Bilingual Language Case Study

problem of disappearing languages. This predicament is coupled with a rapidly ageing world population. An endangered language risks extinction anytime with the death of the only surviving speaker. According to World Health Organisation(WHO), the population of people aged 60 years and over, will increase from 605 million to 2 billion by the year 2050. (Organization, 2014) Research have identified five regions where languages are facing rapid extinction. They are Northern Australia, Central South America, North America, Eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and Southwest United States. (Wilford, 2007) Language is disappearing at an alarming rate in Australia. The number of spoken languages by the initial indigenous population has decreased from two hundred
Labour Member of Parliament(MP) Mr Newmann argued that the above factors were not justifiable, especially with recent changes in the 2007, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it is only appropriate that the aboriginals are entitled to their rights, to preserve, strengthen and educate their children in their indigenous languages. The modest media and political representation on policies relating to the aboriginal population, resulted in the lack of impetus in education policies for aboriginal children. This paper will look at the reasons for NT government reluctance in implementing Bilingual education policies through examining the viewpoints of government(policymaker), media (actors) and
On the list are issues relating to climate change, obesity, indigenous disadvantage and land degradation. According to H. W. J. Rittel and M. M. Webber "wicked" policy problems are hard to define, they have many interdependencies and are often multi-casual, no clear solution, socially complex, hardly sit within the responsibilities of any one organisation (APSC, 2007). Indigenous bilingual education policy has been swaying to and fro, without a clear outcome. In 1999, the "two way learning" program was seen as a better alternative to current programs, hence some bilingual programs were closed. There are many reasons accounting for the ineffectiveness of Bilingual programs. Besides the reasons as cited by the NT government , other complex reasons such as poor funding, bad teaching, or even quality of students may be the cause. For instance, funding allocated to indigenous education in remote Thamarrurr region of the NT was radically lower as compared to the NT as a whole. NT Government spent $8,488 each year on the education of each school age child throughout the Territory, while only $3998 was spent on a child's education in the Thamarrurr region. In other words, for every dollar spent on a child in NT, 47 cents was spent on a child of indigenous origin. (Flynn, 2005) These challenges may not be