"If they don't have the vocabulary

then how can you explain something?" asked the frustrated mother of an even more frustrated small boy. 

How indeed? I left her to sort out her furious young child but it is a problem I have been thinking about in a different way. 

My long essay for Jurisprudence at law school was on "Language planning, multiculturalism and bureaucratic law making." I shudder now that I even dared to think I could say much about the topic in the space of the 10,000 words which were the absolute upper limit allowed. It is the sort of topic which needs a book, not a short thesis. I was younger then and arrogant enough to think I could say something worthwhile.

I wrote it a very long time ago. I know a lot more about the topic now than I knew then but I still do not know nearly enough. It's a big topic.

It has come up again recently but in a rather different sort of way. One of the senators in our federal parliament who identifies as indigenous was saying that aboriginal people in this country did not need a Voice. They needed people to listen. 

I think Senator Price might be correct. There are so many voices and they will not come together as one Voice if the referendum is successful. There are too many competing interests here. Like the charity sector they are getting more and more splintered as people feel their particular concern is not being heard. 

But there are bigger concerns too. There are the voices which are determined to impose on others the ideas they believe are "right". All too often these are ideas which will make them dependent rather than independent.

We have schools in this country which are devoted to teaching aboriginal children in what is supposedly their "mother tongue". They are there to "help children retain their culture and identity as well as their language" - or so it is claimed. 

But are they really doing that? Of course they aren't. "Culture" and "identity" are not static things. Unless we completely isolate children in these schools from the outside world they are going to find out about everything from sausages to space suits and beer to baseball. They will need words to understand these things and that means their language has to change. It has to accept vast numbers of loan words. Unless it does this it will die.

And that in itself is not sufficient for a child from one of those of schools.  In this country they need to learn English, in another they might need to learn Chinese or Swahili, Arabic or Spanish. And yes it can mean that they will not be able to use the language which is presumed to be their first language. It is not good to lose a language because it also means that a culture and a way of thinking can be lost. The world is a poorer place when that happens. But it will happen and to restrict a child's education in order to retain something simply because it seems desirable to a few is surely wrong? If aboriginal people are saying their children's education is lacking - and some are - then surely we need to be listening?