DILI, 25 october 2023 (TATOLI) – Last april, the government approved a proposal that defined Portuguese as the language of instruction and teaching throughout the education system. The proposal defined “Portuguese as the language of instruction and teaching in the Timorese education system, with Tetum and other national languages playing a supporting role”. The proposal was jointly presented at the time by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Culture (MoHESC) and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to cover the entire school system.
The former Education Minister, Armindo Maia, speaking at the Portuguese Cultural Centre at the Portuguese Embassy in Dili and on the sidelines of a ceremony to welcome a group of teachers to the School Learning and Training Centers on 28 february, said that the two ministries would propose changes to the Basic Law of Education, and the proposal was that the language of instruction should only be Portuguese. Tetum and other national languages would serve as auxiliary languages and pedagogical support when necessary.
On 30 september, José Honório da Costa, head of the MoHESC, said in a lecture at the National University of Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL) that he would not tolerate universities and higher education institutes using the Indonesian language to teach, saying that higher education teachers should, in general, use the national languages in all teaching activities.
Thus, for the implementation of Portuguese, the minister said that the MoHESC would commit to “maintaining training programs to improve proficiency levels in Portuguese” and aim for “maximum participation by lecturers ” to ensure that all teaching activities were conducted in Portuguese. Regarding the use of the Indonesian language, he said that his ministry would “ask for clarification from the rectors of higher education institutions that use the language.”
With regard to the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), it should be remembered that the Vice-Rector of the University of Dili (UNDIL), Francisco Mausoro, had already appealed to the MoHESC and the CPLP to strengthen Portuguese language training for lecturers at private HEIs. He said that the dissemination of Portuguese in classes at private universities would promote “quality classes” that would contribute to the “preparation of human resources capable of competing in the labor market both nationally and internationally.”
Last July, the Human Capital Development Fund (FDCH) Executive Director, Cristóvão dos Reis, declared that 48 lecturers from HEIs would be sent to Portugal which would include attending an “intensive Portuguese language course.”
There has been unanimous agreement that the Tetum lexicon is not sufficient for the use of terminology specific to various sciences and technologies. The issue was recently highlighted at the 8th edition of the UNTL Pedagogical Days, whose title The Portuguese Language as an Instrument for Access to Knowledge leaves no room for doubt. At the event, the Minister of Education called the Portuguese language “a guiding thread for access to different doors of knowledge.”
The languages used in Timorese higher education institutions
Based on an unstructured survey of graduates working at Tatoli, it showed that Indonesian is the dominant language at UNPAZ. Meanwhile, English is the dominant language at the Dili Institute of Technology (DIT), where Portuguese is used little or not at all. Portuguese and Tetum are the most widely used language at UNTL.
The “case study” by M. Azancot de Menezes published in the Tornado newspaper (What language is taught at universities in Timor-Leste?) in november 2022 managed to gather 50 responses from HEI students in Dili with the following answers:
HEI students were asked the following questions, among others:
- Do lecturers teach in Portuguese?
- Do lecturers teach in Tetum?
- Do lecturers teach in Bahasa?
- Do lecturers teach in English?
- Do lecturers teach in Tetum and Bahasa?
- Do lecturers teach in Tetum and Portuguese?
- Would you like to have lessons in Portuguese?
- Are you going to write (or have you written) your monograph in Portuguese?
- Are you going to write (or have you written) your monograph in Bahasa?
The answers to questions 1 to 6 were as follows:
- 1 Lecturers teach exclusively in Portuguese;
- 5 Lecturers teach exclusively in English;
- 6 Lecturers teach in Tetum and Portuguese;
- 7 Lecturers teach in Tetum and Bahasa;
- 31 Lecturers teach in Tetum, Bahasa, and Portuguese.
With regard to question 7, it was found that 48 students wanted to have lessons in Portuguese and, finally, with regard to questions 8 and 9, the answers were:
- 22 Students replied that they were going to write their monograph in Portuguese;
- 28 Students replied that they were not going to write the monograph in Portuguese;
Although the answers to questions 1 to 6 show that 38 out of 50 teachers use Portuguese, even though 37 of them are multilingual, the author of the study, somewhat on the fringes of the data obtained, regrets that “classes at HEIs are taught in Indonesian and/or Tetum, with very little or almost nothing in Portuguese”. He justifies the situation with reasons that go beyond the HEIs: “Most of the teachers at Timor-Leste’s Higher Education Institutions obtained their bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Indonesian universities because it was cheaper, and because the classes were taught in Indonesian (the international language that the teachers master)” and he regrets what he says is a “generalized lack of knowledge of the Portuguese language on the part of teachers and rectors (but also MPs, political party leaders, journalists, etc.).”
Journalist: Afonso do Rosario
Editor: Izaura Lemos/Filomeno Martins
Translator: Camilio de Sousa
