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NATURE

Sea, land, river

PEOPLES

Community

 

 

 


For earlier materials see Table of Contents

Using WWW to add depth t

Internet as dimensions

Here learning native languages

Saturday Lecture

I suggest reading the PRDN article first if you were not at the lecture – as gives the immediate contents of the presentation

White interpreted his experience in Skidegate (presumably a decade ago) in terms of Susan U Philips work at Warm Springs Indian Reserve asking ‘why don’t Indian kids participate more in the class’?

Here is Philips as a chapter 12 in online book Participant Structures and Communicative Competence  -- Numerous reprints – here is 2001 edition

And here is SU Philips book The Invisible Culture

 Frederick White at PR Library

 

More Background

 

Philip Whites recently published book Ancestral Language Acquisition Among Native Americans: A Study of a Haida Language Class

Here is a review of that book in an academic journal

 

Theme 1: Revitalizing Indigenous Languages

There is a n online book on this topic – which by the by has a chapter by Dan Rubin on Sm’algyax Language Renewal: Prospects and Options

 

Which led into a second theme on SLA (Second Language Acquisition) – is there a critical age etc

See Wikipedia Second Language Acquisition SLA –and Critical Period Hypothesis for learning 2nd language

 

Underlying the presentation was the Susan Philips approach from Warm Springs Reserve (see above)

 

But as mentioned by White there was also a dimension of linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis where language somehow causes different world views for its speakers --- this determinism seemed to color much of Whites presentation

See Linguistic anthropology for further discussion

How significant is ‘language’ and ‘culture’

White was interpreting the students reaction to the teacher as filtered through a Haida ‘worldview’ (my wording) – and thus much of the conversation from local teachers was how to present culturally relevant material in a culturally amenable manner --- one teacher almost broke down in frustration at her inability to get her class of 5th, 6th , and 7th graders to pay even a modicum of attention to what was being taught

--- The interpretation offered was to present material where the group was the main focus of attention, that students did not want to appear smarter than their peers etc

 

Critique: White’s background seems to be literature – I am dubious of his history and sociology – but it did generate a good discussion with local teachers searching for ‘clues’ how to educate young people who seem completely disinterested

 

And a second stream of how best to teach a ‘native language’ and why that is important (or not)

 

 

White to stay in Rupert to ‘meet with elders’

Apparently White’s degrees etc are in English – while the talk was more of a social studies perspective

But White told me he wanted to work on his next project which was to explore how someone ‘formed’ in Haida culture and Haida language will approach ‘humour’ and how that might differ form an Aglo perspective --- thus presumably looking for those situations where in myths, stories something will be embarrassing or hilariously funny – but will be misunderstood by Anglos as ‘off humour’ or more usually verging on sexually taboo topics areas etc (all these are my understanding of what he said)

 

 

 

 

 

Created by LG on 1/7/2008

Last updated on Tuesday, July 01, 2008