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Preserve And Disseminate
 Traditional Knowledge

Photo from The Raízes da Vida KHouse, Fortaleza, Brazil

English speaking countries offer a huge volume of multi-media contents through the Internet. It flows in waves to the most remote areas of the globe, and covers all aspects of life, business, and society. Its impact threatens to destroy cultural heritages, identities, indigenous knowledge, and languages. Already, they claim three languages die every day!
UNESCO says: "It is widely acknowledged nowadays that teaching in both the mother tongue and the official national language helps children to obtain better results and stimulates their cognitive development and capacity to learn."

Developmentgateway says: "Scientific research has long shown that skills such as math and reading are more effectively taught to schoolchildren in their mother tongue than in a second language. This usually entails a bilingual approach, the second language being the official one of the nation in which the students reside. Recent advances in the understanding of brain development go even further, concluding that learning a second language as a child, preferably before the age of five but also before the age of ten, is associated with more advanced gray matter in the brain in comparison to those who learned later."

M. Kraus says: "as many as half of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken on earth are "moribund"; that is, they are spoken only by adults who no longer teach them to the next generation. An additional 40 percent may soon be threatened because the number of children learning them is declining measurably. In other words, 90 percent of existing languages today are likely to die or become seriously embattled within the next century."

Creating matching contents in any aboriginal language may seem like a daunting task. The good news is that publishing aboriginal contents can now be done at an incredibly low cost.

The challenge is to produce good contents to publish. Many hands are needed. An entire community must be mobilized. Youth must be involved: This lets us shoot several birds with one arrow: Youth will learn about the culture while generating contents, and actively publishing it. This same contents will be used to support their efforts to build friendships with peers elsewhere. It is a win-win situation.

"Who are you?" - "Hi, this is me. This is the community in which I live. These are my rights, family, friends, and roots..."

We propose the Who-Am-I? life training program as an element in your strategy:

  • Let students use their language in the work. Let them interview grandparents about how life was when they were young. Let parents and your community help enrich the program's lesson plans: "Who am I?", "Where do I live?", "What are my rights?", "My family and friends", "What are my roots?"
  • Let students "play out" their  knowledge about your culture when inviting peers in other cultures and language areas for a three day virtual vacation at your place.

Teachers will coordinate the collection, writeups, and subsequent publication of contents. They'll do because it enhances their teachings in the schools' curriculum. By giving students what they want, they'll come back to teachers requiring knowledge (to do their thing).

Comes a new year, and a new Who-Am-I? schedule. New students are led to contents produced in preceding years. They will be asked to build on this resource. In this way, contents in your language will grow, almost organically...

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