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College’s shortcomings emerge at public consultation

“We don’t get any kind of Inuktitut support up there”

SARA MINOGUE

At a public consultation in Iqaluit last week, Iqalummiut presented very different views of what Nunavut Arctic College should be offering the territory. (FILE PHOTO)

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The first question on that list describes the dilemma for Nunavut’s only post-secondary school.

It asks: Which of the following best describes your view of the role that Nunavut Arctic College should play?

• Nunavut Arctic College is a place that helps to reinforce and preserve our language and culture;
• Nunavut Arctic College is a place where adults can improve and upgrade their literacy skills and basic educational levels;
• Nunavut Arctic is a place that provides practical training directly linked to employment or economic opportunities; or
• Nunavut Arctic College is a place where people can study for an academic degree or diploma that will be recognized across Canada.

MLAs Patterk Netser, Hunter Tootoo and Levi Barnabas heard from people who shared each of these views.

Their challenge will be in summarizing these views into a coherent set of recommendations they plan to present to the Legislative Assembly.

Mick Mallon, a former teacher at the college and a founding member of the teacher education program, took issue with the first description of the college.

“Nunavut Arctic College is definitely not reinforcing and preserving language and culture,” he said, pointing to the questionnaire. “It’s ridiculous, it’s nonsense, and it’s embarrassing.”

Mallon pointed out that the college has no program to teach Inuktitut as a second language, even though the Government of Nunavut wants Inuktitut to be the language of government by 2020.

“There’s no program to train teachers to teach Inuktitut.”

Melia O. Dobson has been an Inuktitut teacher in Iqaluit for 10 years, and now works as a language specialist at Aqsarniit middle school. She also said her experience at the college “wasn’t very good,” yet she is now expected to teach Inuktitut to children.

“We don’t get any kind of Inuktitut support up there at the college,” Dobson said.

Other Iqalungmiut pleaded for more programs that led directly to jobs in Nunavut.

Judy Watts, who works for the GN’s department of health in Pangnirtung, said that her department has “a desperate need for a lot of training.”

The college is willing to offer programs, she said, but only if someone else funds and develops their content. In Watts’ view, the college should have the base funding and the expertise to develop programs.

Mary Ellen Thomas, executive director of the Nunavut Research Institute, had obtained special permission from Education Minister Ed Picco to speak on behalf of the NRI, which she was surprised wasn’t mentioned in the discussion documents.

Thomas had a strong message for MLAs Patterk Netser, Hunter Tootoo and Levi Barnabas: mining companies are coming to Nunavut and Nunavummiut will miss out on jobs if the training isn’t ready quickly.

“Those companies can’t wait,” she said. “We have got to move on these things.”

“We need more mine training and we need it now,” echoed Manitok Thompson, a former minister of education.

Thompson said business education was also lacking at the college.

She used hairdressing students as an example. Some hairdressing graduates are unable to put their skills to use because they lack the bookkeeping and accounting skills to open and run a business.

Other Nunavummiut could open their own businesses — either sewing, driving a taxi, or harvesting country foods — if they had the right skills, Thompson said.

Thompson also talked about barriers to education. Some communities, she said, don’t get enough information about programs that are available. Potential students, she said, were being left behind if they couldn’t pass an entrance exam.

“People who already know carpentry run out of opportunities if there’s no way for them to get into college,” Thompson said.

Cathy Towtongie, a former president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., described another barrier: criminal record checks. Her daughter couldn’t get into the nursing program because of a driving offence, she said.

Some creativity is needed, Towtongie said.

“There are people who cannot read or write in English, but they can go out on the land and fix skidoos when they break down. How can we fit this into the entrance exam for mechanics?”

Hugh Lloyd, speaking as a long-term Northerner, echoed that sentiment. He called for more core funding for basic adult education.

The issue is not training people in the system, he said, but training new people to come into the system.

“I call this the ‘walkabout’ solution — training the people that are walking around town with nothing to do,” Lloyd said.

“Your staff needs to connect all these elements.”

Consultations also took place in Kugluktuk, Cambridge Bay, Coral Harbour, Arviat, Rankin Inlet, Arctic Bay and Pangnirtung.

The consultations are a response to a report presented to Education Minister Ed Picco in October, 2004, which found that the college was not communicating with its many stakeholders.

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