Linguistic diversity and challenges in Timor-Leste
Dili, February 18, 2020
In last weeks entry I outlined some of the basic principles that are the foundations of good material design. I’ve been here in Timor-Leste a shade over two weeks, and I am finding those principles are even more important than I realized: they are keeping me tethered and focused. I wrote a lengthy email to an outside consultant, who had previously been advising the Ministry on language teaching reforms for grades 1-6, how these principles were guiding me in devising student workbooks/texts and teacher guides for what will be the students third language of study, English, and why I didn’t want to follow her suggestion and write a student book that started with Phonemic awareness (basically the “sounds of English”). I want to structure the book with communicative purposes in mind. But before we get into that discussion (which is next weeks topic) lets look at that sentence I wrote…”guiding me in devising curriculum for the third language of study.” I am finding that what I am discovering in Timor-Leste is a linguistic situation that has deep historic and political roots. And here I thought I was simply writing a 7th grade English text. This is a reminder that language is tied into cultural, political and power dynamics in all societies, but here, a little bit more so.
Think of this: by the time a typical Timorese student enters 7th grade, they will have at least two languages that they are juggling in a formal academic way. Tetun, the national language, and Portuguese, which is considered an official language. Moreover, outside of Dili, the capital, often the L1 or primary home language of a student is a dialect that is an oral language, with little written references, and often from an entirely different language family than Tetun. Plus, the home language is extremely specific to their region of the country and isn’t used to communicate to Timorese from other regions—this is why the Tetun spoken in Dili (Dili Tetun) was chosen as a lingua franca for the entire nation at the time of independence—more people already spoke it. Upon entering kindergarten students are introduced to a formal study of Tetun—reading, writing, language structure etc. For some, this is their first formal exposure to the language. At grade two they are introduced to a formal study of Portuguese, which they will continue studying throughout their schooling. Then, in Grade 7: English is introduced.
In the language curriculum offices at the Ministry of Education, I sit in a room with the Tetun, Portuguese and English teams all of whom are revising the grades 7-9 curriculum and supporting materials. We have fruitful conversations and dialogues, (one side note is how sharing the California ELD standards is proving very beneficial to the Tetun team—a topic for later exploration) but the reality is we are competing for time, and perhaps more importantly, the bandwidth of young people, who not only have to learn 3 languages, they also have to do what all students do: study math, history, science, art, physical education etc. And if what I am learning in these offices and observing on the street, no one but government officials, or older Timorese speak or understand Portuguese, or English very well. So, how did Timor-Leste get to this place of multiple languages being taught but not being used, except by the elite?
In the constitution itself you can see the tension between these languages. There it is stated that: “Tetun and Portuguese are official languages, and Tetun and other national languages (dialects) shall be valued and developed and that both English and Indonesian shall be working languages within the civil society, side by side with the official language for as long as deemed necessary.”
It’s helpful here to understand the role that language plays in both national identity and politics. Timor was a colony of Portugal until 1975. There was resistance to this occupation all through the 20thcentury but it reached a boiling point during the 1970s as Portugal itself was going through political upheavals and the air was filled with revolutionary fervor. Finally, in December of 1975, after Portugal’s own right wing government was overthrown, Timor won its independence from Portugal. The Timorese rebellion was decidedly leftist, and this meant that Indonesia, under the dictatorship of Suharto, could mask it’s own imperialist designs under the guise of anti-communism. Days after independence, the Indonesian army invaded. We have to remember the cold war between the Soviets and the U.S. was at its height at this time. This meant Indonesia would receive the tacit support of the U.S. who, after the victory of Vietnamese communists, and under the leadership of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, was still concerned with communist influence in the region. Neither they, nor any other nation (I’m talking to you Australia) did anything to support the sovereignty of this new nation—despite the serious human rights violations that were well documented by outside journalists and aid agencies.
The Indonesian occupation was not benign. Amnesty international estimated that upwards of 200,000 Timorese out of a total population of 600,000 died from 1975-1999, as a direct result of Indonesian brutality. It is not lost on this writer, who served as an English language fellow in Cambodia, that the same time period witnessed the genocide of ¼ of the population of that country at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, with no intervention by any other country.
During the Indonesian occupation the use of Tetun, Portuguese and English were outlawed and all business and education was required to be in Bhasa Indonesian. So Tetun, which could be understood across many of the dialects, became a symbol of national identity, so much so that I’ve read that it became part of the Church’s liturgy (another side note, this is a predominately Roman Catholic country, a result of hundreds of years of Portuguese rule). Portuguese, on the other hand, maintained its prominence as a language of resistance, as many of the resistance leaders were educated, and prior to independence Portuguese was the language of schools. So this language held on to that importance and became one of the national languages identified in the constitution that was finally approved in 2002.
All of this leads to a vigorous national debate about which languages actually should be taught in the year 2020. (I haven’t even touched upon the use of Bhasa Indonesian, the dominant language in the entire region and the language of schools from 1975-2002). I believe the focus should be on strengthening the national education system as a whole, using the national language (Tetun) and focusing on critical thinking and academic literacy in that language in the early years. From what I can see the Tetun team is doing that right now. What foreign languages are taught, and how much emphasis on each, is really not my right to say. I know others have stronger opinions on this and they have their right to them. For now I am focusing on trying to create student materials that are developmentally and cognitively appropriate to 7thgraders and take all I have written and continue to learn and think about into account.
Learning and understanding this context is as essential to my work as is the understanding of the basic guiding principles of language acquisition and language material design that I wrote about last week. Today, I am heading out of Dili, to three smaller towns, in the mountains and on the south coast for a three day field trip: Suai, Ainaro and Same. I will be visiting schools and getting a sense of the challenges teachers face in those communities.
