Wiinga qigcikaqa pelii America-m tusngavia-llu.
Atauciurrluku nunavut Agayutem aciani.
Itumcimanga'unani piyunarquciakun
elluarrluki-llu tamalkuitnun.
These are the words I hear every morning while I am getting the day started at Kwigillingok School. This is the sound of Mary Ann Wilkinson's third-grade students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in the language of their homes: Yup'ik. As the state debates the desirability of further federal involvement in Alaska education, there are a number of questions which need to be asked.
These Kwigillingok students, like their fellow classmates in kindergarten and first and second grade, receive all of their instruction in the language of their families. These same Yup'ik-speaking students, under order of the federal government, are tested, measured and evaluated in a foreign language in which they have had no instruction during the academic year. While the feds pore over these standardized test scores (whose standards?), Alaskans must decide if the preservation of a language is as important as standardized test performance in the majority language of our nation.
Kwigillingok is a rare place. In this tiny Yup'ik village on the western coast of Alaska, Yup'ik is the lingua franca in all matters of commerce and culture. In affirmation of this, the school begins instruction in the students' first language, with a minimum of English until the year after grade three.
The results of this decision show up on federally mandated testing. Very few third-graders are proficient in any English area. Some of the middle schoolers are below proficient.
However, as students reach the high school level, many reach proficiency and pass the Alaska High School Graduation Qualifying Exam. In the meantime, in grades 3-9, students' standardized test scores are, from a statistical standpoint, dismal.
Is this lower performance in English an indication of failure -- or a sign of success for Yup'ik? If so, what value do we assign success in an area that is not statistically measured by the feds?
These are the types of questions that are never asked when Outsiders talk about the success or failure of education in rural Alaska.
These questions reveal a great flaw in the fabric of our thinking as a nation. They reveal that we have begun to think of ourselves as only one kind of people that can be standardized and tested uniformly. It means that as a nation we have forgotten that we are one nation made of many. Alaskans, in light of who we are as a state, a state made of a plurality of peoples and languages, must affirm the value of children learning to say in their native tongue, "... with liberty and justice for all."
Walter Betz is administrator of the school in the village of Kwigillingok.
By WALTER BETZ