Lament for minor languages

Lament for minor languages

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): All countries have their own language policies
to ascertain that the languages used facilitate national
development. In the case of Indonesia, language planning should
address three different areas -- the national language, ethnic
languages and foreign languages, especially English.

The 1994 curriculum is an inseparable part of the national
language planning. In most cases, language planning is a
government-sponsored, long-term, sustained and deliberate effort
to solve communication problems in all walks of life; social,
political, economic, educational and cultural.

As a country of diverse ethnic groups and hundreds of minor
languages, Indonesia is highly vulnerable to national
disintegration, a concern shared by the founding fathers of the
nation more than 50 years ago. The motto Bhineka Tunggal Ika
(Unity in Diversity) as they aptly proclaimed then, was a genuine
indication of sociolinguistic as well as politicolinguistic
awareness. The present politicians and power holders should
develop awareness of language problems as the founding fathers
demonstrated.

Many times bureaucrats are criticized for their sloppy use of
Indonesian and retort saying that language problems are to be
left to language specialists. This naive attitude shows a lack of
appreciation and understanding of the function of language as a
means of political and national development.

The rights of ethnic languages are recognized in the 1945
Constitution, saying that these minor languages are to be
developed and protected by the government. They are still widely
used in the family, social and informal gatherings, and sometimes
even in formal settings.

However, in the cities where various ethnic groups mix and
interethnic marriage is common, the use of these ethnic languages
decreases. This phenomenon suggests that the more urbanized and
industrialized the country is, the more developed and cultivated
the national language, and the less developed and protected the
ethnic languages become.

As the 1928 Youth Pledge signifies, the Indonesian language
has long been elevated to the position of the national language
at the cost of the minor languages, suggesting that politically,
no matter what, Indonesian takes precedence over the minor
languages. When Indonesia is committed to modernization and
industrialization, leaving agriculture behind, Indonesian is
elevated to the status of the language of industrialization
besides that of a national and state language.

The minor languages, as they lack vitality for transferring
industrialization, become less significant. The corollary goes
that nationally speaking, the more industrialized the country is,
linguistically the more homogeneous the country tends to be.

With the free market policy era approaching, the mastery of
foreign languages, especially English, is imperative. We are now
then witnessing the scene where English vis a vis Indonesian and
minor languages compete.

It seems to be the case that this linguistic competition
parallels economic and cultural competition as part of global
competition. By no means will English take the position of a
national language -- a phenomenon common among members and former
members of the British Commonwealth such as India and Singapore.

However, people now have come to realize that to anticipate
and survive globalization, learning English is much more useful
than learning the minor languages. This fact suggests that due to
globalization, the vitality of minor languages is gradually
decreasing.

It is reasonable to argue that the best way to study language
planning in a particular country is to review its language
curriculum, simply because the curriculum reflects the
government-authorized means to provide students with
opportunities for mastering language(s). To survive the ever-
changing times, the curriculum needs to be evaluated and revised.

Whatever we are offering in our schools today, it will define
the language competence of the next generation. When we are
concerned with nationalism and globalization, our language
curriculum should then provide students with language competence
relevant to nationalism and globalization.

Long before the 1994 curriculum was implemented, parents in
big cities for various reasons enthusiastically encouraged their
children to take English courses at private schools. As a result,
English classes for children turned up everywhere.

Noticing this tendency, the government considered it necessary
to evaluate and revise the old curriculum and to introduce the
1994 curriculum, which officially allows elementary schools to
offer English as a school subject under the umbrella of so-called
"local content".

Under the local content policy, the school may offer a local
language, traditional arts or English, provided that the school
manages it. On the one hand, the policy necessarily reflects the
government's commitment to monitoring if not supervising the
practice. However, this is not the case.

My 11 year-old daughter was excited to learn English for the
first time and was eager to do the homework. My pride, however,
soon faded away when I knew that her first assignment was to
identify the subject and the predicate of the sentence. The
teacher -- whom I later found out was a volunteer and non-English
major -- apparently does not understand the psychology of
teaching English at the elementary level, let alone the
principles of communicative language teaching, an approach being
promoted nationally by the government.

The illustration above is evidence that in many schools, the
teachers, headmasters, parents and students are jumping upon the
bandwagon, without realizing that the local content policy
challenges professional accountability on the part of teachers,
headmasters, school curriculum developers and the National
Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in
Indonesia (TEFLIN).

English should be taught by certified elementary English
instructors. Otherwise, our kids become a victim of emotional
rather than professional ambitions.

Presently most elementary teachers are grade teachers instead
of school subject teachers. The fact of the matter is that the
schools are not ready to offer English as a school subject.

Apparently, the government has failed to anticipate this
problem. Trained elementary English teachers should have been
made available before the curriculum was officially implemented.

The office of regional education should be responsible for
monitoring the schools on whether they employ professional
teachers. We could not assume that Teachers Training Institute
(IKIP) graduates are professional enough to teach at the
elementary level, simply because their major is English
education.

It is high time IKIPs -- especially state IKIPs -- opened at
least two year diploma English education programs that train
students to be elementary English teachers, otherwise English
teaching at the elementary level will go uncontrolled and
unmonitored -- a fact that is contradictory to the function of
language planning, that is, a government-initiated and conscious
effort to improve the quality of language education.

Language planning is conscious language management. To be
successful, language education should be planned in a systemic
way. It should pervade all levels of the system: Classroom
settings, teacher training, textbook and material development,
and local as well as central government.

The teaching and learning of English in elementary schools
should seriously consider the nature of learning a foreign
language, the instructional system and the governance system that
governs the whole language educational system. Such an approach
to language education involving ethnic languages, the national
language and foreign languages is indeed radical, difficult and
risky.

Are we serious about language education? Without such an
approach, we will almost certainly be condemned to a language
education system that does not fulfill our students' needs.

The writer is a lecturer at the Teachers Training Institute
(IKIP) of Bandung, West Java.