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The reward is the joy of being able to provide children with the opportunity to read and write in
their own language.
By Kathleen Carmody
The Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies has unveiled Mai Hatene Tetun
(Let’s Learn Tetun) – a graded sequential literacy program for the teaching of reading and writing in Tetun, the main local language of East Timor.
Launched to coincide with the first democratic elections in
the tiny country, the beautifully illustrated program is the result of two years of hard work in Australia and East Timor.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights states that it is a people’s “inalienable right to
use and maintain the language, heritage and culture into which they were born”.
To this end, the institute is currently involved in a number of projects to preserve the language, culture and identity of the
East Timorese, with the focus on education and literacy.
The illiteracy rate for the general population is around 49 per cent, but as high as 65 per cent in some districts.
A World Bank Report last
year said the most effective way to create a literate population in East Timor would be to “institute a full inclusive and integrated primary school literacy syllabus based on the study of the local vernacular”.
The Mai Hatene Tetun program is based on the stories, myths and legends of the Tetun cultural heritage and involved working with Timorese people, as well as with translators, editors and artists.
The
institute’s Sr Josephine Mitchell said it is “the first systematically developed program for children in the Tetun language”.
The Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies was set up in 1994 at the
request of East Timor’s Bishop Carlos Belo to help with the work of education, particularly the teaching of literacy.
An earlier literacy program, consisting of curriculum resources for grades 1-3, was
completed in 1997 and used for two years. It was destroyed in the 1999 violence.
Sr Josephine said putting the new program together – incorporating reprints of the materials that were lost – had been
challenging.
“It’s been lots of work,” she said. “It’s the same program, but we had to revise and reprint. We had to start almost from scratch – like the East Timorese.”
The stories then had to be
produced in written form. Printing costs were covered by donations.
It’s been a challenge, but for Sr Josephine the reward is the “joy of being able to provide children with the opportunity to read and write
in their own language”.
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