Australia: First Language First – An Educational Philosophy That Instils Localised Regimes Of Truth, Positive Intergenerational Power Relations And Personal Freedom

In this essay I examine my professional ethos as a facilitator of collective learning in terms of Foucauldian ‘asceticism’ and in doing so I ask ‘What is the fundamental human purpose of education today?’ Warlpiri, Two Ways, Steiner / Waldforf and the emerging Red Dirt Curricula are used to illustrate concrete examples of linguistically, socially and historically relevant pedagogies discussed in the context of Foucauldian thoughts on ‘truth’, ‘power’ and ‘freedom’. This provides the foundations of my philosophy of education and professional practice: First Language First.

‘It seems to me that the philosophical choice confronting us today is the following. We have to opt either for a critical philosophy which appears as an analytical philosophy of truth in general, or for a critical thought which takes the form of an ontology of ourselves, of present reality.’ (Foucault 2010)

Foucauldian ‘asceticism’ is an ‘exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain to a certain mode of being.’ (Foucault 1997 [1980], p. 282). I will start this essay by asking: ‘Who am I being and what am I becoming in my professional self?’ I am being a developer and deliverer of story based, outdoor, in-context, nature and culture based learning programs for students from pre-school to senior secondary. One hour programs support areas of the Early Learning Years Framework and Australian, Steiner / Waldorf, Warlpiri other Aboriginal Language & Culture Curricula.

When a booking for a program is made I clarify the learning outcomes the teacher is seeking and the first languages of the students. First language resources are prepared around the topic and the lesson plan is aligned to the most appropriate curriculum and learning areas. These resources are sent to the school in advance so that the teacher, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Worker and language speakers are familiar with the words we will be using and can assist in ensuring the students receive key concepts and words in their first language first, then English. My personal responsibility is to ensure that every child feels emotionally, physically, culturally and spiritually safe so that they are receptive to explore and learn and feel comfortable to share. I endeavour to begin establishing this when greeting the students by welcoming them in their first language/s and inviting them to assist me to share their knowledge as we explore the learning potential of what is going on around us and between us.

To explore what I am becoming in my professional self I must first ask ‘What is the fundamental human purpose of education today?’ As Woods and Woods state, the purpose of education is to: ‘foster holistic development, enable young people to embrace, and engage in democratic citizenship, and nurture meaning (cultural and personal identity, moral and spiritual development). This requires a collective movement in values: from the predominance of instrumental rationality, efficiency and compliance to values that embrace empowerment, caring, community, connectivity, and inner development.’ (Woods and Woods 2009, p. 6)

Over the last seventeen years, through professional and personal interactions, I have been gifted with knowledge of Central Australian Aboriginal worldviews. As my knowledge has deepened it has become clear to me that in order for humanity to pursue an environmentally sustainable and socially just ontology we must move away from the individualist ethos that plagues our Western thinking and behaviour to a communitarian and social ethos, to promote cooperative and collective learning over competitive learning. We have much to learn from the worldviews of Indigenous Cultures in this pursuit. This ethos is supported by Shaanika (2013), who says ‘Advocating “linguistic sovereignty” for Indigenous populations, accepting curriculum set forth by Indigenous teachers and supporting the rights of Indigenous people to define their own education and choose their own educational materials.’ In my professional self I am becoming a facilitator of cooperative and collective learning with an ethos of care for self and the spirit of the students. I present myself in ways that are non-threatening and respectful, I seek feedback, reflect deeply, adapt and experiment to ensure programs are linguistically, socially and historically relevant to the students.

For centuries we have been asking ‘what is truth?’ Marcus Aurelius (circa 170 AD) said: ‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth’.1 Foucault’s interest in ‘seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses’ (Foucault 1980, p 118), opens up the idea of truth as constructed phenomena. He describes how these constructed phenomena become supported and maintained within discourses.

‘Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.’ (Foucault, 1980, p.131)

Populations of humans have made the world intelligible through the development of localised languages. For the purpose of this essay I am looking at first languages as localised regimes of truth.

‘Language comes from the Land. Everything has got a name; every different ant, every different bird. My own language is Akarre, which I have from my father’s father’s Land. I also speak Alyawarr which is my mothers’s father’s language, and also Central Arrernte, Anmatyerr, and English. But my knowledge comes through Akarre, and that is the way ayenge-arle akaltyele-antheke, ane akaltye-irrintyeke, ane arintyeke, ane itelarintyeke, nthakenhe-nthakenhe-arle anintyeke. That’s how I got taught these things, how I’ve learned throughout my life, how I’ve always seen the world, how I understand it, and how and what in all those ways life has always been. All through my own Sacred Language.’ (Turner 2011, p. 195)

English speaking children have the right to receive education in their mother tongue and their curricula is in line with their culture and customs. ‘Indigenous youth should have the right to receive education in their mother tongue and determine their curricula in line with their time-tested cultures and customs, rather than be obliged to assimilate into a mainstream educational system virtually unresponsive to their way of life’ (Shaanika 2013).

Many Aboriginal languages in Central Australia, as in the rest of Australia, are no longer fully spoken by all generations; a result of the enormous social change experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since 1788. Most of the first languages with more than 1000 speakers today are in the Northern Territory. Lajamanu School is one of three Warlpiri schools that follow the Warlpiri Curriculum that teaches Warlpiri regimes of truth.

‘Old people tell us about their history and we make this into books so the children can read the stories in Warlpiri. Every day children sing Warlpiri songs and read Warlpiri stories with adults. Teaching Walpiri in our schools is very important to the community members, and elders. Yapa (Warlpiri) and Kardiya (non-Aboriginal) teachers work together to do this’ (Patterson 2000).

Minutjukur, Tjitayi and Lester (2013) propose Anangu2 regimes of truth for their emerging Red Dirt Curriculum:

‘I learned by watching my parents and family, I learnt my language, stories, how to be safe, how to find food and the names of my Country. These are written in my heart, not on paper. We want our children to be able to live in this new world and to see new knowledge as an asset, but we don’t want to leave behind our old world.’ (Minutjukur 2013)

‘We learned in the past by watching, listening and practicing what families taught us, it was ongoing learning, we grabbed hold of the learning with our spirit and held it. It was gentle knowledge, my knowledge of digging for honey ants is in my spirit I do not need to look it up in a book.’ (Tjitayi 2013).

‘Our Anangu children need to learn to speak, read and write their first language and then English. Anangu children need to learn about their family, their immediate community, their traditional Country, then learn about surrounding communities, Australia and the world. In Anangu History class they would learn our history, the human rights and land rights struggles of our old people, then Australian and global history.’ (Lester 2013)

In this way the emerging Red Dirt Curriculum will provide ‘historical awareness of present circumstances’. (Foucault 1982, p. 778)

‘Akaltyele-arle-anthemeye – teaching – is a really sacred thing, because everything that we’re learning is sacred, sacred things about our existence: Nthakenhe amangkenhetyeke, to grow up how to be, how to continue growing and learning in the right way throughout our lives……….And how to see life, and how to know life, and also what life is;…..that is the way they used to learn us, our old people, alakenhe.’ (Turner 2011, p. 198)

People in their local areas are the best judges of what is required. ‘Locally relevant curricula with educational goals according to localised ways of knowing, being and doing’ (Osbourne 2013) is linguistically and socially relevant to students’ lives and more likely to engage them and their extended families in the intergenerational education journey.

In Foucault’s view, the production and deployment of truth is intrinsically linked with the exercise of power’ (O’Farrell 2006). Foucault (1988, p. 2) describes ‘power’ as being a ‘set of relations’ between two people where one person influences, guides or leads the others behaviour. ‘I see nothing wrong in the practice of a person who, knowing more than others in a specific game of truth, tells those others what to do, teaches them, and transmits knowledge and techniques to them.’ (Foucault 1997)

Yipirinya School is an independent non-government ‘two-ways’ school located in Alice Springs that caters for local Aboriginal students living in town camps and outstations. It offers two-way (bilingual and bicultural) education and four local Aboriginal languages are taught: Central and Eastern Arrernte, Western Arrarnte, Luritja and Warlpiri. Positive power relations between language teachers and students are vital. ‘What is taught is not more important than how it is taught. Language and culture can only be taught authentically by the people whose knowledge it is. The respect shown to the language teachers as elders, extended family members and bearers of valued knowledge, the respect shown by the elders to students, and expectation that the students participate and learn. This is the foundation of our school.’ (Langford-Smith 2013)

Foucault’s (1997) [1980] concerns of ‘knowing how to avoid the kind of domination effects (of power) where a kid is subjected to the arbitrary and unnecessary authority of a teacher, or a student put under the thumb of a professor who abuses his authority’ are supported by Tjitayi (2013) when she says; ‘the foundation of learning is in the child’s spirit. When words like ‘failing’ are received by the child’s spirit his spirit just gives up trying. We are closing the door on his learning.’ Kind words are the foundation of positive power relations: ‘Children need kind words to encourage them. When children are confident they can open all of the closed doors.’ (Tjitayi 2013)

Central Australian Aboriginal kinships systems are a result of tens of thousands of years of adaptive innovation. Your skin name determines your individual responsibilities for yourself, your immediate and extended family members and your Country. It is a system of governance that instills collective responsilbility for family and Country that does not seem to have become a repressive form of power. To this onlooker, it is ‘a difinitive formula for the optimal excercise of power’. (Foucault 1988)

Positive power relations are embedded in the foundations of the ancient laws laid down in the Tjukurrpa3, Jukurrpa4 and Altyerre5:

‘Our language gives us power through our Land and our Tjukurrpa stories, we must hold onto our strengths as we learn new strengths.’ (Minutjukur 2013)

‘We take children on country visits to traditional Warlpiri country to teach them about their Country, Jukurrpa, songs, body designs and dances. When we go back to school this learning is reinforced.’ (Patterson 2000)

‘The HoneyAnt Readers (developed with Arrernte elders at Yipirinya School) consist of stories passed down from elders to children about the Land and Altyerre.’ (Laughton,Y 2013)

Tjukurrpa, Jukurrpa and Altyerre are grounded by a collective ethos with clearly defined laws determining how subjects respect the rights of others in exercising power through kinship. Central Australian Aboriginal language groups are societies ‘in which the control of the conduct of others is so well regulated in advance that, in a sense, the game is already over’ (Foucault 1997 [1980]), they are societies that exercise power in a way that nurtures ‘the freedom of others.’ (Foucault 1998)

There are different practices of freedom but I am concerned with personal freedom, ‘the capacity of the subject to chose from a range of actions.’ (Foucault 1982, p. 791)

Steiner / Waldorf education is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based on the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner set out his educational principles initially in 1919 in a course entitled Education for the people. ‘Underlying Steiner’s entire philosophy was the primacy of freedom. Education comes into the sphere of culture, and it is absolutely fundamental that the school should service the child, not the state. Steiner / Waldorf schools have, as their ultimate goal, the development of fully free human beings, but they operate from the postulate that freedom does not exist simply by virtue of an arbitrary declaration of human rights. For Steiner / Waldorf schools, freedom cannot be a method of education but must be the end result of it.’ (Carlgren cited in Woods and Woods 2009, p. 209)

‘Anthroposophy was a word developed by Steiner after breaking away from earlier roots in theosophy, and it literally means “wisdom of man”. Steiner claimed that the mystical operation of the mind could, and should, transcend natural science and that such powers would be available to anyone prepared to cultivate the necessary mental faculties (Pawson and Richter cited in Woods and Woods 2009, p. 209). At the very core of anthroposophy ‘lies the deep-rooted philosophy of freedom that seeks to liberate the human condition through the integration of science, art and religion. Steiner’s use of the term has much to do with the freedom to form concepts out of the reality in which we live as human beings – an ultimate form of individual sovereignty. It is to do with our ability to attain knowledge outside the bounds set artificially by an empiricism limited by an ultimate, unchangeable, “objective” and “material” reality.’ (Nordwall cited in Woods and Woods 2009, p. 210)

A large international study of 234 Steiner / Waldorf schools in 1988 found that over 90% of the teachers believed that Steiner / Waldorf education develops free-thinking individuals. (Woods and Woods 2009, p. 216). Phil Walcott, who was the school psychologist at St Philips College in Alice Springs for eight years agrees with this. The majority of Alice Springs Steiner School Students move to St Philips College from Year Seven as the Steiner School does not yet offer classes beyond Class Six. ‘The Steiner students transition extremely well into the Mainstream. They bring a lot of emotional and social maturity, are independent thinkers, creative problem solvers, are connected to the world around them and have a strong social conscious.’ (Walcott 2013, pers. com.)

Karina Lester’s first language is Yankunytjatjara and she remembers learning to speak, read and write English as a six year old. Bilingualism and biculturalism gives her ‘the personal freedom to move effectively between and within my two worlds.’ (Lester 2013)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students need to gain ‘Western knowledge systems in order to effectively participate in Australian society’ (Jorgensen 2010, p. 170). Teaching English Second Language students in English first excludes them from learning. The world makes sense to a child in their First Language First. ‘When literacy learning in a child’s first language takes precedence in the first four years of school and English learning remains focussed on oral skills, children can become confident speakers of English before they have to grapple with English literacy and concepts. Once children have mastered literacy skills in their first language they can then transfer them to English literacy.’ (Marika cited in Devlin 2009)

Yipirinya School’s HoneyAnt readers ‘are written in Aboriginal English, the students’ lingua franca. The books are just to help students read in Aboriginal English, then they can read. We teach them all of the words in the book first then when they pick up one of the books they know are familiar with the words and feel confident to have a go. At the same time the readers reinforce and teach oral Standard Australian English through rhymes and songs. Once Standard Australian English has been acquired orally, learning to read in that language is easier because it is meaningful.’ (Fidock 2013)

Localised regimes of truth, positive intergenerational power relations and accessible pathways to bilingualism and biculturalism provide ammunition for students’ personal freedom. The children in our communities are the men and women of the future and our shared responsibility. As the dominant culture we can do better. Two hundred and twenty five years after colonisation it is time for the dominant culture to encourage and embrace linguistically, historically and socially relevant pedagogies. To collectively invent and define the good, by learning from the wisdoms of the past, bringing this ancient knowledge to the fore and combining it with the current wisdoms of the present. To challenge and provoke all learners to create new and exciting possibilities for the future, to capture the ‘intrinsic pleasure in learning’6 and to promote learning conditions that allow students to find their passion and ‘become the artists’7 and artisans of their own lives. We can do better by insisting that all students have the right to learn in their First Language First.

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