Not a complicated formula, Tel_, even if it is beyond my 20 year old memories to express it!

Dont worry, this is about Australia, the USA and Canada, not you.

Surely Japan (at least) would have to join that group.

Get stuffed

but trumped by the reassurances of the ‘Group of African Experts’:

Don’t worry, this is about Australia, the USA and Canada, not you.

lol/cry?

Seriously, read paras 1.1, 2.4 and 8.1. The points they are making are not so egregiously bad as my distortionary and selective summary makes them sound, but one can see why the UN gets a poor record for usefulness.

Maybe one day (next year!) I will try and put together something on the contrast between the ICC the UNCHR (not to mention that between the ICC.reality and the ICC.feverish dreams of radical lefties). Arguably, the future (ie ongoing existence) of international human rights depends on it.

You do realise your crap-handed attempts to feed your hunger for attention has just turned you into a blogosphere figure of fun. An in-joke punchline.

But then again maybe that’s all you wanted to hope for. The class clown without class. “Hey look everyone! I just separated an earthworm. With my teeth! Isn’t film such a disappointment?”

In as much as a language is the core of a culture (and that’s arguable, but not unthinkable), as the dominant language washes out the minority languages, so we lose culture and the ideas contained within (we should take pains to document the language, culture and ideas so future generations might look them up as reference material, just in case). Thus, anyone pushing for cultural preservation would logically also have to push for language preservation.

Looking at it from another point of view, a language is primarily a tool for communication, and what’s the point, when there is almost no one speaking the same language to communicate with?

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2532129.htm

And don’t get me started on those others paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer lucre for their race-baiting such as Tom Calma and Stephen Hagan. They might be not Larissa-type whiteys, but they are just as unhelpful.

Did you skull a triple ‘Greenfield” – no ice – before that last post? I would have been proud to have penned, ‘cept I know nothing about bilingual education in remote NT! :)

The research only shows that bilingual schools do very slightly better than those following an English-only ESL model. It is quite likely that this is because bilingual schools tend to be staffed by highly motivated, ideologically committed devotees of that system, usually lefties with the usual beliefs in cultural relativism, indigenous self-determination and the inherent superiority of the Noble Savage over evil capitalist Westerners.

By contrast (though with honourable exceptions), the non-bilingual schools contain a high proportion of time-serving misfits who are a very long way from being the “best and brightest” educators.

As Andrew Leigh’s research indicatively suggests, the critical factor in education is the quality and commitment of the teachers. A variety of approaches, including bilingual elements though not in the doctrinaire quasi-religious sense imposed at bilingual schools, may be appropriate at different times and in varying mixes, depending on the particular community, class and individual student.

“Bilingual versus English-only ESL” is a stupid over-simplification of a situation with many dimensions. Marion Scrymgour was right to take on the bilingual mafia, but lacked the health, intellect and political smarts to carry it off. I doubt that Hendo will do any better.

Of course, this is a complete digression from the topic, but an interesting one just the same. I might post on it separately when I get the time and inspiration (or persuade Jen to do so when she finishes her Masters mini-thesis – a joyous event that is probably only a few days away!!!)..

Apparently there’s research that shows bilingual education trumps monolingual education for improving literacy. This comes up every few years in the NT and everyone runs through the same arguments. Eventually the shinybums trot out the same set of studies and bilingualism stays put.

Ive noticed that if am wearing my scruffy beard, I get randomly stopped for explosives testing at airports. If I am clean-shaven I go straight through.

I wonder if I shave down to a moustache will I get rushed through like a VIP.

I get randomly stopped for explosives testing …

If you have a long wait for your flight, try the game where you sit where you can view the queue and guess who is going to be randomly stopped. You can play this on your own but it’s more fun with another player and a stack of small coins to run fast wagers.

Jumping back on topic, let’s suppose an Aboriginal child comes from a tribe where there are maybe 5000 speakers of their native language. Is it more humane to make them learn this minority language, or make them learn English? Sooner or later, that child will grow up into someone who wants a job, in which case they will need English.

No doubt it is tempting to suggest that we make the child learn both languages, but that additional skill must always come at a cost of not learning something else (maybe mathematics, computers, science, philosophy, etc). It would also be nice to let the child choose based on their own interests but circumstance rarely works out that way.

If I were given the choice where my tax dollars were spent, I’d be teaching them English.

I can’t wait!

The ways in which culture evolves cannot be predicted with certainty.

No, not exactly, but the number of styles a culture takes are fairly restricted and their motivational fears quite predictable. The outward material expression are many in detail, but their symbolic reasoning are not.

See fourcultures blog for one approach.

These four styles (more meta-cultures) I would argue are strange attractors. The iterations are individual’s choices based on their afferent biases. These biases are not impediments but motivational.

Each style will attempt to create a world/environment/culture/regime that suits themselves, arbitrarily selects artefacts to identify and express this, while fearmongering anything else; to turn the others into devils (racist terrorists). In ecology this process would be called niche construction.

Untl we admit these meta-processes, “liberalism” will remain stuck in tolerating the poisons and unable to build an appreciative society and we’ll wander the same circles in an eternal return where we worry more about headscarves or beards or motorbikes or some other arbitrary fashion statement as representing the end of the world.

Ethnic cultures are just as stuck. It’s a reaction generally to bad times: war, genocide, and persecution. The best way to free these up is to get rid of the bad times. Unfortunately bad times give psychopaths like Stalin and Hitler power and boy can they stir up the biases in their favour. It’s a vicious circle.

Not always possible of course, but a better culural process informed leadership might help. (It’s a pity our corporations’ laws empower psychoaths so much, th eleast human among us, but then they may have helped make the law in the first place, as such, it would also be a fine example of niche construction.)