivist and social learning: learning through dialogue. Following the path of well known pedagogues such as Dewey, Piaget and Vigotsky, learning and the learning experience would be coupled: during the learning process learners construct knowledge for themselves –€each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning€– as they learn. A holistic approach: children are living beings, with both minds and emotions. The learning process must therefore involve both cognitive and affective strategies. Therefore, playing games and having fun along with the building of the children’s character, tastes, beliefs and attitudes must be part of the school curriculum. An integrated curriculum with theme and project-based learning in order to make learning more meaningful. Teachers build knowledge around themes or projects

.  Antillean secondary education is divided in three streams: an academic stream (VWO) of 6 years or 5 years (HAVO) leading to different types of higher education in the Netherlands (universiteit vs hogeschool) and a four year stream (VSBO) leading to vocational training or entrance to HAVO. The idea was to extend the years children spent together to ten years (Foundation Based Education) and proceed afterwards with the secondary streams of VWO, HAVO and VSBO which would remain linked to the Dutch educational system.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

that are important to children’s development. Learning activities are directed at children’s individual development according to their talents, their pace of learning and their interests. Methods with a strict order of presentation and grading system should therefore be avoided. Evaluation: –â•fi

–â•fi

Authentic evaluation: observation and assessment of competencies (knowledge combined with abilities and attitudes) of the child would be built up through a portfolio system. Grading would be limited. Flexible progression; children would progress through the school system at their own pace and there would be no final exam at the end of the sixth grade (in the new system at the end of the second cycle).

The policy plan Foundation-based Education, Steps to a Better Future was presented and accepted by the Antillean parliament by general acclaim in 1996. This educational system was later accepted by the island territories and school boards, with the only outstanding problem being the language policy. The program also required additional funding, which was to be provided by the Dutch government, including the training of teachers.

3.4.1  Language policy in Foundation-based Education Although the educational policy of Foundation-based Education had been accepted and there was a general consensus that Papiamentu had a role to play in education, there had still been a lot of debate on the proposed language policy. The document Foundation-based Education, Steps to a Better Future proposed a language policy that would finally break with Dutch dominance within the educational system of the Netherlands Antilles. During the ten year period of Foundation-based Education the language of instruction of all schools would be Papiamentu on Curaçao and Bonaire, and Dutch would be taught as a subject and as a foreign language. Native children would then get a chance to develop their language skills in Dutch for a period of ten consecutive years18 and in this way reach the level of proficiency necessary to proceed with Dutch in the third year of secondary education. This would take away the

.  The 10 year period had been proposed because professionals in education both in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles thought that time necessary to build non-native speakers’ proficiency in Dutch to a B1 level, a proficiency level necessary to follow secondary education in Dutch according to the Common European Framework of Reference for foreign languages (Council of Europe 2001).

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

pressure to learn Dutch while also teaching other subjects, and give children a better start in their school career. The denominational school boards were however in favor of bilingual education and went to court to force the minister to accept their proposal to start with bilingual schools before the ordinance on Foundation-based Education had reached Parliament. In a court decision of 1999 the Supreme Court decided in a ruling against the federal government. The Minister of Education could not impose a language policy on the Roman Catholic Board because Article 9 of the 1979 law on primary education had never become operational (Supreme Court, decision of the 9th of July 1999 no. 698). The ordinance on Foundation-based Education therefore had to state unambiguously that Papiamentu was to be the future language of instruction, or the innovation would be meaningless. After extensive consultation with the relevant stakeholders a preliminary decision was reached in 1997. Schools would start with Papiamentu as the language of instruction in Cycle 1 and would then be able to choose between either Papiamentu or Dutch in consecutive cycles. (Beslisdocument Funderend Onderwijs, June 1997). In addition to the language policy, the first version of the ordinance on Foundation-based Education included proposals for regular evaluation and for the incorporation of parents’ preferences into the program. Based on an evaluation (after ten years) by the Department of Education and the preference of three quarters of the parents, the policy could be reversed if necessary. Several other proposals followed in 1999 (Het Regeeraccoord 1999–2002 inzake instructietalen in het funderend onderwijs) and 2004 (Instructietaal Funderend Onderwijs, Beslispunten), but none gained general consensus. The island territories of Curaçao and Bonaire, seeing that there was no movement towards a resolution of the language problem, proceeded to implement Foundationbased Education starting in Kindergarten in 2001, without awaiting the federal government’s final decision. As most pre-primary schools were already teaching in Papiamentu, it was thought that a two-year period was enough to prepare teachers and create materials in Papiamentu for the third year of the first cycle. The Department of Education continued with their planning and produced a teacher training program in 2002 (Fundament voor Funderend Onderwijs: Nascholingsnoodzaak en basisaanbod nascholing voor de verdere invoering van Funderend Onderwijs) and an implementation plan in 2003 (Inrichtingsplan Funderend Onderwijs), which were used to guide the implementation process on the respective islands. In March 2007, however, the Minister of Education considerably changed the proposed language policy of Foundation-based Education considerably.19 Possible

.  Van der Velden (2008a) remarks on this aspect saying: Dat Leeflang in de media spreekt over een ‘jarenlange discussie’ die zij tot een einde brengt, maar in de memorie van toelichting geheel niet ingaat op deze discussie,



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

explanations for this change in policy include: (1) the political stance of the present coalition vis-à-vis the Dutch Kingdom, including the Dutch school system: (2) a general lack of consideration for ongoing local developments and discussions about education; and (3) the influence exerted by the Roman Catholic school board. In the new version of the ordinance of Foundation-based Education, the three cycles were shortened to two cycles (8 years), and article 10 of the ordinance, which contained the language policy of the federal government, was completely altered. The federal government abrogated its authority in relation to mandating a specific language to school boards; local boards were thus given the possibility to opt out of the use of Papiamentu as language of instruction. School boards were not only given the authority to choose different languages of instruction, but also to adopt a monolingual instead of a ‘bilingual’ model of education involving the three ‘official’ languages of the Netherlands Antilles: Papiamentu, Dutch, and English. No provision was made for lesser spoken or non-official languages. A provision for the inclusion of parents’ preferences was excluded; parents simply could choose the school with the language policy that most closely reflected their particular wishes. The Advisory Board (Raad van Advies) of the federal government urged the Minister of Education to establish additional criteria for the school boards to avoid frequent and unwarranted changes in the language of instruction (Letter of the Raad van Advies to the Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, January 11, 2007). The island council of Curaçao and members of Parliament of Curaçao20 and Bonaire,21 the teachers’ union and parents’ organizations also reacted, stating that this authority could not be delegated to private entities such as a school board that could not be held responsible for the quality of education within the democratic system of the Antillean government. The Minister of Education overruled the political motions, and did not try to reach a consensus between the various stakeholders, a situation that was unheard of in the history of Antillean education.

noch aangeeft waarom zij van bestaand beleid afwijkt, in welke mate dit ontwerp afwijkt van het ontwerp uit 2001–2002 of waarom de gekozen oplossing de meest werkzame is, is een zwak punt in dit wetgevingstraject (Translation: “Leeflang (the Minister of Education) states in the press that she has brought to an end a ‘long lasting discussion’ on the use of Papiamentu in primary school teaching. However, she does not elaborate on the long lasting discussion in the Explanatory Report of the legislative proposal, neither does she indicate why she has deviated from the existing policy, nor mentions why she changed the earlier proposal of 2001–2002 or why her chosen solution is a more feasible one. This can be regarded as the weak point in the legislative process”. See also Nercisio (2006) and Comenentia (2009). .  Landverordening funderend onderwijs, VV, No 4, Session 2006–2007: p. 6. .  Landsverordening funderend onderwijs, VV, no. 4, Staten, Session 2006–2007, p. 11.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

The Minister of Education and the Antillean parliament based their decisions on an interpretation of article 140 of the Antillean constitution. In their interpretation, language is a ‘learning tool’ and therefore subjected to the authority of local school boards in the name of freedom of choice in education. This is a very problematic interpretation of Article 140.22 The minister herself expressed doubts concerning this state of affairs by stating the following in the explanatory document of the ordinance for Foundation-Based Education. “If (regulation of) the language of instruction can be considered an instructional tool’ [which in fact it is not MD] then government should refrain from regulating it, because any regulation would put freedom of education in jeopardy”.23 Van der Velden (2008a) made the following remark on this aspect of her€defense: the position of the minister that the language of instruction is not an ‘objective on its own’ but “a means which must lead to the achievement of educational objectives”, may be the correct one in a community where one language predominates. Yet in a country where more languages co-exist, the government’s task is broader. This task cannot be delegated a-priori to private organizations. The regulation of the language of instruction is a foundation on which to build a coherent language policy. Regulating the languages’ status by law must be accompanied by language policy directed towards minimizing the unequal status of the languages involved.

He refers, moreover, to Skutnabb-Kangas (2001:€45) who characterizes bilingual models where students are forced to accept instruction through the medium of a foreign (often former colonial) high status language as ‘non-models’. The native language should not be seen as a ‘learning tool’, but as an objective in its own right. Article 2 of the ERNA (Eilandenregeling Nederlandse Antillen) the ordinance regulating the tasks of the island territories, moreover, does not cover issues of educational policy and factors impacting upon the quality of education, which is normally a federal

.  According to Comenentia (2009) Article 140: 2 on which the minister and the Antillean parliament based their decision is derived from Article 23 of the Dutch constitution. Both refer to freedom of religion or philosophy of life, the freedom to choose learning tools and the freedom to select teaching staff. He states that the Dutch word leermiddel (learning tool) was erroneously interpreted by the minister as to include the language of instruction. The term refers to books, maps, atlases, and learning instruments which are used in the classroom. Thus ironically the faulty interpretation of a Dutch word was used to abrogate the responsibility of the federal government on the issue of language and to leave it up to individual school boards. .  Original text in Dutch: Indien (de regeling van) onderwijsinstructietaal kan worden aangemerkt als leermiddel’ dient de overheid zich terughoudend op te stellen om niet de vrijheid van onderwijs in gevaar te brengen.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

responsibility. Thus according to Van der Velden the question remains, whether the Minister of Education is authorized to delegate a federal authority to a private entity on an island territory.

3.4.2  Language and education after Foundation-based Education The federal government’s way of handling the legislation on the use of Papiamentu shows an overall lack of commitment to a ‘national’ language policy and actually discouraged the use of a Papiamentu in education. The lack of an operational policy for article 9 in the 1979 ordinance, and the subsequent transfer of the authority to determine the language of instruction to the school boards, are clear examples of this avoidance policy. This attitude prompted the island government of Curaçao and Bonaire to take the matter of language policy into their own hands and start with Foundationbased Education in 2001. The school boards of Curaçao promptly followed suit. They changed the language policy in their schools in the school year of 2006/2007 from Papiamentu to Dutch, prior to the moment of legislation (in 2008) alleging that the island territory had not provided enough school materials for the second cycle (the 4th to the 8th grade of the former primary education) of Foundation-based Education. The Roman Catholic schools tried to revert to the ‘old’ situation and arrived at a situation ‘in between’. At present, of the 28 Roman Catholic primary schools, one school teaches completely in Dutch and 27 are supposedly bilingual, 8 starting reading and writing in Papiamentu, and 19 starting reading and writing in Dutch. In practice, two models of bilingual education are currently used: (1) reading and writing in Papiamentu is taught in grade 3 with a transition to reading and writing in Dutch in grade€5; or (2) reading and writing starts in Dutch in grade 1 and reading and writing in Papiamentu starts later in grade 5 (Drs. Saby de Bies, personal communication). Public schools in Curaçao and two of the smaller school boards maintained Papiamentu as the language of instruction and teach Dutch as a subject. Yet a survey of the public school language policy in the class rooms (Dijkhoff 2009) shows that some schools are using a bilingual model similar to the one used by Roman Catholic schools: they start with Papiamentu as the language of instruction in the lower grades and change to Dutch in grades 4 or 5. Of the 5 schools in Bonaire, 1 Roman Catholic school teaches in Dutch in all grades, whereas 4 teach in Papiamentu (Dijkhoff 2008b). There are however, efforts afoot to increase the level of Dutch. As Bonaire will become a Dutch overseas municipality in the near future, the Dutch inspectorate wrote a report on the level of education of the present pupils (Roeters, January 2009) and judged all the 5 schools as ‘weak’ schools and opted for a program to increase the level of Dutch and mathematics (Kamerbrief Bijleveld BES, Tweede Kamer, Vergaderjaar 2008–2009, 31 700, IV en VII, nr. 36). Competency in Papiamentu was not tested and nothing was said in the report on this particular issue.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

Notwithstanding differences between bilingual models, all schools are supposed to meet the same standards and objectives in both Dutch and Papiamentu (Department of Education. November 2006).24 In schools which teach in Dutch, Papiamentu is mandatory as a subject and in all schools which teach in Papiamentu, Dutch is a mandatory subject (as are also English and Spanish). However, the amount of time dedicated to Dutch in the school curriculum varies considerably from school to school (between 15 to 45 minutes a day, generally five times a week). The ‘new’ ordinance for Foundation-based Education thus created a language policy with negative consequences for the island territories. The change from one language of instruction in pre-primary and primary education to three possible languages of instruction, including several bilingual combinations will have far reaching consequences for the budget of the island territories. In principle, schools are now allowed to rethink their language policy almost yearly, with no evaluation procedures nor any conditions attached to this ‘new’ responsibility. And the island territories can only comply financially without having any say in the matter. The postponement of a definite decision on the language policy for Foundationbased Education for a number of years (1996 to 2008) and the actual transfer of the authority of the federal government in 2008 to the school boards, based on the erroneous idea that language is ‘a tool of instruction’ and therefore part of so-called ‘freedom of education’ (Article 40 of the constitution of the Netherlands Antilles),25 also suggests an impetus to discourage the use of Papiamentu as a language of instruction in primary education. The federal government has systematically avoided any concrete formulation of a language policy and maintains this strategy up to the present time. Any intentions on the part of the island territories to formulate their own course of action are also systematically obstructed. The island territory of Curaçao formulated a language policy in 2007 (Dijkhoff, Snetselaar, Tormala-Nita, & Richardson 2007) in accordance with Foundation-based Education, but because of a dispute on the interpretation of the authority of the Minister of Education and that of the Commissioner of Education, it has not yet been approved by the island council. The Minister of Education has the authority to propose a language policy (but delegated this authority), whereas the Commissioner of Education is responsible for implementation of

.  The learning goals are for Papiamentu, Dutch, English and Spanish. Those for Dutch consist of two levels: level I (a higher level) is for schools which use Dutch as the language of instruction in secondary education (all schools in Curaçao, except Kolegio Erasmo) and level€II (a lower level) is for schools which do not teach in Dutch in secondary education (Kolegio Erasmo and the schools in St. Maarten and Saba, which teach in English). .  For a discussion regarding the interpretation of Article 140 cf. Toré (1983), Luiten (1983).



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

language policy, without being able to influence its outcome, except in public schools. The federal government employs the same strategy in matters concerning the status of Papiamentu in the community. An official orthography for Papiamentu, once Aruba had left the Antillean constellation in 1986, never materialized. The authority to stipulate an orthography for Papiamentu was delegated to a private institution, the Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma (Severing & Weijer 2008) and any project proposals to start up the codification process and restore the Standardization Committee of Papiamentu have been met with silent disapproval.26 The decisions of the federal government may have an effect in the short term, but they are certainly not the final outcome in relation to the role of Papiamentu in education. This can be seen in the reaction of schools, teachers and parents. The decision of Roman Catholic school boards to return to Dutch as the language of instruction in August 2008/2009 was not implemented without resistance, and resulted in the two bilingual models already discussed. Parents moreover, are less resistant to Papiamentu as a language of instruction, and their reactions have generally been more positive than negative in both Bonaire and Curaçao. According to a UNESCO (2003a) document on language endangerment (Ad hoc Language Group on Endangered Languages, Language vitality and endangerment 2003), the attitudes fostered by linguistic policies of a polity may inspire and mobilize their populations for the maintenance of their languages, or may force them to abandon them. These linguistic attitudes can be a powerful force both for promotion and loss of languages. Members of the dominant culture shape the ideological environment, often propagating a value system in which their own language is seen as a positive asset, and believed to be a unifying symbol. In this light, the attitude of the Dutch Minister of Education reinforces the position of Dutch against Papiamentu when he states that “Dutch must remain the language of instruction in the Netherlands Antilles. (Ronald Plasterk: ‘Nederlands moet instructietaal blijven’, Caribische redactie, Radio Nederland Wereldomroep 25-10-2008). Note that this attitude does not correspond with the Dutch state’s otherwise tolerant nature regarding minority languages in Europe (Article€7.1 under b of the European Manifest for regional and minority languages).

.  Severing & Weijer (2008) mentions that the federal government delegated this authority to their institution: “The text of the law stipulates that for the Dutch language the guidelines set by the Dutch institute the Nederlandse Taalunie, will be valid while for the Papiamentu language FPI is named as the agency in charge of determining the orthographical rules.” The agreements arrived at in the Nederlandse Taalunie however, have to be ratified by the respective governments of Belgium and the Netherlands, whereas in the case of Papiamentu, no such provision, as far as we know, has been put into effect.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

4.  Language and education in Aruba 4.1  Language policy in Aruba up to 1986 Generally the educational history of Aruba parallels that of Curaçao and Bonaire: it involves similar problems, solutions and outcomes. There were some efforts to contextualize education with methods such as Nos Tera (geography), Nos Patria (history) and Zonnig Nederlands (Dutch), but there was no infrastructure for the continuous production of local school materials.The position of Dutch in education is similar, even after the teaching staff gradually changed from Dutch to local Aruban teachers. However, the Aruban educational authorities’ and Aruban teachers’ assumptions and methods have remained largely the same as those of their European predecessors, namely: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

absence of a clear vision on education, lack of learning objectives in primary education, Dutch as the sole medium of instruction Dutch taught as a mother tongue, lack of contextualization of Dutch school materials that deny the multicultural and multilingual character of Aruban society, absence of Papiamentu27 in education and a complete denial of its importance in education, as the language of the majority, absence of in-service training for teachers

This situation has had negative consequences for the cognitive, social and emotional development of children on the Leeward Islands, including Aruba. Teachers have not been able to change the system on their own, yet they have often improvised ad hoc solutions within the present system with the intention of helping students to cope, thereby perpetuating a system that is counterproductive. Education in the region has become a fossil, a dead structure without content, and does not challenge students to engage with ‘real’ learning. Aruba differs from Curaçao and Bonaire, however, to the extent that Papiamentu has not become a subject in primary schools. Kindergarten and special education teachers in Aruba, however, have dared to take matters in their own hands. Since the 1950s kindergarten teachers have been using Papiamentu unofficially. It was only in 1992 that the use of Papiamentu next to Dutch became

.  Papiamentu is written with an ‘u’ in the in the phonological spelling of Curaçao and Bonaire and with an ‘o’ in the Aruban etymological spelling. In this article we use the phonological spelling.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

official policy (Landsverordening Kleuteronderwijs Aruba 1992 art. 6.1. and 6.2). Special education teachers have been employing Papiamentu since 1974.28

4.2  Language policy in Aruba after 1986 In 1986 Aruba obtained its Status Aparte, a new political relationship with the Netherlands and the five islands that stayed within the polity of the Netherlands Antilles. From this date on Aruba followed its own path. In the government plan for 1986–1990 education was given a high priority. It was believed that a more efficient educational system was needed in order to preserve the high level of socio-economic development in Aruba. Several commissions were established to reorganize the current educational system. Their recommendations are laid out in the following documents that are supposed to guide the upcoming process of innovation: 1. Renovacion di enseñansa; un prioridad pa futuro (Innovation of education; a priority for the future) – (Directie Onderwijs Aruba 1988a). This document is the basis for educational reform and describes the framework of the new educational system and the new educational structure. Chapter VIII.7 is dedicated to the language of instruction. With reference to several old and new documents on the issue, it supports the ideas laid out in the document Pa un enseñansa bilingual, mentioned below. (Advice of the Commission Stuurgroep Herstructurering Onderwijs (SHO). 2. Het Pedagogisch Instituut (The teacher training institute) (Directie Onderwijs Aruba 1988b):

This document lays the foundation for a new teacher training institute which has the following tasks:



– pre-service training, – in-service training, – research and development on the function of teacher training, – stimulation of and an active participation in educational reform on the basis of its expertise, and – service to the field of education and the community educators. (Advice of the Commission Werkgroep Herstructurering Opleidingsonderwijs WHO)



.  This is oral history: there are no official documents, only the experience of the teachers who are very proud of their decision and are celebrating the 35th anniversary of Papiamentu in special education in Aruba in 2009. The green light for development of Papiamentu materials, such as Dal bay numa and Papiamentu na Colo can be considered as official permission to use the language. (Ervaringen en nieuwe denkbeelden in taalonderwijs en taalplanning, Onderwijsdagen 1994:€102).

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

3. Pa un enseñansa bilingual (For bilingual education) (Directie Onderwijs Aruba 1988a) The starting point of the commission was the existing language situation in the schools which is characterized by the use of a foreign language as the language of instruction. The commission called this situation an “anomaly that has to be corrected” (p.3). The solution that is presented is a ‘normalization’ or a ‘healing’ with Papiamentu as the language of instruction. But, because of the sociolinguistic situation in Aruba where Dutch still has important functions, the commission proposed a bilingual educational system with both Papiamentu and Dutch as languages of instruction. (Advice of the Commission Werkgroep Papiamentu) Hereafter, several other working groups were commissioned to analyze the present situation and prepare for the implementation of the new ideas. The commission for the innovation of the teacher training college −€ formerly Arubaanse Pedagogische Academie (APA) and now Instituto Pedagogico Arubano (IPA)€− started its work in 1989, followed in 1991 by the commission for lower vocational training −€ Lager beroepsonderwijs (LBO) now Enseñansa Profesional Basico (EPB)€− and in 1994 by the commission for secondary vocational training −€ Middelbaar Administratief Onderwijs (MAO) and Middelbaar Technisch Onderwijs (MTS) into Enseñansa Profesional Intermedio (EPI). One of the recommendations of the document entitled Pa un enseñansa bilingual was the establishment of a group given the task of promoting Papiamentu in the community. This idea resulted in the setting up of a foundation called Grupo Pa Promove Papiamentu or GP3, which involves representatives from all important governmental entities. GP3 did a good job promoting Papiamentu through its informational programs on radio and television. 1997 was designated the year of Papiamentu (Aña di Papiamentu) and in that year GP3 introduced a special award called Cadushi di Cristal, ‘The crystal cactus’, which honored those persons who most effectively promoted Papiamentu through their art, research or other efforts. GP3 no longer exists, but Cadushi di Cristal is still awarded every two years. 1994 was a very important year in this optimistic realm of educational innovation. The Department of Education with its Section of Curriculum Development together with the Instituto Pedagogico Arubano and the Sindicato di Maestro di Aruba (SIMAR, the teachers union) organized a four day long Language Conference entitled Ervaringen en nieuwe denkbeelden in taalonderwijs en taalplanning, ‘Experiences and new ideas about language education and language planning’, attended by local and international experts. The aim of this conference was to bring the discussion about the Aruban language situation to a higher level and to finally attain a wellgrounded language policy (Taalcongres 1994, Stuurgroep Taalproject). The conference was followed in October and November of that same year by workshops for teachers,



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

with different panels and activities on the language issue (Onderwijsdagen 1994, ed. Stuurgroep Taalproject). In 1995 the Stuurgroep Herstructurering Algemeen Vormend Onderwijs (SHA) started to prepare for the innovation of general secondary education. General secondary education is divided into three streams: MAVO, which prepares students for secondary vocational education, HAVO which prepares students for higher vocational education, and VWO which prepares students for university. Every stream has a ciclo basico consisting of the first two years and a ciclo avansa consisting of the last two years of MAVO, the last three years of HAVO and the last four years for VWO. (Projectbureau SHA 2005. Nota ciclo Avansa – Beleidsvoorstellen voor de bovenbouw van het algemeen voortgezet onderwijs). The structure and the curriculum were adapted to link-up with the secondary school system in The Netherlands. In the 2004–2005 school year, this restructured system finally became active. Papiamentu became a subject in the ciclo basico and it was meant to be a mandatory subject up to the exams at the end of the ciclo avansa. However, the plans suddenly changed. The new curriculum for 2006–2007 showed, that the subject of Papiamentu would not be offered after the third year of MAVO, the fourth year of HAVO, and the fifth year of VWO and that it is an elective in only one of the study profiles, namely Humaniora (Language and Arts).29 In 1995 the Proyecto Innovacion di Enseñansa Preparatorio y Enseñansa Basico, (PRIEPEB), the official commission charged with the special task of studying and developing a new primary school system, began its activities and in May 1996 the commission presented its proposals to the stakeholders in the educational field. After a process of deliberations the report entitled Un bon Enseñansa Basico: Condicion pa un miho futuro – Plan Strategico 1999–2008 (Directie Onderwijs PRIEPEB 1999) −€a document that analyzes education and the community and proposes a strategic plan for educational reform€− was finalized in June 1999. This document contains proposals for reform, change and improvement of kindergarten and primary schools over a period of ten consecutive years. The plan recommends an educational model that reflects the sociolinguistic reality of Aruba and that takes into account the fact that Dutch will remain a language of instruction in secondary education. This implies a bilingual system involving Papiamentu and Dutch as languages of instruction. This model is supposed to solve the problems related to the quality of language education and to the language of instruction. To prepare the implementation of this new primary school system, different study groups started their research for development.

.  In the ciclo avansa a study profile is a combination of subjects. Study profiles are: Mens- & Maatschappijwetenschappen (Social Studies), Natuurwetenschappen (Science) and Humaniora (Language and Arts).

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

In 2002 a document entitled Curiculo Enseñansa Basico Aruba – Programa Nacional, (Directie Onderwijs, PRIEPEB 2002a) to which all the educational stakeholders had a chance to contribute, was presented to educators. This document became the basis for the development of all the other documents concerning the language model and the specific curricula of the different areas of education (clusters of related subjects). It presents a new vision on education for Aruba, the general outline of a new curriculum, and new goals. For language in education two documents are important, namely Habri porta pa nos drenta, ‘Open the door for us’, (Directie Onderwijs, PRIEPEB 2002c) and Curiculo Idioma y Comunicacion (Directie Onderwijs, PRIEPEB 2002b).30 The first document describes the language situation in Aruba and in the schools and proposes a multilingual primary school –€that includes two years of kindergarten and six years of elementary school€– where students will be exposed to the four languages that are important in Aruba: Papiamentu, Dutch, English and Spanish. In this new system, primary school is divided in two cycles: the 1st cycle consists of the two years of kindergarten and the first and second grade of the existing elementary school; the 2nd cycle consists of grades three to six. In this multilingual school (scol multilingual) Papiamentu is the language of instruction, meaning that all subjects are taught through Papiamentu. Papiamentu will also be taught as a subject, with the objective of improving the language skills of the students, both at the level of daily communication, and at the academic level. Aruba being a multilingual community, Dutch, English and Spanish are taught as well, mainly through the development of oral skills during the 1st cycle of primary education, with and through the development of both oral and literacy skills during in the 2nd cycle. Another important change will be a content-based approach, which will enable students to acquire knowledge in any one of the languages mentioned above, thus preparing them for secondary education (Pereira 2008). In this approach language skills are developed together with the knowledge of content of the different disciplines. In a content-based approach the focus is on comprehension and on the development of language and thinking skills. The document entitled Curiculo Idioma y Comunicacion (2003) − a PRIEPEB document with vision and a mission statement as well as goals and a curriculum for language in the multilingual school −€presented a year later, gives concrete form to the ideas of Habri porta pa nos drenta describing the vision of language education in the new multilingual school and the learning objectives or standards of the language

.  PRIEPEB document with the proposal for a language curriculum. Other PRIEPEB curriculum documents are: Ciencia natural y Tecnologia, Estudio Social, Matematica, Formacion di Arte, Educacion di Salud, ICT.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

curriculum. This document describes the importance of Papiamentu –€ as first and second language€– for the development of the cognitive academic language skills, and the relations between Papiamentu and the three foreign languages. PRIEPEB has since organized annual meetings and conferences to inform and discuss the state of affairs with educators.

4.3  Optimism and disappointment in the twenty first century Two of the conditions for success of the new school system are adequate school materials and well prepared teachers. At the Department of Education, different groups were formed to develop school materials. Up to now the production of reading books has been reasonably successful. The production of a Papiamentu grammar is progressing. However, the development of language textbooks has been problematic, due to a lack of experience in this matter and due to the fact that appointing full-time skilled developers seems not to be an option for the government. Nevertheless the cooperation with the Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma (FPI) of Curaçao on the language textbook Cristal – a Papiamentu textbook series for secondary schools – has proved particularly fruitful. This has led to further collaboration and the production of Rampa, an adaptation of the Curaçaoan Trampolin, an integrated series for the first two years of the first cycle of primary education, especially for the areas language (Papiamentu and Dutch), mathematics and social development. It is obvious that there is still a lot more to be done. Papiamentu teachers have been trained since the 1990s. Aruba has a team of derdegraads en tweedegraads Papiamentu teachers, the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. These Papiamentu teachers, who teach at secondary schools, are in charge of the Papiamentu courses for primary school teachers organized by the Instituto Pedagogico Arubano. They are also charged with developing school materials at the Section of Curriculum Development of the Department of Education. They thus play an important role in the preparation and development of materials for multilingual primary schools. Mandatory teacher training courses were started at the Instituto Pedagogico Arubano in 2006 and are financed by the Fondo di desaroyo Aruba (FDA).31 These courses have the following content: Papiamentu knowledge and competencies, the new vision on education and language education, didactics and practice. While the training is taking place and the development of the school materials is finally on (a slow but steady) track, the Grupo Idioma of the Department of Education is struggling with

.  FDA is a monetary facility provided by Dutch development aid and controlled by the Aruba Investment Bank.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

the implementation of the multilingual school project. (Departamento di Enseñansa, Aruba 2007. Masterplan Proyecto multilingual) The former Minister of Education however, changed the original eight year plan with Papiamentu as the language of instruction to a new model: The characteristics of this model are: –â•fi

–â•fi –â•fi

–â•fi

Papiamentu, national and official language (Landsverordening Officiële talen Aruba 21 mei 2003, regels inzake het Papiamento en het Nederlands als officiële talen) and mother tongue of the majority of the Aruba children (70%) is language of instruction from Kindergarten (K1) until the fourth grade of the elementary school (E4) and subject until E6. Dutch, a foreign language for the vast majority of children (94%), and the other official language of Aruba, will be the language of instruction in E5 and E6. Dutch, English and Spanish start in K1 with a special pedagogical approach called ‘familiarization”, to introduce and explore the languages in a playful way, with different targets and intensity. In the higher grades these foreign languages will become subjects with systematic instruction: Dutch in E2, English in E4 and Spanish in E5. There will be a stronger emphasis on Dutch (compared to the model proposed in the document Habri porta pa nos drenta, as described earlier in this chapter):



To prevent a sudden switch from Papiamentu to Dutch, the developers proposed steppingstones starting in E3, which still have to be elaborated on:



1. one subject in Dutch, probably Ciencia y Naturalesa, from E3 onwards, emphasizing both language and content 2. one subject alternating in Papiamentu and Dutch 3. a strong program for Dutch as a foreign language 4. once or twice a week a lesson in a subject (that may vary) is taught in Dutch.

–â•fi

Whereas the content-based approach focuses on comprehension and on the development of language and thinking skills, this approach emphasizes the relations between the subjects.

The new school system also has to prove that the students perform better in Papiamentu and learn better Dutch.32 This is the main reason for embarking on a pilot project involving three schools that was started in August 2009. In the meantime one

.  Masterplan Scol Multilingual, April 2007, Department of Education, Aruba, p 5: letter of the Minister of Education and Administration/2187.



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

school has already opted out. The main reason is the fact that the teachers do not consider themselves sufficiently prepared for this innovative project. Nothwithstanding these developments, discussions are still ongoing (cf. Amigoe about language in education May 2009) and Papiamentu voices are also systematically being silenced. For instance, Highschool Colegio Arubano has put a ban on Papiamentu in the classrooms and wants to focus on Dutch proficiency. In 2007, moreover, the Minister of Education published the report “The learner, our focus: A Strategic National Education Plan 2007–2017” (Nationaal Onderwijs Plan, NOP). In this NOP language problems are not described in any detail. In this report there is no reference to the earlier analyses of the language situation in Aruba nor were any ideas on the language policy included. The impression exists that the whole process of thinking (about the language situation and the resolution of the problems that arise from it) has to start all over again. In the last three years renewed emphasis has also been on proficiency in Dutch in primary school. Since 2007 all sixth graders are tested on language proficiency in Dutch and mathematical skills. As primary education does not have national learning standards, the tests are based on the content of the Dutch teaching materials. Students are therefore tested, apparently unwittingly, according to the national learning standards for Dutch schools in The Netherlands. The ‘insufficient’ results are predictable. Schools were required to produce and implement an improvement plan for Dutch instruction and students were tested again in 2008 and 2009. The improvements were minimal: The national average of the final score was 5.0 in 2007 (Central Bureau of Statistics 2007) and 5.5 in 2008 (Central Bureau of Statistics 2008).33 It is obvious that trying to improve education by perpetuating the status quo is not a viable solution. Yet no advance has been made in recent years concerning educational reform and language policy or planning. Two years after its publication, we still do not know what is going to happen with the NOP and all the other reform plans. The Department of Education, where the expertise lies to address this situation, has to assume a passive role awaiting the decisions of the minister. The fear exists that educational reform is not a political priority. An example is the (failed) attempt of the Minister of Education at the end of June 2009 to use a subsidy from FDA that was allocated to the multi-year plan, and of which the multilingual school is an important part, for the construction of a new highschool. The educational professionals on the one hand and the politicians on the other hand, thus seem to have different priorities where education and language in education are concerned.

.  In the Dutch educational system 10 is the highest score and means ‘outstanding’, 9 = very good, 8 = good, 7 = amply sufficient, 6 = sufficient, 5 = insufficient, 4 = highly insufficient, 3€=€bad, 2 = very bad

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

5.  Mapping the future … language and language policy both exist in (and language management must contend with) highly complex, interacting and dynamic contexts, the modification of any of its parts may have correlated effects (and causes) on any other of its parts. A host of non-linguistic factors (political, demographic, social, religious, cultural, psychological, bureaucratic and so on) regularly account for any attempt by persons or groups to intervene in the language practices and the beliefs of other persons and groups, and for the subsequent changes that do or do not occur. (Spolsky 2004:€6)

Any changes to language policy therefore will be highly controversial and need to be considered taking all these opinions into account and involving all those responsible for language policy and the quality of education. Within this context, language is not merely a ‘tool of instruction’. It is a means of communication itself, a means of expression and interaction between individuals and in groups in society at large. Language is also culturally laden; it is the expression of a particular and unique speech community, with its own history, vision of the world, and system of values (esthetic and ethical). It is therefore a treasure accumulated through the ages, transmitted and enriched from one generation to the next. It is also part of a people’s identification as a group. The language of a people therefore cannot be forgotten, changed or given up for another more convenient one when considering its role in education (World bank June 2006). Benefits of first language instruction in a community where it is a minority language, have also been emphasized by the European charter for regional and minority languages in a report by a Committee of Experts made on March 6 2007:€7 (Council of Europe October 2009). These papers suggest that Papiamentu being the language of the majority should be cherished, protected and its use in education stimulated in order to enhance the development of Antillean society and in order to help children reach their maximum educational potential. To impose Dutch, a minority language, on the Papiamentu speaking majority of children in preprimary and primary education, and thus attempt the assimilation of its speakers, is therefore reproachable, to say the least, and seriously undermines the positive development of the majority of Antillean and Aruban society. Papiamentu cannot improve its status in society nor enhance its expressive potential if its usage in domains such as education is not promoted or encouraged. Government policy plays a vital role in shaping the language ideologies of a society which in turn become an important force in determining whether or not a community abandons its ancestral language or comes to see it as a positive asset and a symbol of national identification. In fact, linguistic counter-identification tends to thrive when the use of a language is repressed and tends to recede when the language is tolerated (Joseph 2006). Thus any decision to restrict the use of Papiamentu in the future will



Language and education in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao 

create a counter force. Decisions of leaders are important but they are certainly not decisive: It is “all those collective behaviors which seek to reform or revolutionize society, and those actions of social agencies and institutions which determine policies in a deliberate effort to affect social change” in language planning processes, which will affect the actual transformation (Cooper 1989:€167). This can be noted in the reaction of schools, teachers and parents to the decision of the Roman Catholic school board in Curaçao to return to Dutch as the language of instruction in August 2008/2009. None of the schools actually reverted completely to the old situation: they created a new one. The atmosphere on talk shows dedicated to the language issue over the last 5 years also gives the impression that parents are becoming less resistant to Papiamentu as a language of instruction, as their reactions to the recent changes have generally been more positive than negative, in both Bonaire and Curaçao. In the last 5 years between 75 to 100 teachers have finished a course on the Papiamentu language at bachelor level and work as teachers or language consultants in different schools and government agencies in Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire. The efforts of these Papiamentu teachers as well as the input of other professionals are helping the community to understand the necessity of the innovative processes at hand, and are actively influencing the final outcome in this complex process of educational change. These professionals are uniting the islands and getting results, something that the respective governments responsible for language planning have so far not been able to achieve. The FPI in Curaçao, for example, has worked together with its Aruban counterparts to produce the language series Cristal for secondary education, which is a duplicate of the language series Mosaiko used in secondary education in both Curaçao and Bonaire. Papiamentu teachers of Curaçao, Aruba (and proximately also Bonaire) are uniting and working together in sister foundations.34 Leading questions in the discussions are: what have we achieved together? what should we continue doing together? and what can we do together in the short term in projects related to the following language issues: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Papiamentu in the legal domain Pedagogical issues in primary education Language rights, culture and identity of Papiamentu speakers Empowerment, coaching and development of teachers Evaluation of school programs through reliable data Feasibility studies, cost effectiveness and quality of education Testing and evaluating of Papiamentu language programs

.  Founded on the 30th of April 2008 and the 24th of April 2009 on Curaçao and Aruba respectively.

 Marta Dijkhoff & Joyce Pereira

Appel and Verhoeven (1991) use the term ‘diglossia’ to characterize the language situation in the Leeward Islands, which is at the basis of the language situation in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.35 Typical of this situation is the difference in function, status and domains of use of the languages involved: On the one hand, there is a language with a low status, which is acquired as a native language, and functions as a means of communication throughout society: Papiamentu. On the other hand there is language with a relatively high status, native to very few and acquired by the majority through formal education: Dutch.  (Dijkhoff 1998)

According to Devonish (1986), new language situations tend to surface when socioeconomic developments in a highly industrialized society emerge in the wake of pressures in the community for the disappearance of an ‘old’ diglossia. This is confirmed by Mufwene (2008:€32) who states that “language changes are externally motivated, in the sense that motivation for change is external to language structure, and contact (situated at the inter-idiolectal level) has always been an important factor causing changes in the ‘balance of power’ among competing variants.” Thus although the language situation in the Leeward Islands can still, to a certain extent, be characterized as diglossic, the once internalized norms are shifting and domains and functions formerly assigned to Dutch are at present giving way to Papiamentu, despite the massive forces at work that are constantly trying to maintain the status quo in education. We conclude this chapter with the following remark. Papiamentu being the language of the majority should be cherished, protected and its use in education and other domains stimulated by the respective governments and other public institutions in ways that are in accordance with its growing vitality. Only then can it be safeguarded from social extinction and grow in social status, extend its vocabulary and domains of use, and develop into a mature language, equipped for an important role in all aspects and at all levels of formal education.

.  The term was first used by Ferguson (1959) and applied to situations in which two distinct varieties of the same language divide up linguistic functions unevenly. The H (High) variety is generally used for high status public and literature functions and the L (Low) variety is used for at home, in the neighborhood and normal social discourse. Fishman (1967) as discussed in Spolsky (2004) extended the meaning of the term to cover cases where the H and L varieties are two unrelated languages. The language practices in diglossia are usually associated with clear beliefs in the superiority of the H language, and language management and language planning reflects this.

Cape Verdean in education A linguistic and human right* Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

University of Michigan/Jeremiah E. Burke High School/ Universidade de Santiago This paper illustrates how the Cape Verdean language evolved from being oral to gaining written representation, a necessary step before integrating the educational realm. We report three sociolinguistic surveys showing the gradual shift in attitudes by native speakers towards the Cape Verdean language. We also examine the evolution of orthographic conventions in Cape Verde and demonstrate that they correlate with creole identity and reflect a complex interplay of social, symbolic and political factors. We describe the challenges the language has encountered in gaining a footing in education including dialectal variation and inadequate linguistic description. Finally, we provide a list of recommendations (including teacher training and parental outreach) to be implemented to help the language gain its place in education. Keywords:╇ Cape Verdean language; Cape Verdean Creole Institute; UNESCO position papers on Education; ALUPEC; orthographic choices

1.  Introduction To most people, linguistic rights (among them the right to receive schooling in one’s mother tongue) are an intrinsic part of human rights, and yet in creolophone societies, it is seldom the case that the people’s language has any type of statute or representation in state institutions such as schools. Back in 1953, UNESCO’s keen awareness that language is a fundamental attribute of cultural identity and empowerment led the organization to draw a tight correlation between linguistic rights and the universal declaration of human rights. For this very reason, the title of our paper is meant to reflect our belief that to deprive children from being educated in their home language

*We are grateful for valuable comments from the editors of this volume and from an anonymous reviewer on prior versions of this paper. Their input helped improve its overall quality and coverage. All remaining errors are, however, our own responsibility.

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

in their own country is to strip them off their most basic human right: access to education, economic advancement, and ultimately, a strong sense of self. This particular paper considers the case of the Cape Verdean language and provides a detailed account of its past and present challenges in gaining representation in the Cape Verdean school system as an object of study as well as a primary language of instruction.1 The main objective of this paper is to illustrate how the Cape Verdean language has gradually gained written representation, developed language infrastructure and only slowly expanded its spheres of usage. In the process, we examine the factors that have contributed to the growing legitimacy of the language over the past century, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. These factors will be discussed within a contextual analysis of the interaction between language and education from linguistic (orthographic choices), sociolinguistic (sociolinguistic surveys), sociopolitical (governmental position regarding the new orthographic script), and cultural perspectives (literary tradition). This paper is divided into five main sections and is organized as follows: First, we briefly present the socio-historical context in which the Cape Verdean language emerged and highlight the role of variation as an obstacle to adequate representation of the Cape Verdean language in the sphere of education.2 Second, to demonstrate the negative impact of the absence of children’s language in the Cape Verdean classrooms, we study the educational, linguistic, social, cultural and economic arguments in favor of early literacy in the mother tongue based on two UNESCO position papers on education published in 1953 and 2003b. The examination of these two documents will show that its global recommendation regarding the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity has largely been ignored by most creolophone societies including Cape Verde until now. It goes without saying that UNESCO can only make recommendations and cannot act as a substitute for any sovereign national state. The fact remains, however, that no steps have been taken so far, in terms of language policy and practices, to concretely open up education to the Cape Verdean language. Third, we focus on how the Cape Verdean language has evolved from being oral to gaining written representation, a necessary step before integrating it into the educational system. On this matter, we report on the outcome of three sociolinguistic surveys that illustrate quite clearly the gradual shift in attitudes by native speakers towards the Cape Verdean language. We also examine the evolution of orthographic conventions and

.  We use the labels Cape Verdean language or Cape Verdian and Kriolu to refer to the same linguistic entity. We use the first label based on our belief that the Cape Verdean language is a natural, full-fledged language like any other, independently from its ‘creole’ status. We use the second label, based on the fact that all speakers of the language refer to it by the name of Kriolu. We chose to write Kriolu in the new orthographic script, the ALUPEC. .  See Siegel (1999a) and the introduction to this volume for a good overview of the obstacles creole languages typically encounter when they try to access the domain of education.



Cape Verdean in education 

choices in Cape Verde. We demonstrate that such choices correlate with creole identity and reflect a complex interplay of social, symbolic and political factors. We summarize the three main attempts at designing an orthographic script and focus on the recently adopted convention, the ALUPEC. We present the reasoning and choices behind the ALUPEC orthography, describe its main characteristics and discuss how it has been evaluated and used by both educators and speakers. We provide evidence of its positive reception by reporting on the results of workshops organized by the Cape Verdean Creole Institute (CCI) in 1998 and 2008, and on the outcome of the most recent round table on the ALUPEC that took place in Praia, Cape Verde (November 2008). We also address the hurdles it has encountered. Fourth, we describe the challenges the language has encountered in gaining a footing in education. Here, we discuss arguments put forward by some opponents to the use of Cape Verdean in education, as they relate to dialectal variation, inadequate linguistic description, and insufficient representation of the multiple varieties of the archipelago. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of using one representative script for the Leeward Islands and one for the Windward Islands (as suggested by Manuel Veiga among others) as opposed to allowing each island to use its own variety. We examine the logistics of alternative strategies. Finally, we provide a list of recommendations that should be implemented to help the creole gain its rightful place in education. In this last section, we discuss issues involving teacher training and outreach to parents as well as measures to help change the current political surface acceptance but underlying resistance to true governmental support for Cape Verdean as a language of instruction. We also explore possible pilot projects that could demonstrate efficacy of literacy in the mother tongue and higher rates of second language acquisition. The key to both is the full recognition and integration of the children’s native tongue into education, as it is undeniably the locus of identity and personal empowerment. Now, we turn to a brief sketch of the socio-historical situation of the islands.

2.  A brief socio-historical overview The Cape Verdean language is a creole, also known as Kabuverdianu or Kriolu, that is spoken in the Cape Verde islands, an archipelago situated in the Atlantic Ocean at approximately 310 miles from the Senegalese coast. The archipelago is divided into two main clusters, the Windward Islands composed of Sal, Boa Vista, São Nicolau, Santa Luzia, São Vicente and Santo Antão; the Leeward Islands, made up of Maio, Santiago, Fogo and Brava. This basic dual geographic division should not detract from the fact that there is almost as much linguistic variation between these two main clusters as within each cluster and each of its islands. The reasons for this are in part geographical, in part historical: the Cape Verde islands were settled in different periods of history and often

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

by different populations of Portuguese settlers and African slaves. For instance, the islands of Santiago and Fogo were settled as early as 1461 and the islands of Sal and São Vicente as late as the first half of the 19th century. Hence, the supposed mix between Portuguese, Mande and West-Atlantic languages is not reflected to the same degree and proportions in all of the language varieties. This uneven mixing of linguistic features combined with distinct settlement histories for the islands and a diglossic situation where Cape Verdean co-exists with Portuguese make for a complex variation continuum. This variation has had major ramifications for orthographic choices and language policy. In Section€ 3 below, we show that variation has been construed as an obstacle to consensus building and as an impediment to its advancement in the realm of education. Given that variation is ‘un fait de langue’, we formulate recommendations in Section€4.2 that could help teachers, students, curriculum developers and didacticians deal with variability in the reading materials. The key is to highlight what is core and common to all the varieties and to stress that linguistic variation is not an obstacle to Cape Verdean being recognized as the national language of the people. The variation within the archipelago has its counterpart in the diasporic communities abroad where Cape Verdean co-exists with other languages: Dutch, English, French or Italian, among others. Indeed, there are about 434,000 Cape Verdeans currently living in Cape Verde and approximately one million including immigrants and their children residing abroad. The main destinations of Cape Verdean immigrants are the United States (with the largest population estimated at about 600,000), Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Luxemburg, and Senegal. Although the islands became independent from the Portuguese in 1975, to this day, Portuguese is still their only official language and Cape Verdean only their national language. It is estimated that between 40% (Bartens 2001:€37) and 50% (Le€Petit Futé 1999:€56) of the population speak Portuguese, however, degrees of fluency in Portuguese vary greatly. Almada Duarte (1998) characterizes the Cape Verdean situation as being a case of diglossia rather than a case of bilingualism. In her view, only a minority of the population is able to use (even less write) Portuguese correctly (Almada Duarte 1998:€158) in spite of the fact that newspapers, most publications and televised news are all in Portuguese. Elsewhere, Almada Duarte (1998:€165) reports on the Cape Verdean youth’s sense of frustration at not dominating completely the written use of the Portuguese language when their own creole language has been denied access to written expression (in schools). More recently, citizens such as Marciano Moreira expressed quite eloquently to the media the lack of bilingualism among many Cape Verdean speakers when he stated that Portuguese is not Cape Verdeans’ mother tongue, hence it is quite normal that they do not speak it fluently which causes outsiders to deride them (Expresso das Ilhas, March 12, 2009). Given Almada Duarte’s (1998) remarks and those of other observers such as Marciano Moreira who deplores the absence of true bilingualism in Cape Verde, it is



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quite clear that the use of Portuguese as the language of instruction has not yielded genuine bilingualism. The stance that UNESCO takes on matters of using mother tongues in the early years of literacy education has not altered this state of affairs. The UNESCO 1953 and 2003 Education documents are the topic of the next section, as they shed light on two main fronts: first, they provide information on the pedagogical and didactic benefits of mother tongue instruction by showing that it facilitates comprehension, expression, self realization, valorization, as well as early acquisition of literacy skills. Second, they also highlight the cognitive advantages of mother tongue instruction. For instance, by facilitating an understanding of the functioning of the mother tongue, mother tongue education also fosters a greater mastery of a second language (see Cummins 2000, 2001). On this issue, the three authors of this paper should make it clear that we believe in the dual representation of Cape Verdean and of Portuguese in the Cape Verdean educational system.

3.  The UNESCO plea that goes ignored For the past 50 years, UNESCO has been consistent in proclaiming the benefits of mother tongue instruction. The 1953 UNESCO report entitled The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education, is the most quoted document defending the use of a child’s first language in school. It was followed up in 2003 with another UNESCO education position paper which, beyond the classroom walls, linked identity, nationhood and power to the use of mother tongues in schools. This document is informed by the findings of multiple studies that have demonstrated that instruction in the mother tongue is beneficial to language competencies in both first language acquisition and second language learning. Mother-tongue instruction also promotes better retention of information in other subject areas (cf. also Cummins 2000, 2001; Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). Due to the misconception that mother tongue instruction equates with lack of access to or eradication of other languages, it is important to emphasize that the promotion of mother tongues as languages of instruction does not detract from nor delay access to global and majority languages. The combination of first and second languages provides the learners with the linguistic tools they need to cope with their social, cultural and political realities.

3.1  UNESCO’s main recommendations: Tenets and learners’ linguistic rights 3.1.1  Some basic tenets One of the main messages UNESCO conveys on matters of education is the use of the learner’s mother tongue as the medium and object of instruction. As UNESCO puts it, mother tongue instruction should cover both the teaching of and the teaching through this language. A basic educational tenet proclaimed by UNESCO and supported by

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

most educators is that learners learn best in their mother tongue; the use of the mother tongue is pivotal in laying out basic literacy skills and sets the stage for early second language learning and mastery of other subject matters. In the countries where the language of learners is different from the official or national language, UNESCO recommends that bilingual or multilingual education make mother tongue instruction possible while providing at the same time for the acquisition of languages that learners need. Importantly for our purpose, this is an additive approach to bilingualism that is different from subtractive bilingualism whose objective is to move children to another language of instruction.

3.1.2  Mother tongue instruction as a linguistic and human right Language being a fundamental attribute of cultural identity and empowerment, the UNESCO document does not hesitate to elevate its recommendations to the status of linguistic rights, and these linguistic rights are in turn connected to the universal declaration of human rights. According to the document, the 1948 universal declaration of human rights, which advocates against discrimination on the grounds of language, make it explicit that individuals belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities “to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue and that measures should be taken in order to encourage knowledge of the […] language and culture of the minorities.” It also recommends that children “be taught to read and write in their own indigenous language or in the language most commonly used by the group to which they belong and that adequate measures shall be taken to ensure that they have the opportunity to attain fluency in the national language or in one of the official languages of the country.” Article 29 sets out that “the education of the child should be directed to […] the development of respect for the child’s cultural identity, language and values.” Clearly, both UNESCO position papers on education and the universal declaration of human rights advocate mother tongue instruction and access to majority or more global languages.3 And yet, in spite of UNESCO’s plea and convincing evidence from scholarly works, in many countries previously under colonial rule, the official language and the language of instruction in education is still the language of the former colonizer. Moreover, in the case of creole languages, even where they enjoy the status of national language, many are typically still non-official and not used in education, not even in the early years of children’s schooling.4

.  See the recent works by Cummins (2000) and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) for further evidence supporting mother tongue instruction. .  The UNESCO documents highlight not only the pedagogical and cognitive benefits of mother tongue instruction but also an additive approach to the use of the mother tongue. This



Cape Verdean in education 

Cape Verdean is no exception and in the next section we document the positive evolution of Cape Verdean speakers’ attitudes towards their own language and demonstrate that in spite of these promising changes and the widespread use of the language at the written level, it still struggles in gaining representation and use in education. We explore the ways through which the language gained ground in the written domain by being the foundation of a rich literary tradition and the object of several orthographic conventions. We consider how although Kriolu gave rise to a respectable, and rich literary tradition, its representation in Cape Verdean schools has not been successful, being hampered by the absence of a viable and commonly acceptable orthographic script. We examine the diverse incarnations of the orthographic conventions that were adopted in the course of the past three decades and introduce the most recent alphabet, the ALUPEC which was adopted in 1998 on an experimental basis and revised in November 2008. While this new orthography has been used both in the archipelago of Cape Verde and in the diaspora to promote Kriolu as a language of instruction, it has encountered many hurdles whose sources we will address. We examine the challenges to the use of Kriolu in the classroom and consider possible strategies to ensure its use in education.

4.  From orality to the written word In the first part of this section, we report on the findings of three different sociolinguistic surveys that reflect how the attitudes of Cape Verdeans towards their language have changed and in what respect they have remained the same over the past thirty years. In the second part, we provide a panoramic overview of the rich Cape Verdean literary tradition to demonstrate that the lack of a standardized orthography did not prevent autochtonous Cape Verdean authors from producing a rich literature. In the third section, we examine the various orthographic versions and some of the ideologies underlying them.

4.1  Outsiders’ and insiders’ views on Kriolu 4.1.1  Valkhoff ’s (1975) study Valkhoff (1975) is the first contemporary sociolinguistic study conducted in the Cape Verde islands and reported on both Portuguese and Cape Verdeans’ views on the language. For instance, Valkhoff relates how the 19th century Portuguese scholar

means that when a second language is introduced in the curriculum, it is in addition to the native language with no intention of pushing it out of the curriculum after an L2 is acquired.

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

José Joaquim Lopes de Lima expressed his concern regarding the establishment of schools in Cape Verde in 1844 by stating that: these schools must be subjected to a Government inspection, and be administered by European teachers who pronounce Portuguese without the errors of African Creole, which is a ridiculous slang (gíria ridídicula) and monstrous mixture of Old Portuguese, Guinean languages, which is loved by that people and which the Whites themselves like to imitate. (Valkhoff 1975:€44)

The outsiders’ perception and evaluation of the language are at times unfortunately echoed by the very speakers of the language, the focus of Valkhoff ’s study. Valkhoff ’s survey included forty-four informants, 11 seminarists, 12 high-school pupils and 21 other interviewees from different social backgrounds. The common point between Valkhoff ’s survey and the other surveys that we will introduce below is that it reports a strong attachment of Cape Verdeans to their language. The difference, however, lies in the fact that Valkhoff ’s survey mostly took into account the opinion of highly educated Cape Verdeans, including members of the Church who proved quite conservative in their attitudes towards the language. In this respect, Valkhoff reports the views of two young priests from Santiago who explicitly expressed that Creole is not appropriate to express the values of Christianity, for it has no spiritual and literary tradition… Young Cape Verdeans would be handicapped in their career if they heard too much Creole instead of Portuguese. Without Portuguese, they would have no success either in the mother country or even in the Cape Verde islands… It is prohibited to celebrate religious services in Creole.  (Valkhoff 1975:€45).

It is remarkable that these priests do not view the language as fit for religious services and do not dignify it with having any type of literary patrimony. Their opinions were, however, counter-balanced by interviewees in São Vicente who acknowledged both the existence of a religious tradition in Cape Verdean Creole, and of a rich literature (Valkhoff 1975:€46). To synthesize Valkhoff ’s findings and evaluate them in comparison to the results of the later sociolinguistic surveys, we may highlight the following aspects: What remains constant in time is the Cape Verdean people’s deep attachment and affection for their language, both on the islands and in the diaspora. The major changes have occurred in two areas: settling on a functional orthographic script and widening the sphere of usage for the language. More precisely, when Valkhoff started his sociolinguistic survey in 1972 (published in 1975), in the country’s pre-independence era, there had been no attempt at designing and settling on an orthographic convention for the language and Valkhoff himself admits that ‘the handicap of a non-existent or inefficient spelling has been brought up several times in the course of his inquiry (Valkhoff 1975:€47). This led many of the interviewees in Valkhoff ’s study to doubt that literary work could



Cape Verdean in education 

be written in Kriolu, dismissing or simply ignoring the islands’ literary tradition. The spheres of usage in which Kriolu appears have also changed dramatically. For instance, Valkhoff observed that although Cape Verdean Creole is the main language of the archipelago, many educated Cape Verdeans on the islands would rather speak Portuguese than Kriolu in more official circumstances, associating Kriolu with the intimacy of the circle of family and friends. None of them ever heard a political figure deliver a speech in Kriolu (Valkhoff 1975:€52). Most of them judged Kriolu inferior to Portuguese but thought it fit to express lyrical poetry (a dozen informants did not share this view). About half of Valkhoff ’s informants thought that Portuguese had gained ground on Kriolu in the course of their life time and the other half had no doubt that Kriolu would still keep a dominant place in the archipelago. Twenty-four informants opted for Portuguese as the future language of Cape Verde whereas ten preferred Kriolu and the rest pragmatically said that this would depend on the political future of the archipelago (Valkhoff 1975:€53). Although Valkhoff ’s study provides us with numerous insights regarding the status and use of the language in the archipelago in the 1970’s, his evaluation of the population’s bilingual abilities may not be accurate. In one section of his study, he claims that bilingualism is indeed a reality (Valkhoff 1975:€52) and that the forty-four questionnaires were filled out by a rather diverse set of people and therefore provided him with an accurate picture of the sociolinguistic situation (1975:€ 43). Elsewhere, however, he admits that the “majority of [his] informants are of a high intellectual and social level” (1975:€53). Highly educated people in Cape Verde are necessarily bilingual and do not reflect the general population’s proficiency in Portuguese, a point clearly made by Almada Duarte (1998). The results of Valkhoff ’s (1975) study are now compared to those of Baptista’s surveys, conducted in 1997 and 2003, and of Sanches (2005).

4.1.2  Baptista’s 1997 and 2003 surveys As Valkhoff ’s inquiry took place in the pre-independence era (1972) and was published the year Cape Verde acquired its independence from Portugal (1975), there had been at that point in time no concerted effort to design a standardized orthography for the language. The lack of a recognized orthographic script meant that considering using the Cape Verdean language as a language of instruction in schools was not even an option. Consequently, Valkhoff ’s inquiry necessarily could not address the issue of Kriolu representation in education. As several meetings dedicated to choosing an orthographic convention for the language took place between 1979 and 1993–1994, Baptista was then in a position to conduct two education-oriented sociolinguistic surveys in 1997 and 2003 on the islands of Santiago, São Vicente and Sal. Like Valkhoff ’s survey, hers was also based on a relatively small pool of 50 informants. However, in contrast to Valkhoff ’s inquiry

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

which purposefully targeted a highly-educated pool of interviewees, most of which were perfectly bilingual in Kriolu and Portuguese, Baptista’s investigation aimed at representing a cross-section of the population that included educated and noneducated (illiterate) speakers in both urban and rural areas of three islands. As Baptista was a co-founder of the Cape Verdean Creole Institute in 1996 whose chief objectives were the officialization of Kriolu,5 its promotion as language of instruction and curricular development, the main goal of her two surveys was to evaluate Cape Verdean citizens’ openness to its officialization and to receiving education in their mother tongue. A related goal was to gauge the reception of the latest orthographic convention, the ALUPEC, which was designed in 1994 by the grupo de padronização or “standardization group” comprised of Inês Brito, Eduardo Cardoso, Dulce Duarte, José Luis Hopffer Almada, Alice Matos, Moacyr Rodrigues, Tomé Varela da Silva and Manuel Veiga. This script was officially recognized by the Cape Verdean government in 1998. Inspired in part by Valkhoff ’s own questionnaire, Baptista’s original survey questions pertaining to Kriolu, its use and status, were formulated in Cape Verdean and comprised the following: 1. In which language do you feel more comfortable speaking (Portuguese or Cape Verdean Creole)? 2. Where do you prefer to speak Cape Verdean Creole? 3. In which language do you write? 4. What are your feelings about the Cape Verdean language? 5. Do you think that Cape Verdean Creole should be taught as a subject matter? 6. Do you think that it should be used as a language of instruction in the classroom? 7. Do you feel that Cape Verdean Creole is radically different from the Portuguese language or do you consider it to be a variety of Portuguese? 8. Do you feel that Cape Verdean Creole should be officialized? 9. Have you heard of the ALUPEC? 10. Do you know of any study of Cape Verdean Creole? 11. How could we do more to support Cape Verdean Creole? These questions were the cornerstone of the 17 question-survey that Baptista conducted with each of her 50 interviewees. They were oral, taped interviews that were conducted with the sole purpose of gauging what the dominant position was with regard to mother-tongue instruction and officialization. Given the small sample of

.  As listed in Section€3.3, the other co-founders of CCI are Linda Caswell, Eunice Fernandes, Manuel Gonçalves, Georgette Gonsalves, Maria Oliveira, Rui de Pina and Filinto Silva.



Cape Verdean in education 

50€respondents, the statistical value of these interviews may be relatively insignificant. The results are, however, still telling given that the interviewees’ responses were overwhelmingly positive and in favor of using Kriolu as a medium of instruction in the classroom and of its officialization. Only one respondent was opposed.

4.1.3  Sanches (2005) In 2005, Maria de Fatima Sanches conducted a similar inquiry as her Masters’ thesis. Her survey targeted 100 subjects, some of which had a high-school education while others had done post-graduate studies. Her consultants belonged to various social classes but Sanches does not disclose how many came from each class. The purpose of her investigation was to examine the position of Cape Verdean Creole in relation to education, religion, literature and music. On matters of education, Sanches specifically interviewed four population groups: the Minister of Education, two inspectors in Secondary Education, 20 professors with degrees ranging from Bachelors’ to Ph.D., 21 students in Secondary Education and 17 administrators. Her report states that the Minister of Education advocated the teaching of Cape Verdean in schools. More precisely, he was in favor of its introduction in the 7th grade, was open to teachers using it in the classroom whenever necessary, felt that students could optionally use it in between classes and believed that the language should be officialized. The two inspectors agreed with all those points except that they advocated for the introduction of the language as early as the first grade. Out of the 20 professors who were interviewed, 12 also recommended the introduction of the language in first grade whereas out of the 21 secondary school students, 13 supported its introduction in first grade. Finally, among the last group mentioned above, 11 administrators favored its introduction in the first year. The larger picture that emerged from Sanches’ study was that all the respondents she interviewed were receptive to the introduction of the Cape Verdean language in education. Disagreement occurred not on whether or not the language had a place in education but on which grade would be most appropriate for its introduction. In Sanches’ findings all survey participants were in favor of officializing Cape Verdean (in the short or long term) and crucially for our purpose, of introducing it in education as a language of instruction (in first grade or later). Clearly, based on the two surveys Baptista conducted in 1997 and 2003 and whose results were supported in Sanches’ 2005 study, it is safe to assume that in all likelihood, a significant portion of the Cape Verdean population is in favor of enhancing the status of the language and of increasing its visibility in spheres where Portuguese is traditionally dominant. It is evident, however, that these questionnaires have two basic limitations: the first is that their results cannot be taken at face value given that we need to correlate such results with social data on respondents; they are also only representative of a small group of the overall population. Ideally, a referendum should be

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

conducted at the national level to gauge what type of viable educational policy could be conducted in Cape Verde.

4.2  The linguistic and literary tradition in the Cape Verdean archipelago The Cape Verdean archipelago has so far yielded a long and rich tradition of autochtonous linguists, writers and scholars who have written in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole. This tradition goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century, according to Manuel Ferreira (1975), and reveals as much interest in the workings of the Cape Verdean language as in expressing prose and poetry in it. In the area of grammatical studies, as early as 1887, António de Paula Brito wrote a grammar on the variety spoken in Santiago Apontamentos para a Gramática do Crioulo que se Fala na Ilha de Santiago. Other major grammatical and lexical descriptions include Napoleão Fernandes’ (1920) O Léxico do Dialecto Crioulo de Cabo Verde, Baltasar Lopes da Silva’s (1957) O Dialecto Crioulo de Cabo Verde, Maria Dulce de Oliveira Almada’s (Almada Duarte 1961) Contribuição para o Estudo do Dialecto Falado no Seu Archipélago, Pedro Cardoso’s (1933) Folclore Caboverdeano, Eduardo Cardoso’s (1989) O Crioulo da Ilha de S. Nicolau de Cabo Verde, and André dos Reis Santos’ (co-author with Jürgen Lang and Martina Brüser) (Brüser et al. 2002) Dicionário do Crioulo da Ilha de Santiago. Manuel Veiga’s (1982) Diskrison Strutural di Lingua Kabuverdianu is written entirely in Kriolu and is part of a string of contemporary grammatical studies that recently culminated with Delgado’s (2008) Crioulo de Cabo Verde: Situação Linguística da Zona do Barlavento.6 The legacy of Cape Verdean writers is just as rich. Major writers had opted back in the 19th and 20th centuries to write in Portuguese due to its prestige, dominance, and because it provided for a more widespread diffusion (Valkhoff 1975). Baltasar Lopes da Silva, Francisco Lopes, Manuel Lopes, Aurelio Gonçalves, Teixeira de Sousa, Filinto Elisio Silva, Germano Almeida, Pedro Cardoso and Eugénio Tavares are only a few of the major Cape Verdean literary figures. For some writers, the lack of a standardized orthography in the early days did not deter them from writing in Kriolu, using home-made orthographic scripts reflective of their own dialectal variety. For instance, Eugénio Tavares wrote Mornas in 1932 using a self-designed etymological orthography representative of the Sotavento variety of Brava. Sérgio Frusoni wrote

.  This list is obviously incomplete and does not include the plethora of grammatical studies that were conducted abroad by Cape Verdean linguists living in the diaspora (Donaldo Macedo, Izione Silva, Marlyse Baptista among others) as well as by foreign linguists who have greatly helped with the documentation of the language (Alexandre, Barbosa, Bartens, Carvalho, Couto, Fanha Pereira, Ferreira, Lang Jürgen, Lang George, Meintel, Parsons, Quint, Pratas, Rougé, Swolkien, to mention just a few).



Cape Verdean in education 

Vangêle Contód d’nos Moda in the Barlavento variety (published posthumously in 1979). While writers such as Kaoberdiano Dambará, Artur Vieira, Virgílio Pires, Arménio Vieira, Corsino Fortes, Oswaldo Osório and Tacalhe wrote both in Kriolu and in Portuguese, Manuel Veiga marked the beginning of a new era by writing the first novel in Kriolu, Odju d’Agu using a phonemic alphabet based on the dialect spoken in the island of Santiago. Through his linguistic works and his novel, Manuel Veiga demonstrated that Kriolu is entirely suitable for academic and literary expression beyond poetry and traditional literary forms such as mornas and finason. He is surrounÂ� ded these days by a distinguished group of Cape Verdean authors who are part of the Association of Cape Verdean Writers and who write prose and poetry in Kriolu. Among them, there are Kaká Barbosa, Tomé Varela, Ariki Tuga, Danny Spínola (alias Euclides Rodrigues), Henrique Lopes Mateus, Jose Luis Almada, Humberto Lima, Eutropio Lima, José Bernardo Alfama, António Cortez, Jorge Pedro Barbosa, and Gabriel Mariano. These are just a few names among many others (for an exhaustive list of Cape Verdean authors, refer to Almada Duarte 1998).7 In this respect, Lang (2000:€54) notes that “Cape Verdean stands out, along with Papiamentu, Sranan, and the French Creoles of the Caribbean, as a Creole in which a bona fide literary tradition has found footing, if not […] thrived.” This rich literary tradition is supported by a firm belief among many Cape Verdean language activists that the language should have access to all spheres and institutional domains. In the next subsection we examine the evolution of orthographic scripts in Cape Verde over the past thirty years and investigate the motivations of each, while lingering on the progress and setbacks of the current orthographic convention: the ALUPEC, adopted in 1998.

4.3  The orthographic choices As seen in the previous section, the lack of a standardized orthographic script did not prevent the Cape Verdean language from gaining a respectable place in the rich literary tradition of the islands. However, its representation in Cape Verdean schools has not been as successful and has until recently been hampered by the choice of a viable orthographic script. In this section, we discuss the three main attempts at devising a viable orthography and focus on the recently adopted script, the ALUPEC. We present the reasoning and choices behind the ALUPEC orthography, describe its main

.  Although the titles of Cape Verdean literary classics are well-known by the overall population, it is unclear how much of the population actually reads them. What is predictable, however, is that if the Cape Verdean language gains a footing in education, those literary works will no doubt become the subject of study in schools.

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

characteristics, and discuss its overall reception both on the part of educators and its users. On the latter issue, we report on the results of workshops organized by the Cape Verdean Creole Institute (CCI) in 1998 and in 2008, of a roundtable that took place in November 2008 in Praia and of the latest Official Bulletin #11, Decree-law€ #8, published by the Cape Verdean government. This bulletin officially recognized the ALUPEC as the orthography of the Cape Verdean language. In the final section, we discuss the main challenges to implementing Cape Verdean as a language of instruction in the classroom. We discuss how opponents to the use of Cape Verdean in education use arguments such as dialectal variation, inadequate linguistic description and uneven representation of the multiple varieties existing in the archipelago to thwart attempts at legitimizing its use as a language of instruction. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of using one representative script for the Leeward Islands and one for the Windward Islands (as suggested by Manuel Veiga among others) as opposed to allowing each island to use its own variety. We examine the logistics of alternative strategies, and provide in the end a list of recommendations including teacher training, parent outreach, and possible pilot projects that could demonstrate efficacy of literacy in the mother tongue and lead to higher rates of acquisition of the second language. One of the first questions that comes to mind when discussing the selection of an orthographic script for an oral language is why is this necessary? The designing of an orthographic script is the very first step towards giving written representation to the creole language and opens up its use to many spheres, the ultimate destination being the classroom. This follows the recommendations of the UNESCO documents, which encourage all governments to allow instruction in the children’s native tongue. For oral languages in need of orthographic script, a cursory look at how creolophone societies go about selecting the appropriate orthography is reflective of the mitigated relationship they entertain with their colonial past.8 As such, the Cape Verdean language continues to exist in a complex political and social relationship to Portuguese. Note however, that by Cape Verdean, we do not mean to refer to a homogeneous entity, but to a language that is rich in variation. The various dialects are distinguishable from each other through a number of phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic features. On the surface, the Barlavento varieties seem characterized by more acrolectal€–Portuguese-type€– features while basilectal traits –€features

.  It is often the case in creolophone societies that the political and social elite has a hidden agenda when managing social reproduction through education. Interestingly, in the Cape Verdean case, it is precisely members of the social elite who are leaders in shaping language policy in favor of Cape Verdean Creole. Dulce Almada Duarte and Manuel Veiga for instance, are among those who publicly point out the dysfunctionality of the educational system in Cape Verde and recommend reforms that can help create equal educational opportunities for all.



Cape Verdean in education 

that differ from Portuguese€– prevail in the Sotavento group. Predictably then, a functional alphabet ideally captures the dual African and European heritage of the speakers and projects how this cultural duality is negotiated. Hence, the orthographic choices in Cape Verde have been informed by the need to integrate the differences among the dialectal varieties into a unified spelling system. Subsequent to the haphazard choices of individualized and inconsistent etymological scripts used by Cape Verdean literary authors, there were three main attempts to build a consensus around orthographic scripts. Examining various orthographic choices and the reasons for their failures reveals the complexity of the linguistic situation of Creoles in general and of Cape Verdean in particular. The evolution of orthographic choices can be viewed as being punctuated by three main stages: 1. An exclusively pro-phonemic approach 2. A pro-phonemic approach with concessions to etymological spelling of palatal consonants 3. A unified phonemic script with a wider range of concessions to etymological spelling The exclusively pro-phonemic approach was first put forward at the Mindelo conference; this was the first International Colloquium for the Promotion of Cape Verdean Creole (Primeiro Colóquio Internacional sobre a Valorização do Crioulo Cabo Verdiano) that took place on the island of São Vicente in 1979, only four years after Cape Verde’s independence from Portugal. The proposed script was motivated by the deliberate intent to eliminate all etymological traces of Portuguese spelling, clearly conveying the ideological stance of its creators who in the post-independence era demanded distance from the Portuguese script.9 As Almada Duarte (1998:€188) puts it: “the Mindelo Colloquium focused on choosing an alphabet that would warrant the preservation of the phonetic autonomy of the Cape Verdean language” [Baptista’s translation]. The objective of this particular alphabet was to design an economical system based on a single correspondence between sound and grapheme. The goal was also to do away with unnecessary graphemes such as the mute consonants that can be found in the etymological writing of some Portuguese words: hora ‘hour’ would be written ora, factura ‘bill’ would be written fatura and baptismo ‘baptism’ would be rendered as batismo (Delgado 2008:€154). The pro-phonemic orthographic script was used for ten years, from 1979 to 1989, for transcribing oral stories, for training educators in the former school for secondary education teachers and for writing folk tales, poetry books and academic theses (Boletim Oficial 2009:€75). It was also used by educators like Georgette .  See Sebba (2000) for similar ideological underpinnings of orthographic choices in the history of Sranan.

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

Gonsalves (Gonsalves 1996) in American schools to promote bilingual education in Massachussetts (English, Kriolu). The script was however ultimately rejected in Cape Verde by users themselves and was charged with demeaning the status of the language by making it look less sophisticated and more rudimentary than Portuguese. On those grounds, another meeting Fórum de Alfabetização Bilingue (Forum on Bilingual Literacy) took place in 1989 where this time, a pro-phonemic alphabet was proposed with concessions to the etymological representation of palatal consonants (Delgado 2008:€154). The justification for this new approach was triggered by bilingual considerations and was based on the assumption that adopting a pro-etymological approach would facilitate the writing of the Cape Verdean language, particularly for those who were already literate in Portuguese. However, many speakers, above all in the Barlavento area, ignored the new alphabet adopted in 1989 and continued to write using the etymological script (Delgado 2008:€154). Finally, in 1993, the National Commission for Standardization (Comissão Nacional de Padronização) signed a contract with the National Institute of Culture and elaborated a unified alphabet able to represent all of the sounds found in the different varieties spoken in the archipelago. This resulted in the adoption of a new script that is a compromise between the etymological inheritance of Kriolu and a phonemic script. This new script entitled the ALUPEC (Proposta de Bases do Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Cabo-Verdiano (1994))10 was promoted by the Cape Verdean Creole Institute (see below) at its initiation and officially approved by the Cape Verdean Council of Ministers in July 1998. The governmental Boletim Oficial ‘Official Bulletin’, number 11 adopted it on March 16, 2009 as the official alphabet of the Cape Verdean language. The ALUPEC script is composed of twenty-four letters and four diagraphs: ALUPEC ABDEFGHIJKLMNÑOPRSTUVXYZ DJ LH NH TX

The examination of the ALUPEC original document (1994) provides us with interesting insights. The first pages of the document define the approach and purpose of the new Cape Verdean alphabet. It criticizes an exclusively etymological orthography as displaying too many weaknesses in terms of relevance and functionality in representing all Cape Verdean sounds but advocates instead an approach reconciling etymological and phonemic orthography (ALUPEC 1994:€2). The purpose of this alphabet is multifold. First, it aims to reflect the relevance, functionality and systematic nature of the sounds in the language. Another objective is to preserve and support the literary tradition of the islands by not diverging in a radical fashion from the orthography

.  This is translatable as the Proposal for a Unified Alphabet for the Writing of Cape Verdean.



Cape Verdean in education 

used in the past in order to promote its broad acceptance. Another goal is to promote a system of sound-sign correspondence that ensures the principle of linguistic economy (ALUPEC 1994:€3), and yet be also representative of all the sounds of the language. For instance, while the fricatives j [ž] and x [š] are used in words such as juntu ‘together’ and pexi ‘fish’ respectively, their affricate counterparts dj [dž] and tx [tš] are found in words such as djanta ‘to dine’ and txuba ‘rain’. This script attests to the conscious choice its creators made with regard to the Portuguese alphabet, as they rejected the use of the letter /c/ and reduced it to the use of the voiceless velar stop /k/ but conceded to the preservation of the Portuguese diagraphs /lh/ and /nh/. What may ultimately ensure the success of the ALUPEC is the conscious efforts by its makers (Manuel Veiga, Inês Brito, Tomé Varela among others) to create an alphabet with which all speakers may identify, independently of the dialectal variety they speak. Its spirit of inclusiveness has not, however, sheltered the ALUPEC from detractors. The main criticisms (among others) target its accentuation rules, the lack of geminate consonants, and the elimination of etymological diagraphs that could have made the writing task easier for bilingual speakers familiar with Portuguese. With regard to accentuation, users experienced difficulties with having to follow a different set of rules for marking paroxytonic words (with stress on the penultimate syllable) versus oxytonic words (stress on the last syllable). On the premise that paroxytonic words are dominant in the language, the original creators of the ALUPEC stated that it was not necessary to mark the stressed syllable with an accent, as this stress pattern is predictable. However, in the cases where the stressed vowel in paroxytonic words is e or o, then it was recommended to mark the semi-closed vowels as ê and ô to differentiate them from their semi-open counterparts é and ó. As for oxytonic words, they carry an accent (marking the open or closed nature of the vowel) if they are more than one syllable-long as in kafé ‘coffee’, mamá ‘mother’ or if they are monosyllabic and end in e or o, as in pô ‘put’ (Delgado 2008:€167). Not surprisingly, the complex nature of the accentuation rules led to many ALUPEC users resisting them or simply ignoring them. With regard to the lack of geminate consonants, their absence did not allow for the differentiation in writing between otherwise homophonous lexemes such as carro ‘car’ and caro ‘expensive’. Delgado (2008:€163) makes the interesting observation that while the lack of gemination and written differentiation between these two words does not bother speakers of the Sotavento varieties who do not make a phonetic distinction between carro and caro, their Barlavento peers do produce two phonetically distinct words when pronouncing them (just like Portuguese speakers). They find it pertinent, as a result, to represent them graphically in a different way. Bilingual speakers who have learned to write in Portuguese find it distressing not to be able to rely on etymological spelling when writing in Kriolu. For instance, they deplore the use of the diagraph tx found in Kriolu words like txuba ‘rain’, where etymological spelling would have dictated tchuba from Portuguese chuva (Delgado 2008:€161). There are yet other

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

areas of controversy in the ALUPEC that clearly illustrate that orthographic choices intimately correlate with creole identity and individual ideologies. For instance, the elimination of the Portuguese consonant (voiceless velar stop) c and its substitution with the consonant k brought to the fore the divide between those who wish to differentiate the Cape Verdean system from the Portuguese orthographic conventions by writing Kriolu instead of Crioulo, Kabu Verdi instead of Cabo Verde and those who feel that the Portuguese side to their Capeverdean identity is just as important as the African side. The same type of controversy emerges around the spelling of the coordinating conjunction y (pronounced as the high front unrounded /i/) ‘and’. Some users feel comfortable spelling it as i in the spirit of the principle of economy that the alphabet embodies, whereas others insist on reserving y for the spelling of the conjunction and use i for all other occurrences of the high front vowel. In spite of its visionary mission of inclusiveness and unified representation, ALUPEC has been ironically charged with privileging the Santiago variety of the language at the expense of all others. Delgado (2008:€162) makes this criticism explicit when he states that the adoption of ALUPEC was not pacifist, but is actually based on the Santiago variety and did not consider the traditions of the other islands, specifically those of Barlavento. Elsewhere (2008:€165), he refers to some well-known figures in Barlavento that feel that ALUPEC is nothing less than a linguistic imposition from Sotavento. Delgado reports on a public opinion column relating a statement of Adriano Miranda: Un uvi dzê quês crê obrigá nôs ta falá cima badiu. Môce, mim, nem morto [Baptista’s translation]: “I heard people say that they want to force us to speak like the badius. Man, not over my dead body.” Finally, Delgado openly admits (2008:€166) to a rivalry between the two linguistic areas (Sotavento and Barlavento) and that Barlavento speakers show some resistance in applying the new orthographic rules instituted by ALUPEC. Interestingly, Delgado espouses the dual polarization of the Cape Verdean language when he describes the linguistic situation in Cape Verde as being made up of two main variants (Barlavento and Sotavento) and nine dialects (2008:€171). These are just a few criticisms among many that have been aimed at ALUPEC but in spite of them, this new orthography has successfully set up new premises for the study of the Cape Verdean language for its own sake, anticipating the new social, political and educational role that it hopes and deserves to assume. On the issue of political and educational representation, the mission of some organizations like the Cape Verdean Institute (CCI) has been to enhance the status of the Cape Verdean language and to demonstrate the efficacy of scripts such as ALUPEC. The Cape Verdean Creole Institute (CCI) was co-founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1996 by Marlyse Baptista, Linda Caswell, Eunice Fernandes, Manuel Gonçalves, Georgette Gonsalves, Maria Oliveira, Rui de Pina and Filinto Silva with the specific goal of promoting the Cape Verdean language. All along, it has advocated the recognition of Cape Verdean as an official language in the Republic of Cape Verde, the implementation of a



Cape Verdean in education 

standardized orthography (ALUPEC), and curriculum development in former Cape Verdean bilingual programs in the USA and abroad. In an attempt to demonstrate that the language has at its disposal an effective and functional orthographic script in ALUPEC, the CCI has organized events that involve community outreach activities and writing workshops that aim to teach community members how to write in the new alphabet. The first event was organized in 1998 and offered a symposium and a series of literacy workshops targeting the diasporic Cape Verdean population in Massachusetts. The CCI received a grant in 1999 from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities that allowed the Institute to publish the proceedings of the writing workshops (community members’ prose and poetry) in a special issue of the magazine Cimboa (Baptista, Gonçalves & Gonsalves 1999). The 1998 event was followed up 10€years later (April 2008) with another symposium and writing workshop series. In November 2008, a roundtable evaluating the merits and weaknesses of ALUPEC took place in Praia, Santiago. The suggestions and recommendations for improvement and the acknowledgement that no other script had been found more appropriate for the representation of the Cape Verdean language led to the government officially recognizing the ALUPEC. In this respect, the Boletim Oficial (March 2009, number 11:€75) laid out five major points in declaring ALUPEC the alphabet of the Cape Verdean language [Baptista’s translation]: 1. The ALUPEC is a useful and functional instrument for writing in the Cape Verdean language. 2. Incentives must be created for writing in ALUPEC. 3. An Autonomous Institute or an Academy must be created to deal with all issues relating to the Cape Verdean language. 4. The standardization of the script must be an open process, where science, consensus and common sense should be preserved and subject to periodical evaluation and adaptation. In this respect, one must continue work on the issue of accentuation and of the tilde, as well as the representation of the velar nasal Ñ, of Y and LH. 5. Based on its demonstrated functionality and usefulness, based on its status as an object of academic, social and cultural interest, based on its plasticity in representing all the varieties of the language, and based on the fact that it has had no competition from any other script model that is as systematic and consistent, the ALUPEC must be instituted, once and for all, as the alphabet of the Cape Verdean language. The study of how the various orthographic choices were made clearly reveals the ongoing dialogue that must take place between linguists, educators and the public. The primary lesson that linguists have learned is that unless the general population is receptive to and subsequently sanctions a given script, an orthography designed by

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

linguists will not survive. In this respect, ALUPEC has made significant strides compared to its predecessors in establishing itself as a highly functional alphabet. It has, however, both supporters and detractors. In its support, a television program centered on ALUPEC was aired every day this summer (summer 2009) in order to teach the public how to write in the new script, in a series of televised lessons. It is likely that the use of media communication to teach ALUPEC to the general population will in the long run result in social mobilization around the language. This should consolidate its status as national language and promote its officialization. It is hoped that widespread diffusion of the alphabet will foster broader acceptance of the ALUPEC. However, as Cape Verdean gains written representation, a few obstacles lie ahead in the implementation of this new orthographic system in education. These challenges are examined in the following section.

5.  The challenges ahead 5.1  The necessary measures and the reasons for resistance One of the first hurdles that the Cape Verdean language needs to overcome before accessing the educational sphere is full recognition as an official language by the Cape Verdean government. This political recognition and acceptance is the prerequisite to the continuation of a thriving literary tradition and the development of instructional materials for classroom teaching. This would allow Cape Verdean children and illiterate adults not only to acquire literacy skills in their own language, but to access the other language(s) in their environment more easily. It is important to make it clear that bilingualism is necessary to ensure children’s success in this economically competitive era. In this respect, ALUPEC may be the ultimate tool in helping them retain their linguistic and cultural heritage and worldview while at the same time conquering and mastering the other international languages. It is also important to acknowledge the social need in Cape Verde for the mastery of Portuguese, the language of social advancement. It is necessary for the learner to learn basic literacy skills in Cape Verdean and then move on to the mastery of Portuguese as an L2, as it is vital for social mobility. Culturally, the ties between Cape Verde and Portugal are many, as much in the colonial history that irremediably connects the two countries as through current economic bonds. The economic and political use of a second language goes hand in hand, as the acquisition of L2 leads to economic growth and development. Hence, we advocate an additive approach to bilingualism (as mentioned in the UNESCO documents presented in Section€2) that would keep the mother tongue present in the classroom throughout the curriculum in coexistence with the second language. This is in stark contrast to the subtractive bilingualism which aims to move children onto



Cape Verdean in education 

a second language as a language of instruction and progressively eliminate the mother tongue from the classroom space. Delgado (2008:€ 186) expresses well the fears that emerge around the potential officialization of the Cape Verdean language and the implementation of the ALUPEC, as its official orthography. As he puts it (Baptista’s summary): The inhabitants of the islands who continue to favor that Portuguese be used in writing and Kriolu remain a language of oral communication fear that: 1. The officialization of Kriolu is going to discourage the use of some varieties of the language. 2. The Portuguese language will lose its official status and will eventually disappear from the archipelago. Only the creole variety chosen to be official will remain‥ 3. If one language variety becomes official, its daily use may be imposed on all Cape Verdeans, thus leading to the extinction of the other varieties. 4. If Kriolu becomes official, Portuguese will be abolished from the educational system, and the Cape Verdean language will be the only one taught in schools.

5.2  Exploring the options Providing evidence for the functionality and efficiency of the new alphabet has not been sufficient to circumvent and overcome the challenges of implementing Cape Verdean Creole as a language of instruction in the classroom. The arguments against the use of Cape Verdean in education can be summarized as follows: it is argued that there is too much dialectal variation, in addition to inadequate linguistic description and uneven representation of the multiple varieties of the language to allow for its use in school. On the basis that such disparities can only prevent standardization and a unified representation of the language, opponents consistently use these reasons to thwart attempts at legitimizing its use as a language of instruction. In response, Manuel Veiga has been advocating the use of the variety spoken in Santiago as the representative for the Leeward Islands and that of São Vicente for the Windward Islands. The problem with this approach (clearly defined in Delgado’s 2008 study, see Section€ 4.1) is that speakers from the other seven inhabited islands may reject the proposal outright, based on a sentiment of alienation and ostracization. Such a reaction prevents the proposal from being fairly evaluated for its merit and ultimate objective. According to us, a possible consensus is for grammars and textbooks in the language to highlight the common linguistic features among the two main clusters while acknowledging the discrepancies between the varieties. Speakers could also be allowed to write in their own variety without penalization for not conforming to a textbook standard. In other words, this approach would combine a written representation in textbooks that capitalizes on the linguistic traits common to each main cluster, yet make room for identifying the discrepancies between them. Adequate dialectal representation is however,

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

only one of the hurdles. The sociolinguistic surveys conducted by Baptista in 1997 and 2003 and the one by Sanches (2005) show that although the surveyed population may be receptive to and even welcome the use of Kriolu in education, not all segments of the population are convinced that this is the best course of action. Indeed, although many teachers teaching at the secondary level may be in favor of introducing the language as a language of instruction (see Sanches study), many of those working in elementary schools and beyond secondary level may be the hardest to convince. Teachers objecting to the use of the language may indeed view Portuguese as the medium that conferred them power, status and position in society in the first place. Consequently, they are convinced that the only language that may offer the same opportunities to their own students is Portuguese, not Cape Verdean. It is therefore crucial that as with any effective language planning, teachers and parents are duly informed of and thoroughly educated about the methodological steps and overall objectives of an additive bilingual approach to language instruction where Cape Verdean would have its place next to Portuguese. Hence, sound language planning should involve the following chronological steps: 1. Officialization of the Cape Verdean language by the government (educational institutions need governmental approval and endorsement to implement educational reforms). 2. Creation of a script built on consensus and with which most if not all users may identify. 3. The running of a pilot project in which a select group of kindergarten children is taught early literacy in Cape Verdean. We could then compare the rate of literacy acquisition in those classrooms with that in classrooms in which Portuguese is the medium of instruction. 4. Adequate description and representation of each variety in each cluster (to facilitate the identification of the linguistic features common to each cluster and the recognition of their disparities). This would be based on adequate corpus planning. 5. Textbook development in all subject matters and development of other instructional materials. 6. Consultation with didacticians about reading materials. 7. Adequate training of teachers and curriculum developers. 8. Outreach programs to parents and the general population to inform them about the benefits of the additive approach to subject instruction. These are the necessary steps (but not necessarily in that order) that should be taken BEFORE the Cape Verdean language is introduced as a language of instruction



Cape Verdean in education 

in€schools. Experiences elsewhere (such as Papiamentu in Curaçao) have shown that a lack of teacher training, instructional materials in mother tongue and/or parental support of the program are all recipes for failure at worse or resentment at best. The supporters of the Cape Verdean language are many and language activists are typically tireless. The first signs showing that the current political “surface” acceptance but “underlying” resistance is finally reaching a turning point can be seen in current events: The round table that took place in Praia in November 2008 culminating in the proclamation of ALUPEC as the alphabet for the Cape Verdean language (Boletim Oficial, 1 Série, Número 11, March 16, 2009) is a positive sign and a milestone towards the officialization of Kriolu. Other signs that the Cape Verdean language is asserting itself somewhat at the expense of Portuguese lie in the fact that some Cape Verdean intellectuals feel the need to defend the Portuguese language. For instance, Ondina Ferreira was reported to make a statement in defense of Portuguese on April 1, 2009 in an interview entitled Língua portuguesa está abandonada (The Portuguese language is being abandoned) for the column Nôs Kultura: Expresso das ilhas No. 383 (4–6). In this interview she deplores that the intellectual community is no longer defending the Portuguese language and she finds this alarming: porque é o meio de comunicação mais rico de que dispomos em termos do desenvolvimento do pensamento lógico, filosófico, ontológico, existencial, tecnológico, e cientifico; porque é um código de comunicação forjado para tal e está-se a perder essa riqueza de comunicação com algum “deixar passar” e algum desprezo da própria comunidade intelectual que não sai à arena, em defesa da língua portuguesa … é uma das maiores riqueza que nós temos. (page 6) [Portuguese] is the richest medium of communication we own in terms of the development of logical, philosophical, ontological, existential, technological and scientific thought; it is a code of expression designed for such purposes and we are losing this richness of communication due to the neglect and spite from the intellectual community who does not defend the Portuguese language… it is one of the richest things we own.’ [Baptista’s translation].

Such statements clearly show that the pendulum has shifted the other way since the days of Valkhoff ’s study (Section€ 3.1.1) where the position of Portuguese in Cape Verde seemed invincible and was deemed to overshadow the Cape Verdean language. However, in most Cape Verdeans’ minds (including this paper’s authors), the situation that we wish to attain is that of functional bilingualism where Portuguese co-exists on an equal footing with Cape Verdean. Linguists such as Manuel Veiga express it well when stating that both languages are part of the history, culture and identity of every citizen: “A afirmação e a valorização dessas duas línguas, mais do que um dever cívico, é uma exigência cultural e uma necessidade ambiental” (Veiga 2003:€85) “Assertion

 Marlyse Baptista, Inês Brito & Saídu Bangura

is the valorization of these two languages, more than our civic duty, it is a cultural requirement and an environmental necessity” [Baptista’ s translation]. As for the implementation of Kriolu as a language of instruction, the road ahead will no doubt, be arduous for all the reasons laid out in Section€5.1. However, with the continuing efforts of all language activists, both Cape Verdean and foreign, it is reasonable to predict that in the near future the Cape Verdean language will attain its rightful place in all spheres from which it has been excluded for five centuries, including that of education.

Trilingual education On the Islands of San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina Ronald C. Morren

Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics On the Colombian-owned Caribbean Islands of San Andres, Providence, & Santa Catalina an English-lexifier Creole is spoken. Recently, Creole-speaking leaders and parents have become apprehensive that Island children and youth are increasingly using Spanish with a concomitant loss of Standard English. Accompanying that concern is the perception that local Creole values, cultural mores, and the Creole language itself, are eroding. Not wanting to lose their Creole identity, an experimental primary school trilingual education project was initiated that begins schooling in Creole, proceeds to Standard English, and then to Spanish. The goal is age appropriate language proficiency in the three languages. The purpose of the following article is to describe this trilingual education project –€its initiation, materials development, implementation, and evaluation. Keywords:╇ Trilingual Education; Bilingual Education; San Andres Island; Creole Language Education; Mother Tongue Education

1.  Introduction Located approximately 480 miles northwest of Colombia and 140 miles East of Nicaragua, (12033’N; 81043’W) the archipelago of San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina, including a number of small keys and atolls, comprise Colombia’s smallest Departamento (province) –€44 sq. km. San Andres, the largest island in the archipelago, is less than 8 miles long and 2 miles wide. (However, if the territorial waters surrounding the archipelago and distant keys are taken into consideration, it becomes the largest of all of Colombia’s ‘Departments.’) Walwin Petersen states that “… a Spanish adventurer discovered these islands in 1527” (2001:€21). At that time the archipelago was uninhabited. The Dutch were the first to establish themselves on the islands, harvesting the timber for shipbuilding and repairs, using “… smaller branches for firewood and coal, which they sold to other

 Ronald C. Morren

shipmen… This trade continued for approximately 100 years…” (ibid). The arrival of British Puritans or pilgrims to the archipelago occurred around 1630. [Petersen actually gives the date as 1627; Parsons (1956) says 1629; Newton (1914) and Kupperman (1993) say 1630; and Baker (2007) says 1631.] Turnage (1975) enlightens us regarding this discrepancy. According to Turnage, in 1627 Puritan sailors from the Bermuda colony were out looking for new land to settle and left 30 males on San Andres. Turnage says that in 1629 a ship left England to pick up more Puritan settlers from Bermuda and take them to Providence Island and that in 1631 another ship sailed out of England for Providence. Apparently, during the years 1627–1631 Puritans arrived in the archipelago bringing slaves and a few women and children. Petersen points out that there was a shortage of women. Therefore, with the permission of the Miskito chiefs, some islanders took wives of the Miskito Amerindians of Central America. “Thus, native islanders not only trace their rich cultural lineage to European and African roots, but also to Native American Indian roots” (2001:€26). In 1641 the Spaniards asserted their sovereignty over the islands and captured or dispersed the English and their slaves resulting in Spanish occupation for the next 30€years. Subsequently, the British regained control of the Western Caribbean for the next 50 years (Parsons 1956). Again, colonization was largely from England –€sometimes directly from Great Britain, sometimes by way of other Caribbean Islands, e.g.€ Jamaica and Bermuda. Some of these colonizers also brought African slaves to work their plantations. Soon those of African descent outnumbered the Europeans. Thus, political rule of the Islands changed back and forth primarily between Spain and England until the 1783 Treaty of Versailles granted Spain sovereignty over the Archipelago. “… [B]ut the people of San Andres and Providence received permission in return for allegiance to Spain, to remain” (Parsons 1956:€ 205). The Archipelago subsequently became a part of Colombia when Colombia gained independence from Spain in 1822 (Vollmer 1997:€ 52). Although Nicaragua has challenged Colombia’s claim to the Archipelago, the two countries have taken the issue to the International Court of Justice and each are hoping that the problem will be resolved in their favor according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Moreover, many Native Islanders chafe at being governed by Spanish-speaking Colombia (Mitchell 2005b, 2004; WCAR 2001) declaring Spanish-speaking Colombians to be modern day colonizers of San Andres island. In spite of Spain’s, and then Colombia’s, control of the Islands since before 1783, Spanish is not the dominant language of the local inhabitants that now refer to themselves as the “Native Islanders.” These Native Islanders are the Afro-Anglo Caribbean people that live there –€descendants of Africans, British, and Native Americans€– and who first arrived to the Islands in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Spanish-speaking Colombians often refer to them as the Raizal People. These Native Islanders or Raizales speak a variety of Caribbean English and/or an English-based Creole known as



Trilingual education 

Islander Creole English. This penchant for English is undoubtedly a result of the fact that the British were the people who originally colonized the Archipelago and who brought African slaves with them to the Islands. Thus, English and the English-lexifier Creole language spoken by the slaves and their descendants have held a principal place in island life even to the present. The current population of the Archipelago is reported as being 60,000 to 100,000 (Rashidi 2003). According to a census report from 2005 the population of this Departamento is 59,573 (55,426 on the Island of San Andres and 4,147 on the island of Providence). [Information from Colombia’s Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE) [National Administrative Statistics Department (2007).] GeoHive estimates the Departmento’s 2007 population at 72,923. These numbers are in contrast to the larger population numbers that have been told to me by native residents of San Andres and reported in the press. For example, Native Islander, Dulph Mitchell (2005a) notes that the San Andres Island’s population has increased alarmingly since the Island was declared a free port in 1953. Mitchell reports that in 1952 there were “5,675 inhabitants; 1964:€16,731; 1973:€22,989; 1988:€42,315; 1992:€75,000+; 2005:€100,000+…” The discrepancy with official DANE statistics, while perhaps exaggerated, may be due to the reportedly large number of people residing illegally on San Andres, (that is, without an Island residence card) and, therefore, not wishing to take part in any census. (San Andres is said to be the most densely populated island in the Caribbean. To control the large number of individuals that want to immigrate to San Andres from the mainland and other countries, one must apply for and receive an Island residency card in order to legally stay long-term on the Island.) Whether you take the official 2005 census number (59,753) or the higher-end number (100,000), it is acknowledged that Native Islanders make up less than half of the Departamento’s population and are now in the minority on what they feel is their Island. Many Native Islanders attribute their minority status on San Andres Island to the Colombian government’s 1953 decision to proclaim San Andres Island a duty-free port and build an airport capable of handling large passenger airplanes. This decision led mainland-Colombian businessmen, construction workers, and their families to relocate to San Andres Island to develop hotels, restaurants, duty-free shops, etc., capable of handling the influx of mainland-Colombian and international tourists. Native Islanders were not prepared for this type of industry and, to the displeasure of many Native Islanders, today most of the free-port/tourism-related businesses are owned and operated by continental Colombians. The Native Islanders that are employed by non-Islander businessmen have historically taken low-level paying jobs. With the arrival of so many mainland Colombians, the Spanish language, i.e. the official language of Colombia, began to be used more and more in business, government, and education. In fact, the Native Islanders commonly believe that this was a deliberate government policy used to ‘Colombianize’ the Native Islander population.

 Ronald C. Morren

Forbes states, “The free port meant and still means the transformation of our Archipelago into … an economic and political system in which all the Mainlander mentality began to grow. It is this system that has controlled our life since 1953 and it is this system that everyday is overwhelming us” (2005b: 6). Thus, Native Islander leaders have come to believe that, little-by-little, their cultural, linguistic, religious and moral values were degenerating. This has troubled the Native Islander leaders causing them to say, “What can be done?” “How can we return to our former ways before it is too late?” “Let’s bring back English in the schools.” “Let’s have bilingual education!” The above mentioned leaders who were advocating bilingual education did not seem to consider using Islander Creole English as a medium of instruction in school€– for many of them Islander English Creole was just poor English. Therefore, with the idea of initiating English/Spanish bilingual education in mind, in 1997, the Reverend George May, then Pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Andres Island and founder of the Christian University of San Andres, Providence and Santa Catalina, sought advice and assistance from SIL International. My wife, Diane and I, being SIL International’s Consultants for Literacy and Education, were asked to go to San Andres and evaluate the situation. A week was spent meeting with educators, church leaders, parents, and other Native Islanders discussing the linguistic and educational state of affairs on the Island. It was learned that, among the Native Islanders of San Andres, Islander Creole English was primarily spoken in the domains of the home and with friends, thus insuring that Islander Creole English was being passed on intergenerationally. Spanish was used for business and government –€domains where it was often necessary to interact with monolingual Spanish speakers. In addition, education had shifted from English to Spanish. English, however, was, and is, still being used in the church domain in those churches whose congregation is predominantly made up of Native Islanders. The mass media domain primarily used Spanish with some English and a very small amount of time and/or space allotted to Islander Creole English. With this information it was recommended that those who wanted to implement bilingual education go beyond English/Spanish bilingual education and consider trilingual education that would begin with the language of the home –€i.e. Islander Creole English. Since most Islander children attend preprimary school for two years, it was proposed that, during these two preprimary years, the students would receive instruction in Islander Creole English in order to develop proficiency and cognitive academic skills in the language with which they were most familiar€– skills that could then easily transfer to the other languages of the curriculum once those other languages are learned. Then, in the first grade (third year of school) Islander Creole English would continue and oral ‘standard’ English would be taught, and, in second grade (fourth year of school), oral Spanish would be introduced.



Trilingual education 

This suggestion received a mixed reaction. Many did not believe that Islander Creole English merited a place in the educational curriculum. Some expressed the common fear that allowing Islander Creole English to be used in school would inhibit the learning of ‘standard’ English and/or Spanish. To counter this misconception, research results were discussed that demonstrated that, when minority language children receive their initial primary education in their mother tongue and continue receiving mother tongue support thereafter, they do better academically in subsequent school years. (See Baker 2007; Cummins 1981; Dutcher 1982 & 1996; Larson & Davis 1981; Modiano 1973; Morren 1988; Thomas & Collier 1997 & 2002) As stated by Tucker (1999:€ 4), “The cumulative evidence from research conducted over the last three decades at sites around the world demonstrates conclusively that cognitive, social, personal, and economic benefits accrue to the individual who has an opportunity to develop a high degree of bilingual proficiency when compared with a monolingual counterpart.” After considerable discussion, the Native Islander leaders decided to initiate an experimental trilingual education project, which became known as the Trilingual Education Project 2000.

2.  Multilingual education model In the United States and England the multilingual education approach selected for San Andres Island and described in the following pages would be considered a transition model or early exit strategy due to the relatively short amount of time that students receive instruction in their mother tongue. As the name implies, transition models shift the language of instruction from the student’s first language to a second language and, usually, this language shift or transition is completed as soon as possible. Transition models of multilingual education often result in the student losing his/her first language. Thus, such a model is deemed to be weak because it often results in language subtraction, i.e. loss of one’s first language. Research indicates that the longer a student is able to receive instruction and pedagogical support in his/her mother tongue, the better the academic achievement will be (Cummins 2000; Thomas & Collier 1997; 2002). Unlike immigrant languages in the U.S., however, in a setting like San Andres Island where the first language of the children is being used all around them, the attitude of the majority of the people group is positive toward their language, and it is observed that the language is being passed on intergenerationally, it does not appear that Islander Creole English is in danger of imminent demise (subtraction). Therefore, even though in the education domain there is a significant language transition by 2nd grade (the fourth year of school) from Islander Creole English to ‘standard’ English, and then, later, to Spanish, it is unlikely that the students will lose their first language.

 Ronald C. Morren

The successful functioning of similar trilingual education models in places like Greenland (George 2001), Hong Kong (Lai 2001), Luxembourg (Hoffman 1998 and TEL2L 2001) and the Philippine Islands (Hohulin 1995) gave confidence to proceed with an early transition trilingual education model. That is not to imply, however, that the vernacular is never used in higher grades on San Andres; it is, in fact, used in those classes to clarify something and/or dealing with subjects of a cultural nature.

3.  Development of the Trilingual Education Curriculum As indicated above, the impetus for doing something about the languages used as media of instruction in the schools of San Andres came from Native Islander leaders€– especially those associated with the Christian University and some local primary schools. The three San Andres Island schools chosen for the experimental Trilingual Education Project 2000 included some of these people as staff members. At the conclusion of this groundwork visit to San Andres in 1997 (described above), my wife and I were invited to return in June of 1998 to facilitate a four-week workshop for preprimary and primary schoolteachers designed to introduce the theory, philosophy, and rationale for multilingual education that begins with the child’s first language (see Morren 2001). Therefore, under the auspices of the Christian University, we returned to the archipelago and spent four weeks training local Islander Creole English-speaking schoolteachers in the development of multilingual education curriculum materials for the two preprimary years. The four-week workshop began with a discussion of the need for agreement on a standard written form of the language. Although some Native Islanders had previously written stories, folk tales, songs, etc. in Islander Creole English, each author wrote according to what s/he considered right in his/her own eyes. There was no agreedupon standard. After considerable discussion, a tentative orthography was approved. Subsequently, an orthography committee was appointed, formed from among those interested in the proposed Trilingual Education Project 2000. The orthography committee consisted of seven persons –€ a Christian University official, two of the three pilot school principals, a Baptist pastor, a Catholic priest, a church elder, and a recognized author who has published in Spanish, English and Islander Creole English. The committee was given the directive to make decisions about standardizing the written form of Islander Creole English. Two of the committee members, Dulph Mitchell (the church elder) and Juan Ramirez-Dawkins (the author) took their mandate very seriously and spent many hours going over the educational materials as they were developed to check for word choice and spelling consistency that adhered to the agreed upon guidelines.



Trilingual education 

According to Decker (1996) a Belizean orthography committee had met to standardize the way Belizean Creole English was written.€ Since Belizean Creole English is related to Islander Creole English, the orthography committee began by looking at the orthography being used in Belize.€ The Belizean orthography committee had considered alternative approaches to systematically writing their language and decided that Belizean Creole should be written with what was called a ‘Rule-based Phonemic Model.’ This model initially appealed to San Andres Islanders because it looked somewhat like English and did not look like Spanish –€both qualities stated by Native Islanders as important to them at the time. According to Decker, The key idea of the Rule-Based Phonemic model is to maintain the more common spelling conventions of English. This is done by choosing the most representative ways that sounds are symbolized in English. Rather than having a ‘one symbolone sound’ system, we accept that there will have to be more than one way to represent some sounds, specifically vowel sounds… Consonants maintain the ‘one symbol-one sound’ correspondence. In principle, the two or three different ways of spelling each vowel are chosen from the way those sounds are written most commonly in English (1996:€357).

However, upon applying the Belize orthographic system to the Islander Creole English curriculum, teachers from the three experimental Trilingual Education Project 2000 schools found the Rule-Based Phonemic Model to be too difficult to teach. It had too many rules. Thus, in spite of the many statements made by Native Islanders that they did not want their language to look like Spanish, after using the Rule-Based Phonemic orthography for one year, the teachers and the orthography committee decided that a more phonemic orthography would be better and would be easier for children to learn to read. The resultant orthography is based on the principle of one sound corresponding to one symbol –€the benchmark of a truly phonemic orthography. Teachers found this orthography was much easier to use to teach children to learn to read and has been widely accepted by native speakers of Islander Creole English –€even though it looks similar to Spanish. (Parenthetically, more recently those educators responsible for the Belize orthography have adjusted their orthography to more approximate a phonemically written system, also.) In addition to discussing orthography issues and eventually establishing an orthography committee, the 1998 four-week workshop included sessions on an Introduction to Multilingual Education, an Introduction to Linguistics, and an Indigenous Authors’ class including an introduction to MS Publisher. The latter two topics were taught by SIL International members, Ronald and Lois Metzger. The tangible products of this workshop were two motivational reading books intended for use in the Islands’ preprimary grades: a children’s ABC stories book (ABC Stuoriz) and a book of short

 Ronald C. Morren

stories (Shaat Stuoriz). In order to compose the ABC stories book, each letter of the alphabet was assigned to one or two workshop participants with instructions to select a key word that began with their assigned letter that could easily be illustrated and to write a brief story that would aid the child in remembering the letter’s name and its sound. Similarly, each workshop participant was given the task to write and illustrate a short story that would be culturally appropriate and would be of interest to young children. Thus, the ABC Stuoriz book and the Shaat Stuoriz book were both authored by Native Islanders and written in Islander Creole English. At the completion of the workshop, my wife and I were again invited to return to assist in further preparation of the trilingual education curriculum and teacher training. In the fall of 1999, I was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research/Lecture Grant which made it possible for us to return to the archipelago for four months to continue working with the Trilingual Education Project 2000. By this time the preprimary ABC Book had been used in the three pilot schools for one year. We met with the teachers who had used it, and, went through the book together page-by-page, during which process the teachers made suggestions for revising it. Also, during the fall of 1999, the first grade curricula materials were generated and readied for application in the pilot school classrooms. In addition, a visual scope and sequence plan was prepared, so that all those involved in the preparation of the Trilingual Education Project 2000’s curriculum material would have an overview of where the Project was headed. (See Figure€1) The language(s) in focus for each grade are in bold print. 1999 pre-prim A Every thing in Creole ---------ABC’s Numbers

1999 2000 2001 pre-prim B 1st Grade 2nd Grade Every thing Reading and Reading and in Creole writing in writing in ---------Creole English ABC’s Numbers Math in Math in Creole English

Social Science concepts

Social Science concepts

Social Science in Creole

Social Science in Creole

Natural Science concepts

Natural Science concepts

Natural Science in Creole

Natural Science in English

EnvironEnviron- Oral English mental print mental print in Creole in Creole

Oral Spanish

2002 3rd Grade Reading and writing in English

2003 2004 4th Grade 5th Grade Reading and Reading and writing in writing in English English

Math in Math in Math in English and English and Spanish and Spanish Spanish English Social Science Social Social in English and Science in Science in Creole English and Spanish Spanish Natural Natural Natural Science in Science in Science in English English and Spanish and Spanish English Reading and Reading and Reading and writing in writing in writing in Spanish Spanish Spanish

Figure€1.╇ Scope And Sequence Chart. Trilingual Education Project 2000. San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina Islands Colombia, South America



Trilingual education 

As can be seen in Figure€1 above, the Scope and Sequence Chart uses the three languages spoken on San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina, i.e. Islander Creole English, ‘standard’ English, and Spanish. In keeping with the pedagogical adage that instruction should go from the known to the unknown, Islander Creole English, the first language known to most of the students in the pilot schools, is the only medium of instruction in the two preprimary years. In first grade the goal is that everything be taught in Islander Creole English with the exception of oral English. (Historically, however, some Spanish-speaking children have been enrolled in the pilot school classes so teachers have some freedom to use Spanish in the classroom.) Then, reading and writing English is introduced in second grade along with oral Spanish. Reading and writing Spanish is introduced in third grade. Both English and Spanish continue throughout the rest of primary school with Spanish increasing in the latter years. Whenever students seem to lack comprehension or at whatever time the teachers think it necessary, they are encouraged to use Islander Creole English to aid students’ understanding. Teachers are also admonished to never ridicule the use of Islander Creole English –€in or out of the classroom. Even though Colombia’s constitution allows for minority language groups of that country to receive education in their mother tongue, the reality of the situation is that very limited funds are budgeted or appropriated for such an endeavor. Therefore, any accommodation to a child’s first language is extraordinary. Thus, with a very limited budget it was necessary to be extremely frugal in the development of the trilingual education curriculum materials.

4.  Development of the Islander Creole English first grade materials As indicated in Figure€ 1, the curricula for preprimary and first grades, except oral ‘standard’ English, were to be written in Islander Creole English. Since this was a workshop for teachers who were native speakers of Islander Creole English, the authors of the material for the new trilingual curriculum were the same teachers employed in the experimental schools. Colombia’s Ministry of Education has national curriculum objectives for all subjects of all grades. Inasmuch as Islander Creole English-speaking children would need to know the same things that their Spanish-speaking counterparts in other parts of Colombia were learning, these national curriculum objectives served as the paramount guide for what should be included in the Trilingual Education Project 2000 curriculum. Other online educational curricula for first grade from various U.S. states were also consulted. Another important consideration was that all of the Islander Creole English educational materials developed were to be culturally appropriate and linguistically sensitive to the Islander children’s background experience and their

 Ronald C. Morren

known Island environment. With the exception of second grade English as second language materials, most of the English and Spanish Trilingual Education Project 2000 curricula needed for the content areas in grades 2–5 relied on grade appropriate materials already published in the respective languages. Figure€2 illustrates the Islander Creole English listening, speaking, reading, and writing objectives and outcomes for first grade language arts. (Also discussed in Morren 2001) In first grade language arts, students will learn: LISTENING/SPEAKING. Students will: – Listen to gather information, solve problems, and enjoy and appreciate literature; – Present dramatic interpretations of experiences, stories, poems, and plays; and – Participate in group discussions. READING. Students will: – Recognize the conventions of print (e.g., understand that print moves left to right, involves upper and lower case letters, and represents spoken language); – Manipulate sounds in spoken words (phonemic awareness) and understand that letters represent sounds (phonics); – Read and comprehend first-grade-level text fluently; – Use graphs, charts, signs, and titles to acquire information; – Find and connect ideas and themes in different books, stories, and other printed resources; and – Draw conclusions from information gathered. WRITING. Students will: – Write their own name and each letter of the alphabet; – Gain increasing control of penmanship and punctuation; – Compose questions, ideas, and stories; – Write for different purposes, such as composing lists, letters, stories, and poems; – Engage in the writing process by generating ideas before writing and developing and polishing drafts; and – Record or dictate questions for investigations.

Figure€2.╇ First Grade Islander Creole English Language Arts Objectives and Outcomes for Listening, Speaking, Reading, & Writing

The entire faculty of each of the three experimental schools in the Trilingual Education Project 2000 worked together to develop the first grade curriculum. Each school worked on one of the following content areas: math, natural science, or social science. During the four-month period that my wife and I functioned as consultants/ advisors to the Trilingual Education Project 2000, the experimental schools on San Andres Island dismissed their students for a half-day each week so that the teachers could meet with the advisors to plan the curriculum development task for that week. Thus we met with all the primary teachers from each school, one school at a time, for one-half day a week to discuss the next curriculum development task with the teachers.



Trilingual education 

Usually the coordinator appointed by the Christian University for the project was also present. After a discussion, the teachers designed and developed culturally-appropriate materials for the first grade Islander Creole English-speaking students. Since it takes fiscal backing to prepare, publish, and train teachers, etc. for implementing a trilingual education project, and since finances for the Trilingual Education Project 2000 were limited, the Islander advocates of the Project were pleased to have whatever economic backing their government apportioned to develop the mother tongue materials required for even this modest venture. However, since those finances were limited, it was decided to plan and develop the materials using the “Big Book Method”. The Big Book Method uses storybooks that are large enough so that a whole class can see and read the book together –€thus only one book per class is needed€– a definite cost-saving device. Big Books can also be shared with other classes. (For a description of the Big Book Method see Waters 1998.) Figure€3 shows the scope and sequence of letters, etc. for teaching reading and writing using the Big Books that were authored by the teachers. No. Name of Big Book Story 1 AH KYAAHN STAN PIKNINY 2

Consonants taught s p

Vowels taught i

MISTA TOM DAH WEHN WAN GUD UOL MAN MISTA JOHN GUOL TIIT

m t

uo

g ks

ii & word final y

4

MISTA TOM AHN DI WAIT RAT

sm h

ou

5

JOHNNY DI MONKY

j f

6

DI RAT AHN DI CHIIZ

r ch z

ou & word final ow [also ou contrasted with uo.] a

7

BYRON SIELIN BUOT

b l

3

ie

Keywords

Conventions of Print

sono pikniny ihn man Tom uol guol beks tiit fony, stuory smaal huom pouda Johnny fraid out kow rat chiiz chiiz Ah(so hongry!) Byron likl sielin

Every sentence begins with a capital letter. People’s names are proper nouns and begin with capital letters. Telling sentences end with periods. Names of places are proper nouns and begin with capital letters. Use quotation marks to show the words that people say. Asking sentences end with question marks.

Every sentence has a complete thought.

Figure€3.╇ Scope And Sequence For Teaching First Grade Reading And Writing In Islander Creole English Using Big Books╇ (Continued)

 Ronald C. Morren 8

BREDA NANCY AHN BREDA TAIGA

n ny br

e

9

DI KING DAATA

w d

aa [double a]

10 PAIRAT MORGAN

k ky kw zh

V+hn [nasal vowels]

11 WAN LAGAHED RAID

pr dr gr

ai

12 DI LIKL GYAL WEH GET LAAS

gy gw

o

13 NO GO IINA DI BUSH!

w bw

u

14 DI YONG GYAL WEH WEHN WAAHN GO SKUUL 15 DI GUANA

y v

uu [double u]

sh _ng

i [review]

Nancy nyuz breda seh, ded, yet wan daata faamly king kyapn kwik trezha wehn prablem droundid grab raid gyal gwain op, som waak bwai bush yong vizit skuul

Titles before a name begin with capital letters. (Review) Asking sentences and question marks. (Review) Every sentence begins with a capital letter. The word “Ah” (first person singular pronoun) always begins with a capital letter. (Review) Every sentence has a complete thought. Exclamation marks are used to show excitement. People’s names are proper nouns and begin with capital letters.

shiek (Review) Names of dong (di trii) places are proper nouns prity and begin with capital letters.

Figure€3.╇ (Continued)

Thirty-two Big Books were developed. Each included instructions for teaching. Although some of the Big Books were written especially for one of the content areas: Social Science, Natural Science, or Mathematics, all of the Big Books can be used to teach or augment reading and writing. Thus, each Big Book is intended for 1–2 weeks of classroom instruction. In addition to three mathematics Big Books, a separate, traditional first grade mathematics book was developed. The teachers themselves illustrated each Big Book. This insured culturally appropriate illustrations, but many illustrations might be called amateurish by professional artists. Illustrations for the traditional mathematics book were mostly taken from Clip Art. If funds were available, it would be ideal to have a more accomplished artist refine these drawings using the teachers’ drawings as a guideline. Copies of the Big Books for each experimental school were reproduced using computers and photocopiers. Thus, even though Islander Creole English does not have a large repertoire of books in their language, the Big Book Method made it possible to provide inexpensive, culturally-appropriate reading matter for each classroom of the experimental Trilingual Education Project 2000 in just one semester.



Trilingual education 

Figure€ 4 depicts the Big Book Method as adapted for the Trilingual Education Project 2000 on San Andres Island. (Also discussed in Morren 2001) The contents of Figure€4 are included in the front of each Big Book that was produced by the Trilingual Education Project 2000 personnel. The Big Book Method of Teaching Reading Adapted and Developed for Islander Creole English as Spoken on San Andres Island, Colombia First Day: Shared reading 1. First reading–The teacher tells the students to listen for a specific purpose as the story is read. The following are story elements included in the Big Book listening section: Setting, characters, main idea, predicting what will happen next, sequencing, fiction/nonfiction, cause/effect, etc. 2. Second reading–The teacher picks any two of the above that were not done during the first reading and discusses them with the students. (Students can listen for them during the story or they can pick them out after the teacher reads the story to them the second time.) Next reading lesson or lessons for another day: (The teacher refers to the story often but doesn’t need to read the whole story every time one of the following is taught based on the story.) –

Phonics–There is a progression of phonic skills taught in this section. One aspect of the story is selected to teach/reinforce a new letter or letter combination to the students. Possible phonics lessons: Beginning consonants, ending consonants, middle consonants, consonant clusters, vowels, vowel combinations.

–

Conventions of print, i.e. punctuation or capitalization—One aspect of the story will be referred to that could be used to teach punctuation, capitalization, or spelling.

–

Writing–There is a writing lesson related in some way to each story. The writing lesson encourages the students to use key words, phrases, sentences or conventions of print emphasized in the story. It is not simply copying sentences from the story. The writing lesson can be on a different day during language arts time.

Figure€4.╇ The Big Book Method

The orthography committee, mentioned earlier, reviewed and edited the Big Books giving special attention to following the established orthography rules and to assuring that the words could easily be understood by Islander Creole English-speaking children and were not unnecessarily borrowed from Spanish or English. All the Big Books were “published” using Microsoft Publisher. Two teachers from each school were chosen to learn this program and seemed pleased to be selected to learn this new technology. The teachers who were taught to use Microsoft Publisher agreed to share what they had learned with other teachers from their school. This method of publishing was another way of stretching the limited budget to get satisfactory materials. Even though the Big Book method made it possible to use just one book with a large group of students, one book could not always accommodate the number of

 Ronald C. Morren

students needing to see/read the words of the Big Book story. In 2004 the Schools on San€ Andres Island received overhead projectors for each classroom. By the start of the 2006 school year all the Islander Creole English Big Books had been reproduced on overhead transparencies. Using these overhead transparencies made it possible to enlarge the pages so that all students could see/read the words of the stories from any position in the classroom. Teachers reported this to be a significant improvement.

5.  Additional information on the Trilingual Education Project 2000 Not only do Native Islanders want their children to maintain their mother tongue, they perceive that knowing their Islander Creole English gives them an advantage over Spanish speakers in learning ‘standard’ English. This is another reason why starting with Islander Creole English, then moving to ‘standard’ English, and lastly, going to Spanish meets with the Native Islanders’ approval. Figure€5 below clearly displays that the language used as the primary medium of instruction in the Trilingual Education Project 2000 changes during the child’s school experience. The mother tongue as a medium of instruction is eventually replaced by two other languages as customary media of instruction. That is, students go from being instructed entirely in their minority language (Islander Creole English) during preprimary A & B to being instructed entirely in two major world languages (English and Spanish) by grade four at which time Islander Creole English is only used informally to facilitate comprehension. Stage

Daily Sessions

Language(s) Used

Preprimary A Preprimary B

5 hours

Islander Creole English

Grade 1

4 hours 1 hour 1 hour 3 hours 1 hour 1 hour 2 hours 2 hours 2.5 hours 2.5 hours 2 hours 3 hours

Islander Creole English ‘standard’ English Islander Creole English ‘standard’ English Spanish Islander Creole English ‘standard’ English Spanish ‘standard’ English Spanish ‘standard’ English Spanish

Grade 2

Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5

Figure€5.╇ Media of Instruction in the Trilingual Education Project 2000



Trilingual education 

6.  Teaching oral ‘Standard’ English in first grade Published curricula for teaching oral English are not only expensive, they are culturally inappropriate for Islander Creole English-speaking children from these Caribbean Islands. Since the Trilingual Education Project 2000 operates on a very limited budget, an inexpensive oral English curriculum designed specifically for first grade Islander children to orally learn ‘standard’ English was in order. Most of the Islander children attend a Baptist or an Adventist church on Saturday or Sunday whose services are conducted entirely in ‘standard’ English. It was observed that they enjoyed learning to sing English choruses in their church schools. (Some adults stated that they had learned and/or improved their English by attending the English-speaking services of a Baptist or Adventist church.) Islander children were also already familiar with many traditional children’s English songs, poems, and nursery rhymes. Thus, in consultation with local teachers, it was decided to capitalize on what was already happening and incorporate ‘public domain’ songs, poems, and nursery rhymes into the English curriculum. Using the voice of a native English speaker, a CD of the English songs, poems, and nursery rhymes was locally reproduced and made available to each experimental classroom. The resultant first grade oral English curriculum was inexpensive, culturally appropriate, and went from the known to the unknown. The following themes became the basis for the first grade oral English curriculum: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Classroom Family Animals Food

– – – –

Clothing Body Parts Games/Sports Weather

Each first grade oral English lesson consists of 2 or 3 of the following types of activities: –â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi –â•fi

Phonemic Awareness – Activities using the songs, poems, nursery rhymes, or stories chosen to teach the English letter sounds to Islander Creole Englishspeaking children on San Andres Island. Phonics – Each lesson has its own chart using the poems or stories from English Letter Sounds for San Andres (The whole chart is also included in the front of the teacher’s manual. Note, too, that each poem, song, nursery rhyme, or short chant is recorded on the First Grade Oral English CD and can also be found in the Appendix.) Songs – Each lesson has one or more songs, which are also listed in the appendix. Stories – Each lesson has its own story. When the stories are continued from one day to the next, the teacher is to review the previous day’s part and then go on to the new part. (All of the stories are listed in the appendix and are recorded on the First Grade Oral English CD.)

 Ronald C. Morren

–â•fi –â•fi

Games and Drama – suggestions appear with the lessons, and a list of all games can be found in the appendix. Total Physical Response (TPR) – There is a TPR lesson for each of Lessons 1–18. After Lesson 18, the teacher will design his/her own lesson for his/her students. The TPR exercises for Lessons 1–18 appear in the appendix.

The following is a list of just a few of the examples of songs, poems, nursery rhymes, and stories that were used in the first grade oral English lessons: –â•fi –â•fi

The Muffin Man Baa, Baa Black Sheep

– –

Three Blind Mice Row, Row, Row Your Boat

By the time students complete the first grade oral English curriculum, they have a rudimentary understanding of English in spoken form and are ready to learn to read and write the English that they understand.

7.  Teaching ‘Standard’ English reading and writing in second grade An effective reading and writing program should be based on what a student already understands orally. This instills in the student the idea that reading is for meaning and not just the ability to pronounce words. The second grade English reading and writing materials were designed to be a continuation of the first grade oral English program. In order for the second graders to be successful in reading and writing in ‘standard’ English, the following requirements had to be met: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Students needed to be able to read and write in their first language, Islander Creole English, with understanding. Students needed to be able to recognize phonemes in ‘standard’ English. Students needed to be able to carry on a short conversation in ‘standard’ English. Students needed to be able to respond correctly to classroom commands in ‘standard’ English.

8.  Contrastive analysis approach A Contrastive Analysis Approach to teaching differences between Islander Creole English and “standard” English was presented to a majority of the Project 2000 Pilot



Trilingual education 

School teachers. They received this teacher training either by attending a course at the Christian University, called, Implementation of Multilingual Projects, or during in-service training seminars conducted by Christian University staff during the teachers’ school breaks. The contrastive analysis approach has been explained by John€R.€Rickford (1999) in a chapter titled, Using the Vernacular to Teach the Standard. As Rickford points out, studies have demonstrated that when students both see and hear differences between their two languages, they are more likely to be able to master each difference and not mix the two into some form of mesolectal English. Research has also shown that, when a student is learning a second language based in part on his/her first language, the prospect of mastering the second language is greatly enhanced by being exposed to exercises that highlight major differences between the two. These exercises may include the syntactic, morphological, phonological and/or lexical differences of the two languages being compared/contrasted. And experience has shown that the use of this method has born fruit among Islander students.

9.  Differences between Islander Creole English and ‘Standard’ English Although not exhaustive, some of the major differences in Islander Creole English and ‘standard’ English are presented below. (See O’Flynn de Chaves 1990, for a more complete linguistic investigation of Islander Creole English.) Some of the differences are appropriate to point out to second grade beginning readers of ‘standard’ English; others might better be left for later grades, when students’ cognitive abilities have been more fully developed and thus are more apt to understand the changes. However, a bilingual teacher should cover all of these differences as soon as s/he senses the class is ready for them. The following are examples of some of the items included in the teacher’s manual to illustrate differences between ‘standard’ English and Islander Creole English: Syntactic Differences: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Reduplication – Then they saw a very shiny star come up in the west ~ Den dehn si wan shain-shain staa kom op iina di wes. Multiple negation – You don’t know anything ~ Unu no nuo notn ataal. Absence of copula/auxilary – Jim is tall. ~ Jim taal. Limited passive construction – John was hit by Sam. ~ ‘John get hit’ is possible, where actor is not specified, but more commonly one hears: ‘Sam wehn hit John.’ Part of total plurals – One/some/all of the boys went home. ~ Wan/som/aal a di bwai gaan huom.

 Ronald C. Morren

Morphological Differences: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Absence of 3rd person singular present tense marker -s – He talks well. ~ Ihn taak gud. Absence of possessive marker –’s – My brother’s book. ~ Mai breda buk. Absence of plural marker with numbers -s – one book, two books ~ one buk, two buk Isolating plural marker – My friends left. ~ Mi fren dem gaan. Isolating typology in verb past tense – He walked ~ Ihn wehn waak. Isolating typology in progressive tense – She is walking ~ Ihn deh waak. Absence of subject/object pronominal distinctions – Let us go. ~ Mek wi go.

Phonological Differences: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

Diphthong ou becomes uo – boat [bout] ~ buot Diphthong ei becomes ie – pay [pei] ~ pie Vowels ar and or become aa – start ~ staat; – morning ~ maanin Final er becomes a – water ~ waata; – grandfather ~ granfaada Consonant cluster sk becomes ks – ask ~aks Consonant cluster simplification – first ~ fos; – world ~ worl Voiceless th becomes t or d – teeth [tiith] ~ tiit; – grandfather ~ granfaada

Lexical Differences: –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi –â•fi

attend ~ asis you (pl) ~ unu he/she ~ ihn (either masculine or feminine) angry ~ beks or veks crazy ~ mad hear a presentation ~ lisn tu wan intervenshan complete an assignment ~ mek a work have an appointment ~ gat wan kampramais help me ~ kolaboreit mi (collaborate with me) confuse ~ kanfaun (confound) bother ~ moles

10.  Using the model Native Islander students taking part in the Trilingual Education Project 2000 that have successfully completed the first grade have had a solid experience in learning



Trilingual education 

to read and write in their vernacular Islander Creole English language and now bring with them to the second grade all those reading and writing skills. These students will have learned five basic skills from their first grade experience, viz., (1)€sound-symbol correspondence, that is, for each symbol –€or letter€– there is a corresponding sound; (2)€sound blending, that is, when a consonant for example is placed next to a vowel, one can blend the two together to make a ‘blended’ syllable sound; (3)€reading from left to right, that is, one begins reading on the left side of the page and progresses to the right; (4)€ reading for comprehension, that is, one gets meaning from sounding out all the letters that are placed side by side in certain sequences on a page, and (5)€conventions of print, that is, one begins each sentence with a capital letter, and ends with a period, etc. All these skills are transferred to learning to read and write ‘standard’ English once ‘standard’ English is learned orally. One of the major challenges the Creole teacher of ‘standard’ English encounters is that of teaching his/her students several ‘standard’ English vowel sounds that do not occur in Islander Creole English. That is, in Islander Creole English there are five basic vowel sounds, viz., /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, each symbolized by one corresponding letter. However, despite several varieties of ‘standard’ English, it is commonly understood that ‘standard’ English has eleven emic (meaningful) vowel sounds but only five vowel symbols, or letters, available in which to express them in print. As a ‘solution’ to this challenge in ‘standard’ English, an orthographic system evolved to use the five vowel symbols in various combinations. And later educators decided to designate some English vowels as ‘short’ and some as ‘long,’ even though none of them have anything to do with length of the sound. The Second Grade English Reading and Writing Scope and Sequence with Activities chart (Figure€6) uses the ‘standard’ English designations of ‘short’ vowels in lessons€1 to 5 and ‘long’ vowels in lessons 7 though 11. It is the English ‘long’ vowel group that most closely approximates the vowel sounds found in Islander Creole, whereas the English ‘short’ vowel group sounds will be new to most Islander students. Thus, it is important for the teacher to familiarize him/herself with these ‘new’ vowel sounds by listening carefully to the CD of songs and poems provided with the Big Books. This will aid the teacher in modeling English accurately. To begin teaching all eleven English vowel sounds –€ both those that are designated ‘long’ and those designated ‘short’€– the teacher may decide to begin with those vowel sounds that most closely approximate what the student is already familiar with from his First Grade experience. As stated above, these are the Islander Creole English vowels that are equivalent to the ‘long’ English vowels, which begin with lesson€7. Then, once the student masters these, the teacher can begin focusing on the less familiar ‘short’ vowels. The teacher’s manual explains how to teach vowel sounds by contrasting them with Islander Creole English. For example teaching lesson 7 (see Figure€6): The teacher

 Ronald C. Morren

is instructed to first present the content of the lesson. Then, as an exercise in contrast, i.e. English letter/sound contrasted with what the student already knows about his/her Creole letters/sounds, the teacher is directed to write on the chalk board two lists of words: on one side a list of Islander Creole words using the letter sounds /ie/ and across from it, its corresponding equivalent in English (aCe, where C represents any consonant sound). For example: ie becomes aCe

Islander kiek kiev ties fies shiek

‘Standard’ English cake cave taste face shake

After writing the above words on the chalkboard, the teacher is told to point out that the ‘ie’ sound in Islander Creole becomes an ‘ei’ sound in ‘standard’ English, that is, the vowels are transposed. However, it is not written as ‘ei’ but rather in several different ways, often as the letter ‘a,’ followed by a consonant (C) and then the letter ‘e’ (that is, aCe) as in the examples above. The teacher then asks the students to identify the ‘long a’ sounds in the story and then compare them with how they would have been written in Islander Creole English. The teacher should also expose students to other ways that ‘standard’ English symbolizes the ‘long a’ sound. For example: ie becomes a ie becomes ay ie becomes ai

Islander bieby biekin piepa fieva die pie bie aalwiez pien jiel miel

‘Standard’ English baby bacon paper favor day pay bay always pain jail mail

For grammatical contrasts between Islander Creole English and ‘standard’ English the following strategy is suggested. On a chalk board the teacher should write a sentence first in Islander Creole English and then, directly underneath, its translation in English. For example:





Trilingual education 

Islander: Mary daag blak. ‘Standard’ English: Mary’s dog is black.

The teacher is to first read the sentences slowly to the students. Then, as the teacher rereads the sentences the students are told to listen carefully to the differences between them. In the above example the teacher should emphasize the English possessive marker “s” in Mary’s and the “iz” sound in the copulative word is. Once this is done, the students can be asked to state what they hear that is different and what they see that is different between the two sentences. It is expected that the students will point out that the word for dog is different. While the teacher should praise the student for a correct observation, the teacher should also call attention to the first grammatical difference between the two sentences, viz. an added “s” in Mary’s. Once noted by students, the teacher should point out that ‘s’ is an English grammatical feature that is added to most English nouns that possess something. Students should also note that an apostrophe (’) is placed between the noun and the “s.” The teacher then sounds out the difference between Mary (in Creole) and Mary’s (in English). Then, to make a game out of the difference the teacher may point to one student’s ear and say, for example: “ear – Sally’s ear” emphasizing the ‘s’ sound. Then, the teacher can point to her eye and say, “eye€– Sally’s eye.” Then point to her hair and say, “hair,” this time encouraging the students to complete the phrase, “Sally’s hair.” The teacher must make sure the students add the ‘s’ sound to Sally. To continue with the “game” the teacher can go about the room pointing out student’s body parts; then go to inanimate objects, such as pencils, books, chairs, etc. (for example “di pensil iriesa” in Islander Creole English becomes “the pencil’s eraser” in English). Alternatively, the students may lead in the game. The same or similar pattern can be used for the second grammatical difference, viz., use of the copulative ‘is’ [iz sound] in English, e.g. “Sally’s hair is black,” “Billy’s book is green,” etc. Similar exercises may be devised for contrasting other grammatical differences between Islander Creole and ‘standard’ English. Wherever practical the teacher should pick out typical sentences from the twenty-eight lessons provided in the Big Books. It is hoped that contrastive analysis exercises that work well in the classroom will be documented, edited and printed for the use of all Islander trilingual education teachers in the future. Figure€ 6 presents the second grade scope and sequence used to teach second grade reading and writing in ‘standard’ English. In addition to songs, poems, and nursery rhymes, most lessons include a story written in English by local Islander authors that is representative of Islander life. Thus, the resultant curriculum features culturally appropriate material that goes from the known to the unknown and is not unrelated or totally different from the local teaching style. Teachers are trained to extend

 Ronald C. Morren

each lesson so that it integrates other subject areas as well. By so doing, each lesson is expected to take at least one week. Lesson 1 2 3 4

Letter(s), sounds or conventions of print Short a (as in apple) Short e (as in egg) Short i (as in fish) Short o (as in octopus)

5 6

Short u (as in umbrella) Review all short vowels

7 8

Long a (as in ate) Long e (as in eel)

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Long i (as in mice) Long o (as in boat) Long u (as in tune) Review all long vowels Letters t, m, and f Days of the week Letters d, r, l Letters s, n, k Letters b, g, h

17

Letters p, w, y

18 19 20 21 22

Review Letters c, j, qu Letters v, z Letter combinations –ck and st— Letter combinations sh

23

Letter combinations kn

24

Review

25 26 27 28 29

Vowel combinations ow and ou Letter combinations sw and sk –ing Time to the hour; ‘x’ Review

Song, poem, or nursery rhyme Story for warm-up Baa, Baa, Black Sheep Where is the Cat? Hickety Pickety my Black Hen Ben’s Hen Pens Sing a song of Sixpence She has Six Fish London Bridge is Falling An Octopus is What I Got Down Humpty Dumpty The Ugly Duck Runs Six Little Ducks Review stories 1–5 A, B, C Song The Old Gray Mare Jane Made a Big Cake Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Steve Likes to Eat Be? Three Blind Mice Food I Like Row, Row, Row your Boat Opal went on a Boat Little Boy Blue The Music Story The Eensy Weensy Spider Review stories 7–11 Old MacDonald had a Farm Today is Sunday Farmer in the Dell Simple Simon Girls and Boys Come out and Play Wee Willie Winky Hokey Pokey Mary, Mary Quite Contrary Five Little Vipers The Counting Song She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes One, two, Buckle my Shoe Found a Peanut Skip to my Lou It’s Raining, it’s Pouring Hickory, Dickory, Dock

Uncle Down’s Donkey St. Ives The Little Red Hen (simplified) Three Little Pigs (simplified) Review stories 13–18 Johnny Cay A Zebra Lives in the Zoo A Stormy Night The Seashell Shop If You’re Happy... Months of the Year Review stories 19–24 The Cat Cries I had a Little Turtle The Dancing Doll What Time is it Mr. Fox? Review stories 25–28 End of the year Review

Figure€6.╇ Second Grade ‘Standard’ English Reading and Writing Scope and Sequence with Activities

11.  Is the Trilingual Education Project 2000 Working? In 2004, Trilingual Education Project 2000 personnel asked for help in evaluating the Project –€specifically, were the students enrolled in the Project’s experimental schools



Trilingual education 

learning to read in Islander Creole English? Various websites and assessments were consulted for ideas regarding the evaluation of basic, early literacy skills. DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) Benchmark Levels is an especially helpful source of this type of information. Based on the curricula materials that had been developed, an evaluation instrument was prepared. One teacher from each of the three experimental schools was trained to administer the evaluation instrument. The eight parts of the Islander Creole English first grade diagnostic reading inventory were as follows: Part 1: Book and Print Awareness. (e.g. Point to the beginning of the sentence.) Part 2: Graphophonemic Knowledge. (e.g. Look at a letter and tell the examiner the sound that letter makes.) Part 3: Awareness of Word Parts. (e.g. “Say everybody without the every.” Student should respond by saying, “body”.) Part 4: Blending Syllables. (e.g. Examiner says the word slowly in syllables, –€problem. The student responds by saying the word correctly.) Part 5: Matching First (Beginning) Sounds. (e.g. A row of pictures of four common items are shown to the student, e.g. fish, frog, rooster, house. The examiner tells the student the name of each picture. The student is then asked to tell the examiner which of the last three words starts with the same sound as the first word.) Part 6: Matching Last (Ending) Sounds. (e.g. A row of pictures of four common items are shown to the student, e.g. chair, bucket, guitar, kitten. The examiner tells the student the name of each picture. The student is then asked to tell the examiner which of the last three words ends with the same sound as the first word.) Part 7: Word Reading. (e.g. Students are asked to read a list of 20 words. The list is intended to progress from easy to more difficult words.) Part 8: Passage Reading with Comprehension. Students are given two minutes to look over a short, culturally-appropriate story suitable for children. Then they are told to read the story out loud. The examiner times the student and also marks words that are misread, skipped, inserted, etc. After the student finishes reading the passage, comprehension questions are asked. By timing the student, a reading rate is obtained. Noting reading errors gives an accuracy score, and, by asking comprehension questions, a student’s understanding of what was read can be determined. The First Grade Islander Creole English Diagnostic Reading Inventory was administered to 18 second grade students attending the experimental schools who had attended at least one year in the experimental program. One reason only 18 students were tested was because many students had moved or been transferred and were no longer attending the experimental school where they began. Due to the small sample of students, measures of statistical significance could not be ascertained as was originally anticipated. Nevertheless, ANOVAS, t-tests and a number of correlations were

 Ronald C. Morren

run and indicated that IF the results of the small sample held true for a larger sample, then, with the exception of Part 8 (see paragraph below), the trilingual education project points toward statistically significant and favorable results. The diagnostic item that posed the most difficulty for the students, and of utmost importance, was Part 8, “Passage Reading with Comprehension.” Although a few could read and comprehend quite well, the majority of the students tested did not adequately comprehend what they read. All of the students read more slowly than the minimum standard rate and this may have affected the comprehension for some. (It’s difficult to comprehend what is being read when the words are read so slowly that there is no connection between the words, i.e. there is a lack of fluency.)

12.  Additional results of the Trilingual Education Project 2000: –â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi



An Islander Creole English/U.S. English glossary is in process. It currently contains more than 4,000 words. For the teachers involved in the development of the trilingual education curriculum, the orthography committee, and a committee of church pastors involved in translating the Bible this draft copy of the glossary has become, for the most part, the accepted standard for writing San Andres Islander Creole English words. It is anticipated that the glossary will be published and made available to the public in the future. There is also talk of expanding it by developing it into a bilingual dictionary. The original three experimental schools of the Trilingual Education Project 2000 are all on the Island of San Andres. Recently Providence Island implemented a pilot bilingual education project, as well, using the Trilingual Education Project 2000 materials. Retired linguist/educator, Marcia Dittman has been helping teachers on Providence Island with this endeavor. A change in attitude toward Creole is evident. For example: – ‘Creole Day’ was inaugurated at one of the non-experimental schools to celebrate Creole language and culture on the Island of San Andres. This school has historically been resistant to the use of Creole on the campus. – T-shirts with Islander Creole English expressions on them are being sold in shops and worn by Native Islanders and tourists.

–â•fi

A Bible translation project into Islander Creole English was begun in 2001 and is still in progress. Part of this Bible translation project included dubbing Campus Crusade’s Jesus Film into Islander Creole English and a Jesus Radio-drama.



– –

The Jesus Film has been shown in many churches. The Jesus Film has been shown on San Andres Island’s National TV station.



–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi

–â•fi



–â•fi

Trilingual education 

– The Jesus Film is available on DVD and has been purchased by individuals to view in their homes. – The Christian Radio Station on San Andres Island has aired the Islander Creole English Jesus Radio-drama. Teachers at the Project’s experimental schools have asked for refresher courses in using the trilingual education materials, including skills to monitor and evaluate progress. One of the original experimental schools opted out of the Trilingual Education Project 2000 while another school on San Andres Island has requested to be part of the Trilingual Education Project 2000. The First Baptist Primary School, one of the original experimental schools, was recently recognized by the Colombian government as the institution with the highest test performance in English of all the public schools in the Archipelago. (This school’s principal has also requested additional training for both teachers and school administrators to further develop their trilingual education teaching.) Approximately 85 students, including present-day teachers, have received training in implementing multilingual education projects at the Christian University of San Andres. Most of these men and women are now in favor of using Islander Creole English and some actively promote multilingual education in the Archipelago. The Trilingual Education Project 2000 has captured the attention of Educators in other countries where a Creole language is spoken. – Educators in Jamaica have read about the Trilingual Education Project 2000 and invited the author to Jamaica to share with them about the Archipelago’s multilingual education project. An experimental bilingual education project was subsequently initiated in Jamaica using Jamaican Creole and Jamaican Standard English. – Ministry of Education employees from St. Vincent invited the author to discuss with them bilingual education and the possibility of using their local Creole language, Vincy Twang, and ‘standard’ English in a similar multilingual education project. Networking has begun, not only among those speakers of Islander Creole English, but also other English-based Creole speaking communities throughout the Caribbean advocating education in the vernacular. A website has been proposed where educational materials can both be uploaded and downloaded.

13.  Conclusion The Trilingual Education Project 2000 has experienced some ‘bumps’ in the road. For example, some teachers who were trained in the application of the trilingual education

 Ronald C. Morren

curriculum were transferred to other schools and the replacement teachers did not know how to properly use the trilingual materials. Some of the Secretary of Education Office personnel were not in favor of using Islander Creole English in the classroom and may have intimidated some of the experimental teachers by stating that the first and second grade students were to be tested exclusively in Spanish. The two universities operating on the Island were in competition for students and the meager funds that the Ministry of Education allocated to the Project. Despite such encumbrances, many of the Native Islander leaders are behind the Project and determined to see it succeed. They meet with each other to plan for promoting Islander Creole English. They encourage the experimental teachers. And they have petitioned the Colombian government to enact legislation favorable to their trilingual education initiative and have been allocated some funds to carry it out. The result is more schools and more teachers wanting to implement trilingual education.

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 Creoles in Education Wolfram, W., Adger, C. & Christian, D. 1999. Dialects in Schools and Communities. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wolfram, W. & Christian, D. 1989. Dialects and Education: Issues and Answers. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wood, R.E. 1972. New light on the origins of Papiamentu: An eighteenth century letter. Neophilologus 56: 18–30. Yarde, C. 1989. Patois making us backward. The Voice, August 26. Yarde, C. 1990. Patois emphasis: A ploy to keep us back. The Voice, February 10.

Biographical sketches of contributors Saidu Bangura is a Ph.D. candidate at the Departamiento de Filologia Moderna, Universidade de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. He is currently doing a study of the English Language in Sierra Leone and also working on Sierra Leonean Krio and Cape Verdean among other creole languages in West Africa. Krio is his L2 and he is a fluent speaker of Cape Verdean. He has been teaching English in secondary and tertiary institutions in Cape Verde since 2000. Email: [email protected] Dr. Marlyse Baptista is Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department and at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She co-founded the Cape Verdean Creole Institute in 1996 and has been active promoting its new script the ALUPEC. She has done extensive fieldwork in Cape Verde islands and specializes in the morpho-syntax of creole languages. Email: [email protected] Inês Brito is a teacher at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School and Language Assistant Instructor in the African Language Program at Harvard University. She has been studying and teaching Cape Verdean Creole for many years. For the past three decades, she has had an active role in its promotion and legitimization both in Cape Verde and the United States of America. Email: [email protected] Dr. Angela Bartens has been teaching at the University of Helsinki since 1998. She is also currently teaching Spanish at the University Turku. She was head of the Finnish Academy-funded project “Right to language and mother tongue education. Linguistic research as a means of strengthening intercultural bilingual education in Nicaragua and Guatemala”. Her research interests include Contact Linguistics, Creole Studies, the Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics, Language Planning, Discourse Analysis, and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese Morphosyntax. Within Creole Studies, she has worked extensively on the English-based Creole of San Andrés and Old Providence and lately also on the related Creole of Nicaragua. Email: [email protected]

 Creoles in Education

Dr. Mirna Bolus teaches Langue et Culture Créole ‘Creole language and culture’ at secondary level in Guadeloupe and is head of the pedagogical and cultural commission of the teachers’ union SPEG in Guadeloupe. Her Ph.D. dealt with the teaching of (French) Creole in Guadeloupe in primary schools. Some of this work is available at: http://www.winmartinique.com/kreyol. Since finishing her degree she has been engaged in co-authoring an anthology of literary texts of written and oral Creole literature from Guadeloupe and beyond. In the near future she is planning to adapt the French sign language system to make it more suitable for people from (French) Creole societies. Email: [email protected] Dr. Karen Carpenter is an Educational Psychologist and a Florida Certified Clinical Sexologist (CST). She is currently employed to the University of the West Indies, Mona where she conducts psycholinguistic research. She lecturers in Applied Linguistics, Developmental Psychology and Research Methods. She has worked at all levels of the education system both locally and internationally for close to 30 years. Her areas of interest include development across the lifespan, human sexuality, phenomenological studies and HIV/AIDS prevention & control research. Email: [email protected] Dr. Marta Dijkhoff worked at the language institute of the Netherlands Antilles (Instituto Lingwístiko Antiano) from 1983 to 1993 and was Minister of Education from 1994 to 1998. She has a Ph.D. in linguistics and a Master’s in Education and Training Systems Design. She is currently working as a language and education consultant. Email: [email protected] Dr. Hubert Devonish is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Language, Linguistics & Philosophy and Coordinator of the Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. He works in the area of Creole vernacular languages and language rights. He is also the Chief Researcher of the Bilingual Education Project, Jamaica. He is the author of three books: Talking Rhythm, Stressing Tone: Prominence in Anglo-West African Creole Languages, Talking in Tones: A Study of Tone in Afro-European Creole Language, Language and Liberation: Creole Language Politics in the Caribbean. Email: [email protected] Dr. Jo-Anne S. Ferreira is a Lecturer in Linguistics at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and a member of SIL International. Her research and publications focus on Contact Linguistics, and include the history of Portuguese language and culture in the Caribbean, notably a monograph, The Portuguese of Trinidad & Tobago: Portrait of an Ethnic Minority, and brief€ studies of South American French Creole varieties, particularly Trinidadian, Venezuelan and Brazilian. Her teaching



Biographical sketches of contributors 

interests include Sociophonetics and Contact Linguistics, including English in the Caribbean and linguistics for Bible translation.€She is currently Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL). Email: [email protected] Dr. Christina Higgins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where she teaches courses in Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Intercultural Communication. She is co-convener of Da Pidgin Coup, a language advocacy group that strives to raise critical language awareness in€schools€and€society. With Da Pidgin Coup, she has made use of critical and participatory methodologies to encourage people to reflect on their language attitudes towards Hawai‘i Creole and to learn more about the history and linguistic structure of this language. Christina Higgins€has also researched codeswitching and other hybrid linguistic practices in Tanzania and Kenya, and this research is synthesized in her book,€ English as a local language: Post-colonial identities and multilingual practices. Email: [email protected] Dr. Arja Koskinen is currently affiliated with the Institute of Linguistic Research and Cultural Revitalization, IPILC, of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, URACCAN. She is a technical advisor for projects focusing on the strengthening of the Intercultural Multilingual Education approach. She also worked as a researcher in the Finnish Academy Project “Right to language and mother tongue education. Linguistic research as a means of strengthening intercultural bilingual education in Nicaragua and Guatemala.” (2006-2008). Email: [email protected] Dr. Isabelle Léglise is currently a permanent Researcher in Linguistics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris). Her main research interests are Language Contact, Language Variation and Change, Discourse Analysis, Sociology of Language, and Applied Linguistics. She has published on multilingualism, contactinduced language change, language and migration, and educational issues, especially in relation to French Guiana. Email: [email protected] Dr. Bettina Migge is currently Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her main research and teaching interests are Contact Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language and Gender, Applied Linguistics. She has published on contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, language and migration and language and education. Email: [email protected]

 Creoles in Education

Dr. Ronald Morren is Associate Professor of Language Development at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (GIAL) in Dallas, Texas where he has taught since 1984. He is currently an SIL International Consultant for Literacy and Education with special knowledge on The Philippines, Guatemala, Canada, Ethiopia, Saint Lucia, Colombia, Honduras, and Jamaica. Dr. Morren has received several Fulbright-Hayes Grants. The first Fulbright Grant made it possible to initiate the trilingual education curriculum development work and related research described in this volume. Email: [email protected] Joyce Pereira has a Masters in Dutch Language and Literature and teaches Papiamento didactics at the Instituto Pedagogico Arubano. She is currently working on a Ph.D. at the University of Aruba. Her thesis deals with the language situation in the education system of Aruba. Email: [email protected] Dr. Hazel Simmons-McDonald is Professor of Applied Linguistics and currently the Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus of the University of the West€Indies. Her research interests include Second Language Acquisition, the development of literacy by Creole and Creole Influenced Vernacular speakers and vernacular literacy within the formal context. She served for several years as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, as its Vice President for one year, and completed a two-year stint as President of the Society in August 2008. Her publications include articles on language acquisition, language education policy, literacy development, language and culture and more recently, on open and distance learning. She has published several English language texts for use at secondary and tertiary levels and co-edited the volume: Exploring the Boundaries of Caribbean Creole Languages. Email: [email protected] Eeva Sippola is a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Philology at the University of Helsinki. She is interested in Descriptive Linguistics, the Sociolinguistics of minority languages and pedagogical methodologies. Her current research is on Ternate Chabacano grammar and language use. Email: [email protected]

Index

A ACAV (Associação Cristã de Água Viva)╇ 235 accommodative language awareness╇ 40 additive bilingualism╇ 23, 278, 292 ALUPEC (Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Cabo-Verdiano)╇ 288–292 APIO (Associação dos Povos Indígenas do Oiapoque)╇ 218 awareness programs╇ 18 see also language awareness B big book method╇ 307–309 bilingual education models in Curaçao╇ 259 education policy in Guadeloupe╇ 89 education policy in the Philippine╇ 61–62, 64 education policy in Brazil╇ 231 see also factors in favour of bilingual education see also fully bilingual education see also intercultural bilingual education approach╇ 11, 170 bilingualism bilingualism in Nicaragua╇ 150 see also additive bilingualism see also functional bilingualism see also subtractive bilingualism

see also monoliterate transitional bilingualism C Cape Verdean Creole Institute (CCI)╇ 282, 290–291 CAPES╇ 81, 93–95, 100–101 in French Guiana╇ 116 in Guadeloupe╇ 93 Changes in socio-political standing of creoles╇ 5 CIMI (Conselho Indigenista Missionário)╇ 213, 221–222, 225, 231 Circulaire Savary╇ 108, 114 Code-switching in Hawai‘i╇ 34 in Guadeloupe╇ 83–84 in French Guiana╇ 112 Codification╇ 6–9 in Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao╇ 240–241, 244–245, 261 communicative or cooperative learning╇ 248 constructivist approach╇ 59 contrastive awareness╇ 39 covert attitudes╇ 14 see also overt attitudes Creole╇ 1–6, 278 see also decreolization critical language awareness (in Hawai‘i)╇ 39–40 CTM (Centro de Treinamento Missionário)╇ 235 D Da Pidgin Coup╇ 31, 36, 38–40 decreolization╇ 83 Deixonne Law╇ 107–108 diagnostic reading inventory╇ 319

differential education (educação diferenciada)╇ 222 diglossia╇ 82, 272 diglossic communities╇ 21 E education see also bilingual education see also differential education see also factors in favour of bilingual education see also foundation-based education see also indigenous education see also multilingual education see also trilingual education educational materials in awareness programs╇ 10, 44–46, 48–52, 130–131 for Chabacano in the Philippines╇ 67–78 for French Creole in Guadeloupe╇ 98–99 for French Creole in French Guiana╇ 116–117 for Nengee in French Guiana╇ 121–122 for Kriol in Nicaragua╇ 153, 157–158 for Kwéyòl in St. Lucia╇ 199 for Kheol in Brazil╇ 231–235 for Islander Creole English╇ 305–310 educationally-oriented projects╇ 20–21 etymological spelling (system/ orthography)╇ 8, 244, 287–288

╇ Index European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages╇ 111 experiential (or action) learning╇ 248 F foundation-based education╇ 253–255 factors in favour of bilingual education (among the Karipúna and Galibi-Marwono)╇ 228 fully bilingual education (program)╇ 170 FUNAI (Fundação Nacional do Índio)╇ 213, 223 functional bilingualism╇ 295 G “ghettoization” argument╇ 12 H habilitation (for the teaching of Creole in French overseas areas)╇ 90–93 heritage-based projects╇ 20 holistic approach/learning╇ 59, 151, 222–223, 254 I indigenous education╇ 213, 223 instrumental programs╇ 16 intercultural bilingual education (in Nicaragua)╇ 146 IME (Intercultural Multilingual Education)╇ 147 interference╇ 12 see also negative transfer Intervenant en Langue Maternelle╇ 117

L language attitudes (and ideologies)╇ 11, 22, 34, 129–130 language awareness╇ 31 approach╇ 128 see also accommodative awareness see also contrastive awareness see also sociolinguistic awareness language planning╇ 239 language policy╇ 26, 241 language revival projects╇ 20 Langues et Cultures Régionales╇ 88, 107–108 linguicism╇ 47 linguistic imperialism╇ 47 literary tradition╇ 142, 274, 279, 285 M mediation╇ 118, 123, 125 monoliterate transitional bilingualism╇ 169 multilingual education╇ 59–60 N negative attitudes╇ 14, 33, 146, 161–162, 201 see also overt attitudes negative transfer╇ 12 see also interference normalization╇ 154 O one-way enrichment dual language programme╇ 174 overt attitudes╇ 14 see also covert attitudes

P P/C writing systems╇ 8 phonemic spelling (or orthography)╇ 8, 303 primers╇ 147, 199, 225, 232 R Regional languages in the Philippines╇ 60–62 in France╇ 88, 111 in Nicaragua╇ 135, 141–145, 155, repression of self-expression╇ 15 S social connotations (of creoles)╇ 4 sociolinguistic awareness╇ 37, 39–40, 48 sociolinguistic survey╇ 27, 137, 279–284 SPI (Serviço de Proteção aos Índios)╇ 212 standard language ideology╇ 39 standardization╇ 154 subtractive bilingualism╇ 54, 278, 292–293 T teaching of literacy╇ 15 transitional bilingual education╇ 227–228, 230 bilingualism╇ 23 see also monoliterate transitional bilingualism trilingual education (on San Andres, Providence, and Santa Catalina)╇ 300, 302

In the series Creole Language Library the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 36 Migge, Bettina, Isabelle Léglise and Angela Bartens (eds.): Creoles in Education. An appraisal of current programs and projects. 2010. vii, 356 pp. 35 Aboh, Enoch O. and Norval Smith (eds.): Complex Processes in New Languages. 2009. vii, 409 pp. 34 Selbach, Rachel, Hugo C. Cardoso and Margot van den Berg (eds.): Gradual Creolization. Studies celebrating Jacques Arends. 2009. x, 392 pp. 33 Michaelis, Susanne (ed.): Roots of Creole Structures. Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates. 2008. xvii, 425 pp. 32 Huber, Magnus and Viveka Velupillai (eds.): Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives on Contact Languages. 2007. xii, 370 pp. 31 Baptista, Marlyse and Jacqueline Guéron (eds.): Noun Phrases in Creole Languages. A multi-faceted approach. 2007. x, 494 pp. 30 Siegel, Jeff, John Lynch and Diana Eades (eds.): Language Description, History and Development. Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley. 2007. xv, 514 pp. 29 Deumert, Ana and Stephanie Durrleman-Tame (eds.): Structure and Variation in Language Contact. 2006. viii, 376 pp. 28 Clements, J. Clancy, Thomas A. Klingler, Deborah Piston-Hatlen and Kevin J. Rottet (eds.): History, Society and Variation. In honor of Albert Valdman. 2006. vi, 304 pp. 27 Escure, Geneviève and Armin Schwegler (eds.): Creoles, Contact, and Language Change. Linguistic and social implications. 2004. x, 355 pp. 26 Mous, Maarten: The Making of a Mixed Language. The case of Ma’a/Mbugu. 2003. xx, 322 pp. 25 Migge, Bettina: Creole Formation as Language Contact. The case of the Suriname Creoles. 2003. xii, 151 pp. 24 Mühleisen, Susanne: Creole Discourse. Exploring prestige formation and change across Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles. 2002. xiv, 332 pp. 23 Smith, Norval and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.): Creolization and Contact. 2001. vi, 323 pp. 22 Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid and Edgar W. Schneider (eds.): Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages. 2001. iv, 492 pp. 21 McWhorter, John (ed.): Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. 2000. viii, 503 pp. 20 Rickford, John R. and Suzanne Romaine (eds.): Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse. Studies celebrating Charlene J. Sato. 1999. viii, 418 pp. 19 Spears, Arthur K. and Donald Winford (eds.): The Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles. Including selected papers from meetings of the Society for Pidgin and Creole linguistics. 1997. viii, 461 pp. 18 Escure, Geneviève: Creole and Dialect Continua. Standard acquisition processes in Belize and China (PRC). 1997. x, 307 pp. 17 Thomason, Sarah G. (ed.): Contact Languages. A wider perspective. 1997. xiii, 506 pp. 16 Clements, J. Clancy: The Genesis of a Language. The formation and development of Korlai Portuguese. 1996. xviii, 282 pp. 15 Arends, Jacques, Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith (eds.): Pidgins and Creoles. An introduction. 1994. xv, 412 pp. 14 Kihm, Alain: Kriyol Syntax. The Portuguese-based Creole language of Guinea-Bissau. 1994. xii, 310 pp. 13 Arends, Jacques (ed.): The Early Stages of Creolization. 1996. xvi, 297 pp. 12 Byrne, Francis and Donald Winford (eds.): Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages. Papers from the University of Chicago Conference on Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages. 1993. xvi, 329 pp. 11 Byrne, Francis and John Holm (eds.): Atlantic Meets Pacific. A global view of pidginization and creolization. 1992. ix, 465 pp. 10 Winford, Donald: Predication in Caribbean English Creoles. 1993. viii, 419 pp. 9 Byrne, Francis and Thom Huebner (eds.): Development and Structures of Creole Languages. Essays in honor of Derek Bickerton. 1991. x, 222 pp. 8 Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor and Patricia Cukor-Avila (eds.): The Emergence of Black English. Text and commentary. 1991. x, 352 pp.

7

6 5 4 3 2 1

Fabian, Johannes (ed.): History from Below. The “Vocabulary of Elisabethville” by André Yav: Text, Translations and Interpretive Essay. With the assistance of Kalundi Mango. With linguistic notes by W. Schicho. 1990. vii, 236 pp. Singler, John Victor (ed.): Pidgin and Creole Tense/Mood/Aspect Systems. 1990. xvi, 240 pp. Jackson, Kenneth David: Sing Without Shame. Oral traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole verse. 1990. xxiv, 257 pp. Lipski, John M.: The Speech of the Negros Congos in Panama. 1989. vii, 159 pp. Byrne, Francis: Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole. Verb Complementation in Saramaccan. With a foreword by Derek Bickerton. 1987. xiv, 293 pp. Sebba, Mark: The Syntax of Serial Verbs. An investigation into serialisation in Sranan and other languages. 1987. xv, 218 pp. Muysken, Pieter and Norval Smith (eds.): Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985. 1986. vii, 311 pp.