SIL DEFENDS VERNACULAR LITERACY

In the Weekend Courier of Papua New Guinea dated 17 November 2012, there is a report from an SIL linguist justifying elementary vernacular literacy.

The sincerity of Robbie Petterson is applauded but he is obviously not a teacher. Please click:

VERNACULAR TEACHING IS ACADEMIC FANTASY

In recent months, the Summer Institute of Linguistics has been under pressure from the PNG Government in the removing of vernacular literacy training in elementary school.

This has been the reason-to-be for the SIL for many years. They are preparing us all for the Second Coming. The official suggestion has been that vernacular training in literacy has been a failure.

But one Robbie Petterson of SIL has lifted the veil of secrecy to explain the success of vernacular learning by a story of a school involved in vernacular learning supported by SIL.

The propaganda has always been that students involved in vernacular language do better in English later on. Robbie Petterson does not produce statistics but tells us a nice story in anecdotal format.

For your interest, the literacy statistics for this grade 7 class are typical for schools in the area. Seven out of 17 students are good readers of English. Six can only read at beginner level and four can not read at all.

But the really interesting finding is that of the seven good readers in this class, nearly all came from tok ples elementary feeder schools. 

Only two came from the local English only elementary schools. All the non- readers went to the local English-only school.

There are many flaws in this description:

He generalizes on all schools in the area without a formal survey cited.

He makes subjective sampling of students.

How does he assess 'good readers'? Do they come out one at a time and read?

What of spelling, structure, writing, comprehension and vocabulary?

Surely all schools are different for various reasons.

Are all the schools open throughout the year?

Do all students attend throughout all terms?

How many students from vernacular schools have low achievement?

There only a few books in the school in the vernacular language? Is this satisfactory?

Many schools have no vernacular books as tok ples has not been translated into the bible.

If the SIL wants to explain the worth of vernacular, let them show solid statistics of the schools under question.

Robbie says that students who did not learn to read, should not be pushed up to grade 3 without having learned to read. This means they should be kept back in elementary. Not good. Please click:

START KIDS EARLY TO READ, WRITE AND SPEAK

EDUCATIONAL UNDERCLASS IN PNG SCHOOLS

The report above makes me sad to reread. But it does reflect the true situation in many Papua New Guinea schools, particularly in the rural area. It is a worst case scenario which means that many schools are not a bad as that.

Surely a little remedial work would help. Reading is not a difficult task if done in a practical mastery way.

There have been reports of 800 languages in PNG. Recent media reports give the figure at 1100. Perhaps the Second Coming should just come.

It will take another 500 years to translate all these languages. Too bad for the local vernacular schools.

VERNACULAR SHOULD BE PROMOTED TWO LESSONS A WEEK