From the issue dated March 31, 2000

A Small College in the Pacific Is at the Heart of a Linguistic Struggle The College of Micronesia will help to shape its nation's cultural future By COLIN WOODARD Yap, Federated States of Micronesia Clearing customs at Yap's airport is a two-step process. First, the uniformed immigration officer subjects your passport to poker-faced scrutiny. Then, the moment you turn away from the counter, there's the traditional welcome: a green garland placed around your neck by a bare-breasted, grass-skirted young woman and a young man wearing only an elaborate loincloth. "Welcome to Yap," they say with a sincerity that leaves many visitors convinced that they've finally found the unspoiled Pacific paradise of the popular imagination. The wider world is constantly arriving on Yap's doorstep. In this century, Germans, Japanese, and Americans have flown their flags over Yap and the more than 600 other tiny islands of central Micronesia, and each colonial power had its own ideas about how the region should be developed and what should become of the inhabitants. Educational policy -- and the language of instruction in particular -- was central to colonial ambitions here. Today, few places in the world exist where the interplay between higher education and society is as visible as in Yap and the three other states of the Federated States of Micronesia. Almost every public-school teacher and government official has studied at the College of Micronesia-F.S.M., the only institution of higher education here. The college's curriculum and priorities have a direct influence on every aspect of society, right down to the languages the citizens speak. The two-year college has four branch campuses and is now at the center of a new cultural-conservation effort. Long accustomed to being merely a jumping-off point for studies overseas, the college is attempting to become a repository and defender of the nation's long-neglected indigenous languages, and the cultural values they embody. Foreigners used to come to the Micronesian islands by boat. Now the outside world arrives in the form of videotapes, satellite television, Internet connections, and commercial airliners. And while greater contact is appreciated, it presents considerable challenges for the Federated States of Micronesia, which has eight tiny but distinct cultural groups among 120,000 people scattered across more than a million square miles of the Central Pacific. In Yap, striking a balance between maintaining the region's cultures and welcoming foreign ones is viewed as crucial. "Yap can no longer live as an island unto itself, but we need to retain our basic survival skills and values if we are to take advantage of outside influences," says Henry Falan, director of education for Yap. "Language is the foundation of cultural knowledge, and the stronger that foundation is, the better it can withstand the importation of Western values and ideas." This part of the Central Pacific was one of the last regions of the world to be discovered by Europeans. Spain, Germany, then Japan each ruled what is now the F.S.M., along with the Marshall, Palau, and Northern Mariana Islands. Japan aggressively colonized the region, building cities, industrial centers, and ports. On the eve of World War II, Japanese outnumbered Micronesians by a ratio of two to one. Japan also built airfields, fortifications, and naval bases, where strikes were launched against Pearl Harbor and American bases in Guam and the Philippines. The United States captured the Micronesian islands during the war, with an enormous loss of life on all sides, and kept them after the war under a United Nations trusteeship. All Japanese were repatriated, and their devastated cities, factories, and roads were smothered by the jungle that grew back. For two decades, The U.S. government allowed few people to enter or leave the region, in part because of the secretive nature of atomic-bomb tests in the Marshall Islands. By the early 1960's, U.S. conduct in Micronesia was under mounting criticism at the United Nations. The U.S. government devised a plan: The islanders would be allowed to vote on their future status, but only after an intensive U.S. effort to Americanize them. The United States took over the entire education system. American teachers and textbooks were sent to the islands, and English became the official language of instruction. The effort was a spectacular failure. Exposed to the antiwar and civil-rights movements in the United States, Micronesian leaders began plugging for independence. After decades of negotiation, the F.S.M. became an independent nation in 1986. But an American curriculum dating from the 1960's remained largely in place -- and was woefully ineffective. "If five years ago you'd have walked into a school on a remote island like Satawal, you would have seen Dick and Jane and Puff and Fluff and lessons about snow banks and apartment buildings," says Mike Caldwell, a former dean of the University of Guam's College of Education who now trains future teachers at the College of Micronesia's Yap campus. Mr. Caldwell, who in 1963 was part of the first wave of American teachers dispatched to Micronesia, says that research on how children learn first and second languages always contradicted the U.S. educational policy: "Kids who start learning in their own language will learn a second language faster than kids who were taught in the second language from Day 1." Today, Micronesia's native languages remain the primary means of communication within the towns, hamlets, and villages of its far-flung islands. But because the F.S.M.'s eight languages are mutually incomprehensible, English is the lingua franca. Although English is the first language of less than 2 percent of the population, it is used on all government forms, in business, and on street signs. The mangled system of language education has had disastrous results. A recent national report found that high-school seniors typically read at a fifth- to seventh-grade level. High-school seniors and college students also perform poorly on tests of English as a foreign language. Now, after more than a decade of debate, the four states of the F.S.M. want to change to a system in which children would begin studies in their own language and gradually shift to English. But a problem remains: The written forms of the country's indigenous languages have been so neglected that there is a profound shortage of books, dictionaries, and grammars. Most of the languages lack the vocabulary needed to teach many subjects. "The education system needs so many things, but not having materials that are relevant to the needs of the nation is probably No. 1," says Susan J. Moses, president of the College of Micronesia-F.S.M., which is based near the national capital, on the lush tropical island of Pohnpei. "That's one of the things we want to help correct." The role of creating such a linguistic foundation is usually undertaken by large, national universities with extensive libraries and armies of doctoral students. The College of Micronesia has neither -- in fact, few faculty members even have Ph.D.'s. But as the source of most of the nation's teachers and professionals, the college is central to efforts to revitalize local languages. Most of the 1,800 students who attend the college go on to further studies at four-year institutions in the United States. Like the rest of the education system, the College of Micronesia was created by the United States and modeled directly after American junior colleges. The college's main campus recently moved to a small complex in a quiet valley set beneath a striking volcanic mass that looks like a miniature version of the famous Devil's Tower, in Wyoming. The hill's name, Pwisehn Malek, translates as "Chicken-Shit Mountain," after a giant mythological bird that was supposed to have left it behind. Few students arrive on the campus with an adequate command of English. "Our biggest problem at the college is language," says Gene Ashby, of the languages and literature department. "By the time I get a student, they've had nine years of education in English, but it's been so imperfectly taught that they can't use it very well." As a result, English dominates the curriculum, accounting for about half of the credits required for graduation. To get at the root of the country's educational problems, national and state officials have asked the college to focus on overcoming pedagogical obstacles. The centerpiece is a proposed National Language and Cultural Institute, which would develop grammars, dictionaries, and teaching materials for the eight F.S.M. languages: Pohnpeian, Chuukese, Yapese, Kosraen, Woleian, Satawalese, Ultithian, and Kapingamarangian. The institute has the political and financial backing of the national Congress, but Ms. Moses is seeking additional money and expertise abroad. The institute would end up making decisions that could alter the evolution of the languages. Standardizing orthography, spelling, and grammar often means choosing between competing dialects. And after two centuries of colonial rule, removing foreign borrowings is like peeling the skin off an onion. "You've got Spanish influence, German influence, Japanese influence, and now a whole lot of English influence," says Ms. Moses. "How far do you go back?" The college will also introduce local-language courses and train teachers in bilingual education. As the college tries to strengthen local languages, one of the problems it faces is that a great deal of vocabulary has been lost. The language skills of the younger generation, in particular, are slipping: Many children are unable to name common plants and animals. Several English words creep into each uttered sentence, including common terms like "open" and "close" as well as words for new objects and concepts. "The way we have been going, the local language is sort of de-emphasized, kind of demeaned," says Harvey G. Segal, of the College of Micronesia's education department on Pohnpei. "Problem is, there's not much stuff to read in the vernacular. There's the Bible, but not much else." Several local languages have special forms used to address traditional leaders. Use of that formal language has declined so much that one new community chief told researchers he had lost most of his friends because they didn't know how to communicate with him in the proper language. But Mr. Falan, the director of education for Yap, says the effort to save the languages is worth it. "If we'd lost the language completely and were trying to recapture it, this would be an exercise in futility," he says. "This is all possible because native vernacular languages are still the predominant languages used in the home." If the Federated States of Micronesia succeeds in preserving native languages while giving students strong English skills, some of the visitors arriving at the Yap airport may be coming with notebooks in hand, to learn how the country has accomplished the task. http://chronicle.com Section: International Page: A55 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article