Reflection week 4 EDF2031

By Stephanie Lindsay
During my class edf2031 indigenous perspective on teaching
and learning we talked about some of the polices in place in
schools that effect Aboriginal and Torres Strait people. One such
police is the Language Policy which was formed in 1987 the
National Language Policy was presented by the Hawke
government and was the first ever official and organized
language learning policy in Australia which was focused of
foreign languages it was ultimately replaced by the Keating
governments 1992 Australian Language and Literacy Policy
which because of public demand now focused on just the
English language.
Now you may ask yourself how theses polices would affect the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait people I did to, the Aboriginal
people of Australia speak many different languages which are
classed as foreign languages in Keatings police and because
the focus of the policy these foreign languages where left out of
education curriculum. This then meant that Aboriginal children
would have to learn English on top of their native language
before there could actually learn anything in school. It also
created a clear and seemingly large divide between educators
and the families of the children they were teaching as neither
could work together as they did not speak the same language.
Thankfully a new policy was put out into 2005 which focused on
the importance of Australian indigenous languages. I believe
that language from any culture is an important part of
education and that bringing that languages into an educational
setting is important. As for bringing native aboriginal
languages into the classroom there are many different ways of
doing this such as incorporating aboriginal names and locations
are landmarks another suggestion would be to invite someone
into the classroom that spoke an aboriginal language.

References
Peter Anderson. (2014). EDF2031 week 4 PDF.
Anastasia Radievska. Language learning in crisis: why
Australias foreign language education is not quite
Wunderbar. Retrieved April 11th 2014. From
http://www.google.com.au/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ua
ct=8&ved=0CE4QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fjohnbuttonprize.org.au%2Fstatic%2Ffiles%2Fassets
%2F432f3ef3%2FAnastasia_Radievska__Language_education_1_.pdf&ei=km5PU7_dCcWplQXHjoC
4Dg&usg=AFQjCNFJWF9N7MwFozQsPhbq2VNVEWUGA&sig2=sUzSR60sGq9UQEkceAX9Ug&bvm=bv.64764
171,d.dGI

Australian government ATTORNEY-GENERALS department

ministry of the arts. National indigenous languages policy.
Retrieved April 11th 2014. From
http://arts.gov.au/indigenous/languages

D E INGRAM. Language policy and language and

education in Australia. Retrieved April 12th 2014. From
http://arts.gov.au/indigenous/languages